Standardized testing in Public Schools and how president s handle crisis situations. For a complete schedule visit booktv. Org. Let me please welcome you all and introduce you, first, to zephyr teachout. She is an associate law professor at Fordham Law School the former National Director of the Sunlight Foundation and a former democratic candidate for governor of new york. Please welcome zephyr. [applause] and linda tirado is the author of hand to mouth living in boot strap america. She describes herself as a completely average american with two kids, and up until recently two jobs. Her essay, why i make terrible decisions or poverty thoughts, was picked up by huffington post, the nation and countless others and read by more than six Million People and shes quite a voice for people live anything poverty, so welcome to both our panelists. Ms. [applause] so i think since we want this to be a little more conversational than your average panel, i have some questions to kind of kick us off. But we would also, if you all have questions during im not going to hold it til the end. Just wave or shout or in some way make yourself known. Im gonna need p a dance. [laughter] lindas going to need to dance anyway, but if you have a question, you could try it that way. So please just signal. I think well start off. So our panel is called organizing in the 21st century, and while youve both written on different issues your common geography seems to be this terrain of economic inequality and its relationship to democracy. So let me ask you each to start by talking to us about kind of what you see has been going on with organizing lately. So just in the last few years i can name a whole slew of organizing efforts that have gained National Media attention. Obviously, occupy, the reproductive rights proitses in texas and even protests in texas and even here in virginia moral mondays of carolina, all the events of ferguson and the organizing it has inspired across the country the studentled efforts against campus sexual assaults and each here recently close to home in charlottesville, students turning to organizing in response to the violence against marquis johnson. So both of you why do we need organizing, what does it need to confront and why organizing as a strategy . Do you want to go first . [laughter] im going to have to think for a couple of years, and ill get back to you. No, why dont can you go first. Why dont you go first. As far as organizing, were remembering how to do it, thats great. The truly effective stuff weve found is all internet based. Black lives matter started on twitter, and it is now in over 170 cities in the country. It is constant action by random people just little groups of two or three or five or 20 that are super responsive whenever something goes on. You can get people out to say this is not o. K. With us as a citizenry, and you can mobilize those folks on the inside of a half an hour which is not a thing we could say ten years ago. As far as 21st century organizing, give me the internet any day. Its about half of my spoken vernacular as many means, you know . And those sorts of things, i think, are hugely important because organizing didnt used to be about populism. It used to be folks who knew what organizing was, would come down and say okay, we need all of you guys to do this we need you guys to do that and now its grassroots and saying we need to do something and getting together and figuring it out how to get it done. So its a really hopeful trend as far as im concerned. Yeah. So the questions were why . I mean right now we are very far away from the idea of selfgoverning, that people have a lever over the power of their own lives. And theres a study that came out in may from princeton that you might have seen that told you what you probably already know, but the headlines were that the United States is now an oligarchy. But what the study actually showed is that most peoples in general, Public Policy doesnt follow what most people want. So you might remember the sort of good old days of politics and think that was terrible, but we arent even an area of [inaudible] politics. The majority of people want a financial transaction tax, that doesnt mean were going to get a financial transaction tax in the senate n this congress. But what the other thing the study showed which you already already know is that a lot of wealthy people have a lot of power, but also organized interests have power. So since were not in an era where 51 gets you the law, we are many an era where incredibly highly organized efforts actually can make a difference. Theres so many different examples that i could use of recent organizing that i think is really important. Ill use one from my own home state, new york, where people opposed to fracking started organizing about seven years ago. New york is the last shalerich state that doesnt have fracking. And they were not supported by the National Democratic party. They were not supported by a lot of the big green organizations which were silent on hydrofracking because so many foundations and groups were funded, that funding of foundations was complicated people didnt know enough. Instead, what you saw was groups around the state forming highly local groups forming and then being connected to each other. As linda was saying, it was true grassroots in the sense i often think of it as theres two kinds of organizing. This is really, really crude but this is organizing theres organizing where tasks are distributed and where power is distributed. So a lot of our organizing i love moveon but a lot of it tasks are distributed. You have built a big list and tell people what to do; what petition to sign, what thing to watch, what particular act to take. Thats all well and good but powers still concentrated. When you have distributed power, people come together in local communities with a shared vision and decide what should we do strategically . What is the petition we want to write, what is the person we want to follow around or bird dog . What happened in new york is basically five years of local groups connected through a web doing highly local organizing. Some of it was online. A lot of the online work though was through these really crude forums like yahoo or bag google groups. No fancy apps, just groups anybody could understand. And then they did a lot of offline work which is where i might disagree with you. I actually feel its important that they were physically present offline, bird dogging. Governor andrew cuomo said everywhere he went, every fundraiser he went to there were people saying dont frack in new york dont frack in new york so much so that he felt today had more power than any other group because he saw them. Thats something that i learned from the tea party. I went to a lot of Tea Party Events in 2009 to go watch what was happening, and i was involved in occupy. And one of the things i saw was they understood the power of physical presence, that politicians are still in some ways their heart still beats, theyre still animal, they still have fears, nightmares dreams. And that means if you are physically present and your faces are there to protest and to register that protest people will respond. Politicians will respond more than if it is just online. I think the combination is really powerful. I think when we talk about online organizing, people often think it means exclusively online and i think that when i was in ferguson and i spent quite a few weeks there many august and september through november of last year one of the ways that we kept ourselves safe was everybody was online in these yahoo , facebook groups and twitter. But what theyd say was, hey, theres something going on on this end of norson, everybody go. And that was how we knew where we needed to be. So i think were actually saying exactly the same thing. [laughter] used to be the director of online organizing for howard deans campaign, and i would joke that, you know, you shouldnt have a director of online organizing any more than you should have director of car organizing or telephone organizing. The internet is the way in which we live as well as the road is or the telephone is. And so the key is organizing and understanding power. And the internet is our current tool, and it affects things but it is should not be seen as separate. And so many groups that just flock using the internet successfully thought im going to hire an online organizer whos in a separate cabin who will do a bunch of petitions and not engage in our core work and just build our lists. And they didnt understand the way in which using the internet is like using the telephone it has to be a core part of what you do every day. Well, and the republicans used telephones incredibly effectively in the 80s right . Ralph reid devolved that entire thing out, and its one of the reasons were seeing the political calculus we do today its all about work they put in in the 80s has come to fruition. People have come up from the local levels. Its exactly the same thing. Organizing in the 21st century is organizing in the 20th century is organizing in the 15th century. Its about getting people together and go do a thing. Whats hardest, i think, is crossclass organizing which really since vietnam up until relative recently we havent seen a lot of crossclass organizing, and i actually think its essential. At one point, one in every twenty americans was president of their local Volunteering Association in the 50s. Some of those were problematic, but thats a tight web where you have basically, 5 of all people have some power with their local moose club or elks club, and we also had a lot higher unimembership. And i think were really union membership. And some of the core fights were having now around education and the sort of commitment to Public Education, i think what you see is big hedge funders and a few people with a lot of money and a lot of power taking on Public Education because they actually want to get rid of the bastions of union power. And so when we talk about organizing, we also have to talk about Union Organizing. I wonder what you think about the Current Union structure. We know theres been 20 years worth of destruction which will destroy a thing. And i wonder what you think of the Union Organizing that we see now where youve got these three or four huge groups that are this d. C. , and the locals dont have nearly as much power as they used to. Yeah. Well, im a very uncomplicated person i like decentralized power. [laughter] so, i mean what youre talking about different unions are different, just to be very clear. Right. Yes. But theres a class dynamic inside the unions themselves where you see unions often separated from their own membership and less responsive to their own membership. And i dont think i think in the short term unions havent always realized the cost, and the cost is extraordinary because if youre not in there in the fight with your membership, you lose some of that trust and cohesion that creates power. Yeah. And i think the corollary to that is when you lose your own membership in that way, theyre not being evangelists for the things they should be doing. Collective bargaining, like, the loss of collective bargaining is the thing that made me work at burger king for 15 years right . Lets not sugar coat this. So for me the question i confront often is how do we do collective bargaining in this landscape . Sure, you can unionize if you want to give them your dues but theres nothing they can legally do because there are no contracts. Yeah, no. Theres, obviously, some things that we could do on a legal level to make collective bargaining a lot easier. Instead, we have a Supreme Court that makes amazon workers on that ruling. Yes. Amazon is a particular interest of mine and should be an interest of anybody at the book festival. Its a real concern that concentrated power in the book industry is actually taking a kind of feudal relationship to our ideas. Amazon has the power to set prices of books. But amazon should also be a concern if youre interested in labor. I guess what i would say is that sometimes with real exceptions to both individual and some of the structures within union leadership, sometimes i think democrats find it so quick to criticize unions where there are Serious Problems and not realize how much were throwing out if we dont also embrace the basic principle that people should be allowed to unionize and, in fact, that unions are a core part of a truly democratic future. So i take those criticisms seriously, but i also think i dont want to live in a utopian fantasy where we can actually have the kind of selfgoverning we want, i want without that kind of countervailing force with just nonunionized organizing outside to. Does that make sense . Yeah. No ive been thinking about this a lot recently, how we move forward in labor organizing and get that collective bargaining in spaces where, you know the unions in the ways that they were structured 30 years ago and just havent been able to keep up. Where do you see the most exciting stuff in terms of nontraditional [inaudible] and those are unionaffiliated groups. This is aflcia affiliated. They are local used, collective bargaining mechanisms. You get people sitting down on the job at walmart i cannot tell you how brave you have to be to do that people walking out of burger king or mcdonalds and saying end dont cross my picket line they cant afford to get blackballed against all the franchisees in their entire city. They are the bravest people i have seen in my life, so thats the hope that i see. Ill tell you a personal story. A year ago yesterday somebody approached me this may not sound personal but it is somebody approached me to see if id be interested in running for governor of the state of new york. And i thought about it for about six weeks. I was instantly interested. I love politics. Ive got a lot to say. I didnt think the governor was doing a very good job. But i had real anxiety about being attacked personally, being characterized for things that i was and things that i wasnt. Ask i saw a film at the duke documentary film its value last year when i was thinking about this called the hand that feeds which is a film about undocumented immigrants organizing at the hot and crusty on 72nd street in manhattan. And these men and women worriesinging deportation risking deportation by trying to organize against disinterested management. And i thought what kind of coward would i be if i didnt run for governor because im scared about my reputation . And these men and women are risking their entire lives to organize with the people they work with. And it had a real effect on me that thats where real bravery is happening in this country. I think, though, the thoughts completely valid. Hands, how many of you guys have heard of like, googleed me or anything like that before this . Okay. Like four. Okay. So quick story. I was home from a shift at work late one night. I had a couple of beers one of my friends said something wrong on the internet, i immediately corrected them. And that got me, you know a few million page views and a book. What it also got me was the biggest fraud of 2013 on cnn. It also got me coverage in the New York Times that says when truth is viral is Fact Checking taking a beating . And in that piece they failed to fact check. [laughter] i have great faith in our media. You know so those sorts of things happen. And the kind of abuse and things that people can say is the downside of our new online spaces right . Because anybody can sign up for a twitter account and tell you what a terrible human being you are. Anybody can hack your email. Thats happened to me seven different times in the last year. And all of this because i got drunk last night and said it kind of sucks to be poor guys. And that was enough to send me in and my friend jared is here. He, he fought with me through it. It was pretty epic more a few months there. For a few months there. I think that fear is legitimate and i wonder how much were not doing because so many people just dont want to put themselves through that kind of wringer. I think a lot. Yeah. I think the fear is legitimate. If i had a choice, i would have stopped. In for a penny, if for a pound at that point. I think the fear is legitimate. Since i dont see a way out of it, i just want to talk to other people who are obviously, you dont need it but there are a lot of young women who i talk to who i really want to run for office or people who i cant run for office. Have you seen this . [laughter] nobodys voting for me. But who feel like they dont want to step out. I dont want to lie to them and tell them will arent these reputational risks involved. I think thats a false. Yes. I think those reputational risks are real. Instead, i just want to have, like the open conversation that it may still be with it even with these risks beforehand so people understand what theyre getting into. I think its important we talk about them. Like i was sitting on a sun porch, i remember this, i was in a wicker chair. And i had this kind of realization that this is going to happen to my reputation whether or not i actively do good right . Theres nothing i can do about this. And had i not been painted into that corner, i dont think i would have written a book, i dont think id be here right now doing any of the work that ive been doing. But its been fairly interesting to me to have of of so many people reach out. I cant tell you how many hundreds of emails where people were like i really want to do something, can we keep my name off it . But dont you think so i know its hard but dont you think there was something freeing about i have this image of you in the wicker chair. [laughter] something freeing about the fact you cannot control your own reputation, so youre going to act with oh i took my teeth out on youtube, are you kidding me . [laughter] no, it got to the point where it didnt look like it was going to stop, so i had one or two choices, either i mic drop or i run, and those were my options. So i mic dropped, and then i came back with a book, and now i talk to rich people about compassion for a living which is fantastic, by the way. [laughter] so both of you are talking about a narrative that was created about you personally based on, you know, coming into the spotlight. But youre also talking about responding to narratives or mythologies that have already been created around your core issues, i would say, poverty or corruption. These kind of larger stories that people have been telling for right or for wrong that i think both of you have been making an effort to try to shine some sunlight on. And theyre not new problems theyre not even really abstract concepts. If we choose to look, we see the real life consequences of these big issues, so why is it so hard to change those narratives for people . I just look at it totally the reverse which is that selfgovernment is so rare this human history. A society with genuine civic culture is is so rare, and it is impossible and exciting that we have made it happen for few brief moments that we have. Ill step back for a second. I turned 18 when the wall came down. And the berlin wall. [laughter] and i think there was a sense in my generation that we had solved the great problem of democracy. We beat off the soviets and it was just a matter of every other country catching up, that the arc of history tended in one positive direction. And that because of that our jobs were sort of minor jobs. Like lets clean up the little extra racism we have over here but these are cleanup jobs with some structural problems we had fundamental hi solved. I do not see the world that way. I think it is a constant fight to fight against racism. I think it is a constant fight to fight for a kind of genuine, Mutual Respect and selfgovernment, and i think it is extraordinary the moments weve achieved. So i guess i would just flip it on its head. Does that make sense . Uhhuh. Im with her. [laughter] look, i i think people frequently see trees and not forests. So when were talking about what is left to do, we talk about these issues separately. We talk about racism, we talk about classes and we talk about sexism. Well i, you know worked as a bartender, so tell me how to separate my wage from my sexual harassment. I work on Poverty Issues and we know that the more mel know anyone you have in your skin, the more work you have to do to get to the exact same place i did, and i was barely surviving. So tell me how we separate race and class. When i first wrote the thing i used a phrase that my neighbors used a lot and it was, it was baby daddiment and that is daddy. And that is a blackcoded word. We expect black folks to use that word. I came in for so much hell because it turns out i am white and everybody had coded in their brain from that word oh, you must be black you must be from here, you must be from here. And i kept having to tell people you do realize theres more poor white folks . You know theres more of us taking the welfare resources because numbers and statistics are a thing. Black folks are are 12 or 13 of the entire population. Sure not 100 of s. N. A. P. Users. And so a lot of my work is just telling people okay these things intersect here, and youre not paying attention to one. And you cannot solve one without a holistic look at all of the others. So for me, i would say the bulk of my work is reminding people i dont care how much of your life sucks, you still have it better than somebody else, you still have it worse than somebody else and the question isnt how do we make my life better, how do we make it so that nobody has an awful life in the wealthiest country in the world . Why is it that half of our workers dont know how much money theyre going to make next week . What does that say about us as a society, and why the hell is that my problem when im the one working the fry machine . You think ive got enough power to change the world . I barely have enough power to change the temperature of your french fries without getting yelled at. It doesnt work like that. So i think a lot of the stuff we have to do is really point out the forest. I so love what you said about the separation because what i see, the fight that were up against right now is a very deliberate fight to separate these issues and treat them as distinct. And this is embodied in the Chicago School which you might have heard about a group of academics trying to tell us that theyre often associated with free market fundamentalism, but trying to tell us that we can see economics and politics in splendid isolation each from the other, that we can have an examination of Economic Issues here an examination of political issues here. And the roots go back to the beginning of the 20th century 20th century organizing. But its very serious. Its about what were taught. Were taught to read the business pages in one section the Political Pages separately. Were taught to see these separately. I think we should be talking about race and economics and politics all together all the time, and you said it more eloquently than i could have. Because thats the way that a life is lived. And so my actual, my real passion now is Public Financing of elections and antitrust. And the reason i care so much about antitrust is because you see, first of all, antitrust falls apart in 1981 right after a successful civil rights movement. So we stop enforcing laws to break up big companies. I dont know whether thats a response, but certainly in the reagan era partial response to a successful civil rights movement. And then you see this incredible concentration of wealth and power and very few corporations, and weve lost the political language to deal with it. The antimonopolists people of the 19th century were also interested in real problems of race in our country. Charles sumner, who was flogged the abolitionist who was flogged on the house of the senate was also a big antimonopoly organizer. So weve sort of forgotten this incredible part of our history thats, i think powerful because it connects this economic power and political power in a serious way. But weve forgotten it on purpose. Weve forgottennen it because Chicago School has been so well funded to tell us we can think of each of these things separately. I got to tell a Margaret Thatcher joke at the london school, and it was highly inappropriate. I think that problem is largely solved by the internet though. I think when we got together in our own separate communities, we have people talking about gender issues, we have people talking about class, and we have people talking about race. And what you find is as those conversations start to overlap where we see each other im a class activist, okay great i see folks working on, a friend of mine, dante, runs million hoodies which was an organization set up after trayvon. We say the same things on twitter and dont even realize it. There are women, a writer i follow talks about gender a lot, she will say the same thing i do about class and not even realize it. And so we start to see that, basically, all of our fights are our own personal take on being disenfranchised. Theyre our own perm take on oppression, our own personal take on having no power. Me i am a woman, i am until very recently have no hope of being in the middle class. I was a working class girl. So for me my issues are generally gender sexuality and class. But that doesnt mean that everything that im saying doesnt apply to any other issue that you could find. It all comes together. And i think the beautiful thing about new organizing is that we can all see that so clearly, that its inescapable. I think that siloing is going to naturally go away. The new general ration of activists, people in their 20, in their 30s are very interconnect inside a way that i havent seen interconnected in a way that i havent seen or their counterparts who are using that kind of 1970s 1980s organizing, like were going to be on this issue and this issue. So, again, i have a lot of hope. Im a young person from the internet and want to selfaggrandize a lot. I think its good. I think its going to work out. So just in line with that, id be remiss if i didnt sort of point out the obvious which is that we have an allfemale panel up here which is rare in many circumstances. But in this one in particular talking about these ideas of corruption, democracy and poverty, these are our base political and social challenges. And i think womens voices need to be leading these conversations. And in a time when i think internet and social media have a lot to do with this, when women are really breaking through. Blithe moore and Wendy Elizabeth moore and wendy davis, even literary critics roxanne gaye what do you all have to say to young women who have things to say, who have that voice and are looking to share it . What advice would you give . First its an extraordinary joy and freedom to be political and to be politically engaged. And as somebody who spent a lot of her life organizing against corruption, i dont want to be part of that world that has dissuaded people from getting involved. I actually think one thing thats important is for women to get directly involved in electoral work. What i see often is that there is real excitement about working for a nonprofit. A real excitement about, you know, maybe going to streets protesting and a total kiss dane for running can disdain for running for office. I asked a young woman who was organizing at syracuse a couple months ago whether she would think about running for office. She really had a lot of things to say really thoughtful deep in the weeds on policy and she said, no no, no, i cant do that. I said, why not . She didnt have an answer. I said is it because its corrupt . Shes like i said, is it because its square . Showing my age, because i dont think square is a word used [laughter] financial services. But she knew what i was talking about. Half corrupt, half square. [laughter] and there is nothing that the head of comcast or jpmorgan benefits more from than young people not using their power to actually run for office and staying out of the electoral realm. Those kids in hong kong would do anything to have the right to actually be on the ballot. And the fact that successfully through some odd combination of ideology it has become not the thing to do, to get involved politically but not to get involved politically, is an incredible boon for those corporations that im talking about and an incredible loss for people who want a selfgoverning society. So i say absolutely get involved, and id love to talk to you, but please do it politically as well. I would say i started watching politics like you watch the kardashians. You cant find anything funnier than Lindsey Graham talking publicly. [laughter] and i really enjoy that. I like the give and take of it. I think we can watch these things and be aware and informed if we simply look for the funny. Finish and its politics so theres plenty. You know, i do think engagement and awareness are the first thing. But the most important advice i have is find a thing you care about and fucking fix it. Like just go find a thing thats wrong and fix it. Whatever that looks like to you whatever capacity you have whatever joy it brings you or does not, find something wrong that you cannot live wit being like this with it being like this and go and fix it. And i dont think it gets much more complex than that really. You know, one day i heard about this is a stereotype but women are likely to think that they need to be the very best person for the job before they choose to seek out that job. Whereas, again, this is very broad, men are more likely to think i want to do that job. Therefore, im the right perp for the job. Person for the job. So if you are out there thinking im not the best person im not the best person to fix it that isnt the question. The question is whether youd like that job, to be part of fixing it. I would go further and say i am not the best person for this job. [laughter] im not the best person for any job. Nobody should put me in charge of anything or give me power or anything like that. But they did because world is an insane place. And as long as the worlds got this collective delusion that im saying something of value im gonna roll with it. [laughter] and what ive found is that nobody else knows how flawed you are. Nobody else do you know how many people call me brave . Im like no, im just mouthing off. They gave me some whiskey, man. [laughter] and nobody knows. Nobody knows how flawed you are, nobody knows your secrets your secret fears, nobodys going to come for you on the things that youre worried about. And that fear turns out to be valid but overblown in a lot of cases. So find something wrong and go and fix it. And you have no idea how flawed everybody else is. Oh yeah. Dude, everybodys faking it. Everybodys faking it. They put me up here on a panel. Look at the people im next to. These are women with like degrees. [laughter] so we have a question in the audience that ill go ahead and see if we can get a microphone over. Thank you, microphone lady. Thank you. So im curious kind of as a corollary to some of things youve been seeing as what you see as effective ways to organize. You know, once you get this idea and you see something you want to fix, what do you see as the characteristics of Effective Organization versus inEffective Organization . And one of the things i was wondering, you were talking about sort of the big picture. But there are lots of studies out there that say this we get paralyzed when were faced with big picture like that. How do you break it down so that people do feel empowered . So i work on class and gender mostly, but you notice i speak a lot about race. Thats how you get the work done and thats how you keep the forest in mind. You say this is what i know about, this is what makes my heartbeat, this is what makes me move. But all of these other things are correlated and important to you. What youll find is you will run across folks who want to work on those issues. And you can say, all right, man be free. Go do your thing. And thats how we get them all covered, right . Nobody has to specialize in everything but everybodys got to specialize in something and that makes the world go round. Its more of a question of just keeping in mind do we have weak spots . Do we have people working on ab issue closely tied to ours that could use some help right now and if so, could we give them some of our capacity . I work on race and gender. I went to ferguson because thats where they needed warm bodies and cameras, and i had the time. So off i went. And it doesnt have to be more important than that. It doesnt have to be broader. But as far as how to know where to start, you start by talking to your neighbor. Every time ive been outreached by something, its because somebody said something dumb on the internet in real life sometimes. And you just talk to them. You just say thats a really dumb thing. Why would you say that . Maybe a little more gently, unless youre me. And you just talk to folks. Thats what organizing is. Its changing minds. You talk about hearts and minds, thats what we do for a living. It doesnt have to be more formal than that. But if you want it to be, the internet exists. You can google it. Use the google. I would like to feminism. And find 20 groups and amazing look, the sum total of Human Knowledge is in my hand. This is frigging incredible. People get mad because youre on your phone all the time. Im reading wick period yarks guys leave me alone. You can find any information on the internet, and that includes organizing resources. Or you can just call somebody thats already organizing. Say howd you get started . Man, we love nothing more than to talk about our own careers let me tell you. [laughter] so two answers. One is that bad organizing is still good. And and i actually think a lot of times ive had some very strong views on this. I was, have been organizing for over a decade in one form or another, and i used when people would come to me with ideas, id tell them the ideas that i thought were bad. I no longer do that because i think that theres almost a bureaucratic quality to organizing on the Democratic Left where we wait for the perfect and lose extraordinary opportunities to learn. As a good frend of mine says Everybody Needs to reinvent the wheel on organizing was if you just because if you just tell people dont do this, dont to that then actually they never learn for themselves. And we dont know how to do it. But second i do have some ideas. [laughter] one, i didnt finish the story on fracking, the activists followed around andrew cuomo for five years he ended up putting on a ban on fracking in new york state. I think that inperson, actually present protests is incredibly important whether those in power are your governor, city council or somebody whos running a corporation or somebody whoever that is, figuring out whos in power and then being very present. I think regular whether online or offline meetings with a Smaller Group of people, ideally under 12 is really important. We found that meetings over 12 people you feel good a lot of people showed up, but one or two people ends up taking responsibility instead of the small cluster. So 312 groups of people, i think, is incredibly powerful for figuring out core organizing things. I think its always important to check your tendency to be afraid. The natural tendency is going to say if i do this, then im going to lose this ally. This ally doesnt agree with me on this or that. And that leads to an enormous amount of silence. And the problem is theres a real risk in speaking whether thats but i actually think we need a lot more speaking. So openly saying what your point of view is, theres energy in that. And so much of what we need in politics now is selfenergy and people being drawn to that energy. So those are just some ideas but i love, love organizing. And every situation is different. I saw a few hands go up so maybe we can go ahead and start hearing from you all out there. Nobodys danced yet, you guys. [laughter] maybe this is an extension of what this other m woman asked, but what about measuring effectiveness . For example, we saw hundreds of thousands of people out there on occupy. What do you think was that effective . Was that effective . What came of it . And, you know, probably i also would ask, say about the walmart or the donalds thing. Were hearing more about, oh, theyre going to raise wages for some people. I still dont know what that means when i read that walmart is going to raise wages for some people. So, you know were talking bug here. Were not talking the small little organizing group. Those groups got very big. But were they effective do you think . Is. So theres a lot of different questions embedded in that. One, occupy did change the language in a very serious way. 99 , the 1 , talking about inequality had been latent and became a fundamental part of our political dialogue. That doesnt mean they changed they or it or whatever did everything that occupy might have wanted but there was a real change there. But i think theres another question youre asking about, you know, why should i engage if i dont know theres going to be something thats effective. And i would say about any one of these fights that anyone were talking about taking on power. Thats really what were talking about. In most of these. Some areas were not. Like, you know, perhaps with legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana, that might be a fight against as much entrenched power. Some is changing a fight is a fight about changing attitudes. Most of what were talking about is taking on power. So the odds are youre gonna lose. So if i were, if i were a rich man [laughter] i would not be looking for those situations where i thought there was a 51 or greater chance of winning because those are incredibly rare. Id be looking for situations in which there was a chance of winning. And that may mean, you know, 1 in 10 chance or 1 in 15 chance. But be you look at if you look at incredibly successful event recently, the fcc. Im very clear with my politics with the fcc announcing theres going to be Net Neutrality, okay . I did a power map of that a year ago. It was impossible. Say if you said should we bet on Net Neutrality given who might be engaged the numbers of people who might be involved and who might influence those in power, the answer is no, we should not engage in this because it is actually impossible. But they did both they organized with great generosity, different groups came together, really credited each other. They had, they were very outspoken, they were very clear in their moral core and they won. That doesnt mean i was wrong a year ago in the math it means we cant actually see the future which is both what is so terrifying and so wonderful about politics. I would add that there are Different Things were trying to change. Zephyr clearly is politically active and about numbers and data and has a plan and a very firm idea of what it is that she does for a living. I, on the other hand talk to people. I cant thats not fair. I talk to people too. [laughter] yes, yes, yes. [inaudible conversations] show he that plan that i have . Show me that plan that i have . I dont do anything measurable, the only thing i do thats measurable is my book sales. I have no idea how much impact my work has had. Does that make it more or less valuable in i have no idea. What i do know is that there are people who are toplevel organizers. They do actual strategy they do the actual numbers and the moving around and the power knobs. And then there are people who dont have that talent. Where my talent lies is in having conversations with people. I have shifted hundreds, if not thousands of minds. I know that because i see my email inbox. Is that different really though . Because you need both. You need people that are look, im on newsmax tv, and im as liberal as they come but im talking to conservatives more than i am liberals. Zephyrs very partisan, and thats the path she took in her career. Neither or both have more or less value. You measure the effectiveness of occupy. Look, im not a huge fan of the people who would think that camping is a fantastic idea in a city. Like, theyre just not my people right . Im a punker, whatever. Its fine. But what they did was they told all of america that you could do that. And that subtle change and, again, ill go back to ferguson on night three the first night that they gave us space that we were legally allowed to stay out past curfew because they were sending everybody home. That was part of where the violence was happening, they were pushing folks that needed to process. So they finally got smart and said well give you this lot to process in. A group of kids started to occupy. Were camping out until the indictment comes down. Had no idea what they were doing. These were 15yearold kids from st. Louis years after occupy happened. But they knew that they could just stay there and refuse to leave. And the reason that they knew that was that they had heard somewhere that some people did Something Like that. Thats what they told me. How do you gauge effectiveness . I think its kind of impossible, but i understand why you want the metric right . Theres some things you can put a metric on and some you just cant, so i think that would i just really want to underline that. That culture art conversations these are actually the things that all these structures hang on. And fundamentally it comes down to i think a moral vision about what kind of world we want to have and expressing that moral vision is the only way which we have previously caused change before. Even look at the different moving elements of it, so i really agree with that. I recognize you from yesterday. [laughter] hi. Let me come down front first. I think a microphones a coming to you. [inaudible conversations] going for what you can win is a very old thing. Not given to us complete the struggle [inaudible] not giving us [inaudible] you spoke that the Chicago School tried to split up all the struggles, racism sexism. Ive been hearing the word hierarchy more. It seems to be about the union of the whole thing. And yet i am [inaudible] yet it does seem a useful idea. It is. I think that when youre talking about hierarchies and power its important to remember at least from an organizing side that whoever needs the help the most right now is on top. That doesnt matter what your issue is, whos many charge. None of that matters. Youll find people. Nobodys going to remember your name if you were the first one to a protest. The point is that you went. And that warm body was there. But i think that when we are trying to value our own work and what we are going to put our energies in, we understand what were best at what were most passionate about what well be more effective at and also who needs the help most . Is it the thing that im on right now . Or is it somebody elses thing . Theyre going to help me when its critical. As far as hierarchies, thats how i score em. Weve got one more question up here. Two quick comments and then a concern that maybe shifts the conversation a little but id love to hear what you have to say. Anden then ill do and then ill do a little dancement. [laughter] i think measuring is elusive. Yesterday i saw on the news that in Frankfurt Germany theyre using occupy language. Yep. And theyre lining up in the streetment street. So that is influence. And its a little harder to put a metric on it but it certainly is effective. Secondly an example of stovepiping. While the Younger Generation coming up, i think does have a very different understanding of this when you talk about Something Like equal pay for women or womens equality, you cannot talk about that without talking about reproductive rights. They are also linked. And so language in washington needs to incorporate that. Our language here does which is why i just put it out there. One word i havent heard enough today, and on this panel, is the word community. Were talking a lot about organizing, but one of my concerns is even as we create online p communities and we have people organizing and meeting up in the street, my fear and in meeting room my fear is a loss of community in other ways that used to support people. And i wonder if you can talk about that. And peoplely, here finally, here is a little best. You are the best. [laughter] here is oh, my gosh look at that. I cant even do that. [laughter] and a bigger dance, i have to take my scarf off we wont put you through that. [laughter] im good for, like the whole panel now. So i believe that the best kind of organizing creates commitment. And, in fact i sometimes think the word organizing makes people who really want to be political feel like its not their thing, because it sounds scary and difficult and complicated and strategic. Whereas be you say i want to have people over for a potluck to talk about, you know fixing the stop sign, to talk about banning fracking. Not i want you to come over as an organizer thats a little more inviting. So one of the things that im really ill push again, is this idea of regular meetings which itself creates communities where you can have, you know whether its having a beer or having breakfast together, but some kind of other tie i think, is essential. One of the things when i was after s. B. 1070 was passed, i dont know if you remember this in arizona, i spent the summer there working with a candidate who was opposed to s. B. 1070. And there are all these incredibly long marches very powerful marcheses. Five miles, eight miles, ten miles. Whats with the tradition of these marches . And the tradition of the marches is that people spend time together not just as a symbol, but to show that when somebody gets sick or needs water theyre going to help them out. If you know somebodys going to help you out with a glass of water on a hot saturday in arizona, then theyre also going to help you out in the way that lindas talking about three years from now when youre creating a kind of trust that i think is absolutely essential. I believe that i believe that one of our jobs right now is to lay out a positive vision of the world that could be, and thats a world that includes community, thats a world that for me involves incredibly diverse, exciting Small Business economy with an extraordinary amount of innovation and life and community that comes out of the market. Its a real celebration of a different vision of the market. And i think if we can lay out that vision as a positive vision that involves all of us in this way, then so many of our fears pause were going to have those because were going to have those fears and those moments that may last years. Our fears just get us in the way of action though. Ive never liked the Term Community organizing. Never have. It seems to me like a special Cool Kids Club where people who understand that terminology can go and do stuff that may or may not affect me, but i have never felt connected to that term. Most of the people i know have never felt connected to that term, most of the people i work with wont call themselves Community Activists because what we are doing is fighting for dignity and respect. We are fighting for human rights, we are fighting to call ourselves as valuable as everybody else is. I dont think thats got anything to do with communities or organizing. I think that has to do with being human. And my fight isnt organized. I dont fight an organized fight. I fight anytime i see somebody being told theyre not good enough for any reason, for any reason, thats frigging wrong, and you shouldnt do that. But for me its not about i think Community Organizing as far as i understand it is much more about specific outcomes and specific actions. Wed like to get this law passed, get this rule changed get this nonprofit set up and funded. For me my work is about all of human dignity. It doesnt matter what it looks like, i dont like seeing people be marginalized and oppressed. And that, i dont think, has a lot to do with that laws we pass or dont pass. If it did, we wouldnt see so many people margin isallized in the press. Were we able to politically pass a law that said you cant be a jerk to your neighbor, i would run afoul of that law incredibly quickly. But i think wait wait, wait wait. [laughter] yes you do so do you believe that the the way we fund campaigns doesnt matter . No. I think it matters inherently. Okay. Because thats what [inaudible] superfluous to. Like its an extra layer right . So youve got Campaign Finance regulations. Youve got citizens united, corporations are people, the Koch Brothers are going to spend however millions of dollars it took them to buy this next election larry lessig is going to scream. That is all going to happen. Underlying that, for me, is a fundamental lack of respect for people who dont have a bank account your size. So i think that this is where we come at it with that pinser move. Yeah. I just wanted to see because i think i agreed with you up to a point, can and then you said you didnt think the laws mattered. And i do see that step with some people who are i guess i dont have any other word to use organizing straight up not an anarchist. Just put that out there. Because i think it leads to a kind of withdrawal. So i think the clarity here is that the laws absolutely matter, but you cannot legislate respect. You cannot legislate that other people give people dignity. You cannot fix that with the law. I be but i think thats a dynamic relationship. If you have a Public Financing system, what you are saying is do not spend all your time as a sycophant to, you know, a handful of wealthy people. You actually, you know you may not respect everybody, but at least your tendency tendencies to have a broad respect can be encouraged. Theres a dynamic sewer action between laws and respect. Does that make sense . It does. I think its a question of where we both come at it from because i have never once for example, there are laws that said if you run a restaurant, you have to provide Safety Equipment for your employees. That law is incredibly rarely followed. Even when ive reported it to unions governments, whatever i still had a pair of oven gloves that my employees were burning themselves on because we couldnt get the company to spend 35. Now, the fact that the law exists was no protection for me. So me, the way i see it from my experience, my fight is to go to the dude that wouldnt buy the gloves and make him explain himself to me. But you could also go to a court of law engage a lawyer x then you would have a weapon in your hand in order to get [inaudible] something about the law. Like, im sorry no. No no. Thats actually fantastic. The its a quality. Laws decriminalizing marijuana and expunging peoples addictions so they can participate more fully these are a club with which the people who have been beaten, you know they can beat the let me ask you a question. Sure. Assume that you made 213 a week. Assume that youre the sole support for six different people. Tell me where youre going to find a lawyer and how much money you have for a cushion to wait for the eeoc to decide to do its job . Tell me [inaudible] right. [inaudible] ive been poor. Maybe you employ eloquence. Maybe you try to engage peoples compassion. But you know the law and you can use the law as a weapon to achieve your objectives i just have to disagree with you. Thats fair, but i will tell you this, i am eloquent, i am intelligent. I am a very, very accomplished perp. Had i been able to access a lawyer, honey, dont think i didnt try. You and i agree on this. I wanted to check. It is that we need all the different ways. I think that is right. So we are right up against 3 00 now. I didnt want to interrupt that great conversation to finish on. I will say, really quickly since it is a roomful of book festivals, at recent interview, we need more poetry in politics. We have a roomful of writers and readers, not talk to them about their role in organizing all of this and what would you say to them in terms of their doing their part . Audrey lord says the difference his winged poetry and rhetoric is you kill yourselves instead of your children. She wrote this poem after the shooting of a teenage boy by Police Officers several years ago. In response to the rhetoric, that was used to explain the killing, i believe in order to engage in a new political moment we need a more poetic moment where we are putting our whole selves on the line, and crafted phrases. Being more poetic. Were organizing and expressing an idea to come around to understanding, they dont have to be good. I dont think they have to be anything but true. People will eventually understand what youre trying to say. You can have political fights and all kinds of different and commonalities, no way and the same way. Sees you understand what you mean and that is the point. [applause] one more thing i always told my panels if you have a question or concern or a comment, my email address is bootstrapped industries jean mail. Com or find me on twitter, it is my job to answer questions people have. Bootstrapped industries gmail. Com. Right bootstraps industries. All of my email stephen l. They may stick around the little bit, it come up and talk or have books signed please complete your evaluation forms one more round of applause. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] jesse was born in Charles County in 1859, he was a local boy if you will, he was born with a slight defect in his right eye. It looks really white and because of that people made fun of him quite a