i'm generally supportive of reform and i'd like to see some reform because we have booker t. washington, other cases we have that there has been c-e-q-a abuse and the challenge that you do have is not only that you have the process of the city, but booker t. washington which we voted on a year and a half ago is still being litigated in the courts. so, you know, people can do c-e-q-a here, but they do c-e-q-a in the court. there is a challenge when people are he opposed to projects and they use c-e-q-a as the way to poe pose those projects. i wish there were a way to better separate those issues out from, you know legitimate environmental concerns. * but i don't think anyone is here wanting to weaken, talk about lessen the protections that we have because i think that everyone would recognize c-e-q-a has been valuable in decision-making process. all the

don't want lower income housing in their neighborhoods or people of color in the neighborhood, booker t. washington center was mentioned earlier. and the business community, we're as guilty as anyone else. we have k-mart suing wal-mart to stop any type of economic competition. all under the guise of environmental protection. the end result of all of this litigation and needless delay -- a detriment to our environmental well-being. development follows the path of least resistance. when you have litigation in urban areas where you have a lot of people and people don't like people, that development horizontally sprawls right into suburban areas and you get horizontal development, transit -- rather auto dependent development which is not good for our vieerthv. environment. you are being asked today to institute a fair process so so that honest brokers can challenge battered projects while protecting good projects from the bad players whose motives have nothing to do with environmental protection. to finish, i'm party to the negotiations with senator rubio in the state capital working on c-e-q-a reform

when the booker t. washington affordable youth housing project came to the board, we had to approve a special use district for that project. at the last minute, i think the day before or the day of our land use hearing, a c-e-q-a appeal was filed. we were required to take the entire matter off calendar and it delayed our consideration by two months. this legislation would provide that if the board is required to legislate for a project to happen, the board of supervisors becomes the c-e-q-a decision maker and the c-e-q-a item automatically comes to the board and is agendized along with the underlying zoning change or whatever the legislative change is and the board considers them, the two items together, and then the full board takes action. not deprive anyone the ability to comment [speaker not understood] c-e-q-a. in fact, it came to an automatic appeal. another change is that currently when a c-e-q-a appeal is filed, no action can be taken by anybody, by the board, by any commission. and that means there are pl

while i'm at lincoln person, i am a booker t. washington, frederick douglass, and i keep those around me to remind me of what our obligations are, yours and mine. >> the first time i think i heard you, you were talking about the declaration of independence. which of course mr. lincoln alluded to right out of the gate in the gettysburg address, four score and seven, 1863 minus in 87, that 1776 when do the math. our father began this imagery and any quotes from the declaration. our fathers brought forth a new nation and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. that is the language from the declaration. you have often, you have thoughts about the declaration. it's up there in the rotunda alongside the gettysburg address and the emancipation and the constitution itself. i invite you, as you have talked about lincoln, to tell us a little bit about what you think of the declaration and its part in the american story. >> in the beginning we have these rights we are endowed with certain inalienable rights and we give up some of

while i'm at lincoln person, i am a booker t. washington, frederick douglass, and i keep those around me to remind me of what our obligations are, yours and mine. >> the first time i think i heard you, you were talking about the declaration of independence. which of course mr. lincoln alluded to right out of the gate in the gettysburg address, four score and seven, 1863 minus in 87, that 1776 when do the math. our father began this imagery and any quotes from the declaration. our fathers brought forth a new nation and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. that is the language from the declaration. you have often, you have thoughts about the declaration. it's up there in the rotunda alongside the gettysburg address and the emancipation and the constitution itself. i invite you, as you have talked about lincoln, to tell us a little bit about what you think of the declaration and its part in the american story. >> in the beginning we have these rights we are endowed with certain inalienable rights and we give up some of

booker t. freder washington, frederick dougss, a douglassi and i keep those >> the fo remind me of the obligation he the first time i think iir heard you you were talking about the declaration ofce. independence that mr. lincoln alludes to write are to out of the gate for score and seven 1860's three negative seven that is 1776. with the imagery then he quotes from the declaration. brought forth a new nation dates nation conceived in liberty dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. up there in the a alongside the gettysburg address and the emancipation and the constitution itself. i invite you, as you have talked about lincoln, to tell us a little bit about what you think of the declaration and its part in the american story. >> in the beginning we have these rights we are endowed with certain inalienable rights and we give up some of those rights to be governed by consent. that is critical. for me, when i started though, it wasn't so much about government. it was about what was the best argument against slavery. it was as simple as that. when you grow up under segregation, yo

to my record, in 1972 the historian louis harmon published the first of his two volumes on booker t. washingtont was written -- worthy of a pulitzer prize. the silence enveloping black writers began to break. in 1973, demagoguery of the novels richard wright by the frenchman, followed by a 77 of the novelist historian by the american scholar robert hemingway. and in 86 and 1988, came my two volumes on hughes. aided by a voluminous archive left behind by hughes, i tried to tell through the lens of one crucial life the african-american story as it had existed, and exists at a certain social level. i tried to do justice to the complexity that had been discounted over the centuries, and the representation of american racial reality. the picture is quite different now. the 1990s saw a steady rise of prize-winning biographies of black americans by writers such as taylor branch and william fugate in 1994 and 2001, david lewis one pillagers for each of his two volumes on dubois. this year, a biography by the lake manning marigold won the pulitzer prize. this surge in biographical writing by african-ame