reproduce that number during the year. so beekeeping is a totally different thing now. there are number of things that are threatening them. it's not because simply they are just die. we have to think about the production and reproduction of the population and what has changed about beekeeping. it is different than managing. keeping it going, we do more and more managing the deaths of our bees. i'm not worried about the bee population disappearing, not unless the beekeepers do, which is very possible. only about 80% of the bees in this country are basically managed by about 1200 beekeepers. i would say 50% of those have massive beekeeping operations. it will keep new people coming into it as long as they can make a profit off of it, and we will manage the debts the same way we manage cattle. now the modern be has a shorter lifespan, more parasites, more viruses, more bacterial infections and colonies living shorter lines -- like send any time and aviary history. bees have a certain personality, they develop as they grow. even though the bees switch out quickly, they will become much or a hive. they don't do that anymore, they're being replaced annually. no commercial beekeeper would keep them for years, almost all of them flipped after one year. the modern bee, all of the historical ones, nothing has come close to this. the modern bee lives a more precarious life. we have done more research than ever before. they live a more precarious life than any time in the multi-millet until history they have shared with humans. the conditions point to economic and political conditions of the industry itself. i'm always wary of crisis because it is in the moment when people talk about crises that other types of gary things -- is what pulled me into looking at the bees, and i'll will come back to that in a minute. it is a lot of effort now more than ever before to try to figure out what is going on and in some sense it is a crisis because of the changing rate of the population dying off. we have more money going into that research right now. you had the newly mapped genome, you have toxicologist, you have bacterial entomologist trying to figure out what is going on there. you have all kinds of other theories about what is causing the collapse, cell phones, electrical transmission lines, armageddon, cape town south africa, in for tradition of the u.s. ovulation my south african bees. the zombie fungal parasite has more teeth than you might think. there is all kinds of struggling to find one kind of element that is causing it. there is less consensus over what is causing the collapse. we will come back to some of that struggle over consensus but there is less consensus now than ever before. it raises some questions about what we are doing and how we are thinking about dealing with and how we approach the question of the die off. so much of it has been oriented around what is happening to cause the crisis around the bee rather than asking the more fundamental question -- how to the conditions of honey beekeeping arise in the earth place? what are the conditions for precarious. not because the scientific elements are not important, as a beekeeper i draw that knowledge often. i don't think the matter what we do going to ultimately figure out what's going on i isolating elements of the problem and trying to come up with some technical solution through those narrow scientific means. for the long-term, i don't think it's going to make much of a distance. -- much of a difference. the most common factor you will see, newspapers will talk about it and say the set of variables is complicated. when you said that everything is a variable, everything is part of the cause, it tells us nothing about the calls. if there is more than that he gives us new ground for a politically informed engagement. there is no analytic traction for the meaning of vibrant politics. it will allow for different way of engaging in apiary politics. to include epistemologies to politics, e racial history of the bee, other ways in which knowledge is being produced about bees. today we will hear about militarization, to asked those questions of how we might know the bees differently by asking different sorts of questions. the broader project. i did not have to really talk about this. i ultimately, honestly in the beginning did not want to write this book. i kept these my whole life. i love keeping bees. the make a very nice site thing. you do your job and come home and take care of bees in a quiet, tranquil, relaxing situation. the encyclopaedia britannica says there are more books written about bees than any other species other than humans. people have been writing about bees for a long time. i love bees, don't get me wrong. i love the sound of the swarm. i love the smell of the hive when it is opened on a warm day. i love the perverse pleasure, after you have been stung enough the vitamin doesn't affect you -- the venom doesn't affect you. i also felt that my inches of other things, were more important than the quotidian beekeeping stuff that was going on. as i talked to histories of chemical warfare, the politics of military drones, ap and elements of the story kept distracting me. i read about liberalism, b and bees became part of those stories. everyone has something to say about the. i said what is going on there, it stuck with me and resonated with me. bees have a strong history of being used to delineate and define the very definition of what it means to be human. but then something happened that pushed me even harder. my be started dying. honestly, i tried everything. i tried peppermint oil, and might be cap dying away never done. it was kind of a rare occasion while. now if you are a beekeeper, you lose these all the time and that is a part of what we do, you get used to losing hives. at first i was really desperate about that loss. if you have 15-20 hives and they start dying and you start panicking, you say what am i going to do? i'll try these organic methods. that didn't work. i'm desperate, i will try it. none of that worked in the end. i said ok, what is going on here? i use my access to research journals that i get free and started looking at these journals and trying to figure out what they were saying. i became dissatisfied with the way they were talking about. i wanted to return to doing this work on bees on my own terms, in the terms that i approach the questions. i want to do and epidemiology of honey bee. i took seriously the knowledge and production theory about it. i wanted political theory. to develop different ways of thinking. it's not just something in the abstract, it's something i care about and something that may be pushing me in many ways to do it. as i said before, i don't mean this in an abstract symbolic way and i want to think about the history of those. i became more attuned to the other side of it. it's about what humans are doing to bees. human nature is partly major history of understanding bees. ecology of the empire. so this is where i will go into little more detail on how i was talking about the project. both the ways in which bees have been transformed, and again, i'm trying to say -- talking about how we bred them and how the material is coming to be out. but other central way is the militarization of the be. there is nothing new about animals being used in warfare. horses, dogs, and chicken, to name a few. they have used flesh -- beatles to eat the flesh of prisoners. hundreds of millions of insects were cultivated in tens of billions of beatles and mosquitoes were cultivated and deployed. one general released hundreds of millions of insects in china and world war ii that cause the death of tens of thousands of people. in korea, there are played in flesh it -- plague infested bees . there are torture techniques in vietnam, the cold war saw crop eating beetles dropped in the country and most recently insects have been used in guantanamo as part of tortured there. people are afraid and they have brought people in and put them in confined spaces with these and spiders. bees have been used in warfare -- think about an army if you have someone entrenched in a cave or for anyone to get them out, throwing hives into the fort. if you have armor, the bees can go through that and around it. it is now believed by many experts that apiary historians cause the radical drop in bees in the 16th century. you can see the catapult that would launch on in me fortresses. the adam knowledge he became deeply intertwined around this time. my interest lies not in that long history today of apiary elements or even modern history, how science made the better be. the ways during world war ii, the tongue of the be right here, how they bred the the that we have now to this size tongue so it would produce more honey and wax. military shell casings were coated with wax so water would not damage them. enabling the busy little insects to do jobs for war. interesting lines in this particular modern form of the honey bee. there has been a long history of four. this is a different war -- long history of war. it was not easily defined for quite a different type of warfare. in 2002-23, famously in the speech, it was said this is more than any war on intelligence. part of the war was part of the war on terror is, to find out about things we cannot see. as rumsfeld said, the war on technology requires a new technology on warfare and new intelligence, being amped up figure out what is going on. all of a sudden in a war that is so clearly undefined and ambiguous, getting to know and understand objects within that context is very difficult. so the question of the suspicious looking individual, all raises questions about an individual's and 10. the efforts in this war, trying to understand the world around us. the bee has been brought into that form of for fair. the technology for this develop before hand in los alamos where i worked in new mexico on it earlier project. dealing with the history of the cold war, they want to find out where the pollution was. they kept finding it in beehives. so they said we will use that as some kind of indicator. they started taking bees and change the problem of contaminating honey to having bees the extension of human sensing over the landscape. these can be deployed 60,000 bees hive. they will fly anywhere within a two-mile radius. a will collect the honey from every water source, every pollen source in that area, and they will bring it back and put it in the hive. you can place an bee -- place to be have an area and then monitor it. 400 beehives were deployed around the world in 2005 for surveillance, to find out what kind of chemical weapons were being used and try to develop and find a blunt weapon and different areas. as one officer homeland security only one bees -- to see the pollen sticking as a positive charge. you go back to the hive and the honey and pollen and nectar will become part of it. that was the first stage. then a little later, there are other resources such as the ability to smell. the defense and research project agency is one of those think tanks for the military. realized they were trying to develop a mechanical means to smell for landmines. they tried to develop other means. at the same time, in tomorrow just realized how effective bees are if they have an ability to smell that, so much more than that of dogs. the experiments were done at los alamos and devoid around the world. you basically make an association between the chemical and the bees. then you can trace that by tracing these flight patterns. you can actually see these moments here. you have a be generated map of the minefield. you can map the minefield of a particular area. here's the early experiment done on port. you put some cap chemical in here. these red tagged things are the bees. these are deployed at laces that due to take chemical weapons. people govern straight up for three reasons. you cannot work at night. they did not fly under certain degrees. the spearmint's are frustrated with the way that bees would get distracted by other things. how do we control them a little better so they can do more with the research that we had. so that started to isolate bees as individuals. the department of defense and by barbara -- darpa. the styrofoam cells are trained with a chemical mixed with sugar water. every time you smell it and start salivating, -- that is a better picture there of that. they were put in cartridges. the cartridges a put into different boxes. the boxes then measure and graft the extension of the tong. you can train these for multiple chemicals. you would have all kinds of chemicals, it will imitate what chemicals are present. there have been more radical interventions. i'm doubtful of the success of them. what that basically started to do is actually -- berkeley has done this with all kinds of insects right now. they grow these in the larval a answer grows in the right way you can control the bees, a massive amount of money has gone into that element of the research. they are being trained from eating nothing but the chemical resources. i don't want to over emphasize, and that is what drew me to this in the first place. more money is being spent on bee research for military purposes than agriculture at this point. but not from small elements of it. there has been a whole new set of be breeding in the military. this is a picture of the university of virginia, training researchers to do this sort of research at the end at the university of virginia. one element is simply the materials in the history of the making of the be. there is another element to the story out wanted to tell. that is the story of how the bee has built into the making of the human and the military strategies in particular. i want to give you two quick examples of that. one is the history of forming itself. from 1989-2003, the central military strategy of battlefield tactics was air land battle. basically it was what we saw, a land invasion, a lot of air invasion backed up by land invasion. a massive military show strength. that philosophy was redone because of the nature of the current military threat that was challenge during the war on terror. a whole set of people started defining new military strategy. it will be fully operationalized by 25th teen. the new centralized strategy of u.s. military operation. the idea is to decentralize and the soldier has a great deal of autonomy. that make decisions of their own. there is a decentered set of -- i just lost my place. a decentralized force operation, unit autonomy, continuous and synchronized real-time communication. so swarming become one of the architects of that is one of the architects of this report says it became the u.s. command and he says it appears in the animal kingdom large before -- long before does in human affairs. many of the behaviors are readily applicable to military tactics strategies. that actually draw off entomology. you will find famous into my largest, it becomes the means of understanding and designing swarm tactics for military strategies as well. you have a whole set of network communications that come from these entomology things. this is not symbolic. it is actually a set of detailed studies of material behavior of bees and other insects and they are using those to become the basis for a new set of military tactics. these become militarized -- military humans become apiary in a second, swarm applications for military tactics. is broken into separate units, very different than the earlier moments of military warfare. a second example is the use of these in drones. there are couple of different elements at play here. first of all, the drone -- it is hard to coordinate drone use. if you use a drone, it had to come away from the incident. one drone would have to leave and a new one would have to come in. it is hard having two different pilots next to each other and so far away and being able to fly well together. but they realize they could do and what they started mapping, by using mathematical algorithms derived from insect behavior, programming it into the drones, they started programming in 2012 and we had our first multiple drone strike controlled by six different operators, but using digital pheromones from electronic sources in satellites, to coordinate the different drones together. they become locked into one autonomous element and they can actually increase lethal force of the drones considerably. this element of the collective swarming of drones who become one of the central new tactics in drones. it is, do have one soldier in one place controlling multiple drones like could never have happened before. this is not derived from a symbolic element of these but derived in the ways in which the zen ants behavior work -- in which bees and and behavior works. in conclusion, a couple of different elements. i want to bring the relationship of animals, economic and military interview is a critical site to think about how the the is being remade symbolically and materially. at the current moment we are facing the most serious crisis of the honey bee, and a close accounting of the many places and forms relationships are being made at this moment are central. it is attentive to the political economy, the chemistry and molecular biology on the genetic engineering and genetic laboratories. all these elements need to be heart of understanding contemporary bee. something that has been produced of this long, historic old relationship. so critical national history is not about preserving and protecting the or developing a proper style for these. it is about rethinking the relationship, the order that we used to understand contemporary bees, and the means of creating new possibilities for being in relationships with these. i believe it will open up more possibilities because those interested in the health of the bees would have to come to terms with colonialism, race and industrial relations, at the heart of understanding apiary history. there is the possibility of fostering and new ways of imagining being with bees. it is about proliferating new, less precarious biology's in the future. thank you very much. [applause] >> what i'm trying to do is hold these histories, different analytics to think about bees and the way they are being constituted through time, and thinking about that to understand not just the history of the bees but the crisis it self. i want to know what is causing the death of these bees. i don't think it is related to one particular chemical or viral parasite. we can see the bee differently and understand how the relationship we have with the bees is going to be and the material be it self, how it has been made in the way that it has. that is kind of the gist of it. >> i will open it up for everybody's questions and comments. >> it is really hot up here. >> maybe we can open the back your again. >> aside from the military applications, can you talk about the natural history of the bees and how colonialism was involved, and while we got in this carry a state and what you think we could do about it. >> that is a bunch of questions there. the colonial histories had everything to do with the construction of the hive. 90% -- the model of the hive is made from the same architecture itself. it's part of a certain political moment of architecture that became the conditions of factory work and also the condition of the bees. there are all kinds of colonial relationships that became interested through the race of the bees. honeybees were not part of the united states. it was part of the european settlement particularly in the east going west. that was a very black, small be. that be almost entirely disappeared. we don't talk about sub species or races of these. the different definitions of race amount of the categorizations of race they came out a century before. those became part of the scientific defining of bees and part of the selection we had. now the bright yellow be became the most popular one. that's one example. and then what we can do about it, this is a tough one. in explaining what i'm talking about is explaining how we think. so much of those relationships are over determined at the starting point. what we are told now is to plant them a garden or plant them flowers. none of that will do any difference for the bees. it is amazing how many flowers it takes for the hive colony per to produce a honey that it does in order to survive. it's such a large quantity, the question -- had we come to terms that bees are dying rather than actually making a radical change? if you want to deal with ease and you have to take on the difficult questions of race relations and political economy. you have to ask, is not a chemical or medicine, it's about reworking industrial agriculture. stories are often told in two separate domains. you have to deal with empires to deal with the collapse. >> so i am wondering, are there while bees that have been unadulterated by industrialization, and do you think it's desirable if there are such bees to try to nurture them and enhance -- i think you get the gist of my question. someone may know better than i do but there are 25,000 native bees in the world. the honey bee is one of those species but there are very few that actually hive and few that are mobile. the honey bee is one we have for agriculture because it is mobile. >> water on levels lingering -- starve.l --imagining different ways. not returning. does it make sense? following up. field.stion of the urban it is quite healthy and i see plenty in my neck of the woods and is that part of the new vision you are just describing the way people are trying to get back to agriculture and reminding us of the end of world war ii and 45% is inside of the city and the victory gardens. elements.re two you mean the wild bees. there are two elements. up until the 1970's there was quite a big population the rise and it will wake up all of the bees. some people argue that all that have to betually managed by humans. the relationship was much more tight and tighter before then and became really tight. they gofind it and if make it to the hive and the way we manage in our heads and the woods it is not going to survive very long. they do not survive very long. there are few exceptions. they may have found one that is older but very rare. does not exist any more than a wild cattle. of beekeepers keeping bees in the city, i think it is great to keep bees. we should do that. it raises our attentiveness to bees, but i don't think it's going to save the bees anymore. most of the bees, all of the kind of these you get in those hives, you can say i'm going to do my own beekeeping here and get a clean somewhere else, that queen is a part of it. part of the voter ability is that the bees will be susceptible to that of the chemicals will be susceptible to that. there is no easy way out. i think you might care about these more because you keep them, but small urban beekeepers are not going to transform in any direct way the scale of the contemporary collapse of the bees. >> you were saying that [inaudible] >> the rate of the collapse is much higher. the rate of death of these right now is much higher than it has ever been. colony collapse disorder was a particular way of dying, which is something that has happened in different places in the past but has come back. it is a definable thing and still exists. but saying there are these traits, that he's fly off and leave the hive early on, that does -- that they particular way of dying called colony collapse disorder. but that is not what is causing the 30% of the deaths. there are all kinds of ways bees are dying in the current moment. colony collapse disorder is a small part of it. even if you don't with that and had a certain idea about a virus and pesticide combination, it won't deal with a larger voter vulnerability which is causing bees to die in multiple different ways. it is not -- i'm not saying it doesn't exist. i'm not saying there are not a lot of deaths of these will stop i'm saying taking it on in that particular way as a specific is these we need to address and the way we have in doing it is not going to get us out of the high mortality rate. >> a couple of observations. maybe one more optimistic one. i take my classes tracking wild bees and i have been able to monitor that over the year through these last projects. the good news is in the last four years, the hives have been stable and the wild trees -- last friday, we saw they art doubling. i have two more hives to find the woods, so it is encouraging there is that behavior and remarkable capacity for this animal to adapt to changing circumstances. so just a touch of optimism. i think you have been thoughtful and thorough but i thought you left an 1850's misconception to the audience in the use of the hive as a moment of industrialization. i would just like to add that evolved out of humanity towards these, so the notion of the the space and not killing bees prior to 1850 when bees were salford every year. that was an effort to be a humanistic relationship to the bees and i thought a very pivotal moment in our history where we are trying to offer a more symbiotic relationship. >> i think that is the history that is often told, and it goes to the history of the hive, but the history is not through the skip. it's through the observation hive and it is much more through hoover in 1850, which you give a much greater control of the hive and it becomes the model for it. not the first humanity hive that came out of the world there which was celebrated as a humanitarian way. that was tied to the notion of civil people do it this way and backwards people use skip hives. that history is one that is deeply infected with a class element of that moment and a lot of people didn't keep the queen. if you look at the monastery records at the time, they kept their hives over and over again. so i think that's an erroneous jump from the skip hives when actually the history of it being built into the hives goes to the observation hive which is about that controlling factor. you can see the conversation between beekeepers developing those hives and then the people that lang strop developed with his hives. i'm wary of one notion of the humanitarian movement that goes on because the politics are there, racial and colonial politics in england at the time and because there's a history of not doing that. i love the history. i think it's an important moment but there's a different writing of it than that way we normally tell the story. >> i don't fundamentally agree with the connective links you have made in the conversation, but post 1850, as the hive became standardized and became the most familiar hive in america and he's considered the father of american beekeeping, then the industrialization of the keeping and a mass scale of the easily removable frame hive that allows a lot of people to keep bees changed from a cottage industry to a long-term industrialized economy. i agree with the evolution after 1850 but i don't agree with before and within the british system, the situation where the step hive was the common hive of ordinary people, wealthy and ordinary landowners. then gradually, there were movements in the 1840's to bring up the rights of the cottage or being a generic term for anybody being on a small has a like scale to more productive scale trying to improve their lives through agriculture and books were written specifically for that group of people to socially enlarge their lives through more intelligent and management of agriculture. that was another social liberal you are aware of. >> i'm wary of the humanitarian element of the stories. we can get into a detailed history of the hive here, but there are a lot of elements were beekeeping has been used to keep people up, whether world war i soldiers or ringing them back to health as a means of social regeneration. that's the idea of the reconstitution of the human subject through the bee and that's about that making the the and making the human together which i think is part of the story. the idea there's a humanitarian element to that story, that this is about a social uplifting story, i'm wary of that both in the hives and later, but i know your work, so i would be interested to talk about that. >> if i hadn't done this, i was going to do a history of the hive, doing a more history version of this talk. >> we can keep going forever. >> you talk about the military strategy and i was wondering when that started in your mind in terms of your analysis? there was a book "crimes and civil disorder" written in 1995 with a two page segment about riggle mass which some of us here have been super involved with. they were remarking on the fact that this icicle phenomenon had developed a swarming tactic and they had no idea what to do because they were not prepared for something that had no head that they could chop off and make it go away and it filled the street and moved around without any obvious means of communication. they said this was something the military needed to learn from, so i'm wondering about the timing. >> there's a deeper history to this swarm which is a central part of it. how do we deal with the mob, how do we deal with the rabble question mark what do we do with that and whether it can be harnessed and what happens -- this is from world war ii and world war i, what's the potential danger of that? that's always something that has fascinated social theorists. but it was much later, the 1990's and during the 60's that they realize they had to develop new tactics to deal with a decentralized element. they talked about it in russian military manuals because they brought a series of anarchism into the story. but the modern element of the police and the specific tactics that started in the 1990's because the military and police have become so tightly associated that they share these tactics so they are going back and forth, but it's an interesting observation because i know the modern police story of swarms and their use of swarms and i know the social and political theory, but i did know that connection. >> when somebody pointed out the activity as a swarm -- -- >> i'm fascinated by something i heard you say about the military fooling around with the physiology of the bees to make them do what they wanted them to do. >> i thought maybe they are working on that. >> i kind of stuff over because i'm always a little wary. i can look at the money going into this program and say there's a load of money going into it, into the mechanical changing insects. the effectiveness i know from knowing a lot of good entomologists and they are very doubtful. just because people throw massive amounts of military money doesn't mean it will work. it's something to be scared of and as someone who studied entomology, i've seen the flights of some of these insects and they control them like a drone. you can actually control the wing pattern and make them go left or right of the it is so sloppy and these are the best scientists out there. they are a long way from being able, even though they can do this electromagnetic element of it, i'm dubious, intrigued by it, scared by it, but it feels like area 51 to me. it's that kind of thing. >> great talk. i'm interested in the potential depth of the study on the intelligence of bees as a collective. how is that done? who is doing that sort of research? what is the literature out there that says maybe there's a lot we don't know about this creature? >> in terms of collective intelligence, i have a hard time dealing with the because the object of the study is almost always the bee and that the hive will stop it interesting that the fda and usda regulates one and the other regulates-have different regulations because of that. what's the unit of analysis? bees are pretty dumb, but collectively they can do quite a bit. artificial intelligence is very excited about that, official -- especially artificial intelligence. the idea of the drone being like a bee that can make those decisions, they've programmed an algorithm into the drone and have it fully autonomous of thought that is the dream of artificial intelligence. i know there's a lot of research that goes into that part of it and what i'm amazed by is the capacity of these often go back to breaking it into components of the bees and the abilities of the bee where they don't know exactly how to deal with the collective that is both individual and a single totality at the same time. if you isolate the components, you lose the object you're trying to ask questions about. it is remarkable how people have not come to deal with each other, having very little research on the intelligence or ability of the behavior of the hive. i think we think to focus on the individual. >> there is a whole thing in this book about a mega hive of bees out in the ocean and they get saved when the bees come out to the ocean. >> it's on my list. >> it's a great novel, but that's the weird part. >> you talked about in the colonial days, there was a spotlight bee and we now have this yellow and black the. are you saying americans hate black evil so much that we see it in everything? >> it is part of the selection process that went on in marketing bees in the 1860's. you would see by the italian queen, she's beautiful, she's yellow, she's fair skin and more docile. they are talking about the behaviors of the bees, but the point of it is there's always a way of an how we understand ourselves is a projection. it's also the means by which we look back at the world we make ourselves. that element is very much part of it any broad history of selection of the be that became a central bee in the u.s. 1912, 1921 -- i might get my numbers backwards -- but from 1921, there was the chinese exclusion act and we put a moratorium on bees. it was dropped in 2002 because bees were dying. they wanted to bring the population seven people found it cheaper than killed -- buying a whole new shipment from australia by plane, it's cheaper than keeping them throughout the year and you make more money that way. it's cheaper to fly them over than to do it that way. there's an element -- i totally just lost my train of thought. i went way over here. until 2002, we open the borders, but that's only 2002. the laws were the same language and the same senators were involved in passing the laws for the racial exclusion act. that became the same logic and words and language. then you get into the scientific history of eugenics which was hugely important and some of the essential eugenics scientists were beekeepers. the ideas of animal husbandry became part of eugenics where beekeepers and animal husbandry people, like the person who ran the school harbor was an expert and he uses that logic of breeding animals to breed people to make better humans and parse out and let the bad animals die. using that same logic in human population, that agrarian history of eugenics very tightly and the bees are very mild implicated in that history. >> a tiny correction on the exclusion act -- it was renewed 10 years later and again was made permanent in 1902. the time you are talking about is interesting because jane is feeling was running in the u.s. senate and his campaign slogan was keep california white. you could see it in the lovely book "imperial san francisco." there was this panic about not having white people running the farm lands in california in that exact here you are talking about. >> who needs to get in here before we call it a night? >> i just want to mention the rand corporation study on swarming that was up there for a while and we used to run it chronically on indymedia. just as the terrorist concepts were coming in. >> it became the central means of replanting -- this idea of remaking the u.s. military based around the swarming tactic. i'm surprised how little press it got given how central it was in the remaking of the u.s. military and u.s. military tactics. they got very little press even its importance. >> i think we have had a great night. thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> on the next washington journal, the national school boards association and top issues facing public schools. institution,thomas discussing the common core standards initiative and the role in u.s. education policy. and, your phone calls comments and tweets. "washington journal" live on c-span. >> a look at some of our programming this week. 8:00 p.m.tuesday at eastern, oral argument in the case of aclu versus clapper. the second circuit court of appeals hears -- wednesday, live coverage of a debate between north carolina democratic senator and her republican opponent. at 8:00, a senate hearing on sexual assault on college campuses. thursday night, the senate agricultural committee look at school lunch nutrition. at 10:00 p.m., coverage of the governor's debate between the incumbent and his challenger. elizabeth2 book tv, drew talks about her 1970 five book about the news coverage of watergate. wednesday night, after words, officer of -- an author about the use of police use of technology. emily miller on her book. it describes her efforts to get licensed to own a handgun and washington, d.c. in american history tv, tuesday, historians debate the battle of bladensburg in the war of 1812. on wednesday, coverage at 1:00 p.m. of the symposium marking the 200th anniversary of the war. coverage continues all day thursday beginning at eight 30 a.m. find our television schedule at www.c-span.org and let us know what you think. call us at -- --twitter, use or e-mail us at -- the c-span conversation. like us on facebook. follow us on twitter. >> a discussion on the current state of the union's. the impact they have on wages and jobs. from "washington journal," this is 40 minutes. us on twitter. continues.on journal host: on this labor day, a discussion of unions with the american progress. the project director of the project, hello guest: hello. how would you describe the state in the u.s. today? guest: they've been in decline. so there's been a long slow of decline. and then there's increasing sort of political fight where is they're feeling under attack. the negative. i think on the positive; you would also see that there's a a wing resurgence and recognition that if we want some of the basic things that i ear able to provide like higher wages, we have to rebuild the union movement. ost: what would you say led to some of the -- what are some of the facts that led to the decline. is t: one of the key things the current state of our law is really weak. and for example, if a company breaks the law and fires someone for trying to join a union, so they break the law, the penalty is so weak that after years of fighting in courts, the person to get their job back minus any wages they made in the meantime. so that's really kind of a slap on the wrist. choose ompany wants to to avoid unions, there's a lot of incentive to do that. host: a gallup poll put out on the 28th talking about approving disproving, 53% say they approve. starting 72% as a point in 1936. >> the trend there's slightly than hat approve disapprove. other kinds of questions, do you think labor unions are important to get ing workers higher wages and benefits, they recognize their value. have some negative attitudes that there's not support. ing >> what's the perception of the the reality?hat's guest: the exception would be in the past. minimum wage or overtime. but that was in the past. so maybe they're not as relevant today. host if you want b to ask some labor unions -- independents, 202-585-3882. if you're a union member, you want to give your thoughts as 202-585-3883. a jeptleman wrote an opinion labor day and t unions. he wrote this. he said as labor became less number of a large democrats became cool to unions. president carter angered unions s when he pushed fiscal austerity and didn't back legislation that would have prevented boycotts. president clinton clashed over unions with the nafta free trade reaty and president obama disappointed many when he didn't push for the employee free in 2010.t i wouldnificant amount, agree. unions were able to work across isles and both parties recognized their value. increasingly, that's become the party and the democratic are more closely associated. even there in the democratic party, there's been tension over years. peement ev-- people are the g back to recognizing value of unions. we've had 30 years of stagnant wages and declining incomes for a decade. and the ways that you can think of raising incomes, its's get there without unions. host: president obama is in a labor to talk about event. ho uh do you feel about his relationship as far as what he's done for unions. guest: more generally trying to boost wages for workers and jobs workers and quite supportive in some ways of unions. make the strongest couple of a bill a years ago in congress. that would have faced an june anyway.d in congress on the whole, quite good. he made good appointments, appointmentse good and good regulations but they're on the smaller scale. the bigger things will take congress. really an uphill road right now. >> what would you like congress first and foremost? guest: i mentioned the weak law.lties for breaking the if you do something like fire a worker for wanting to exercise a a ic right, like joining union, there should be much higher penalties. i think we can fix this election want to here if you become a -- join a union, its's unfair process an host: is that only in states with what are known to right to work laws or other states as well. guest: right to work is a separate issue. union, whether you need to pay for the services they provide. first call to our guests. ann for new york, democrats line, for david madeline of the american progress. go ahead. caller: i do support the unions, i think we need a revolution in this country. i think the corporate greed, the ceos, and the congress not supporting the eople as opposed to the corporations and including the supreme court. i think it's time for the people revolution in a this country a go out and demonstrate. guest: thanks for the call. we need citizens to have more and our the economy politics right now. of sh mentioned the issue top pay or ceo pay. declining, at are the top, record increases. ceo pay is 300 times the typical workers' pay when 30 years ago, it was like 20 times. o we've had all of the gains going to the top. and i think there's steps we can tart to take so that ordinary when the economy does well. that's what unions do. get ital thing is they lost. unions negotiating with an employer one-on-one so workers wages.ter they help workers have some power in politics. they encourage workers to get and vote more off b and talk to the legislators more often. so that's a counterbalancing power. you have corporations with a lot not so in congress but much workers. both should have power and negotiation there. if it goes to the political activity as well? guest: so if you join the union, yes, they do political activity. to you pay the fee, that's represent you for the forward do with the employer. if you don't want to join the union, you want to pay the fee representation, that's possible too. is : from florida this, john. hi. caller: hi, c-span. always like to say, it's about the price of labor. labor, theynts cheap make lots of money. they buy our politicians. labor, they make lots of money, they get cheap politicians,uy our they buy our news media. ou can go on and on with this stuff, you know? it's always between business and labor. over history, k what is it? usinesses looking for cheap labor. it caused slavery, illegal child labor. those businessmen used to take young kids, put them to work in factories and work died.until they literally that's what you have to look at. we need a labor party in this country. labour t we have a party? reflecting aller is that sometimes antagonism where willing business are to go too far in order to make money. ou mention in the past child labor, slave labor. certainly there's a possibility for those trying to make money to go too far. where you get back to vital role for unions. not everything that the union wants is going to be good. power.th have some able to get to the reasonable place where hopefully it works for both parties. a little longer, i think one of the places you see that working well is in germany. where they have a different model, unions have quite a bit of power. they tried to structure things the owners of capital a va seat and labor has a seat. they negotiate the things that work well for both of them. successful for the economy. very high wages and dominant in the export market. they have figured out less of a conflict, the driving down of and how to compete on a high level. effortslkswagen and the in the united states in bringing work there. are there lessons in union involvement? guest: very much so. volkswagen is a key example. the -- they are bun of the leading manufacturers in the world. members on their board helping to make decisions company does. they are trying to operate in the united states where they have a different model. they're bringing some of their practices to the tennessee plant. one of those is the idea of the where workers have some input in the day-to-day operations like what's the best think about running this particular machine, for example. successful in germany. trying to do that here. led to huge conflict where some of the local politicians have felt in change power relations where you bring in unions and they fault and listed it. created a conflict that in my mind hopefully will be able o be resolved with workers to be able to join a union and some of the advanced practices put in place. host: does the plant in tennessee have a union? guest: no, it doesn't. starting to join the union. there's -- it's very complicated. i can give me a while, answer. they don't have a full union yet. host: because -- guest: votes of workers. here were threats of taking away subsidies by the tennessee government if the workers unionize. big, big fight which is what neither the workers or vw wanted. slightly going on a different track where the workers are -- those who want have joined in a minority union figuring out how to work with the company. 202-585-38883. a union member, hello. thomas, good morning. caller: i was working at safeway. the big thing was to get 40 hours. of all,f i believe the unions built the middle class in this country. in 1979, when i was in san jose state and working at safeway. vendors would come in and start touching the items on the shelf. repuld complain to my union and he could get in there and get them out of there because i more hours butet the vendors were able to reface the store and do all that stuff. ack then, they couldn't do that. they would pull them out. hours.d get the to make $13 an hour and make full benefits. a husband and wife could make $40,000, $60,000 a year working on sundays. a husband and wife could raise a family. the stores, you see vendors doing all of the stocking on the shelves. point.t was my the unions have lost a lot of clout. the benefits have gone way down. agree. we need a revival of the unions. thank you. guest: the caller is making two big points there. the idea that as labor unions have declined, they had less ability to raise wages and for workers. you get little debate from even your next guest would agree with that. which i est point, think is really critical is that essential if you want a strong middle class. this is something i've discussed for a long time. it's not just the past. it's clear if you look over time in the u.s., you can see as increased, the strength of the middle class increased and then it fell as density fell. today in states that have a stronger union movement, they classes, nger middle meaning the income going to the higher there.s world.ound the the same is true so not just in that the it's today union movement is vital to a strong middle class. union im from ohio, a member. jim, go ahead. caller: good morning, gentlemen. but nions are necessary, the companies don't want them. that? do we get past i was a teamster for a few years college, in the urw in good year in akron. prototypical machinery. one day, i asked, which plant is akron, chine going to in one, two, three or whatever. they said, oh, this is going to to tn. lightbulb came on. i left and became a teacher. in the nea and the oea. around to the point i wanted to make earlier unions operate, a paradigm shift. in goodyear, it was about the money. you'd go to the union leadership and say, well, let's talk about etraining issues and job security issues and transfer rights and some of those things. they department want to hear it. $2, $3, $5 the $1, an hour. companies are interested in the total costs. back.re coming i want you to speak a little paradigm shift us, 10% for % for the company. go to the 50-50, win-win kind of situation. yes it's going to have to be ive and take, yes, we do need the unions. ideal so what would the situation look like where companies and unions have some power and get to a better place. interesting really model. they have several things, but really, is in the best interest of the company. ecause the company that's nonprofitable is not good for workers or unions. neither is a company where the of the re getting all profits. when people d is think about the future of the company that continue to benefit everyone there. the german model, there's workers that are unionized. they negotiate for wages and benefits. they also have the union members on a board that has sort of veto say over some really important decisions like, for example, whether or not to production or what kind of investment needs to happen. then workers have the ability to say, you know what? we see the need to go there and do this thing, if you invest will make the whole company stronger. it's been a successful model. germany, high union, high wages, and a huge export surplus. more people around the world are wanting to buy their stuff because it's really competitive. host: ga this, is allen, republican line. aller: yes, thank you for having me on. call in about a previous caller from rightway who was talking about his job outsources at the vendor for staging a store. common sense dictates a all of vendor, go to the work for the vendor. i was, on a minimum wage, making minimum wage in '73 at the ripe age of 13. i was making minimum wage at a power company after high school. skills. i had to learn how to do my job in 30 minutes. s long as you're doing a job that you can learn how to do in 30 minutes, you're going to make minimum wage. raise the minimum wage to $25. but all that means is that poor people will be making $25 an hour. you're never going to be able to the value of a job just by raising the cost of it. guest: the caller makes a point skills that e workers have will help determine which wages they make. basically government policies as well as things like unions that help negotiate for higher wages. mum wage, that was a point of discussion a lot in the previous segment, the basic about the minimum wage is that it used to in the 1950s and 60s be about half of the average wage. is that was relatively close to class.ddle now it has declined with inflation. $7.25 an you know, hour. it would be much, much higher if you haven't even kept pace where -- to be.bchlt so it's not just about the workers have.e it's about government policy. the last thing i want to add the minimum wage is that not, again, just about the -- for the individual worker. things in theader economy. you have more demand because consumers -- workers have more money in their pocket and they buy things which is a critical thing they need. we have governments subsidizing wage employers. because if you're paid that $7.25, you would be getting food stamps or medicaid. we can reduce those kinds of to nditures if we were able raise wages. host: "the boston globe" has a but it king away provides a chart between the differences between public ector and private sector unions. public sector, a sustainability s but a since the '80 decrease in the private sector. why are those happening? basic trend you're on is right. public unionization rates are decades.r private sector, a sharp and steady decline. there's different laws, i think. different laws, but i think that's really the significant explanation. there's blic sector, huge opposition by the employer. you can't see the government waging a fight saying don't unionize. workers are going to make a decision under reasonably fair conditions. he private sector, you uh have employers heavily going after them saying don't do this y, or z.of x, cross themetimes they line. then they do, they're weak. most of the differences can be explained by the basic structure of rules. one more thing, canada, for example, has stagnant -- rates have stayed about the same, much higher than the united states. in the private sector, because they have a different set of rules. host: a recent event at the victor foundation, jaques from employee freedom week talked about right to work overall, but also about unions and here's a little bit had to say.e >> as part of national employee reedom week this year, we decided to conduct a poll, a national poll of union members ohn't out of could your union without any penalty, would you do so? surveyed 454 union members across the country. said, yes.% i want to opt out of my union if penalty.so without there's 14.5 million union members, so that's oobt a 4 who want to e leave. they can. amazing is if they're in a right to work to e, they don't even need pay agency fees. if they're in a nonright to work state, their options aren't as have options. they can become an agency fee ayer and receive a rebate of their union's political study or and igious objector redirect the union dues to the union to a charitable organization they find acceptable. wanted to ask the american public what they thought. this union members have right. in a separate survey of 500 americans we asked, should union mployees without force or penalty be able to opt out of union membership? americans said yes. he workers should have that choice. they should be able to make the decision about union membership that's best for them. you can take from that? guest: one of the most union embers would like to stay in their union. they like it. that seems that most unions are doing a relatively good job. to be re always going people who aren't satisfied. the other core thing he is this idea that people could be able to leave without any penalties or any issues. the problem there, unions must represent all workers whether they're a member of the union or not. they must negotiate unions for ll workers, if you have a particular gree vagrievance, yo talk to your supervisor about it. they have to do all sorts of work for you. but if you left, they still have that. that's the questions -- the polls that are getting to don't could the basic idea, you ask people the same kind of thing -- do you think people hould leave the union and get all of the benefit that unions provide, you get a different of answer. host: one more question. hen a viewer asked about the unions, the local and state governments budgets respect able benefits.e generous that equals bankruptcy. guest: it's a little more complicated. the share of state budgets that go to employee compensation for the last several decades has same.the it's been the same. o they're not getting huge increases. what has happened with the economy crater, the great recession, that made budgets huge demands on budgets because getting less e money in, but they had to spend more money on supporting people unemployed, etc. so you have this huge budget crush. but you have pensions. long-term obligations that much of the money is invested in the stock market. hit.stock market took a big that led to these sort of crises. ut it's not because workers were getting so much more or getting so much out of -- out of basically all states and the other thing about his, all states are facing a similar situation. not just whether they're unionized or not. the union rates and states of public empoiees varies hugely from much higher states, isconsin, for example, to much lower states, south carolina. few , you know, very, very workers in the public sector are unionized. all have a similar problem. it's not just about unions making negotiations for high it's about the larger changes in the economy. vicki from new york is on the line, democrats' line and a union member. hello? caller: i wanted the reiterate what the guy is saying. i'm a union member. 've been a union member for over 18 years. i work for the city of new york. $18,000 d on my job at an hour. i'm at $61,000. that's because of the union. every year.aises and if we didn't have a union, i wouldn't be at my salary. so you started at $18 an hour and you're currently -- caller: i started at $18,000 a year. host: $18,000 a year, now $61. caller: yeah. of the unions. i get a 3% raise every year. he unions represent us for upper management. now, working for the state, the the raises. my dues are $25.60 every two weeks. $50 a month for union represent raises, what's wrong with that? who did you want want that? caller had aad the good experience. she's been able to get what most think, ould like, i which is that as they progress in their career, as they become they're able to get a steady increasing income, of the kes them part middle class. gave them basic security, to rtunity, the ability provide for their children, send their kids to college. a all of the things that we would associate with the middle class. unfortunately, it's been very, very hard for most people in the today.y we've had decades of stagnant wages. at the same time the wages have for most people, they've had rising costs for college, for example, doubling whereas oubling over wages have been flat. costs for health care almost the increases.of housing also rapidly rising. so the middle-class families are being dramatically squeezed and one of the things that can help is if r thinks, i think, we were able to strengthen unions so more workers could increases of wages and strablt in their lives. host: liz, democrats line, a union member, hello. caller: hello. a discussion since this morning. obviously a 's benefit to being a worker. life in one my entire the public sector in education. my father was a union pipe itter and benefitted both in the pension and the retirement benefits that were able to be gotten for him. lived a nice long life into his 90s. think a lot of the problem i see is some of the baby-boomers have known a world that there was more unionized workforce in the private and public sector. and they -- they understand the benefits. he people younger, the gen-xors, the ones that bought the reagan ideal, we are living the reagan world. this is the amount of unionism that he apparently wanted, slim sector.in the private this is his world. and they think it's a better world. they don't want the government, want big unions. but they don't realize they are dead in the water, their wages are going nowhere. guest: the caller mentions the workers may older have more experience with unions seened what they can do and be supportive. truth to that. but what's also very, very interesting, the millennials, he younger generation, basically, 18 to 20-ish, mid 20s, that is the future. this big generation, they're the most supportive of unions of any previous generation. i think that is is because they have seen the world without them. faced ve -- they have basically a recession since even before the great recession, well 2007, the economy was terrible for these folks. the most likely to go without ealth insurance, for example, they were stuck in jobs where they were overeducated for and getting low wages. have the great recession and they're feeling all of the effects. they had a terrible economy. hey would like to do something about it. they see the potential for unions. so that's one of the things that though we've, even had trends of declining unionization, right? e have future generations recognizing a great need for them. >> della lives in new york on line.emocrats you're on with david madeline, hello. caller: good morning. of the problems for unions and labors in the united states is that we have globalized the corporations to move their jobs elsewhere, to move their jobs to place has where banned, like n bangladesh. and how can we compete with this? we have to globalize the rights of unions to move all over. wherever we have a trade agreement, we have to make sure hat the people in that country and that place have the right to right to on, have the collective bargaining. guest: the caller hits on a things, the e way -- the changes in the economy and our government olicies have given capital, owners of capital and corporations a lot more power about.edom to move but they haven't at the same time strengthened workers to be to negotiate for themselves and improve living conditions abroad. led to a situation where the rate is down. it's not happening. different model. there's a hugely globalized economy. they're an export leader. but their model has been how do we do it in the way that works or both workers and for companies, profitable company, rising wages for workers, and been a real boone for both parties involved. we can do those similar kinds of things. wouldn't do the same way. but we can find ways in the united states, we have done it have past where we arrangements that work with to compete. host: on the republican line, randy from california. caller: good morning, good to hear from all of the union members calling in. unions, it's a mixed bag. i have no objection whatsoever with agreeing with being in private sector unions. ike a professional like a coal miner or something. of course i want representation nd make sure that as many safety precautions, you know, can be taken as possible. you start talking about ublic employee unions, you know, there's just i'm a alifornia resident, and public employee unions are the obstacle for poor people that are trying to improve their schools. unions as whole pretty much amnesty pay. living e a poor person in this country, you know, diploma,n a high school you come from a sub standard school, you're trying to make a iving, guess what, there's a lot of low-skill people coming up behind you trying to pull you down. guest: the caller has a lot of points. i'll see how many of them i can hit. discusses is sort of whether the things that negotiate for are necessarily good. i think you always find any is nization not everything exactly what any one person would want, just like the corporation, the things they do, you wouldn't say things they do is perfect. they're necessary parts of a modern economy. both have a role to play and they both need some power. specifics of teachers.a i'm sure that maybe not everything, but much of what the provide good is to schools and good classrooms which in theory should benefit decision by : the the national labor relations board taking a look at cdonald's. mcdonald's could be held liable with the franchises for wage and violations. talk about the impact of that decision. of thethe modern economy u.s. has shifted towards fewer and fewer people kind of being employed by pa corporation. a lot of different ways that corporations have structured hemselves so that they in some ways have escaped responsibility for providing good wages and benefits. kind of mcdonald's model. and the question -- yet, has some still oversight and influence over the franchisees operate. so the question the lawsuit is bout is, well, they're still telling them how to do x, y, and z. they are the employers of these workers. n that case, you have the potential really to raise wages and benefits for the workers. franchisees say we're not profitable. wages.'t do it and raise the ultimate headquarters really s and they've been making lots of profits. these are interesting because future of t that the workers might have power in different ways. f i may go back in history, this is a little of how our economy was organized in the late 1900s. s, the early 1900s sewing r example sweatshops, multiple different operations but the person on the a couple of ing people claim they didn't have the ability to raise wages where layers thatyers and people were making profits. we figured out how the laws ould string the whole thing together so that everyone who had power was actually responsible for the working conditions. host: pat from huntington, west line, a democrats union member, hi. on, er: i'm on when you're that's great. this is what i wanted to say, about three things i wanted to in history to start off with. 1 in of all on september 1907, walter ruger was born in virginia. west he was a long-time president of the united auto workers and was founders of the union movement here in the united states. but on september 1, 1921, the -- had captured 25 miles of blair mountain, the ridge up the mining wars. and were about to descend on it. and get what they had fought for, some recognition. when president warren harding and es under marshal law ordered federal troops and a bombing squadron to come in and citizens.d states that's what your government does protecting you laborites. armed the iterally train and seeing the shots that i lived within sight here in ton, and ran it up here and machine gun living in tent children.th their host: what would you like our guest to comment on? we're almost out of time. here's what i wanted to say. my -- i watched the program one -- of a species of bird another d wait until species got its nest built. then it could come in and push of its nest, take crow st, and stand up and about -- and call its mate in. that's what i see. host: okay, thanks. caller was talking ant history of labor in the country. rights, huge conflicts that were not good nor anyone. the government would go on the ide of the employers and suppress the workers. this is a terrible situation. 1930s, we in the created a law that gave workers national rights, labor relations act that we weren't going to crush unions. that law was a huge step forward. unfortunately, it hadn't been updated for decades and decades. now it's become so weak that we're nowhere near back to where the caller was, but we've gone plus your phone calls, facebook comments and tweets. atshington journal" is live 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. this morning, several u.s. college professors released on minority students and whether current policies are helping or hurting their chances college.g into they'll speak at an event hosted by the ucla civil rights project. it starts live today at 2.0 a.m. eastern on c-span and on c-span 3 a ceremony marking the anniversary of v.j. with remarks from george prescott bush, he's the grandson former president george h.w. bush and will speak about his down 70her being shot years ago while serving as a navy fighter pilot in 1944. the world warrom ii memorial starts live at 9:00 a.m. eastern. afternoon, the center for strategic and international ondies holdings a discussion global health issues. we'll hear remarks on the future health advances and challenges being addressed in third world countries. at you see that event live 3:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. now part of a recent summit on hosted byrevention, the obama administration. the aim of this event is to give an opportunity to explore a range of issues, including dating violence, cyber bullying, and school discipline techniques. this is an hour. >> thank you again for being here, first for getting through security system. but more importantly we ordered this weather for you. been to d.c. in august you know that this is not typical. so we wanted to be sure you had experience if you're coming from out of town. and if you're in town we wanted it more special to think we may have some work with the weather going on. want to welcome you to this fourth bullying prevention summit. it's an issue for me that's really so vital, having spent of my career in education and having seen what occurs when students on a bases in all kind of settings. i'll talk a little more about few minutes. but it such a great honor for me to introduce our next guest who is at the white house. and it has been an honor for me to get to know him. one of the things i want to share but is that i have never in government who has more focus, more commitment even more so who has more heart in the game. with row bertoak rodriguez i'm reminded why any one much us wants to work with kids every day, because it's his passion that fuels his thinking policies. roberto.you, [applause] morning, everyone. it's wonderful to see you. first for that very kind introduction, but also for your outstanding leadership to strength expen support our school as cross the country. they could not have a better advocate and voice here in washington than yours and than education arnie duncan. be herepleasure to today to bring greet prosecution the white house, to welcome to annual nowrth federal partners in bullying prevention summit. start today's conference by giving a very warm ourspecial thanks to all of partners that are gathered here today. from the department of the department of justice. from the department of health and human services. and from all other federal partners from across our aencies, this is really effortive and hands-on across our federal agencies to support this work. to thank them for all the work they've done to make this summit a reality. them a big round of applause. [applause] and we've come together here this morning and will discuss and talk throughout the day, bullying isnow that not only unacceptable, but because we know that we have to take action. to examine what we can do to who arese youth bullied, to work with those that do bully. positive school climates. and to make sure that all of our people are supported and are safe in community across our country. nearly one-third of all of our young people in school report bullied. our federal agencies are still gathering the latest round of year.or this latest but it appears that that figure has remained unchanged over the several years. bullying is still a major problem in our schools, and in communities. so we need to move the needle on number. and collective action around thischallenge is what summit and what today's meeting is all about. here because we believe we can make a difference in keeping our children safe and bully-free. we can recreate what school feels like for children. a place of fear, but a place safealthy development, a place to learn, to grow and to make new friends r friends. the president has said time and time again, bullying is of a harmlesssage part of growing up. it's wrong, it's destructive, we can all prevent it. three years ago our president first lady prepared to host the first ever white house conference on bullying prevention. it was clear to me then, and it remains so today that as our family and as our parents in chief, he and our first lady are the strongest advocates against bullying. the chargelly led and they have pushed us forward make administration to important strides in this effort. as parents of two beautiful girls, i think the president and the first lady aow how challenging it is as parent to ensure that children feel safe, feel well equipped to journey to adulthood with all of the ties and all of its lows. time that's filled with hope, hopes and disappointments, own we're forming our conceptions of who we are. and who we want to be. for most, the transition to young adulthood is also a time and vulnerability, especially in relationships with piers. that is why more than ever it is a time when we as a collective community should foster a culture and a climate of acceptance for all of our to be able to grow and develop. we need to create a safe place learn, to grow, to feel comfortable in their own skin. when a child is bullied we in thatt we have failed duty. it's important to acknowledge we onet place the blame on any individual for why that bullying came to be. but at the same time we must acknowledge that we all have a role in preventing it from happening. be pro-active to make sure that bullying stops before it starts. whether we're parents, educators, students, aighbors, all of us have collective charge to care for our children and to ensure that ofy don't feel the fear being bullied or harassed. you at thisined convening, just two years ago, i stand, needed to take a we needed to take action to stop bullying now. continue to take that stand. but we also need to come together to explore what's behaviorshat other contribute to bullying that young people might be negatively by.uenced we need to understand how we can leverage the successes of all keep them safe. we also need to look at what lessonsrking, and what we can learn from those efforts to be able to move forward effectively. two years ourst administration along with 80 external public and private stake holders has continued our collective progress in this effort around bullying prevention. we've created earlier this year uniform definition of bullying, that we released to improve public health service -- surveillance of bullying. that was a long endeavor, but it was a very important endeavor to on the common page as a country about this challenge. new project at a the department much health and human services and our ontitutes of medicine reducing bullying among youth. to invest models that are proven bullying in decreasing as well as thoadz to mit gay the ofative health impact bullying. we've launched a program of research at the department of justice focused on children exposed to violence with a particular focus on internet a wasment -- bullying. or cyber and these are just a few of the way.ts that are under we also know that too often the tip of thet buys berg when it comes to deeper challengings in our schools. and it should be a warning sign of the need to promote positive school climate across the board. we need to promote a shared vision of respect and engagement in our schools and communities that surround them. spoken genders that sense of safety, those strong relationships. that our young people can feel. in their communities and among adults around them. this is also why our administration is making efforts partner with schools in improving school climate. education safeof and supportive schools model recognizes this important interrelationship between student engagement, safety and environment. many more accomplishments that you'll talk about today that will be but i want to, just again convey our to eachration's thanks and every one of you for everything you've done to administrationr to prevent and to stop bullying. that this summit will inspire continued effort on this critical issue for our children. i'm looking for to the day that we no longer have to deal with bullying at the level that we have in the past. we would bee day have to have this conference much we still have a lot of work i do across the country, but hope that all of how have joined us today, all of you who are us, willonline with walk away from today's convenings with new ideas, with take backthat you can home and apply directly in your schools and communities. with ayou'll leave here renewed sense of energy, a renewed clarity of our common objective, of our common purpose. and keeping our community safe bully-free. and i hope that all of us will part to keepo our our young people safe, to give them everything they need, to to grow, to be successful and to fulfill their dreams. much.you all so [applause] thank you, roberto. you can get a sense much why i enjoy working with him so much atause he always keeps kids heart. thankly do i want to roberto, you'll hear from two colleagues of mine. to publicly recognize them because they've been an thisdible part of important work. people think of d.c. as being a place of isolation, and this is a wonderful example of our being able to reach across federal agencies and to know that there other individuals who have the same energy and passion about a particular area such as this. so i want to publicly thank them. i also want to recognize in our david esquith, he's usually hiding in the back somewhere. david, you are, hiding in the corner, okay. leads to thank david, he up our office of safe and healthy students and he's been work, ascated to this has his team. so thank you, david and to your staff for being such great partners and always being readily available to reach out to districts and the stateially agencies to help them with this work. we know that this is a big mob for kids. our students are heading back to school this month, we are all passion and energy and just the excitement they have about going to school. that there recognize are too many kids who will be scared to step foot into that building. maybe because of situations that they faced last year and they going tow what's happen to them this year. or too many kids were plagued by over the summer, particularly cyber bullying. mention, bullying is a problem faced by too many kids. the 2013 indicators of school crime and safety, in 2011, about 28% of 12 to reported being bullied at school. approximatelyl, 9% of students ages 12 to 18 reported being cyber bullied. during the school year. and so if you grew up like i feelic lie --es like i stepped into school when either was still cooling. cyber bullying was not an issue for us back then. happened now with technology which is so great for instruction, but it's also enable bullying to be a 24-7 sport. is steppable.is what's really great about today's summit and different summits is that instead of focusing on what the problem is, we're going to be take a closer look at the challenges and to explore to addressrategies bullying prevention. this is particularly important bullying hasue of neither diminished nor has been e eradicated. forward tooking hearing from you throughout the day, particularly during the weus group sessions, as examine bullying and related high risk behaviors including dating violence through the lens of school climate. aware, school climate is incredibly important for not only keeping students safe and engaged but for helping improve their academic achievement. think about school climate. at one point in my career i actually was a middle school teacher, and if you ever want the highs and lows of education a daily basis, just go into a middle school and follow the people around. one minute they're ready to hug you and the very next day you don't know anything and they want to walk 20 feet in front of of my,remember a student kendra, who was walking down the hallway one day and unknown to bully had been extensively for the last several months, and she got into a fight. and because she precipitated the fight i knew this was going to be a hard challenge for her and probably the repercussions were not going to be really good. so i did exactly what every adult should never do. looked at kendra and i said to matter.doesn't whereupon she pushed me into a locker and she said to me with a voice she said it do matter. and i realized at that moment in time that out of my frustration with my bag of tricks being they in dealing with situation that i really needed some help and resources to withegize how best to deal the kendras of my career. how best to deal with those students who had no idea what to do in their only retaliation was something that would end them in trouble. as opposed to what preaccept tated the event. so as you think about this, please be aware of the kendras that are in schools all over the country. deb delyleware that who didn't know what to do and did the wrong thing, because it's not only students who need resources, it's teachers and principals as well, and many families need resources. great parts of my job is getting to travel around the country and viewing schools and walking into them. when ever i walk into a school i ask myself just one basic question. is, is thisstion school good enough for my own kid? school good enough for my own child. because if the answer is no, we should never allow that school to be okay for other people's kids. comes down to culture. you all know when you walk into a cool probably within 10 know whether or not you want to be in that school. sometimesat you hear, unfortunately about what you smell, what you see on the walls, but even more importantly the interactions between adults and students. you get a flavor for whether or your own kid in that school. so quite simply what we want for our own children should be what we dedicate ourselves to giving to every child in america. partnert to thank our cbo's for joining us, because much of the success in the field is owed to your dedicated efforts. thanks to our federal partners, d.o.j.,cular h.h.s. and not only for being here today, but for being such great partners dedicated to this important issue. because for me it's easy for whaitss to show up, but they do behind the scenes on a dailies base i is what really matters us to. education alsoof takes school climate issues seriously, as evidenced by this partnership in president obama's plan, now is the time. because that's a way for us to protect our children and communities by reducing gun violence, making schools safer and increasing access to mental services. as part of this plan, ed announced the school climate program,ation grant for state educational agencies and local educational agencies excited is just i am so about this competitive program. these programs will work in improvingn for behavioral outcomes, and learning conditionings for all kids in america. of our expectations is that as program, this program will in on the reduction of bullying behaviors. overyear we hope to award 70 grants to l.e.a.'s for around dar 35 million and -- $35 miami. grander scheme that's not a huge amount of money, but it's a great start for us in this it means many states and school district as cross the country will be school hard to improve climate. we know that when adults and students walk into schools in safe andy feel supported, gray things can happen in those buildings. so on behalf of the department education and the fear partners in bullying prevention, i really, really want to thank for attending what i know is going to be a productive and hands-on day. honored now to introduce a great colleague, carol mason, generalstant attorney for the office of justice programs from the department of justice. carol, foru so much, being here and we welcome you for your remarks. [applause] >> good morning and thank you, deb, for setting the phone for this meeting. that i'm tell you all the family failure, because i'm the only one in my family that educator inme an some form or fashion. so i am pleased to be in theship with issues with department of education because i feel like i'm doing my family on thesee working issues. i also want to acknowledge ofy graf, who is the we'rement of the work doing here. steffi, stand up. thank you. to apologize for leaving right after i speak. stay, but like to today is kids day at o.j.p. and on cyberching bullying. it was a wonderful could ins kens that -- that the days overlap. so i'd like to thank deb and her leadership ofr the federal partners in bullying prevention. outstandingn an partnership across a number of federal agencies including the department of justice, and i'm proud of the office of justice programs has been part of this to be herem pleased representing the department of justice along with my colleagues o.j.p., including the administrator of the office of juvenile justice and prevention who be part of a federal panel later today. this is an excellent opportunity our commitment to addressing the link between bullying and life outcomes for our young people, particularly in addressing academic success and avoiding the involvement with the juvenile and criminal justice systems, because if we do our jobs well then you can hopefully put us out of business. we know through research conducted by the national center for school engagement that bullying adversely affects school attendance and we also know that kids exposed to violence are more likely to experience a host of problems ranging to depression and later delinquency and criminal t. since more than 60% of american children encounter some form of violence, either directly or indirectly we are not talking about a small group of people. this is a concern for us and the department of justice. four years ago we launched a program to address this. as part of that initiative we're funding eight sites that are using evidence-based strategies. one of the big advantages

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