>> every weekend, book tv brings you 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span 2. keep watching for more television for serious readers. . >> and everybody got quiet right on cue. that's never happened before. i'm bradley graham, a co-owner of politics and pros along with my wife, and on behalf of the entire staff at p and p and everybody at busboys, welcome, thank you so much for coming. we're very fortunate this evening to have with us eric liu to talk about his new book "you're more powerful than you think" a citizen's guide to making change happen. what a timely work. in the wake of last november's election, my staff and i at the bookstore have been approached many times by customers concerned about the course that events have taken and wanting to know what they can read to help them decide, how to get more involved in civic life and effect change. well, eric's book is now a good place to start. he began writing it before donald trump launched his bid for the presidency, but trump's election is one manifestation of a mounting turbulent in u.s. political and civic life that we've all been seeing for some years now, whether it's the tea party, the occupy wall street movement, the sudden success of marriage equality activists or the black lives matter protests. there's been a rise of citizen power, what eric calls the great pushback. bernie sanders and donald trump both ride this populous wave and now eric has channeled it into a book about civic power, what it is, how to practice it, why anyone would actually want it. the writer, educator, and civic entrepreneur, eric has been thinking about democratic values and the role of citizenship for a number of years. back in the 1990's, he was a speech writer for president bill clinton and later, the president's domestic policy advisor. more recently, founded and remains ceo of a university, citizenship through a variety of programs. he's the executive director of aspen institute citizenship and american identity program. additionally he's a regular columnist for cnn.com and a correspondent for the atlantic.com. and he's written several previous books on such topics as mentoring, patriotism, the roles of government and citizens in our society, as well as a memoir three years ago that told not just his story, it was a broader exploration of cultural identity. his new book were out of a talk that eric gave in 2014 on civic power. it's a very popular talk which i urge any of you who haven't seen it yet to watch. before turning the mic over to eric i'd like to thank two other organizations for joining pnp and sponsoring this event, citizen university and eric's program at the aspen institute, the citizenship and american identity program. we greatly appreciate their support. so ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming eric liu. [applaus [applause] >> good evening, everybody. it is great-- oh, i may have messed up your mic here. it's great to be with you this evening and i want to begin with a round of thank yous. brad, to you and lyssa for your part of the busboys and poets partnership itself. when i lived in washington, this space did not exist much less this conflict of meshing food and ideas in this way that is really at the root of what civic life is supposed to be about. civic life isn't supposed to be about-- well, eat your vegetables. you can't eat your vegetables tonight, but eat your vegetables and enjoy eating your vegetables in the company of others in a space like this. it's really just wonderful to be in a-- to be with you this evening and i also want to thank so many friends, so many friends who are some as longstanding friends that they are family, some who are newer and colleagues of different kinds and thank our friends at c-span to be with us today and cover this conversation. and what i'd love to do is just share some thoughts that are embodied in this new book "you're more powerful than you think" and open it up for conversation and discussion that can take the form of q & a or just the form of you sharing your sense of the state of the union right now. so, let me just begin in the first place with a word about this moment that we're in. brad said in his introduction, we're living through times that, you know, we know they are tumultuous and without precedent and yet, still, it's sort of staggering to take in the reality of what we are experiencing right now and i'm not talking only about the election of donald trump and the immediate aftermath, staggering as that has been, i'm talking about the ways over which the course of many years now, really, if you think about it, tectonically over the course of several decades in the united states we've had this concentration and wealth and opportunity and polarization of our politics and this severity of inequality that has given us exactly the kinds of uprisings that we're seeing across the left and the right here in the united states. and they are the same kinds of uprisings that you're seeing all around the world right now. the arab spring, the orange revolution, green revolution, the umbrella revolution, all of these movements, like the movements that have sprung up here since at least the tea party and occupy wall street through the current times, are movements that are in progress. some have achieved electoral victories and some have achieved little in the way of tangible outcomes, but all are a part of the swirling moment that we're in and i think naming this moment as a moment of incredible cross-eyed logical citizen power is really important for us. and i think part of being in washington d.c., and being in the capital, is there is emanating from the city, not necessarily places like busboys and poets or policies and pros. emanating from the capitol there's politics and civic life is essentially the house of cards. it's this dark, apocalyptic topina vision of being in the public. widening our lens and looking beyond the beltway and this town is realize from left, right and center there are incredible surges of bottom-up citizen power going on all around the country. now, part of that surge, we've seen just in the weeks since trump became our president and the label resistance has been attached to that surge, but, again, it was a surge of civic power from people who had long checked out of politics, who had long decided that the game was too rigged to participate in. that brought donald trump to power in the first place. so, recognizing that all of these are part of the same moment, the same arc of civic power, is i think the first thing that i want us to reset and do. the second thing i'd like to say this evening is just to unpack a bit what i even mean by power. talking about power in d.c. is sort of like talking about money in wall street or new york or talking about image in hollywood. it's just a thing that's so ambient and so ever-present that people stop naming or describing rigorously what they mean by the word. i want you to know what i mean. the capacity to ensure that others do as you would like them to do. some people that is an uncomfortably menacing definition, some people think is sounds authoritarian or domineering. step back and think about it not just in the context of power, but your relationship. family, friends, co-workers, all of us are all the time in this swirling eco system to assure that others do what we'd like them to do. that power as it plays out in seive civic life is common concern. so much of the word in this house of cards, age, has a negative moral balance is that power inherently is neither good nor evil. power just is, it's like fire. simply because it can be put through this use, it's understanding how it can be put to good use. so, one of the ways in which this book aims to explore the topic of power is to frame it in the first place as a subject upon which we may get literate. we have to learn how to read power and how to write power. to to that in talking about power and civic life, we kind of boil down the patterns, the ways that power unfolds in our common and political life into three broadly speaking three laws. i want to say a word about each of the laws of civic power. the first is this, not a surprise to anybody, but yet, it's worth naming. power compounds. rich get richer, the powerful get powerful. and people with clout get more clout. and power compounds and it concentrates in ways that turn the game ultimately into a winner take all game. the power left to itself yields monopoly and that's true in economic life, it's true in civic life, it's true in community life and that dynamic, of course, is true as well of powerlessness which also compounds. when you don't have voice, you tend to get less voice. when you're on the margins, you you tend to get pushed further out into the margins. you don't have to talk about national politics and this is the life of this community, washington d.c., this neighborhood in washington d.c., in tremendous flux. it's full of opportunities, but mrs. displacement. the way that power concentrates and compounds. that's law number one. law number two, the power justifies itself. the civic life, every kind of narrative, propaganda, ideology, background story or explanation we might have about why the economy works the way it does. why white people tend to have more wealth than non-white people. why men dominate our institutions and not women. all of the explanations that people offer for these states of affairs are ways in which power justifies itself. power will create narratives and ideologies and just the stories to explain to everyone who lacks power, why it is they rightfully lack that power and why it is that those who happen to have concentrated and hoarded that power are the rightful holders of that power and again plays out in our life. the economics, the ideology of trickle down economics is the classic instance in the way in which power justifies itself. that those who already have privilege and wealth need to be coddled and taken care of so you don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg. and so that their wealth can ultimately trickle down and leak its way down to the rest of us. it's a story that many people tell and that many people left and right, democrats and republicans for decades have bought into. if you take the first two laws, the ways in which power concentrates and you can get into a grim situation. a situation that you can see, well, certainly around the world right now if you think about how institutions are collapsing in places like venezuela today where the legislature and now the courts are beginning to yield and concentrate power to a single dictatorial authoritarian leader. this is one real-time instance a place where power is concentrating to a monopoly, winner take all system and justifying itself with ideologies and stories why it has to be so. if it were just those two, we'd be stuck in a grim doom loop. what saves us from the loop and helps us break out of the loop is law number three. which is this. power is inif i-- infinite. power is infinite. i cannot underscore this enough. power in civic life is not like energy in a physical system, you have a law of concentration of energy and only so much in the system. if you should get more energy, that must mean that someone else is getting less energy. in civic life the amount of power that the system can hold is infinite so if you learn how to give a public speech. if you learn how to organize your neighbors. if you learn how to frame an issue in a way that's compelling to the media, you don't diminish by one whit the liability to give a public speech or to frame an issue or mobilize my neighbor. all you've gone is add to the net amount of power circulating through our eco system. now, to stay that power is infinite is not to be polly anna and naive and all people are equally powerful. of course not. i mean that all people a the all teams no matter the endowment of power they think they have at the moment are capable of generating more out of thin air. how? this magical, magical act called organizing. and the simple act of inviting one other about person to join you in common endeavor generates power where it did not previously exist. the simple act of inviting or creating a space where there's permission for a few other people to join in to explore what our common purposes and endeavors ought to be generates power where it did not previously exist. so, this third law about the infinitude of power and public life saves us from doom laws number one and two. all of these laws actually yield for us as citizens and by the way, i want to say, in almost every instance that i use it, in the name of our organization, citizen university, in the language of citizen power, when i talk about this, i am not talking about a limited motion of citizenship as document status under the u.s. immigration and naturalization laws. i mean citizen in the deeper ethical sense, the member of the body, pro socially contributors to communities, one who believes in leaving something behind that's greater than one self. being a nonsociopath. it's harder to live up to than it seems and there are fewer examples than you might like in our mreks right now, but i want to just say that that notion of citizenship proudly defines, when we think of our roles of citizens, three imperatives of action for us. so from the first place, the reality is that power compounds and concentrates and it tends towards these monopoly winner-take-all games. our first imperative, to change the game. in the second place, power justifies itself and is always spinning ideologies and narratives, how the people who have power and wealth and clout have it and our imperative as citizens is to change the story. and the third place we are reminding that power and civic life is in fact infinite, not zero sums, not finite, not limited to current allocations and current structures of power. the imperative for us at all times is to see where we can change the equation. changing the game, changing the story, and changing the equation. the way that i think about our work as citizens and in the course of this book, i describe under each of the three imperatives, several strategies for us, whether you are an activist, whether you are an interested bystander and somebody who has been involved in civic and political life, all your career. and whether you are one of the millions who today are just deciding for the first time that i should get involved. i should actually step off the sidelines into the playing field. no matter who you are, it's a time for us to become literate in the strategies of citizen power so we can change the game, change the story and change the equation of power and civic life. well, let me say a few words just about a couple of examples about each of these as grist for the mills as we open up the wider conversation. to think about changing the game of power and civic life, you know, one of the examples that i often share from my home state, washington, i live in seattle. i've been there since the left the clinton administration in year 2000. and one of the great virtues of being in the other washington, what we think of as the sane washington, is that you're in a place that is deeply woven into the fabric of national economic and political life, indeed global economic and political life and yet, you have a great distance from the conventional wisdom that captures so many imaginations in this town. one of the benefits of that distance is thinking slightly differently and having slightly different tool sets of what you can do on different issues. one issue that a group of friends and colleagues of mine in seattle and washington state got motivated on after the sandy hook massacre was gun responsibility. we decided of course, we made a push as many in this room and around the country did was to try to get our congress to act on responsible gun reform legislation. that failed. how about in the state legislature of washington, we can get our legislature at the time was democratic controlled to move on responsible gun reform legislation. that failed, too. what we realized was, in both cases, both the united states congress and the washington state legislature, it didn't matter particularly that large majorities of the people of the voters and constituents supported things like universal background checks for gun purchases. what mattered there was a finite number of legislators and a finite number of legislators who could be controlled and bought or threatened by the n.r.a. and other groups in the gun lobby, for the n.r.a. it was effective to play an inside game. an inside game of legislative action to make sure a small number of legislators could not even be particularly threatened, but sort of warned about the price that would be paid if they were to put their name behind legislation for reform and that was enough to chill and freeze and kill any effort at reform. we were frustrated, we were angry, we yelled, we stomped and decided we needed, in fact, to play a different game. and in washington state, like many western states, we have a different game available to us, which is going straight to the people. so we began to organize people to get a ballot measure on the ballot, exhibitcled signatures from across the state, every county in the state and we put a measure on the ballot to enact the background checks for gun purchases that the legislature refused to pass. and after that kind of mobilization, after bypassing the legislature and deciding to get people in our state and all over our country to pay attention, washington became the first in the union to pass by a vote of the people, universal background checks for people for gun purchases. [applause] >> this is one simple example of how you decide you're going to change the game and not just on the terms and format that the game previously has been rigged in. changing the story is a similar act and a similar set of choices for strategy. when i think about changing the story, i think, actually, as you walk into the store here today, you might have seen some of the placards on the polls there for an upcoming black lives matter rally about police violence or the demiliterization, the fact there are placards and posters and a conversation in the united states about police brutality and police violence, is not a result of elites, of policy makers, of congress, it's the result of unsung citizen activists, many of them for the first time getting involved in civic life. some of them marching, some pressing policy makers, all of them getting quickly literate in the strategies and tactics of power. and one of the fruits of black lives matter movement, campaign zero. it was start by four of the leading activists including my friend britney, what campaign zero is, it's not just a pr campaign, but a policy agenda aimed at changing the story. the story when it comes to police violence, when it comes to police killings of unarmed civilians, particularly civilians of color, hey, this is the price that a free society must pay for order. that's the story that we've all begun to internalize in many different ways and that story is one that one increasingly in the last few years, because of the state of high profile and videotaped shootings and contingency of unarmed black men, it's a story that's beginning to change. people are beginning to challenge and say, you know what? it's not enough to say that the price of order in a pre society is that every now and again, an unarmed united states citizen will be killed by the police forces meant to guard and serve that citizen. that's not okay. but in addition to simply protesting or challenging or saying no, what the organizers of campaign zero did was to create a compelling alternative narrative embodied in the name of this campaign. campaign zero is aimed at reducing the number of police killings of unarmed civilians in the united states, not by half, not by a lot, but to zero. all right. they didn't call themselves campaign, let's cut it down by 35%. campaign zero. and the name of that campaign and the agenda, which is not a pie in the sky agenda, but one that's quite closely thought through at the level of legislative policy making, at the level of police department practice, at the level of citizen engagement, it is an agenda for how all of us take ownership of the work taking to zero the number of these kinds of killings. but setting that goal at zero and telling a story how it's possible to get to zero as some jurisdictions in the united states have, as many other countries around the world do, that it's possible to get to zero as a reminder and a shifting of the frame of the possible that is so much a part of this work of changing the story and the power. well then finally, when it comes to changing the equation, think about a couple of different examples. one actually has its roots here in washington d.c. some of you may have heard of a fellow named bob woodson, who has been for decades running something in washington called the center for neighborhood enterprise. bob woodson started out, as he puts it, somewhat on the left and as time has gone by, he finds himself now a counsellor on issues of urban poverty and urban opportunity to folks like speaker paul ryan. but no matter who he's talking to, bob woodson has a simple notion in the work for injury for neighborhood enterprise make-- taking neighborhoods and treat them not of the objects of government care, not the vessels into which government lar largess should be poured into, but agents of their own remedy. and to say in every one of those communities, there's more smarts, there's more capacity, there's more trust, theres' more problem solving ability than ever is getting tapped from the vantage points of the welfare state. though he may be coming at this issue from the right, he actually has a counterpart who comes at the same issue and to the same conclusion from the left and that's another i write about, mauricio miller, founded an organization across the country near oakland called the family initiative. same notion, taking high poverty, low income families of all kinds, starting in oakland and now in several cities around the united states and saying, these aren't just beneficiaries, they're not just clients of the system, mauricio cut his teeth as a director of welfare for the state of california. he had to resign when he realized after many years in that system that all he was doing was managing a system that was rearranging the deck chairs of urban poverty. he was not actually lifting anybody out of that poverty and he quit that institution to start fii coming from the left in the way way that bob woodson coming from the right realized there's so much untapped in the communities. what they did, unlocking the voice and capacity for low income aid in these communities, they change the equation of power and said that the communities hitherto who have been voiceless and seen as economy of the state get to be authors of their own economic and civil state. changing the equation that way is something that closes the party and ideological line. >> every congressional district in the country. there's a lot of that energy right now that's meant to resist the trump agenda but i want to be super clear. this surge of civic power right now, this bottomless pushback against the concentrated monopolized power is not the province of the left only. this is something that is happening across the board. it's something where actually some of the most interesting change and work that happening is happening on the libertarian right. matt tightly walked in with his wife and they are cofounders of an organization called free the people which we work with a lot, free the people is an organization speaking to particularly millennial's and across ideological way about principles of liberty and libertarian thinking and there are a lot of folks right now whether they were trump supporters were burly supporters who check out completely in the process. there are a lot of folks drawn to a message of hey, don't like a duopoly?how about trying a different cla carte approach to politics? they don't like this forced funneling into one of two paths of civic engagement. how about thinking in a different way, in which the principle of liberty leads you to different notions of how you and your friends and neighbors and organize each other to develop their own civic voice and capacity. as well on the reform conservative side, there are equally troubled or as troubled by theoverreaching , they been troubled by the overreaching in the previous executive. across these ideological lines right now there are from the bottom up, everybody organizes each other, finding each other, through things like social media but so often now in beautiful ways. he was telling me as we were starting today that how politics and prose, upper northwest has been holding a series of teach ins. that have been completely packed to the gills of people wanting to learn the basics on one issue or another that now brought to the forefront of the news. seattle where citizens university is a is doing since the election gathering called civic saturdays which are broadly speaking a civic analog church. these gatherings that arenot about , not about churches or synagogues or religion but it is about american civic religion, inviting people to come to a gathering where they can see one another, be with oneanother, sing together , check the great american scripture, spend timereflecting on our moment , carrying a sermon for speakers, and the notion of civic saturday is simplythis , that we are in a moment though it is easy to be fooled by technology and the networking technology makes possible, we are in a moment where every color, class and greed are hungry, starved for the power and purpose that comes from face-to-face engagement. that is to me why i am not in a nacve or pollyanna way hugely optimistic about this moment. i do not deny that the system is rigged in many ways. i do not deny we are experiencing the most severe income inequality and concentration of wealth seen in this country since before the great depression. i do not deny we are seeing the most polarization for the civil war. all these things are real and all these things will continue to play out in ways that probably mean our politics will get darker and morebroken before they get brighter and more you . but i do believe they will get brighter and more healed because across the left and the right there is this incredible pushback of everyday citizens finding their voice and finding their power, connecting on issues that run again from national to hyper local. let me close with this. i spoke a lot aboutpower , about imperatives of power and about the ways that we get more literate in power and i said earlier that my definition of citizen and citizenship is about being a non-sociopath. here's the thing. if you truly want to be a citizen, it can't just be about attaining literacy and power.literacy and power must also be coupled with a grounding in character. when i speak of character, i'm not talking about individual virtues like perseverance or diligence. i'm talking about character in the collective. i'm talking about a moral sense, adam smith said in his most famous quote, the moral sentiment of trust, spirituality, of shared obligation and shared responsibility. a sense of respect, a sense that mere tolerance in a diverse country is necessary but woefully insufficient. that beyond tolerance we have to be willing to cultivate the habit of empathy and fellow feeling. a sense of character neglected, it has to be coupled for literacy and power and the sense of neglect ultimately centers around a simple word which is this. inclusion. i don't care what party you are, i don't care whether you call yourself right or left or something in between, the only question i used in the culture is if you are engaged, and vital citizen power right now is this, are you engaged because you want more people more of the time to be more included in more arenas of civic life? if you do, let's play. let's partner. let's find ways to collaborate, ways to cook things up together but if you don't, if you want to get literate in power so you can restrict, you can monopolize, keep to yourself, the knowledge you gain about how the system works and how the rigors ratings. >> then you are on the other side. >> and that life is not a red blue line, it's not a cr line, it's not a postpartum landline, it is aligned with her you believe in the american idea or not. >> american idea. and this notion that we as citizens are called right now to actually say blessed right now. to be living through a time of incredible ferment, one that everyone of us when we break read the rest of this night and spend time in conversation and go forth into our communities and workforces, we have to be committed to humility and a sense of integrity. and learning from each other, truly seeing one another and committing to ourselves to get literate and reading and writing to power. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. i really want to throw it open to questions, we have a roving might davis over here, so please, died in. >> thank you so much, i want to thank everybody here. >> okay, this is a short-term question. but what is the same, i know a lot of people who are in court, and now that there's going to be a filibuster, how do they engage in the story when they see a pattern to help make that happen. >> so this question about the nomination of judge or such to the supreme court, i think it's happening as we speak right now. the fact that at least that my last check of headlines before walking in your that the pure senate democrats have accumulated enough votes to sustain a filibuster. it's itself the result of citizen pressure. it's the result of lots and lots ofpeople in this country , some of them getting activated, some of them getting awakened by groups. some of them getting pushed by other organizations to do a whole checklist of ways of engagement. calling your member, emailing your member, showing up at meetings and the rating your member of congress or senate area to do the right thing here, applying pressure in a way that it can, what is the frame of the possible, changes in the calculation. and changes in the story, there is one way to tell a story which advocates of neil or such are saying which is let's let these judges judge. this guy has every credential you would want and if you're doing this in a neutral way, this guy by all rights ought to be on the court. it's a pretty compelling story, the guy has a compelling resume. what acts on the other side and chips the story away from that of a about neil's qualifications and his seemingly spotless record and so forth into a question about in the first place fair play in the senate. and what has happened to the nomination of eric barling. but number two, a story about the kind of people and the kind of causes that gorsuch stands for and stand against. again, i offer no opinion right now. ability or not of that story but i frankly know that that is a perspective because it is applied pressure to make members of the senate and the view of death threats against. was going to happen, this is one of the rules within the broad imperative of changing the game is about sizing the arena. when i described the ways in which we and washington say ongoing responsibility, expands the arena from the state legislature for the nra could wield disproportionate control and expand that arena to the electorate of washington state. that sensibility about when is helping to expand or contract the arena will now be explaining the foundation. there's a fight is going to happen within the arena of the senate to see what republicans members do and whether they will use the so-called nuclear option and so forth. frankly, however that game plays out, that's just like you, citizens like you who want to engage and preferred outcome where gorsuch is not on the courts, are going to have to figure out how to continually expand arena and make it a broader point about our broader citizens read and our broader institution. and the changing this into a battle that is about hold on a second here, we have a supreme court nomination number one, coming on the heels of a nomination that was against all norms and number two, that's coming in the wake of a presidential election that itself is increasingly under a cloud of illegitimacy. that's the story i would tell if i were you and how to expand that. reality is for people on the other side, their focus has been on the ways in which you and people like you are responsible for blowing up natural politics, you are radicals who are trying to undermine the way the national government works and you are very much out of the swap. >> all politics is a game of infinite repeat play. >> all politics is perpetual tug-of-war between these kind of framings and these kind of choices but for you as a citizen, getting aggravated and organized and really, i don't know if you remember on election night, some of the newspapers like the new york times had that neither of the odds of hillary clinton winning that started out at 93 percent and as the night went on it dwindled and you know, this is kind of a system now, a data thing. i don't know what the meter says right now about gorsuch becoming a justice of the supreme court. i guess it's still pretty high. and part of the challenge for you is to find victory or defeat not necessarily in whether he ultimately gets pushed through but what broader avenues of organization had opened up, while broader stories can be told and that they see this not some inside baseball play for the u.s. senate but as their flight to and if that works and that happens, even a successful move neil gorsuch on the court could yield positive benefits for activists like you. >> great, we will come back to the front. >> i love your film about inclusion. i find it some parts to total up those in color and i'm wondering if you could talk more about that. how citizens have the right to have easy access to bathrooms or if you don't think that black lives matter has a break, how do you suggest we engage those who refuse to engage? it's not just in state government, i don't recognize you or your rights and privileges and how do i engage in those powers. >> mark, thank you for that question and tell me again a name of your venture? >> action that. >> mark is a social entrepreneur. one of whose ventures right now is called action that and is one of those people system of tools that are popping up. created by citizens right now. so that if you want to get engaged in the way that our last comments or spoke about on something like the supreme court nomination or something of more local concern, you go to a map on action that and it will navigate you to the elected officials, the ballot measures, the choices, legislative actions pertinent to your jurisdiction. that kind of thing is sprouting up all over the country right now so thank you mark or being part of that city served and i question that mark about inclusion, about tolerance of the intolerance. and i think all i can say is from my vantage point, the work that we do in the university which is work that is completely cross ideological. we work with those that run the gap from tea party leaders and activists to current black lives matter leaders and activists from the $15 now movement, dreamers who for conservatives, you name it. if their interest is in bottom-up citizen power and in widening the circle of inclusion in the civic arena, then we have business to do with each other. and in that work, one of the things i've learned is that you find if you are coming up against somebody who has a story that they are telling, that they seem constitutionally incapable of including somebody else because she is transgender or because of whatever or because he's murky, views that are controversial. if you find yourself calling somebody just de facto kind of intolerable and unacceptable, that's the kind of things i find are important to invite yourself to change your own story. and ask yourself, what is it that i'm trying, what notion of identity and i reinforcing? that makes me unable to tolerate this other person? and if you ask that about yourself first , there's a really good way to invite the other person to ask about herself but if you start with a man, why are you so close minded? why are you such a big? that's a pretty good way to end the conversation. there's a wonderful book that i want to commend to all of you by somebody who i've read for many years and about three weeks ago i had the thrill of talking to for the first time, i guy named c terry warner who is a retired professor of psychology at brigham young university and who wrote this book about 15, 16 years ago called bombs that make us free. and it's about sort of like my book in the sense that is principal and ideas can be applied in almost every tale of life. whether it's spousal relationships for international diplomacy. >> and in this book, terry warner describes very simple universal human dynamics of collusion. we all engage in all the time, it goes like this. i accuse you in order to excuse me. >> that human life). >> i accuse you in order to excuse me. >> though that's, why don't you take out the garbage? i didn't do the dishes? >> so hey, why don't black lives matter? why don't blue lives matter? so we're doing this countering of accusations, this one-upsmanship of moral claiming. and the only way that terry warner talks about being able to break that cycle of collusion, the cycle of relentless self-justification is in fact to release the impulse to justify yourself. and make yourself the first object of scrutiny and examination. let me tell you how my own heart, i'm kind of narrowminded when it comes to people who leave ask. and i'm intolerant of people who think why. and i have to really get over this instant i have. and i think extending that invitation, just letting it sit there, not waiting like this is your turn to confess but actuallyjust putting there with all , in all seriousness. >> to say look, i don't know if you're going to reciprocate but i do know the only way we can break these cycles in our politics is for me to start. that's what it means to step up as a citizen. >> i do believe that is a norm that is contagious. i do believe that when people like all of us in this room who know these incredible networks cynically and in many different arenas and communities start behaving that way, we do make it more possible for people to let down their guard and ask themselves okay, why is it and is it possible for me to frame my story of identity differently? some of you who are campaign junkies know the phrase the canvassing. which is this body of work that has been unfolding over the last election cycles, isn't doorknocking and asking people their opinions but is actually knocking on a door on a contentious issue like marriage equality and then really spending the time with that person who answered the door and asking them to tell their story of self . x asking them to reveal how it was they came to their values and their identity. and only after drawing out of them, beginning to find points of connection, i see that family matters to you. i see that tradition matters to you. >> i want to tell you about my friend who are in a relationship who see marriage equality because the then, family matters too. >> tradition matters hugely. and you should not see them necessarily as the enemy, you should see them as the agency of the revitalization of this tradition. the only way you can get to that point is if you've done that the time canvassing and hearing all sincerity a man, where are you from? it's that question of where are you from, where are you really from, it's something that we as citizens have gotten out of the of asking. i think again, that's why i put such a premium on aces in places like this where we can see each other and engage each other and feel each other rather than what social media allows. >> will come back here and then go back. [inaudible]. >>. >> could you comment on evaluation of processes or evaluation of this and how it relates to your understanding of power? >> i have a picture in my head of what you mean by risk but say a little bit more. >> that's the question of the careful what you wish for. >> so in the example of the filibuster, that could be used for downside to pushing for a filibuster with a nominee that is going one way or the other. so there's a riveting ball for democrats to get in on that and that is along the same question. i wonder i like you because you've been a very upbeat about racing in the days, tell us about the evaluation of risk from a reader's point of view and taking them more education to service. >> collusion. >> david? david's question i think is important and i'm glad iasked you the follow-up because there are two levels here to thinking about risk .and power. david, you were talking about these coming from a leadership perspective and i want to get to that second because you will find when you read this book that i talk hardly at all about leaders and leadership.i talked mainly about citizens and citizenship. i don't really, that's not to say that people who have titles and authority and formal positions of power are self citizens but my focus is on how every one of us no matter where we start can be more powerful than we think. the evaluation of risk i think naming this factor is important because one of the ways in which again i don't want to be nacve or pollyanna about civic power is that there are costs involved with every action we take, every standard weekend. so one of the first things we've got to do in evaluating risk is to take inventory of our own power and frankly our own privilege. there are various forms of power that have ascribed to civic, money power, ideas power, power, social norms power. states. everybody in this room, everybody watching on tv, everybody in america has some little pile and in some cases some big pile of capital that is the accumulation of these various forms of power. you may not feel that way, you may feel the opposite way, you may feel restless and powerless but if you take a candid inventory of the kind of power you have at your disposal, the ability to mobilize other people, available almost to anyone in this room, the ability to activate money is available to at least in the withholding of your money and boycott power, if not in the laying down of piles of cash, all these forms of power are available to you taking a candid inventory of that number one, and number two, taking a candid inventory of privilege. the word privilege whether it's attached with white privilege or other forms of institutional privilege is widespread these days and i want to name it. privilege i mean simply that of the accumulated unearned benefit of prior allocations of power. >> right? so here i am, the son of immigrants. all i had to do is the dumb luck to be born in the united states and instilled upon the were the privileges of citizenry of the united states. i did zero to earn that. i was born at vassar hospital in new york in 1968. >> that's a pile of privilege that from a global perspective is enormous. the privilege that i had for the united states, the privilege i have when i walk into the room anywhere on planet earth and can say for one, american, number two, you can't stop me. >> it's a giant pile of privilege. so taking inventory of your power and privilege in different ways and different people have different forms of privilege, you can be education privileged, whatever. i say this not imbued with some, some of you are thinking here's some seattle dude trying to get on some new age self-flagellation thing, that's not what i'm doing. i'm saying get real about you are and what you've got. i'm saying let's get real together about who we are and what we've got. and in this moment right now, beginning with that allows you then make a more clear eyed sense of calculation of what are the risks here? what am i putting at risk western mark and i willing if i work in a federal agency for instance, am i willing to meet somebody who creates a guy like the indivisible guide, but instead of a guide for how to apply pressure on congress, it's aguide to how to move the federal bureaucracy, a guide to help to get a regulatory agency to do x and y, are you willing to take that risk ? we have to waive for yourself the power that you have, the public purpose that it will serve and hope that it might incur on you but you have to realize that almost nothing in life is worth doing is cost free. >> right. >> i have two friends who are part of our big, broad extended family of citizens and i want to tell you about, to go to the second layer of what david is talking about. this is more at the leadership level, these two friends names, what is a guiding josc antonio vargas, the guy is named mark, so rose, some of you know because you use to be a journalist here in washington at the washington post, a pulitzer prize winning journalist and he's probably by whatever measures we might use such a thing america's most famous undocumented person. not only because he's a pulitzer prize-winning journalist but be happy because he came out as undocumented in a new york times magazine cover story. he did that a few years ago because when he discovered as a teenager that he was undocumented, that he had been brought here illegally, he felt for many years that he had the this fight secret. and he had this little when first family but also the grandparents who raised him but also the teachers, guidance counselors, first members at the post, others who as he moved from higher education out into the world help keep a secret. >> and josc kept on telling it, racking up accolades and doing great in journalism and kept on being a big citizen of the united states. in the sense that i mean, not about documentation because josc antonio vargas is living in the ocean but there are many people in this country who lack the papers but would like to be citizens and many people who have the papers and don't. those antonio vargas kept the secret to the point he could no longer keep and send you know what? i can't do this, the burden of this is too heavy and too painful and number one, number two i have privilege all around me are these young people, these undocumented activists who are putting their lives on the line by coming out and saying there undocumented. >> if they can do that, that i must be able to as well. that's why he came out in the cover story of the new york times and that made him , even during the obama administration which that we have to be clear was very active at deporting undocumented immigrants. x even during the obama administration, antonio vargas had a bit of a target on his chest and back. it's gottenbigger and brighter now that we are in the trump administration. you talk about risk, here's a guy who believes in the country, the only country he's known and loved . once help define and redefine what it means to be american in a way that can include a contributor like him, he's willing to get in the back of the line and a pathway to citizenship. but he's willing to put his views out there and put himself on the line and risk deportation, risk the obliteration of life as he's known it. i look at josc vargas and i think i'm not risking nearly enough. i look at the people behind me here, waiting, watching and reading. i think about the dalai lama, i think about gandhi, i think about long before they became icons, you put on posters for gatherings like this, they were people who made and started making little choices things at risk and those choices accumulated. those choices accumulated into the story itself that said i am somebody who's about something bigger than me and i'm willing to but something at risk for that. mark becker is the other guy i want to tell you about who's a tea party compatriot of matt and terry from different circles and was a cofounder of the tea party patriots as an organization and mark has been out there, he's spent several years in that organization and now he's running something called citizens for self-governance and there's a whole other story about what they're doing which is a total change the game kind of power strategy which is they are organizing an article 5 constitutional convention. all right. so instead of saying gosh, i'm tired of the federal government spending so much money and never being able to curb itself, they dumped it on the constitution, look at article 5 and said there's a provision here that says if we get three quarters of the state to ratify, approve of a resolution calling for a new convention, we could have a new convention. >> there trying to call a new convention whose sole purpose would be to dramatically reduce the size and scale of federal government. so there's riskier on a policy level because if they should ever in fact yet to 37 states and actually have the bell ring and say okay, we're doing this, having a constitutional convention, it's in essence there is almost no way they'll be able to contain convention in the bounds of the subject of producing federal spending and reducing the size of the federal government. at that point, all left to draw and at that point, all the folks in the left want to feel citizens united and all the folks on the right want to embed term limits and all the holds in between who have a free-for-all, with a constitutional convention, i don't know how close we are to that but i know that and even putting the idea out there, intellectually, mark is taking a risk and saying you know what? we don't grant that there is the possibility this will be a runaway train. but we believe enough in our privilege and our cost to put that train in motion. and mark is one of these folks who has put himself out there and is indeed one of these activists from the tea party who has been shall we say quite at loggerheads with the irs and saying that he's been persecuted by the irs for his activity. in tea party acts. >> so he's another guy from the other side of the spectrum who has been taking risks intellectually and personally to push the ideas that he wants to believe in. >> this is a question for all of us. not everybody in this room is the leader of an organization or the head of the movement. >> no matter whether you are or not, and i willing, what do i have. >> and the notion of spending is not like set on fire and it's wasted and burn it, the idea of spending, i mean circulation. >>. >> when you realize what kind of capital you have, social, intellectual, relationship, whatever. once you become clear eyed about that capital, you it's a binary choice. the choice is shall i conserve or circulate. that's it. everything else is rationalization and detail. shall i conserve or circulate? again, you can be of either party, any philosophical group, you can be a hoarder and the same thing for being a circulator.my job here at citizens university and my aim is to give us the tools for circulation because as it is, it's a body so it is in the body politic, more circulation, the healthier we are. >> and less relation, more clothing and clustering and clotting of the lifeblood of the body this we are. and that's the united states in 2017 right now. >> a country where one percent of the body. >> has 42 percent of the blood. >> if i had 42 percent of my blood in his pinky finger i be falling off the stage right now. i be broken. and what we've got to do as a body politic is circulate mindfully and intentionally with that kind of understanding. >> a couple more. >> let's actually just here all three of these and i'll try to wrap it up. >>. >> quick. >>. >> for civic religion, there are stories and rituals. >> we are facing a question and thinking about the question of sorting where nationalism is spreading versus the idea of the interconnected state of human invention circulating and as provincial, as some of our friends in monticello aren't winning on immigration, and as david and you, we do a naturalization ceremony every year on july 4, you are seeing mark, where are you from? it misses the question of where they're from, do you think july 4 could be an immigration holiday? thank you. >> we are kicking around. >> i think it's key to thinking about all the visits, we had no convention on what you are doing with respect to other people as citizens ... [inaudible] then you can solve the other part and open up the door, how do you get this as a country and ourselves so that we can mend when more hearts and minds and have a change for the better. >> hi, a question about civic empowerment, i think you talked a lot about the roles that countries finding that are potential and what they have and they change but i was just curious of something to getting your thoughts on how the groups that are franchised, where there's a simple stratification of gender, race, etc. can actually whether or not it's necessary that they be viable to change, that takes place prior to them being able to actually exist their potential and about their potential in terms of engaging access. >> one more up here and then i'll stick together here. >>. >> the question about your number run rule about changing the game and if you had presidents in the room today was working with the former chinese general eric holder in missouri, all on the issue of gerrymandering, is this big concentration of power so if they are asking eric, your opinion, your recommendation on how to change the game, how do we change the game so that we can get a better concentration of power than gerrymandering, with the true obstacle in reforming. >> great question. if this person's question came, i think there's a common thread here so let me say that by way of answering them and bringing us up to a close two things. first, andrew slack who asked the first question is another living embodiment of the power of changing the story, he's the creator of something called the harry potter alliance which is activated the millions of fans of the harry potter books and movies to be as he puts it heroes in real life. duties on civic causes here in the united states and abroad ranging from civic engagement and immigrant rights here to writing hunger or genocide in darfur and other places. and so that emphasis on story is core to the dna of an organization like the harry potter alliance but it is of course as andrew points out or to the moment we are in right now. you can boil down that question to the question who is off? >> when we say us right now, who's us? >> when donald trump spoke of an america that you wanted to make great again, he was implying and in some cases able around more saying explicitly our particular notion of us. >> when hillary clinton was talking about stronger together, as her slogan, she was talking about a different notion of us, then in some directions was more inclusive but in other directions less to some people feeling left out of the conversation.and i think this notion of overlapping stories, the great community organizer marshall ganz was indeed one of the tutors of barack obama , marshall ganz always talk about these pre-nested stories at the heart of any active community organizing, the story of self, the story of us and the story of now. any winning organizer or effective political candidate is able to run through line between a story of self, who i am, a story of us, saying who we wish we are were and a story of now, here's why we got to be that thing we wish we were and obama nailed back in 2008, that alignment of self, us, now and trump kind of nailed it in 2016, at least enough to get the electoral college victory got but this notion of story is so central in a moment where nationalism and populism are surging as reactions to the underlying structural reality of globalization. we are in this great age of reaction and very little, i don't care how many trade immigrants come down the line, very little is going to undo this. is going to undo technological interdependence . is going to undo globalization so the question has to become, this is why i think for the question that you are asking here about disenfranchised groups, people who are weathered by color or class are on the margins of political and civic life and whether in the first place there needs to be structural change and reform in order for them to feel like you have a stake in the game.part of my answer to that is well, it's basically you are asking the chicken and egg question and my answer is eat something. start somewhere and for some people, their work is going to focus on structural policy driven social norm driven choices that make redlining or centrifugation or racialized health disparities or racially disparate outcomes in education or policing, that make these things happen. some people will focus on the structural level, some folks like the name signing earlier are going to dive right in there with families on the ground right here, right now saying what you got? what, when you take your inventory, what you know, you know, what church networks, what family networks, music, what art, what can you mobilize? we're in an age where we have to get beyond the notion that it's either or. you might want to focus on the structural side and god bless. for someone else it might be i've got to get in there in this neighborhood in gary indiana or i've got to get in there in milwaukee or philly, i've got to get in there and start face-to-face talking to folks who are left out, forgot and written off by our system of race and opportunity in this country and show them it's possible to find a voice to create power from thin air but i do think this larger question of the stories we tell our key. so the story that we have to tell right now and this goes as well beyond that to your question which i think to be larger than gerrymandering. if president obama and frankly if any of you were to think about what do we do now to, gerrymandering is one of the most visibly rated games. it is the very definition and electoral politics of rigging the game. or where politicians choose their electorates and not by person. >> so gerrymandering is a thing to focus on and for all of us in a way that i think is possible, i think who would've expected that so many millions of americans would be fluent in the particulars of the emily and klaus. of the constitution. i wouldn't have guessed that a year ago. the things that you think are too nerdy, too specialized, too arcane, you never know that you are working at it and pounding away at it when the moment will arrive for that to be an issue that everybody feels like i've got to get up to speed on which states have independent redistricting commissions and which states, which legislators rated the game and draw districts to their favor. i've got to do that but beyond redistricting, dark opening up a larger question of the rules of the game of democracy itself. and these are rules both of elections that go beyond district drawing and we live in a country where we taken for granted the idea that all elections should be 50 percent +1, first class of folks, one winner and everybody else loses. but all around the world, they figured out other ways to play the game. whether that is proportional representation, whether it is choice voting, there are other ways of structuring boats that people who are in the minority in the community get some representation. and it's not just 50 percent plus one as it is in the presidential race, if there are new ways of drawing the rules for the electoral game so that more people feel like they have more to say, the organization fair vote is one that i would draw your attention to if you're interested in that kind of stuff is not just about voting. it's about money in politics and here again, some of the stories. >> so i want to go with the story of what's been going on in seattle where i'm from. >> and i love dc, i sent some formative years here working on bills, working with president clinton but i believe that the entire worldview about citizen power is shaped by being in the other washington and being in seattle. what i've learned in seattle has come through experience, so the experience not only on the gun issue which i described earlier but on the issue for instance of the $15 minimum wage. x 50 now, it's here in dc, 15 is everywhere. it's running either like wildflower if you like it or a rash if you don't but it's spreading from city to city. it started not even in seattle, it started in the shadow of seattle in a town called seatac which is a little town where the seattle-tacoma international airport. and what a group of mainly immigrant, mainly low income, mainly women, workers. work at airports jobs, who worked in the hotel area surrounding the airport, what they managed to do. was organized and find ways and say you know what? we're going to make the case for $15. >> were going to make the case that not made on charity , were going to make a case for why when we get a $15, for clean bathrooms in the airport hotels. by man the rental car station at the airport, during the night shift, that when i make 15 bucks an hour, if not just good for me, it's good for the community because i circulate those increased earnings into the grocery store, into the forest, into the restaurant, and i help set in motion a positive group of increasing demand. these airport workers were structurally grounded down, they were the kinds of people you are talking about that this deck is stacked against them and they have every reason to say i'm for this and i don't have any reason to believe it's ever going to change but they made time. >> they make time for church and after church to give the first public speeches of their lives. they made time to knock on their neighbors doors, they need time to collect signatures. and they got $16 path which completely knocked the domino overs for seattle which at the time was in a mayoral race so all of them had to scramble to catch up to be the 1st to 15 there and now that's spread all around the country. the stories we tell our not only the stories of people and what the moment is, it's the stories we tell with the stories about ourselves and whether i think you are powerless and voiceless and unable to do anything against the rigged game. >> that may not be true in the moment if you tell yourself that story but it will certainly be self-fulfilling. it will come true, that story you tell. what i want to leave you with isthe simple idea whether you are thinking individually as a citizen or hopefully more frequently collectively in the company and fellowship of others , newcomers in a room like this to remember that when you tell a different story that says you know what? i may not have much but i have the ability to put two and two together and i may not see it in my lifetime with statehood but folks who got the ball rolling on abolition got the ball rolling on women's suffrage, the folks who got the ball rolling on the civil rights movement, folks who got the ball rolling on marriage equality, they do not see the ball reaches destination in their lifetime. they just got it rolling. they started clearing a path for that ball to build momentum. that is the story we've got to tell right now, that every one of us has the power to set in motion change that will change this republic and help this country live up to the promise that made to all of us. thank you for being here tonight. [applause] >>. [inaudible] if you all fill out, eric will now be back here where he will be playing vote, we are not three. if you would like to take one of these on the board and check out that, most of our area as you leave. >> the rest of the table. [inaudible conversation] >> here's a look at books being published this week. former secretary of state condoleezza rice examines global struggles for independence and democracy. pulitzer prize winning author david gero forces president barack obama and rising star. >> that and speechwriter and senior advisor to richard nixon offers an inside look at the nixon administration in nixon's white house worse. journalist thomas boulevard and curtis wilkie recall john f. kennedy's presidential campaign in the road to camelot. also being published this week university of pittsburgh history professor hold looks at the war crime committed by the british and continental army during the revolutionary war in bars of independence. stephen dylan reports on her father's career as an american intelligence officer in his relationship with the cia's soviet double agent in spies in the family. >> shelley mark freeman shares the story of two us naval efforts to find their youngest brother who islisted as missing in action in the philippines during world war ii in the jersey brothers. and rachel pearson , a resident physician offers her thoughts on the american healthcare system through her own experiences in no apparent distress. >> look for the titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for many of the authors in the near future on book tv on c-span2. >> jim jones is always a megalomaniac. he always believes at least to some extent that it's been preordained that he would be great. he always lies. >> he is really unthinking and cruel to his wife. >> he's selfish. . he's accomplishing these great things as he gets more attention. he is also getting less criticism from those around him. when he does on things, when you maybe overdoses on the amphetamines he says he have to take because he needs to be a 20 out of 24 hours a day to get so many great things done, it makes it easy to say well, that's jim. he performs fake feelings that are fake as the day is long and if you read this book, they make one of the interesting sections you might find is how these faith healers actually do produce these cancers that they take from people's bodies in chicken parts. he sexually abused many of his followers, haven't we all seen then and today the examples of men in power who abuse that with women, it's disgusting. and it's cyclical. as he began more and more to become famous, to achieve what he wanted, he began less and less to worry about what impression you might be getting in private for the way that he's acting.>> members of the church who disobeyed him and suffered terrible beatings in front of everybody else. he has sex with the wife of one of his closest followers, they have a child.there's a whole lawsuit, there's all kinds of legal battles going on over custody of the child, so what, he's jim jones, he gets what he wants. it was inevitable with all the bad things he was doing and please understand, just because ofall the great accomplishments , that doesn't in any way negate the horrible things he's doing. >> at some point the media is going to catch up with him. and when they do, jones does two things. first, he starts blaming , this is the phrase that was used back in, fake news. they're making it up. they can't prove it. and as they started to prove it, he would continue saying they haven't proved it at all. until finally, there was a foreign farm settlement in guyana that people had started and jones was going to escape here. it was going to happen. demagogues in any form, even if they are promising followers, are going to make this a better world at some point leave them to doom and one last point i'd like to make quickly, we're talking about white people. >> okay, we know all these great things that have happened. but there's all, will call them the eccentricities of jim jones. how do you forgive that? one of the members in fact one of the few remaining survivors of that terrible day november 18, 1978 told me this story. it's like the frog in the pot of water. if you drop the frog in a pot of boiling water he's going to hop out right away but if you stick the frog in a pot of lukewarm water and turn up the heat little by little, it will almost allow itself to be boiled to death. please don't think when you read about crazy jim jones again, that he was always exactly that way. it was incremental, it happened over a number of years and again, the difference to between him and other demagogues in power is demagogues gain their following bycreating enemies . if i'm the only one, the who can fix the problems today, there's all thesepeople that let's take this , no offense. >> these are the people who already have everything. >> they want what you've got. >> if you don't follow me, they are going to get everything you own. they're going to take it away. and create that tension. the members of peoples temple did not join because they thought they were going to get something, they gave up everything they own joyfully, the idea being they were going to set an example, of other groups where everybody's saying, everyone is treated alike and that example will be so wonderful that the rest of the world will see it and adopt it, will finally have a world where race doesn't matter, where money doesn't matter. they were getting into this because they thought ultimately , with all the crap jim jones is doing on the side, he's still the one who's going to lead us to this great moment. they did it out of generosity , not so much. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >>. [inaudible conversation] welcome today to this event in annapolis at the annapolis book festival. my name is stephen wrage, i'm a school apparent with sons who graduated four years ago and i also am a professor at the naval academy in annapoliswhere i teach courses in international relations . it's a great thing to have general michael hayden who is here todo