the media, into something more openly hospital. >> african-american lgbt issues -- leaders talk about issues facing their community. voting,ve talked about running for office. the result much political work that has to happen beyond those things. right? just as we have been here, policy is moving to prevent queer people from being parents, from adopting and fostering children. it is better for a child to stay in the system then heaven for bid to queer people adopting them. rbid two queerfo people adopting them. they have to be hearing from us all the time. >> watch on c-span and c-span.org.

next, a book tv exclusive area are cities tour visits las cruces, new mexico to learn more about its unique history and literary life. we have traveled to u.s. cities bringing the book seen to our viewers. you can watch more of our visits citiestour.rg/ broughtnited states rockets here to test. we spoke with an offer to learn more about the history. i worked in the public affairs office for 30 years. i came in 1977 as an army intern. this was my permanent duty location. inerved 30 years, retired 2007. working in public affairs in this price9 -- this place, you

get exposed to a lot of questions. i had to answer news media questions. i didn't know anything when i got here. i have to find out this information, how it works. there's a lot of cool history here. like the first atomic bomb explosion. like the indians who once lived here. collectng time, i would this information so i can answer questions. toward the end of my career, people started to say, you have to read a book about that. after i retired, i did that. it turned into "pocket full of rockets." the building houses this be to/ v2 -- v2 rocket.

the united states went to germany to bring back as much material as they could because this technology was way beyond anything else the united states had. enough material was brought back ,y boat and train to las cruces 150 train cars were parked and unloaded and brought to the missile range. all of this material was stored here. general electric at the contract to assemble v2 rockets and fire them here. the program started in 1946 with the first firings. the army had the foresight to realize that they could learn a lot in addition to using them as weapons, as scientific vehicles or to put payloads in them. we have an area where the germans had a 2000 pound payload warhead. the scientists thought, we could put payloads in there.

we set up instrumentation to to see the samples, composition of the atmosphere at the upper levels, to measure radiation levels, to take temperatures, measure the wind. all of those things that we didn't know after the war. we had never gotten that hide. the missile range has always prided itself in being the birth place of america's space activities because of these being launched here. them werelike 65 of actually fired here. the missile range was established to test this new technology. they knew they needed a big space. this used to be a bombing range during world war ii. and took that property turns it into -- turned it into a missile range. the basic real estate is 40 miles wide and 100 miles long.

that doesn't actually reach 4000 square miles of military a nationalcause of monument sitting in the middle of that. there is also a wildlife refuge in that property. you get about 3200 square miles. they also have properties on the northwest side with a contract with the ranchers to evacuate them during 12 hour periods. during those periods, the missile range is the size of the state of connecticut. without any people out there. connecticut has, what, 4 million people? it's a sizable chunk of property where you can get people a lot of the way in case heavy things for a lot of the sky. white sands is the birthplace of america's space activity. it is the birthplace of the atomic age for the united states.

trinity side exists because there were two bond designs at las animas. one was a uranium-based bomb. it simply shot one load of uranium into another to get critical mass. it is a nuclear explosion. that is the bomb that was used on hiroshima. that was not tested until it was dropped there. that is a very slow process to get the uranium 235 separated from uranium 238. it is a fairly common elements, like tin. do a chainion to reaction, you have to have uranium 235. iss than 1% of the uranium 235. that is what oak ridge was all about.

slow, laborious process. they also found that when you run a reactor, one of the byproducts is plutonium. which is fissionable as well. you can have a go critical if you get the mass correct. you can make it, and quickly separated in the chemical process. it was about the reactors there making plutonium. found that they could not use the same mechanism to get a critical mass because the plutonium as a gets closer together, you have to assemble it quicker. change the. he of the plutonium. they couldn't do either. they had to come up with a different way of getting a critical mass of plutonium. closer the adams

together so you get a chain reaction. they came up with implosion. implosion simply takes up all of case it isin this the size of a youth softball. 13.5 pounds of material. surrounding up by 5000 pounds of high explosives. the trick is to get all of the high explosives in individual lenses to go out in the same instant and symmetrically compress that downfall something to the size of a golf ball. boom. that was unknown. they didn't want to just drop it on japan, and hopefully it works. they wanted to do a test. the test was scheduled for 4:00 a.m. but thunderstorms in the area caused a delay. they didn't want to wait another day because of lightning issues. everything about it is exposed in that desert air, the rain, the humidity.

they rescheduled a few hours later at 5:30. it went. just as they were beginning to get light in the east. it lit up the sky. you can see the light for over 100 miles if you are looking in that direction, depending on cloud cover and stuff. shockwaves went out. it broke windows in some of the surrounding communities. lieutenant bush, the camp around whene was the explosion took place. he happened to be outside the bunker. he was in a hunch. shots his eyes shot -- and was looking away from the explosion. light so bright that he didn't know if his eyes were shut. he touched his eyelids to make sure that they were shut. after the light dimmed a little bit, he stood up. the shock wave hit him and knocked him down.

it didn't hurt him or anything. that, theyonded to all talk about the white light. they talk about the colors in the fireball as it rises. people's experience of the shockwave differs to parenting -- depending on their location. some experienced a roughly, thunder thing. some were disappointed and some were amazed. the other issue with the explosion is the fallout. everybody was far enough away and in bunkers and stuff that the radiation emitted by the fireball, they were safe from that. the only issue was the fallout of radioactive dust, the daughter materials created in the explosion. that,ere monitoring oppenheimer had technicians and scientists out with geiger counters and vehicles, driving

along and following the cloud of all-out in trying to measure out where it fell. the heavier dust materials are going to fall quickly, the later stuff gets pushed way up 45,000 feet and keeps going. they are trying to measure that and try to put limits on where it went. you can go online and see a diagram of that going to the north northeast. up towards santa rosa. extends because it gets into the upper winds, it gets dispersed and spread all the way around the planet. , at ground zero itself there was a small depression, at greater created by -- a crater. they were simulating an aerial blast. to get the maximum explosive effect on the ground, you need to explode up in the air at 2000

feet. high atldn't get that trinity site. it only gave them a simulation of that. because of that, that 100 feet of air below the bomb did not -- bomb, it did not take a huge crater. there was not much your lifted into the firefall -- dirt lifted up into the fireball. that material and the steel tower and the mechanism around the bond -- bomb all got activated in the fireball. the sand gets melted into liquid. it falls back down as rain. some of it is particles and some of it is liquid. the crater gets covered with green glass, spotty green last. it's called trinitarian --

trinite. material, the lightweight dust and stuff, is what went down range. 's got us into the space age. it became a sounding rocket. that is a vehicle that takes instruments to a high-altitude or does some kind of experiment in a high-altitude. that kind of row graham has continued nonstop since 1946. it is still being accomplished today by nasa in conjunction with the navy here and the army. sounding rockets are still sent up because it is relatively cheap and easy, now we can send a small rocket to an opportunity

of 150 miles, well above the atmosphere. you could look at stars at night and there is no atmospheric interference. all you need is for-five minutes of exposure to collect that data. they have done experiments with manufacturing in the abruptness fear. when you are up there 200 miles in zero g or microclimate a -- microgravity, you can see what happens when you don't have the effects of gravity. those kind of tests are continuing here at white sands. was aange is a mayor -- major player in the space shuttle program. in the early days of creating , toe models of the shuttle actual space shuttle landings, only one in 1982. the columbia landed here at the end of its third space shuttle

mission. the space shuttle landing strips were used during the whole program. facility,a training 90-95% of astronaut pilot training for the shuttle system was done at the runway in the middle of the missile range. they would go to very high altitudes, glide down for possible landings on these runways. plays a role here at this ranch. initially, when white sands was started, one of the buildings here -- the buildings here were set as temporary. the army sat about to test this new technology and also devise new missiles, new vehicles to deliver warheads, to defend against aircraft.

all kinds of vehicles. the navy was interested in this stuff as well. initially, the navy was interested in research, pay 's.ds being put up in v2 the navy is a cooperator here since 1946. eventually the missile range facility,p as an army run and financed by the army. the army commander, which was traditionally a general, had three deputies, one each for the army, navy, and air force. those guys are then responsible for sponsoring their services testing onto the missile range. it doesn't test for just the army or the navy. it also tests for the air force. in the early days, they launched missiles from the ground and

aircraft, that testing was on at white sands. the missile range does lots of things for lots of different people. the biggest contributions would be those early days, the testing , this istechnologies the one that people don't realize. or the blueprint for test ranges as a whole, for all up,ices, on how to set them what instrumentation you need, how to control tests into it safely, all those things. the missile range was the go to place for a couple of decades. we used to have instrumentation directors here who were in charge of developing new instrumentation, new radar,

decks, -- new optics. that was pretty important as well. as a public affairs guy answering questions from regular people, citizens and the news media, was to tell the basic enjoyable in terms of informational stories with the information there, it is not a list of the weapons systems,. it is not a list of radar systems, telescopes and all that stuff. there were some of that information in there because it is necessary to tell the story. i wanted it to be interesting for normal people, not get lost in technology and that other junk. and enjoy some of the stories. when i sign my book, i say enjoy the stories.

before being dropped on nagasaki in 1942, the fat man plutonium bomb was tested here at white sands missile range. we asked an author to learn more about oppenheimer, the father of the atomic weapon. oppenheimer was the father of the atomic bomb. he directed the civilian laboratory during when lauren -- world war ii. nobel prize-winning scientist and engineers, military personnel, and civilians who worked on the atomic bomb project. greeceback to ancient have been wanting to split the atom. they talk about the indivisible part of matter. that is a concept that has been around for a while. humans still haven't seen in adam. it is so small.

it wasn't until the end of the 19th century that scientist at it to be able to tinker with matching things together and figure out what came out, like you smash a car together and the carburetor comes out. we know that is something in a car but we don't know -- in a very basic way, that's what atomic physics was about. in 1938, two german physicists working in berlin bombarded this lump of material called uranium and they got the clearest result. it released a lot of heat. a different element, one of was farther down on element table. the word about this spread through the nuclear physics that like a forest fire

scientists have split the atom and that it was scientist working in nazi germany went on it. there was knowledge that the germans had split the atom. it wasn't until after pearl harbor the manhattan project was created. resources, under the control of the army corps of engineers, was devoted to creating this new weapon. grylls was appointed the head of the manhattan project, he is -- had finished building the pentagon. he asked people who would be a good leader. oppenheimer probably was not high on the list. he had not even been in charge of his physics department at berkeley before he was chosen to be the head of the central laboratory. it was something about him that grove liked.

grove saw that he was hungry, there was nobel prize winners that were being considered. groves wanted somebody who was -- woodworking bit harder. on a train trip across the country, oppenheimer was able to describe the groves what was needed to be done in terms that gross -- groves can understand. the other thing was where to locate the central laboratory. he couldn't have it in chicago because what happens if an accident happens? it would be easy to breach the top security, you are walking down a street involved in it, a colleague who was not involved him up and said, what you doing. there would be an easy way to top secrecycret -- on that. they picked some places in the west.

oppenheimer had come to new mexico to recover from an illness he was 18 years old and have fallen in love with new mexico. at one point, he said he wished he could marry the two loves of his life, physics and new mexico. that is before he got married. this was an opportunity for him to do that. groves some places around new mexico. iner they chose a place november of 1942, oppy started recruiting people. he couldn't tell them what he was doing. he said, i would like you to join me on this project but i can't tell you what you are going to be doing. you are going to be in a beautiful place and it will be central in the war effort. blue new -- people who knew oppy knew that this was something that was going to be important. a lot of people did sign on.

they went to an address in santa fe, near the plaza, and were told, you are not quite there. here is your temporary security plus -- pass. ofentists assembled in march 1943. they decided that they needed to do multiple ways of trying to make this weapon. part of the problem was that nuclear material, the uranium or plutonium, it was miniscule. plutonium was entirely man-made. a reactor in washington was created to manufacture this plutonium. uranium is naturally bade -- made but the part that is used for bombs is 1% of what occurs in nature. how do you refine that out? had you extract that 1%? that is how the big industrial complex at oak ridge was made,

to separate this isotope of uranium from the rest of it and assemble it. delay was the material. part of it was trying to figure out how to assemble this into a bomb. there were two different ways. one was a gun assembly bomb. and anotherranium part of the bomb had high explosives behind it. it was like a bullet. it had a huge detonation. that was a pretty simple technique or idea. simple thatlly so they didn't need to test it. that was the bomb that was dropped on your shema. they were so sure that it was going to work that they didn't

test it. the other bomb is little different. they tried to do that gun assembly with plutonium but as soon as it got shot, it fell apart. it never got to the other lump of newtonian. -- plutonium. they came up with the idea of implosion. you have plutonium about the size of a great route and around it you have conventional explosives. you detonate those within the same millisecond. there's a shockwave that comes onto the core, compresses the plutonium into a tighter mass. that is when you get the chain reaction and the splitting of the plutonium atoms and the release of an explosion. scientists were not sure that would work. it is tricky.

if the explosions arrive at the for thee or -- corba plutonium, it doesn't work. of lose south wiest alamos. oppy later thought of a phrase babita, baba god -- by now i am death, destroyer of worlds. just to put this in perspective, that one bomb when it was dropped over japan had the explosive and destructive equivalent of 2000 of our biggest bombers used in the war fully loaded. it had to be 2000 of those bombs fully loaded dropping all of their loads equaled the destructive power of one atomic weapon. oppenheimer felt about his work

in a complicated way. he had some mixed feelings of the fact that he did create this weapon of mass distraction. on the other hand, he ended the war. i don't think the atomic weapons won the war. the war was already one. it was won by the united states military, and by the people working in the factories. 1945ar ended in august of because of the atomic bomb. oppy realized this and took pride in the fact that possibly some lives were saved because of the use of it. invasion of the home islands of japan probably would've created more casualties. that is something that historians debate. we will never know the answer. he also felt somewhat bad about it later in life, in the 1960's.

he and his wife visited japan and journalists said, have you feel about your work in developing this weapon that was used on japan? it's not that i don't feel bad about it. i don't feel worse about it tonight than i did last night. by the time the 1950's rolled around, he started getting concerned about the arms race between the united states and the soviet union. said,rted feeling, he it's like there are two scorpions in a bottle. they're going to kill each other. he was also worried about the effect of secrecy on our democracy. vocal,me more and more questioning the nuclear policies of the country. he was influential. he was on the general advisory committee, the civilian committee that advise the atomic committee.

he had made some enemies along the way. in fact, j edgar hoover had put him even before world war ii on a list, to be detained in case of a national emergency as a suspicious person. oppenheimer in the 1930's had participated in left-wing activities. his wife was a communist party member. his brother and sister-in-law were communist party members. that he was a communist party member. that has never been proven. director ofs, the the atomic energy commission in 1953, didn't like oppy, partly for personal reasons. edward teller didn't like oppy because he thought he should of been appointed the head of the theoretical division.

there are these people that got together in the early 50's to take down oppy. some of it was for petty reasons. some of it was for security reasons, maybe he was connected with the soviet union. it is also because we, as a country, had come to a fork in the road. oppy would say, maybe we should be rethinking the fork we're going down. maybe we should go a different way. 1953, a report was given to president eisenhower saying that oppenheimer was a soviet spy. ike created can -- a wall around oppy. he still had his top security clearance. had oppylewis strauss come into his office and say,

there is a report about you. we are going to have to remove your top security clearance. he we can either do it quietly or we can have a hearing. elution.a public it was posted be secret. ended, a 997 page transcript was released to newspapers. everybody heard what happened with oppenheimer. they never proved he was a security risk. the second charge against him was that he advocated against the hydrogen bomb. he did say that the hydrogen bomb -- he said that the atomic bomb was powerful enough area -- enough. oppy was against the hydrogen bomb. did he try to coordinate scientists not working on it?

that was the charge. he might've talked to some people say that atomic bombs were powerful enough and you don't need to unleash 1000 times more powerful bombs. , humiliating way, his top security. -- security clearance was yanked. he went from 1945 being a hero that ended world war ii to 1954, being a villain who was maybe a communist spy. brought nuclear physics west, first to berkeley and caltech, and then to new mexico he changed new into what had been a very poor part of the country, even today some people don't know that new mexico as part of united states. they think it is a part of mexico. i get that all the time.

you don't have much of a nexen. [laughter] because i'm from the united states. i say, i'm from new mexico. state that was poor, had very little infrastructure, put in the middle of it is federally funded facilities that transformed the state. mentionedg jobs, i the scientists, engineers, the military who came here. but also for the manhattan process -- project, lots of people got well-paying jobs. in the 1960's,- the peace corps sent volunteers to new mexico to train before they sent them down to latin america. now, los alamos is one of the most prosperous countries --

counties in the country. they have a highest per capita number of phd's in the country in the county. it has transformed the state. that is a lot of spinoffs come from research into nuclear physics, people decide they don't want to work in los alamos, they create their own businesses. there is a ripple effect through northern new mexico. blue have high-tech jobs to come up with a good idea and spin it off in the run businesses. state that was in the backwaters of the country, not well known and is you are tourist to came through and so the beautiful landscapes and interesting cultures of new mexico, and made it more mainstream. >> what lessons do we learn from oppenheimer?

we still refer to a massive effort to use science and government and business to come up with a solution for the world's problems. we need to do a manhattan project on this. that in have back in -- the back of our minds. was is this impossible feat accomplished by dedicated people working hard to come up with something that nobody else had ever done before. we still take lessons from that and from oppenheimer's leadership in that. a mixed legacy. side, because of cleo partly because of who we are power plant accidents that have happened. partly it is a mixed legacy because of the divided opinions of the public looking at people

who work at los alamos as either saviors of our democracy or shadowy figures who have their fingers on armageddon. trys a complicated thing to to wrap your head around. times, the rays no black and white easy answers on this. >> are look at the literary community in las cruces continues as we visit new mexico state university to hear the story of the women who helped settle exit go. 9 -- settle new mexico. ofwe are in the reading room the special collections department of the new mexico state university library. the archives have been around for 40-50 years. it began as a project of one of our former presidents who was concerned that there needed to be a repository for local

history. this is our reading room. we have a very large contingent of users, very interesting people. people in this area are interested in history. it is about the women of other new mexico. this part of the country has been called the wild west. figuresthe most famous in wild west history come from around here. garrett, geronimo. the question of what women were was to me very interesting. there is a kind of iconic women

eitherwild west, she is ladystitute or a farming with no teeth, perhaps an old indian women. -- woman. a calamity jane character who shoots bears. a -- an army wife who passes through with her husband. in the calvary or whatever. then, i was contemplating all of this and working on photographs in our collection. i ran across a photograph of a a bachelor holding of science degree. 1895.hoto was dated from i thought, there's a whole other

story going on here. project because of the photo collections that we have here. what is the most influential photograph, this of three men. they were three early professors in 1891.here these men, this one holding a rifle, was a graduate of cornell. to teach at are university with a spirit of adventure. these two gentlemen were brits. quite well-to-do backgrounds in great britain.

look at these guys. they are celebrating the wild west, they are really into the wild west. [laughter] look at it and think, there's not a woman in sight. other than thee wild west horses, the rifles. these guys were definitely pretending. they were enjoying it. out whatest to find women were doing at the time, i ofked at the first picture the first class at the college, five of the air t were women. women proved to the administration that they were serious about the -- what they

wanted to learn. it is to our credit that we didn't actually offer domestic that kind of limited the 1900s.il almost it turned out that there was demand for it. women who might not otherwise have come to the college thought, if they could get a degree in the domestic arts, that would be to their advantage. they could possibly use that. wives.re ranchers -- a dressmaking class. popularame a pretty piece of the curriculum.

that in was interesting the late 1890's, we initiated a business program. guess who leapt in on that. class, youtenography notice, they were surprised to find so many young women found business careers in stenography. example, i think this is a very lovely photograph. one of our early biology professors was an avid photographer and he took a great many atmospheric photographs at the yearly university. womenne shows a group of in the chemistry class. this is one of my all-time favorite photos because it is

very beautiful. it is also of a group of women in the horticulture class. it is about the turn-of-the-century, about 1900. again, reinforcement that education was becoming very important and a serious undertaking for the young women who can. -- came here. this is a hoot, i think. education, perhaps we were not as advanced in the ideas of physical education for young women. wasider physical education allocution and scarf drills. [laughter] partdates from the latter

of the 1890's. not quite sure what the actual date of this is. a combination of wereise and dancing that performed for audiences. there is one comment -- [laughter] the audience was stupefied by the performance. not knowing quite to make of it. enlightenment, thanks to baxter college. they started a very active problem -- program of women's physical education. one of the chief elements was basketball. teamd a female basketball before he had a male basketball team. radicallynged rather

in the space of about five years. womenk that the young were probably very grateful that they didn't have to dress up and parade around a stage and stupefied their audience. is very interesting. reservation, it is one of the most beautiful reservations in the country. it is in the mountains to our east. so. rio does eastern pronunciation. women, life on the reservation was pretty tough. means wherebyut a they can support themselves very profitably. they made these beautiful

as forestd sold them prizes -- tourist prizes. we have this wonderful book of one of her professors wives purchasing a basket from one of the mescalero women. profit.e quite a it is surprising to think about the women as the doors -- which printers in tribal society. it is also, we had some of these in our museum. incrediblyst expressive. they are beautiful works of art. the fact that they could turn them into a mercantile

a lovelye is justification for the work they did. obviously, this was a place hispanic families turned up in the mid-19th century. one of those families, the avadors, they -- were also entrepreneurial. the family was filled with women. these women were incredibly successful business people. familyextent that the became the leading citizens in

those days. here is a wonderful picture of , the familycnic ladies with their umbrellas in their beautiful gowns, sitting on the ground, relishing in their privilege. it is a lovely still. their hotel still exists. it has been under restoration , a particular project of the historical society. they were merchants. very aware of their position, weddings,hey had for beautiful wedding gowns. they married well. they were first citizens of the town. ambitionsat women's

and hopes and dreams have always evolved. , we are in a. of evolution right now with the me too movement. we have always had these ambitions, we have always advantage or to find a situation in which there is a vantage for us finding that we can go to university and learn skills that can make you independent. is reallyat interesting and important. the fact that people didn't come out here and drown in the land, they found education. they found ways to make life easier for themselves.

it was very, very difficult. i wanted the audience to confront some new ideas to counterbalance all of the stereotypes that we associate with women in the west. that there were young women who were getting bachelor of science degrees out here in the 1890's, in a place that was considered ready rough and -- pretty rough and tumble. area that people are familiar with around the country. last night, i was watching the election returns. they never even mentioned the elections in new mexico. we seem to be concerned with the , we had someions very interesting things going on in new mexico. that is true of our history. people are just not used to

innking about what happened west.large areas of the we are just prone to stereotypical thinking. i wanted to introduce some new ideas. >> as we continue to explore the las cruces literary scene, another author shares her research on the lives of order crossing students. -- border crossing students. >> life on the border is phenomenal. a lot of people who have lived on the border don't understand how fluid it is. i grew up in new mexico, born in el paso. mexico.ma lived in every summer, he would visit her and stay there with her. you learned so much from both

countries, from mexico and the united states. people think about the border, they think about the wall and the limits. think from many places along the u.s.-mexico border like tijuana, we feel the same. we come and go. we would go to war as -- juarez to get groceries. we would come back come to new mexico. we have always seen it as very fluid. a lot of us have family over there, a lot of family over there has family over here. ideank, when i think of my of the border here, i think about the fluidity of it and how much it is fluid.

not only physically but also with newspapers. we have newspapers the music, the traditions, the food rgs the holidays, are very fluid. there is a demographic study that two of my colleagues from the university of texas in el paso, we spent three years in he school located right across juarez. you can see the border from there and we worked with students who are the students who go back and forth to el paso. some of them travel daily and come to school in el paso and some of them travel on the weeggeds and some of them go in the summers as well. we started working with three

teachers at the beginning. and the end, we focused there was a dynamic teacher working with the students and we learned so much from her about strategies to use in our classroom, how she uses knowledge and how she uses that in her curriculum and how she uses language in ways that students feel comfortable speaking and learning both language. >> we tried to really just go into the classroom and spend time in the classroom. we started off taking notes and listening and eventually when the students would come to us for questions and we started to get to know the students and they got to know us, especially

mige grants, she was the who got the research started and spent a lot of time in the classrooms because she lived in el paso. i was living here in las cruces and i would spend once a week in the classroom and we -- somebody would be there on monday, somebody on tuesday, somebody on wednesday, so we got the whole picture of what the classroom looked like during the week. and we would just visit the kids. we would take notes. we collected jourms, work assignments and also interviewed group of students and interviewed the add mississippi administrator, the principal, the social worker and the teachers. we learned that the principal ap the assistant principal were from the community where they were working at ap a lot of the

teachers were from the cities and crossed back and forth and they were able to relate to the students. o he was very welcoming to the students in the school and he knew what it was to go back and forth on a detail basis. there were several findings. one of them was i think a lot of the teachers and i talked a little about that with the principal and assistant principal. it pointed to the importance of the teachers understanding -- being understanding of the community and the students and how, because they themselves were transferred from cities and most of them english learners, they could relate to their students. so it made to it where they were able to facilitate the

curriculum in u.s. schools. one of the big findings was the translanguages. the hmp l translanguage classroom and use english ap spanish and the dual language, you need to separate the languages, but they were using both of them and learning a lot because they were able to use the context. and she was very good about not telling them, don't talk spanish now or enlish time right now where we see in a lot of classrooms where the students don't want to talk. she was able to make them feel comfortable and learn both languages. that was one of our major. and we learned about the

violence in juarez ap the violence escalated and huge proportions from the drug cartels and the parents were sending their kids to el paso because they were afraid from their kids and finding grand parents and uncles, god mothers ap god fathers that could keep them for the week so they could go to school and not be in jua rmp ez. the students told us stories about violence they had experienced and one in particular, i remember this little girl says she smells the blood in the truck they were driving in. it became a normalized, because it was everywhere. and she talked about the bullet

holes in the truck that her dad was driving and to smell the blood. we learned about a father who september his little girl to the school where we were working at because he had just lost his brother's child and wanted to keep her from danger and september her and she was at our school. story after story after story about violence. we learned the literacy. and used in el paso. they were talking about comics in spanish. but they would use them in the classroom to create their own comic strips. jokes, journals. we had a little girl who was using the lyrics from youtube and we looked at digital

literacy that was crossing over. and she liked rock and she would look at youtube and learning english by using the lyrics and she would bring that into the classroom and use it in the classroom. and i think we also learned about the strategies that was used in the class, because she was dynamic. she was an amazing teacher and create spaces where students felt free and open to ideas and speaking in spanish or s pmp a nmp lish. she would use mow dalts and that is one of our findings and not just lecturing. she would use possible terse, role modeling, music, videotaping. the students were producing

videos. and she was doing it in both english and spanish. o i think literacy translanguaging and the violence in juarez, those were some of our major findings and the major findings that a lot of teachers could relate to the students ecause they were from there.

>> i want to listen on how the

students bring with them a wealth of knowledge that needs to be taken advantage of in their classroom for relevant curriculum. and i also think that we need to see the beauty of the border as well, the fluidity, the beauty of how we -- there has been a lot of talk about building walls and building the big wall between mexico and the united states but we don't see the beauty of what happens when we cross back and forth and the knowledge we contribute over there and contribute over here that we all learn from each other. and that's beautiful to me. >> next, we'll hear from an author about attorney john ashcroft and his impact on the united states executive branch. >> john ashcroft was the

attorney general undergeorge w. bush and led the way on the administration's domestic response to the war on terror after 9/11. part of that time, he had been a senator for the state of missouri and he had been a controversial pick because of his religious views but he was confirmed. he was in the position but then came 9/11 and everything changed. the attorney germ's role is a fascinating one and one of the first cabinet positions and it was a part-time position and the attorney germ didn't live in d.c. but as the federal government gue, the attorney general had to be on happened because it was his job to argue cases before the u.s. supreme

court. it really spappeded with the modern presidency in franklin roosevelt because as the federal government grew the more and more areas, it was the attorney general's mandate to oversee it. the lawsuits and legal actions relating to the civil war erupted and private attorneys were hired by the government ap it was very expensive and brought in and created a department of justice and eventually a solicitor general who took over the role of arguing the case. it is a large bureaucracy and the attorney germ is at the head of it. it plays an important role by providing legal advice thrfment is a white house couple who is more directly tied to the presidency, but the attorney germ is supposed to be overlooking the entire government system and what cases should be brought before the

supreme court. legal policy issues, reviews of judicial nominees is in the justice department and what i find fascinating it sets up the nextic. you have someone who has served in an elected administration assisting the president in that constitutional duty to make sure the haas are faithfully executed and is the top officer of the nation. >> you are looking at the world trade center and we have unconfirmed reports that a plane has crashed into one of the owers of the world trade center. >> certainly during the george bush administration. we haven't seep the ripple effects with future presidents but we do know that 9/11

transformed much of the justice department's mandate into being more aggressive and that is fwause of the strike. they were in the united states and domestic attack and the government decided to frame it the nation's response as a war, it was a war-time. it wasn't a crime but an imhuman rights violation or international crime. it was war. and that required a different domestic response than we have seen ever before. and other than the civil war. it couldad a war where e the batting field and it was articulated by john ashcroft. no place is safe. and they used weapons against us.

he understood the attack as being the exploitation of freedom of movement, freedom of speech, real depouse liberty and the press and therefore, those things had to be closely monitored. wasn't that civil liberties would be damaged just this the course of war. you had restrictions of liberty until every previous war but return to some normalcy. here, we had a war where the vulnerabilities were the rights and freedoms. and as a consequence of that there are attacks. >> our war on terror begins. but it does not end there. it will will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. [applause] >> how we fight and win this

war. we will direct every resource at our command. every means of diplomacy. every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence and every necessary weapon of war. to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network. >> by framing it as a war on terror, the not just the justice department but the entire government was opening up an enormous range of power for the executive branch. there would be no limits who you would go after. it wasn't a war on al qaeda or the taliban or nation state like afghanistan or like communism. it was the war on terrorism. and terrorism is a tactic that has been used for thousands of

years. it's not neatly dwiped. you can never really win. it's never going to be over. and dick cheney made a point, this could be a limitless war. it's not bound by geography or time. it is bound by nothing. it is when the united states decides. and when the government decides, hey aren't going to be kind of limits, attorney germ ashcroft saying things like the government is not limited because limited government is to make the government vulnerable. if we are transparent as the government. if the freedom of information act is used for freedom of the press and can get access, that endanger the the united states and shifted the presumption to

nondisclosure rather than to disclosure. there was a vulnerability for the government so they wouldn't share information even with committees in congress or if you got documents, they would be heavily redacted and congress has oversight of government programs. how do you know if a program is working or not and a program needs to be change. the house and the senate have to have access to that information, even if it is a small group with them. so that there is not a problem of exposure to the wider world. the executive branch didn't want to do that. the executive branch argued that the courts have no role in reviewing immigration cases or certain types of cases, enemy combatant cases. what does that mean?

a major impact on separation of powers. in addition to the changes of the interpretation, john ashcroft engaged in a number of policy changes legislatively, he championed the patriot act and the extension of some of the provisions that had been sunseated to end. so he pushed for that. he was an advocate of the authorization of the use of military force. both of those measures were passed after 9 9/11. and largely because of the bay they were playing this. do you want to have the united states attacked again. if you don't pass this. members of congress initially right after 9/11 congress was at fault, locked out of its buildings because of anthrax. people were frightened in washington, d.c., and more

willing as ar consequence to go act without what would be consider committee hearings and we did not have those. the patriot act was the measure that empowered american law enforcement to proceed with a lot of aggression against any one seen as a terrorist threat but it was drafted in a way that gave law enforcement authority even ordinary crimes or if you were caught up, you wpt say the focus of an investigation, but you would be related. and your bank records and libe rear records would be in the suites that the federal depoft was going to be doing. you deposit have to be the terror suspect to find your. there is a section of the patriot act that was used by the national security agency to get

access that the phone calls imly. plore n snowden, whistle made clear that this enormous scope and how many ordinary americans called electronic data had been swept up in this, congress reacted very strongly and in 2015 passed the u.s.a. freedom act to exert control on . at level of n.s.a. so it's an extremely piece of legislation. much of it is not a controversy. do empower e they government to act in a way to gather information that is otherwise private without something like a fourth

amendment due process, fourth amendment warrant issued by a judicial magistrate, issued by a judge or even if there is a reasonable suspicion that a crime is about to occur or the crime of planning of come policity that you need to get access to the documents. you don't have that.

and there was the use of the material witness warpts, for example. that was a bill that was passed in 1984 to ensure that people who had knowledge of the crime, but were reluctant to come forward could be compelled to testify in a trial. the ashcroft justice department expanded the definition so that those warrants to arrest someone were no longer issued by a judge

but by the f.b.i., an executive branch agency and people did not have to go before us. they could be held in detention for weeks. for months, in some cases without access to couple without being charged with a crime. john ashcroft pleeved revealing any information without any sort and have the government promulgated the war on terror would increase the likelihood of an attack and make the united states vulnerable in the context of this larger war. therefore, information was very, very tightly held within the executive branch ap not shared with co-equal branches and not shared with the newspapers ap press and definitely not shared with the american people at large. many of these changes were made without any discussion. you have this big tradeoff

etween and try to decide where do we typed the balance here. we never had that discussion in the united states because we didn't understand for the first several years after 9/11 when these measures were at their height, we didn't know how much our liberties were being limited, how constrained we were and what was being gathered by the government. i think there is a key listen here and that is that the system checks and balances require maintainance. we can't assume they are always going to operate when one of the anches acts in a tirnous manner or a very broad claim of power. we have to ensure that the constitutional system is operating as it should. when i was young ap watergate was coming up and i was in

college, i was a journism major and fired up by the "washington ost" and the importance of the exposing of wrongdoing and the hearings and exposing the wrongdoing and the role of the supreme court and i took that as evidence that checks and balances work. we had to check all of these elements of government are working together and the civil society, the nongovernmental actors like the free press, this is how it is supposed to work. what was troubling after me after 9/11 and continues to be an issue for me, we can't take those checks for granted. we have to be aware as citizens and be ensuring that voices on the other side are heard, that very, very broad and

unparalleled claims of power are checked. there is mechanisms operating in government and federalism is another thing. we need to make sure all of these elements are in place for the government that the framers created and the constitution actually works. and that's the take-away for me. we have to be depaged in mid-term elections and state and local elections and have to inform ourselves. there is no reason to look at a ballot and not know the answers. there is a duty we have as citizens. we have freedom. we have a duty. and the duty side has gotten downplayed and defer to these other actors and they will make sure. we blast the media and plass members of copping, how about us? we are the ones responsible and

make sure that they are vie brapt and they are operating as the framers intended. >> our visit to las cruces, new mexico is a book tv and we introduced to c-span's city tours. we bring the book scene to our viewers. atch more of our visits at c-span.org/citiestour. saturday morning at 10:30 eastern, we are live at the mississippi book festival for their lawn party at the state capitol in jackson, sourp history, u.s. politics and presidential leadership. authors include --

>> i was a ranking member.

i made the contribution. the september appears of me being equal and september appears of me as their superior allows me to know that i can negotiate. >> we will hear from others. watch oral histories sunday at 3. 0 a.m. eastern on c-span a look at what it is like covering the trump presidency and president trump speaking to reporters and the decision to revoke the security clearance of john brennan and a discussion about holding the government accountable ap on "newsmakers," maryland senator chris van hollen on the