called "powering the midwest." we knew in the '90s that renewables were ready, that energy efficiency was ready and we needed to make a transition. so, a couple of years ago, we had been working on fracking at food and waiter watch at as the first national group to call for a ban on fracking, and i started looking at some of the statistics about how far we had come with renewables since the mid-1990s when i worked on this project. and it was stunning. as of 2015, only five percent of our electricity is generated from solar and wind energy. we need to do so much better and, yet, here in a state like massachusetts, where you're not really suffering from fracking, but you are suffering from all of the infrastructure to really promote fracking and allow it to expand. so, i decided to write this book because you really need to know where you've been to know where you're going, and i wanted to see how we'd ended up with this mon knoppizeed oil and gas industry that has so much power over our democracy and over the future. so i started in -- at the turn of the century, and i want to talk about that history. i want to know how familiar people are with fracture fracking. maybe shy start by talking about the impact and why we care that there's so much oil and gas drilling and fracking across the country. come on in. there's plenty of room. so, fracking is a science fiction-like process that uses large amounts of water, toxic chemicals and very fine sand. it's injected deep underbackground in a well and then over multiple stages, the fracking takes place. the wells are drilled about a mile, up to two miles, into the ground, and then a horizontal tunnel is drilled, again it could be as much as a mile or two miles. then this toxic mixture of sand chemicals and water is injected under very, very high pressure, in multiple stages, to fracture the rock, usually shale, and to release the oil and gas. and although we're talking a lot about fracking being for natural gas, since 2012, 80% of fracking has been for oil. so, what is this doing in the community where the fracking is taking place? these are called sacrifice zones. there have been 140,000 wells fracked in the last about ten years, and today 17 million people live within a mile of a well, and there's a lot of infrastructure to support fracking and the drilling and fracking for oil and gas. we're talking about thousands of miles of pipelines, compressor stations and processing facilities. now, compressor stations, the fracking and drilling itself, the process and facilities, all of these have a lot of impact. they let a lot of chemicals, things like benzene, meth anyone, in the air, that make the people living near the facilities sick. since 2013 there have been 62 studies written about the health impact. 94% of those studies show adverse effects and health impacts in living near where fracking is taking place or the compressor or processing facilities. now, let's talk about the water. fracking uses 50 times more water on average than conventional drilling. so we're talking for one well, anywhere from 1.7 million gallons to 13 million gallons in a state like texas. lots and lots of water is used, and fracking, of course, is going on in some of the driest places in the nation, places like texas, that have been having a drought. california. and in a state like colorado, frackers are actually competing with farmers for water in auctions and having a real impact. now, when you're using injection to send all of this water and chemicals and sand deep underground, a lot of it comes back to the surface. right? and it's bringing not just those fracking chemicals and we know that although the companies don't have to disclose exactly what the chemicals are, we know that there are over 400 chemicals that are used, many of them carcinogenic or with other health effects. now, a lot of that water comes back up out of the wells, on average each day about 10.5 bill gallons of water. that's a lot of wastewater. and it has to be dealt with. one of the ways it's defendant with is by injecting it deep underground. it's called deep-well inesque, and we know that has it own impacts. right? earthquakes -- this isn't something i just made up for the book. this is something that the joggologyic service and a lot of authorities have now confirmed. fracking wastes water injected deep underground causes earthquakes and in a state like oklahoma it's been really shocking. before fracking started, there were one or two serious earthquakes over 3.0 magnitude. today there are as many as 5,400 earthquakes -- that's a recent figure -- actually that are picked up on -- with seismic equipment. huge number of earthquakes. and this is happening in multiple states. ohio, arkansas. there are lot of other impacts but you can see that this is something, if you live in a community where fracking is taking place, you're probably concerned about it. your family members may be sick. having rashes, nose bleeds, and even more serious impacts. that's why there's a big movement that has sprung up in these communities against fracking, and drilling. which all touch on in a minute. but now i want to turn more to the story about how we ended up with an extreme energy practice like fracking taking place. why we're continuing to use fossil fuels even when our global climate is threatened. and as i was saying earlier, that story does begin at the turn of the 21st under when jd rockefeller, who you probably learned about in a history class, had rolled up the oil and gas industry, controlled 90% of it, used a lot of ruthless and unethical practices to drive other companies out of business ask to really control a resource that was very important at the time, originally it was used for kerosene, which people depend on for lighting their houses. now, around the turn of the center, some other companies formed. texaco and gulf were formed around oil found in texas, and in europe, there were two other companies. i'll call all these companies by their modern names because with the mergers and acquisitions through history, they've gone -- through dozens of changes. so we're talking about very important companies that have done a lot of lobbying and have a big impact where we are today. so the european candidate are shell and bp, the u.s. companies were formed after rockefeller's standard oil was broken up, and as you remember from history, that teddy roosevelt challenged the oil industry under rockefeller and there was a proceeding and they ended up breaking up standard oil, rockefeller's company, into about 30 companies. now, that's usually the end of the story. but actually that should be the beginning of the story because standard oil wasn't really broken up. standard oil got to write its own plan, and each of those 30 companies with exxon getting half the value, rockefeller maintained an interest in each one ask the three rockefeller companies were exxon, chevron, and mobile. we know exxon and mobile eventually were merged and actually texaco and gulf also merged into chevron. so, we're actually talking about four companies today, but for most -- a good chunk of the 20 them century there were seven companies that were really almost dictating public policy, and the american companies had a huge impact on our tax policies, they research that was actually done for oil and gas industry, the whole system of energy that we actually use today. and this got very dramatic in 1928, the kind beginning of the oil and gas industry drilling in the middle east. you'll remember that the middle east was created at the breakup of the otto man empire by france and britain, and the oil industry was already there and interested in the resources. so, in 1928, when oil was found in iraq, the big oil companies, the seven -- they're called the seven sisters -- named after a greek mythological story before atlas' daughters who fought amongst themselves but if there was ever an attack on one of them, they all gathered around and protected her. so they were nicknamed the seven sisters and that's kind of how they behaved. so, when this oil was found in iraq, there was a lot of overproduction. so, the seven sisters got together in one of their cab balls, drew a red line around the middle east, made an agreement amongst themselves they would only go in and drill for oil as jointly. never go in alone. this was so they could watch one another. and that they would actually limit production, fix prices, and break basic antitrust lauds. after this agreement was made the three largest of the seven sisters, ex-on, bp, and shell, netted a cass until scotland and decided on a set of principles for how they would actually accomplish this price-fixing and moving forward together to break basic antitrust and monopoly laws we have in this country, and they met periodically after that. meanwhile they were having a big effect on the rules that were being written and the laws that were being decided on prior to world war ii and then after world war ii. but let me step back a minute and talk about the utility industry a little bit because today we have this cabal of the oil and gas industry, the big electric and gas utilities, and actually the banks, which i'll get to in a little bit. but in -- well, the oil industry was rolling up and really dictating the rules around oil and gas drilling and discovery. there was man named samuel insol dooring the same in electric utility and gas utility industry. he did something that is similar to what happened with the housing market in 2008-2009. he actually owned -- had an ownership in about 5,000 gas and electric utilities in 30 states, but there was a holding company structure, we would call it's multinational corporation today -- and the parent company kind of milked the utilities, charging them big rates and fees for services. meanwhile, he had investment companies, a number of them, and he sold the stock over and over and over again to these different utilities and this all contributed to the crash of the great depression. now, talking about this because it actually has a big impact on policy today. so when roosevelt came into office, there was a lot of activity around trying to curtail what the oil and gas industry was doing, what the electric utility industry was doing, and then what the financial services industry at the time was doing. there were a couple of laws passed that i want to talk about because when they were repealed, it really allowed fracking and the oil and gas industry to blossom and created the giant utilities. so the first one was kind of an arcane law that you may never have herd of before but it actually regulated electric and gas utilities, said they had to focus on their main business, that they couldn't gamble with rate-pair money and needed to have contiguous service operations and it really dictated the structure of the industry, keeping it from getting too big to fail. so that was one law, called the public utility holding company act of 1935, but you don't really need to know that. but they weren't able to get natural gas included. in fact that law that i just talked about was probably the most controversial law in the early years of the roosevelt administration. there were 600 lobbyists in washington, lobbying against it, large sums of money were spent, and it passed by one vote, and they managed to keep natural gas out of it. so, three years later they came back and they were actually able to pass another law regulating the natural gas industry because a lot of consumers had been really ripped off and there were urban cities that were angry and organizing to try to do something about consumers not having access to affordable natural gas, which was very important for heating and for electricity generation in some places. so, this law did something important. it regulated the price of natural gas and it gave the authority to a governmental body called the federal policy commission, and they used the cost of what it actually -- what the oil and gas industry had to pay to do -- to get the resource out of the ground, and then a profit that they added to it, which was between 5.6 and 6.5% over a 40-year period. pretty good for the times. so, this was called cost-based regulation. well, the natural gas industry despised this. they also -- the electric industry despised the other law i talked about. this natural gas act also regulated pipelines. so you just couldn't go around and build pipelines and get them to approve it. there was actually a process to see if the pipelines were necessary. people could be involved in the process. it was lot more democratic. well, then there was a big debate for the next really to the 1970s, and in the book i talk bat number of characters who played a big role in this. some of them are really villainous. many of them are big characters. one that comes to mind is bill kerr, who was first a governor of oklahoma and then a senator elected in 1948. big belly, the white suit, big ten-gallon hat on. have some pictures of him. he is actually the great nephew of aubrey mcclendon. for any of you who fold this industry he just died mysteriously. he was a big fracker at chesapeake and driven out of the company for bad behavior. so this is a relative, of aubrey mcclendon but actually every year, kerr introduced legislation for the oil and gas industry to do away with the natural gas act. every year for the next -- well, until he died in 1963 from a heart attack while in office. there were other characters like john j. mccloy, a favorite villain. he worked for the rock fell ever's chase bank and someone -- we worked as an adviser for nine presidents. he is part of that government that exists that is not elect -- we don't have time to go into, but he was the antitrust -- harvard claimed antitrust lawyer who time and time again stepped in to get the oil and gas industry exempted from antitrust laws. a lot of timed they were just sneaking behind the scenes to do this. it matters. this has been a debate since the beginning of our country. remember, thomas jefferson wanted to have a part of the bill of rights, the right to be free of monopolies, and he didn't care about the price of gas or price of food. what he cared about what the political power that you get when you are such a large company that you're bigger than most countries, and that's what happened to the oil and gas industry. so big that really especially after world war ii, they could just dictate public policy and laws, and remember that the amount of oil consumed, drilled for and consumed after world war ii, doubled and part of that was used for plastics and also the industry was able to make sure that it was used for lots and lots of other things, other sources of energy might have been developed but they really were able to dictate a lot of how our tax dollars were used. so, i want to now fast-forward because we don't have that much time, and i want to talk about what happened when these important laws were under attack and repealed. and i guess the story really begins -- we'll start at with the nixon administration. there were a lot of people in the oil and gas industry, very concerned about the environmental laws that were beginning to be passed and the movement, student movement, the real changes in society, the oil and gas industry were concerned about the environmental piece of this, but you'll remember there was the warren court extending rights to people, categories of people, who hadn't enjoyed those rights before. there was the movement against the war. there was kind of a youth uprising. there were a lot of both conservative industries, conservative social interests and then a lot of corporate interests that didn't like to see how the country was changing. they helped elect richard nixon, and they also -- after richmond nixon was elected, he promoted some of the people who would weaken our democracy, people like lewis powell, who went on to be a supreme court judge, you may remember him. a supreme court judge that wrote the first opinion saying that corporations have the right -- the same rights to participate in elections as people. he also wrote a very important memo and if you aren't familiar with it, google it. it's called the pehl memo. some call it the paul -- powell map fest to. he was a very savvy man. he wrote out a plan for how corporations could take back the democracy and it was a long-term plan around how the most important institutions were actually going against corporate interests. he talked about the media. the university, all of the major institutions were actually helping to support this rewriting of the rules in the u.s., including the environmental laws. so, this memo laid out a long-term plan for how to undo this, and lewis powell helped raise a lot of money to help make this holiday, include money from the koch family, the melonned, a lot of the very conservative economic interests in this country, and they need fact weaken our democracy and our political system by creating this. now i talk about this in relation to the oil and gas industry because they were key to this. and when president carter came along, there was a lot of pressure on him, and in fact, democrats started receiving corporate money at this time as well because the campaign finance laws began to change. so, one of the things he did -- you'll remember there was an oil problem because opec was angry about u.s. -- the u.s.' foreign policy, and so there were long lines for gasoline and when carter came into office, one of the things he said he was going to do was have a new energy policy. and he put together a plan to do away with the federal power commission that was regulating natural gas pricing and pipelines, created a new agency called department of energy, that brought together all of the different federal agencies that were working on energy, and he created the federal energy regulatory commission that now oversees pipelines, electric wires and a lot of the infrastructure for energy. and it was given more and more power over the next decade. but that is really how it began. and also under the carter administration, the rules around natural gas prices and pipelines were rewritten. they called it natural gas deregulation. but what it actually did was rather than having a process to look at the price of gas, see if it was fair for consumers, see if pipelines needed to be built, now this was all deregulated to let the market select what the price would be and if pipelines should be built. but really what it was was rewrite thing rules to benefit the oil and gas industry. and that natural gas deregulation was finalized under the reagan administration, and since that time, we have had more than 936,000 -- 100,000 miles of pipelines built since the dough regulation of pipelines and we have more pipelines being built all the time, and a lot of the pipelinessed -- pipelines today -- we don't know how many they are because states govern this and a lot of pipelines are not regulated at the state level. the smaller lines, caught -- called gathering lines. so many more pipelines and if you count the ones built before deregulation, today we have 2.5 million-miles of pipelines in this country, and it's enough to circle the globe 100 times. and now we're building another 40 years of infrastructure which is really hard to justify considering climate chaos and what we face in future. the next thing that happened was electricity was deregulateed or the rules were rewritten. they were rewritten in a way to actually incentivize natural gas and smaller natural gas plants and more recently in 2005, we've seen a lot of other rules changed to really incentivize fracking and natural gas. under the bush administration in 2005, the energy bill -- energy regulatory bill of five -- 2005 was passed and had three benefit us of for the soul and gas industry. one most of you are familiar with. the haliburton loophole which exempted the industry from the state's drinking water act. the other two benefiters are less well known. one is the repeal of that bill i talked about, the public utility holding company act of 1935. that was repealed. and its repeal means that utilities could get as big as they wanted, they could engage in any kind of activity, including the trading and the speculation on the stock market that was forbidden before. in fact natural gas was not even really traded before the 1990s. and today we now have 20 giant utilities that operate in this country and provide more than 50% of power. they use the "all of the above" strategy and encouraging fracking and really a party to it. and the other thing that changed in the energy policy act of 2005 -- i didn't have the name quite right before -- is that it gave the federal energy regulatory commission that was created under the carter administration, new and big powers. it put ferc in charge of the environment, putting in charge of our are our most important environmental law in terms of building new things at the national environmental policy act that requires that an environmental impact assessment study be done to look at the environmental impact. so this agency that has almost never seen an oil and gas or electricity project it doesn't love, now is in charge of doing the environmental assessment and it also gave it the power of emthan -- emanant domain, supersede what states and localities can do, and giving it the ability to condemn land for pipelines, interstate pipelines or transmission lines and has really spurred the development of pipelines and fracking. so, i've spent a lot of my time tonight talking about the bad things. want to ed end by talking about the hope and the good things. i think that in the election you have been able to see that a movement has been born around fracking. that's why we have candidates for the democratic nomination for presidency debating fracking. it's because a huge movement has grown up around this country. people are saying, we don't want to do what just politically possible. we want to have a future. we want to keep fossil fuels in the ground and don't want fracking and there have been some big victories. a ban in new york, very hard, fought ban, moratorium in maryland and they're going back for a ban this year. your own senate has passed a moratorium and we'll see what happens in the house and hopefully you'll have your own moratorium. there have been more than 500 measures, either bans, moratoriums or some local measure against fracking across the country. there are major campaigns taking place in about 15 states, including states like colorado, and california, where there's a lot of drilling going on but there's an aroused citizenry, and i think it's really exciting that the movement is growing so big, and what we have to do for the future is really keep organizing and keep our eyes on the prize. we really need to stop saying that renewables are going to come about because the market is going to do it. the market was going to do it, it would have already happened. we need to fight for the public policies that are going to bring us a renewable future, that will allow to us use energy efficiency, going save the planet for future generations. we don't need 40 more years of infrastructure and a climate that is threatened and local communities that are threatened. so, at food and water watch we look forward to working with folks to keep this movement going because i do know that we will be successful in the long term. so, we can do questions now. [applause] and just if you have a question, -- okay, yes. >> isn't it also true the price of natural gas is declining to historic lows? and that the energy companies are mostly on the verge of bankruptcy? >> well, i think when you look at the history of the oil and gas industry, this is one of the things that has allowed the consolidation. i don't think i mentioned that exxon is the largest fracker today, that the four remaining oil companies that i mentioned from the beginning, chevron, bp and shell, they're all amongst the ten largest frackers and their history really is boom, bust, and when there's a bust, they pick up a lot of smaller companies. so, i predict -- i would probably place a bet on this -- that within the next two years, the price of oil and gas will go back up unless we can really curtail what is going on now the industry wants to export oil and gas. remember, they're not -- first of all it was for energy independence and then when there was touch tao much of it they advocated for being able to export oil, which had been illegal since. the 1970s, and they are lobbying to build liquefied natural gas plants that would also allow the export of gas. so, those prices will be going back up. >> -- [inaudible question] >> that is the history of the industry. they will export it and they'll get ahold of it. that's the kind of strategizing they did throughout the 20th 20th century, to -- they weren't always able to stop production, but i would predict that pretty soon, based on history, the price will go up. i mean, i have a graph of the actual ebb and flow of the oil industry and it really is. it goes like this. another question? >> i live between cambridge and tulsa, oklahoma, and oklahoma now, besides being the tornado capital of the world, the earthquake capital of the world. just in the past couple of years, it happens almost every day. a 3.0, 4.0. it's not anything like san francisco, but it's amazing. and what very few people know is that actually from st. louis through texas, you have the falls. the last time there was activity on this was when all you head were teepees so even there were probably eight and nine richter time of quakes it was like 18 14. knocked over teepees and didn't matter. a lot of problem when you're talking about with the water, the wastewater, and we-the thing about it is the industry is very, very powerful in oklahoma, but there are so many people being badly impacted by this itch didn't realize additional now there was a problem with the fracking itch didn't understand why the water was getting bad, because a lot of these places -- talk about farms that are actually using well water and this is getting into the well water. >> yes. thanks for your comment. >> i'm sorry. i arrived late, but i didn't really hear the talk but i have been friends localfully new york state who were involved in the anti-fracturing movement and have a friend here who is involved in trying to stop a pumping station, but what i found in the rural communities it's also an issue of economic justice. i don't know if you addressed this. you go to farmer's market and talk to farmers about some of them -- politics because it's very difficult to survive. rural communities disappearing. so that there has to be a long-term strategy for economic viability of these communities. >> it's an excellent point. my last book was called "toedopoly" where i addressed how our rural communities and agricultural areas have been left with no hope of the future because of corporating a gull tour and that's how the lanesmen who go in -- the landsmen who do in and sell leases and prey possible people. they were especially able to do it before people even knew about fracking. people are trying to save their family farms. but it's really harmed these communities. you look at a state like north dakota, that has had booms and busts from agriculture, and actually oil, too, and in the '50s, and there's a lot of development when the transient workers come in. their population tripled in some areas, they build hotels, restaurants, what they call man camps, housing for these people. and it also brings a lot of crime and the lifestyle is also really affected, but then when the price plummets, all that investment and some of it is public investment for roads and other struck -- it's gone. it's not really a long-term strategy for economic development. even though some people do benefit in the short term. it also -- one of the things we see a lot of these communities is the divisions. the people who had the ability to sell leases or sold leases and made money and that's they're facting their neighbors and the anger. a lot of sociological affects to this. obviously we need to reorient our economic system so that we have people in rural communities able to make a fair living. it means a complete reorientation of our food policies, our economic policies, but one of the reasons that i wanted to write around energy is because of this short-term threat and because we need to get energy right and we can create a lot of new jobs if we're doing an energy platform that is really about helping people and not helping a few dozen companies. that's because energy efficiency has huge potential. we need to retrofit just about every existing building. we need actually to have federal funding to get some of this underway. we have to reorient our political system, obviously to be able to do this, but we decided to engage in the fight at food and water watch because you know there's really no choice if we're going to save our global climate and we find that people really want to fight for what they want. they're tired of these incremental changes that might have some effect, and so we need to talk about what the policy changes are and then fight for them, and i'm excited we're even talking about fracking during a presidential election. we all know how difficult it is to get an issue to rise and i have big hopes for even after the election for all of the really millions of young people who have been energized by current events. we're really at a historical moment. so, we have to keep our hope up but it includes having new policies for rural areas, too. >> my questions have to go with for -- i've been part of a group here in massachusetts that has worked diligently for the past year and a half to stop one of five frack pipelines, one being rust rock, very close to where i live. it's personal live gone to meetings from the conservation commission to the supreme judicial court of massachusetts. personally written to warren dis40 e-mails and five or six meetings in their offices. thousands of signatures have been collected by -- and hundreds of other organizations. always comes down to this fit between new england, the local gas distribution companies and ferc who is made up most live of oil and gas industry lobbyists. i have been looking at articles about closed door meetings held with mark cal pen on the board and it's a complete revolving door some i'd like for you to delve into that because we've had people in massachusetts approach sheryl, the court are court commissioner from massachusetts who refuses to meet with it but will meet in closed door meeting with the oil and gas industry, her former cohort. so please delve into that as much as you can and what can we all do to combat that system, because it is so fit. that's why the probably call it that. >> well, our outline a tremendous problem in our movement. i think we're going to over time have to fight to not reform. ... >> so electricity could be bought and sold. we're going to have to get rid of the system and put into place actuality mandates and i know it's not a popular subject. but we need to speak the truth about this. the way that the system is -- has been created today there's no reason that you can really get the renewable and energy efficiency development that you need. it's all been fix sod it's fixed so probably get rid of ferk. right now, while we're having this discussion, there's actually a coalition of some of the pipeline groups having a meeting. i think it's going to have to be a much broader coalition of all of the groups all across the country from the northwest to across down texas not far from el paso all over the country and question need to get together to first of all take away their power of come condemning land and begin the political power to have a different energy system and to get rid of ferk we needed the department of energy that actually creates the plan to get us off of fossil fuel and nuclear power. we don't need an agency about 80% of what had they have spent at the department of energy over the last 30 years has been for dirty energy. so we really need to have a whole new plan for energy, and i think all of it is beginning with this movement to ban fracking and the global climate justice movement that wants to keep fossil fuels in the ground. >> okay. >> in terms of the relative blfns evil and trying to find a silver lining in instance of fracking what do you make of this -- for all of its problems the fact that it has dramatically decreased u.s. domesticking store of national gas, oil seems to be accelerating to demise of coal. >> well, yes but one of the things that i didn't talk about is the threat that natural gas we know oil is a threat because of consider bonn. but there's a lot of recent science looking at natural gas, and natural gays is mostly methane about 95% methane it turns out that methane is a more potent green house gas. the first 20 years after it's emitted of course the next ten to 15 years, surely by the next 20 years, we need to have a new energy system. so natural gas actually when you look at the threat to the global climate and this is not me speaking but specific cor cornell and elsewhere, it's actually a bigger threat to the climate in the first 20 years after it's emitted since it's 100 time thes more potent than carbon is in first 20 years, so we really need to get off natural gas it's not a bridge but it's actually a bridge to where, and it's a bigger threat to our global climate and you know what upsets me so much is the idea that we would be building another 40 years of this infrastructure. you know, the bank are literally investing, learning millions of dollars to build all of this infrastructure that's going to last for decades. that's why we know it's not a bridge fuel. this is just an excuse and a way to try to buy people into it, and you know, we need to stand up and say no, it is not -- it's a bridge to nowhere. >> one more -- question. [inaudible] >> so they serve -- you covered a lot and discussed, of course, with the methane -- takes time but develop like the oil subsidy and all over. but what can we do to go back to the question what would you do locally and where can we tap into to kind of raise the awareness because as you don't power vacuum owns media and koch brothers you can go on and on but they keep getting subsidy and moving towards renewable. so that's one piece of it. plus they don't want to get off of it even though we know that 30 years they knew. 30 years ago in green house gases in global warming -- they knew about it just criminal and a whole another conversation but rest of subsidies you have -- people to work with to approach that piece and then a broader piece is getting messaging out there. this is long besides your website. >> i do think there's a whole social media and i'm -- an alternative media system because we know that the consolidation in the media in 1984 there were 50 major media organization and it was already consolidating today there were six, and i have a charted in the book that shows the interlocking board of directors so you know, there's an alternative and i think we can give you a lot of that information if you talk to one of our organizers after this. i mean, there's a movement in almost every state and it has to be directed at building power to those people who are elected and we can't let them get away with this. and even here in liberal massachusetts, you have liberal members of congress like your senator warren and senator marquise. we have tried to get senator warren to introduce the bill that we were able to introduce in the house with 37 sponsors in the house. it's a bill to ban tracking on public land. you know, pretty easy none of real big asks haven't had success with that. with either of your senators. so i think one of the things that you need to do here in massachusetts is try toe create some leadership that could be used in -- to begin with in the democratic establishment because what we find is in a lot of states where we're working with democratic governors you know from rhode island, to pennsylvania to colorado to california. they are supporting the fracking. so we need to get our, you know, more liberal democrats with the program and then we can start working out more broadly and we need to do it right away. and you know, the subsidies are shock and they've been going on for decades, i mean, i talk about some of the some of the tax benefits like the golden gimmick been around shins 1948 that gives american companies ax benefit if they produce oil scraib there's a lot of outrageous stuff that goes on because of their power. i will say that fracking itself, the technologies that came together to allow fracking many of them were actually perfect and paid for by federal tax dollars. that we do have a lot of work to do but let's get these elected officials speacialt one special the ones that say they're representing us to do the right thing to begin and it'd also line to invite you all to get involved with food and water watch. i know there are a lot of local groups but we really pride ourselves on fighting back and taking, creating a political space to actually do what we want to do with with our future. and we have a lot of opportunities to get involved in local organizing on these issues, and would love to have you join our list. and, in fact, if you aren't familiar with food and water watch and would like to get on our list you can text frackopoly -- [inaudible] a piece of paper in front of me and i had a moment. so 69866 text frackopoly to it. thank you. >> thank you very much everyone for coming as i mentioned the book is for sale in the reasonable it is in the next room and form signing lineup and have this signing here at the cable and also i have a quick announcement that will someone left their keys in the cab and they brought them back so they're at the information desk if you think you lost your keys in a cab go to the information desk. thank you. [silence] whircht tune into it on the weekend it's author sharing of their new releases. >> watching nonfiction authors on booktv is the best television for serious readers. on c-span they can have a longer conversation and delve into their subject. >> booktv weekends. they bring you author after author after author. that's unlike work of fascinating people. >> i love booktv and i'm a c-span fan. >> it effects the federal government's long mobilization of the crime prometh particular type of social control. when one that signals that the target arrest, rationally marginalized americans that sport this regime of control, are among the central characteristics of domestic policy in the late 20th century. the decisions that policymakers and officials and closed circles or part of a larger coalition made at the highest level to government, had immeasurable consequence for the in this case, however, unintended some of those choice may have been a different time and different political moments. ultimately, however, the bipartisan consensus of policymakers fixate ised on political in urban space and eventually were moving generations of young men and women of color from their communities to live inside prison. we can excuse set is of action and choices these historic actors made as a product of their time or merely tactic but by doing so you continue to confront legacy of enslave that time prevent nation from tull fully realizing promise of its founding principle. until recently devastating outcome on war of crime have gone unnoticed for many americans it appeared discrimination ended with civil right the missouri and united states had moved if beyond exploitation. along side tremendous growth of american law enforcement poafort last 50 years formidable black american class and rise in is the 70s to display of black wealth for popular consumption to the presidency of barack obama. these achievements promoted discourses of cultural pathology and personal responsibility even further. making it seem as though the systemic incarceration of entire groups of racially majorrallized citizens we flected the natural order of things. political representation and the fact that some black americans have a mass substantial wealth and capitol do not mean that historic racism is inequality ended which i'm sure is not news to many of you who are in this room today. african-americans grew more afluent after 1965 my end of 20*9 century. the assets of the highest fifth of black american households were 7,448. only $448 above that of the lowest fifth of white american households. and the black middle-class is also been concentrated in the public spirit and social services where mobility is tied to the extent of state spending on dmes pick programs. in celebrating racial inclusion champion by african-american activism and ally and classrooms across nation touring black history month every year, the fact that many of the critical reforms opposed of the post war period negate bid priorities remains unrecognized. for instance, nine years after passage of the voting rights acted dawn of mass incarceration, the supreme court rule ptd it constitutional to deny convicted felons the right to vote and states consistently removed convicts from the court 1964 richard's decision and today nearly 6 million americans most of them served their sentences are deprived of the franchise. as a result of the racial disparity in american policing and criminal justice practices, an estimate ptd one out of 13 african-americans will not vote in had the 2016 election due to a prior conviction. because of the felon disenfranchisement and policy behind it a key civil rights gain of the 1960s has come undone. and go on and on to make an already questionable situation worse u.s. census counts people who are incarcerated in state and federal prisons as residents of the can want where they're serving time. and if defense count in term repghted a thoughts home to the majority of the pus population they're home to the majority of prisons. in other words, urban american who is tend saver in thes lost representation because of disenfranchisement work and favor republicans gained extra representation because of how the prison system works. meanwhile as mobility remains stagnant public school and many urban neighborhoods are more seg regated today than before the civil rights missouri. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org.

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