incredibly highly organized, strategic efforts actually can make a difference. there are so many different examples i could use of recent organizing that i could mention which are important. people post on tracking, started organizing about seven years ago. checking in new york state. they were not supported by the national democratic party not supported by a lot of the big green organizations which were silent on hydrocracking against so many foundations and groups the funding for the foundations was complicated, people did not know enough. instead use our groups around the state forming highly local groups forming and then connecting to each other. it is true grassroots. this is really, really crude, but there is organizing work tasks and distributed and organizing were power is distributed. a lot of are organizing i love move on top of a lot of the organizing tasks are distributed. that is all well and good, but power is still concentrated. when you when you have distributed power people come together and local communities with a shared vision and what is the person that we wants to follow around a bird dog. what happened in new york is five years of local groups corrected to the connected doing highly local organizing. some of it was online. a lot of the online work was to really crude forms like yahoo or google is groups that anyone can understand and they get a lot of off-line work. it was important that they were physically present off-line, bird dogging. governor andrew cuomo said that everywhere he went there were people saying don't track new york, don't track new york don't track new york so much so that he felt they had more power than any other group gets he saw them, and that is something i learned from the tea party. i was involved in occupy, and one of the things i saw with the tea party is they understand the power of physical presence. that means that if you are physically present and your face is that a a protest and to register that protest politicians will respond more than if it is just online. i think the combination is really powerful. >> and we talk about online people often think it means exclusively online, and i think that when i was in ferguson and spent quite a few weeks there in august and september through november of last year one of the ways that we kept ourselves safe was that everybody was online in these yahoo facebook groups and twitter. but what they say is hey there's something going on this side, everybody go and everyone would kind of moving that direction direction, and that is how we knew where we needed to be. i think we're saying the exact same thing. >> the director of online organizing for the campaign command i would joke that he you should not have a director of online organizing anymore than he should have a a director of car organizing or telephone organizing is job of the internet is the way in which we live as well as the road is on the telephone is. the key is organizing the understanding power. the internet is our current -- current tool and effects things but so many groups like using the internet successfully. i we will hire an online organizer in a separate cabin who will do a a bunch of petitions and not engage in our core work for. and i did not understand. >> well the republicans use telephones incredibly effectively in the 80s 80s, ralph reed basically owned the telephone draft mail game and it is one of the reasons we're seeing the political calculus that we do today. it is all about the work that they put him in in the 80s coming to fruition. organizing the 21st century is organizing a 20th century, organizing the 15th century, it's century permits are getting people together to go deal with it. >> and what is the hardest is cross class organizing which up until relatively recently we have not seen a lot of that. i actually think that it is essential. at one time one in every 20 americans was the president of the local voluntary association the 50s. some were voluntary but you have basically 5 percent of all people have some power with the local club and we also have a lot higher membership. and i membership. and i think that we are feeling the absence of that union membership. some of the core fights we are having our them i think what you see is hedge funders and a few people with a lot of money and a lot of power taking on public education because they actually want to get rid of the last batches of union power. >> i wonder what you think about the current union structure. twenty years worth of distraction. and i wonder what you think of the union organizing we see now where you have these three or four huge groups in dc. the locals i have nearly as much power as they think that they used to. >> i i am a very uncomplicated person. i like decentralized power. i mean,, what you are talking about, different units are different to be clear. >> yes. >> but there is a class dynamic inside the unions themselves where you see unions often separated from their own membership and less responsive to their own membership. in the short term unions have not always realize the cost which is extraordinary because if you are not in there and the fight with your membership you lose some of that trust and cohesion that creates power. >> i think think the corollary to that is when you lose your own membership in that way they are not being evangelists for the things that they should be doing, collective bargaining, loss of collective bargaining is the thing that made me work at burger king for 15 years. let's not sure cut this. and so for me the question i confront often is, how do we do this collective bargaining in this union landscape where i live in and i we will state. sure you can unionize if you want to give them your dues, but there is nothing they can really legally do because they are not having contracts. >> are obviously some things that we can do in the legal level to make collective-bargaining a lot easier. we have a supreme court that makes -- >> amazon is a particular interest of mine and it should be of anyone in the book festival festival, real concern of concentrated power in the book industry is actually taking a kind of feudal relationship to our ideas that amazon has the power to set the prices to books, but they should be concerned. sometimes with real exceptions to both individual and structures of the union leadership democrats find it -- are too quick to criticize unions were there are serious problems and not realize so much red throwing out if we don't also embrace the basic principle of people should be allowed to unionize and the fact that unions are a core part of a truly democratic future. i take this criticism seriously, but i don't want to live in a utopian fantasy where we can have the kind of self-governing we want, i want without that kind of countervailing force just nonunionized organizing outside. does that make sense? >> i have been thinking about this a lot lately, how we move forward in labor organizing and get that collective-bargaining with the unions the way that they were structured 30 years ago. >> where do you see the most exciting stuff in terms of nontraditional union? >> and those are union affiliated groups, right? but what you find is that they are localized collective-bargaining mechanisms. people sitting down on the job at walmart. i i cannot tell you how brave you have to be to do that. people walking out people walking out of burger king or mcdonald's and saying don't cross my picket line, these are people that cannot afford to lose their job single shift, sure cannot afford to get blackballed against all the franchisees in their city, the bravest people i have seen in my entire life. that is the hope that i see. >> i we will tell you a personal story. a year ago yesterday someone approached me -- this may not sound personal. [laughter] a year ago yesterday someone approached me to see if only interested in running for governor for the state of new york. i thought about it for about six weeks till ago was instantly interested, i love politics, have a lot to say. i did not think the governor was doing a good job but i had real anxiety about being attacked personally, being characterized personally being characterized for saying things that i wasn't things that i was not and saw a film at the duke documentary film festival last year i was thinking about this, hand that feeds which is a film about undocumented immigrants organizing in manhattan. and these men and women were risking deportation by trying to organize against this interested management. i thought what kind of coward were i be if i i didn't run for governor because i'm scared about my reputation and these men and women are risking their entire lives to organize with the people they work with. it had a real effect on me, that is where real bravery is happening in this country. >> i think that is completely valid. how many of you guys have heard of me, google me or anything like that before this? okay. like for. so i was home from a shift at work late one night. i had a couple of beers. one of my friends that something wrong and the internet, i internet, i immediately corrected them, and that got me a few million views. a me coverage in new york times this is when truth is viral is fact checking taking a beating and in that peace they failed to fact check. [laughter] i have great faith in our media. you know, so those types of things happen. the kind of abuse and things that people can say is the downside of our new online spaces because anybody can sign up for a twitter account and tell you what a terrible human being you are , anyone can track your email. it is up up and be several different times in the last year all of this because i got drunk one night and says -- got trouble night and said it kind of sucks to be poor. that was enough to suck me in. my friend jerry is here and fought with me through it. pretty epic for a few months there. so i think that fear is legitimate. i wonder how much we are not doing because so many people just don't want to put themselves through that kind of ringer. >> i think a lot. i think the fear is legitimate. >> if i had a choice i would have stopped, but at that.in for a penny in for a pound. >> since i don't see a way out of it i i just want to talk to other people who are -- obviously you don't need it but there are a lot of young woman i talked to who i really want to run for office of people who want to >> nobody talks to me. >> would you feel like that they don't want to step out. i don't want to lie to them and tell them that there are not reputational risks involved. that is false. the reputational risks are real. instead i want to have the open conversation that it may still be worth it even with these risks beforehand so people understand what they getting into. >> it is important that we talk about that. i was sitting on a sun porch i remember, in a wicker chair and had this kind of realization that this is going to happen to my reputation whether or not i actually do good to be there is a hack and do about this. had i not been painted into that corner i don't think i would have written a book being here right now doing, doing any of the work i have been doing. but it has been fairly interesting to have so many people reach out. i can't tell you how many hundreds of people to have how many hundreds of e-mails i get were they say i want i want to do something but can you keep my name off of it? >> i have this image of you now painted into a wicker chair. was a something freeing about realizing that you can't control your own reputation so you act with truth and integrity regardless? >> i put my peace of on youtube, are you kidding me? they got to the time work it did not look like it was going to stop. so i had two choices. mike drop or run. so i might dropped and out i came out of the book and talk to rich people about fashion for a living. >> you are talking about a narrative that was created about you personally, coming into the spotlight but you are also talking about responding to the narratives or mythologies that have been created around your core issues, i would say poverty and corruption these larger stories that people have been telling for right over wrong that i think both of you have been making an effort to try to shine in some sunlight on and they are not knew problems, not even really abstract concepts. we see the real-life consequences of issues. why is issues. why is it so hard to change those narratives? >> totally the reverse. self-government is so rare in human history. society is so rare. it is impossible and exciting that we have made it happen for the few brief moments that we have. i don't think of it as -- i we will step back for a 2nd. i turned 18 when the wall came down. the berlin wall. and i think there was this sense in my generation that we had solve the great problem of democracy. we beat off the soviets, and it was just a matter of every other country catching up at the arc of history tended in one positive direction and that because of that our jobs were sort of minor jobs. let's clean up the little bribery here the extra racism here these are cleanup jobs with structural problems that we can fundamentally solved. i do not see the world that way. i think it is a constant fight to fight against racism. i think it is a constant fight to fight for a kind of genuine mutual respect and self-government and i think it is extraordinary the moments that we have achieved. >> i am with her. >> look people frequently see the treason of the forest. so forest. so when we're talking about what is left to do we talk about these issues separately, racism classism, sexism well you know i we will worked as a bartender. tell me how to separate my wage for my sexual harassment. i work on poverty issues command we know that the more melanin you have in your skin the more work you have to do to get to the exact same place that i did and i was barely surviving so tell me how we separate race and class when i 1st wrote the thing i used a phrase that my neighbors is lot. it was baby daddy. that is a black coated word. we expect black folks to use that word. i came in for so much hell because it turns out i am white come and everyone had coated in their brain from that word, oh, you must be black. you must be from here, you must be from here. i here. i kept having to tell people, you do realize they're are poor white folks, more of us taking the welfare resources because numbers and statistics are a thing. black folks are 12 or 13% of the of the entire population, sure not 100 percent of snap users. so a lot of my work is just telling people, hey, these things intersect you and you are not paying attention to one and cannot follow one without a holistic look at the others. so the bulk of my work is reminding people i don't care how much your life sucks, you still have it better than someone else and worse than someone else in the question is and how do we make my life for your life better but how do we make it so that no one has an awful life in this country and the wealthiest country in the world. why is it half of our workers don't know how much money they will make next week? what does that say about us as a society and why in the hell is that my problem? i barely have enough power to change the temperature of your french fry without getting yelled at. i think at. i think a lot of the stuff that we have to do is really .out the forest's. >> i love what you said about the separation because what i see, the fight that we are up against right now is a a deliberate fight to separate these issues and treat them as distinct. this is embodied in the chicago school which you might have heard a group of academics trying to tell us that they are often associated with free-market fundamentalism are trying to tell us that we can see economics and politics in splendid isolation each from the other and can have an examination of economic issues here: political issues here. and the roots go back to the beginning of the 20th century 20th century organizing but it is serious, it is about what we are taught taught to read the business pages. we are taught to see these separately. i think we should be talking about race and economics and politics altogether all-time and you said it more eloquently than i could have because that is the way that life is lived. so my real passion now is public financing of elections and antitrust. in the reason i care so much about antitrust is because you see 1st of all antitrust falls apart in 1981 right after a successful civil rights movement. we stop enforcing laws to break a big companies. i don't know where there is a response, but in the reagan era partial response to a successful civil rights movement. and then and then you see this incredible concentration of wealth and power in very few corporations that have lost the political language to deal with it the anti-monopolist, the down with monopoly people of the 19th century were also interested in real problems with race in our country. charles sumner who was flogged on the house of the senate was also a big anti- monopoly organizer. so we have forgotten this incredible part of our history that, i think, is powerful because it connects race, economic power political power in a serious way. but we have forgotten it on purpose because the chicago school as been so well funded to tell us that we can think of each of these things separately. >> a at the teller margaret thatcher joke at the london school of economics, and it was highly inappropriate. i have to tell that story. i i think the problem is largely sold by the internet when we get together in our own separate communities we have people talking about gender issues, talking about class, talking about race and race command what you find is the conversation start to overlap where we see each other. i'm a class to class activist. great. i see folks, friend of mine runs million hoodies, an organization set up after trip on martin. there are women on sir benning, mushy talks about gender a lot and will say the same thing i do about class and not even realize it. and so and so we start to see that basically all of our fights them our own personal take on being disenfranchised. our own personal take an impression, our own personal take on having a power. me i am a woman. i until very recently had no hope of being in the middle class. i was a working-class girl. for me for me my issues are generally gender, sexuality, and class. but that does not mean that everything that i am saying i am saying does not apply to any other issue that you could find. all comes together and the beautiful thing about this new organizing is that we can all see that so clearly that it is inescapable. and that silo owing is going to naturally go away. the new generation of axis i am seeing come up people in their 20s and 30s are very interconnected in a way that i have not seen a lot of counterparts that are maybe 20 or 30 years older for using that kind of 1970s 80s style organizing like we will be on this issue on this issue. again, i am a young person from the internet and want to solve to herself aggrandize but i think that it is good. i think it is going to work out. >> just in line with that i would be i would be remiss if i did not.out the obvious we have an all-female panel appear. rare in many circumstances. but this one in particular talking about the ideas of corruption, poverty, these are political and social challenges. women's challenges. women's voices need to be leading these conversations. in a time where i think internet and social media have a lot to do with this women are really breaking through. wendy davis, even our culture and literary critics what do you all have to say to young women now who have things to say who have that voice and are looking to share it? >> first it is an extraordinary joy and freedom to be political and to be politically engaged. as someone who has been a lot of for life organizing against corruption i do not want to be a part of that world that has dissuaded people from getting involved. i involved. i actually think one thing that is important is for people to get directly involved in electoral work. what i see often is that there is real excitement about working for nonprofits there is real excitement about maybe going to the streets, protesting, and a total disdain total disdain for running for office. i see young women organizing at syracuse a couple months ago and asked her whether she would think about running for office, really have a lot of things to say, really thoughtful deep in the weeds on policy and she said no, no, i can't do that. why not? she did not have an answer. is it because it is corrupt? is it because it is square? showing my age. but she knew it i was i was talking about and said, have corrupt half square. and there is nothing that the head of comcast were j.p. morgan benefits more from then young people not using their power to actually run for office and staying out of the electoral those kids in those kids in hong kong would do anything to have the right to actually be on the ballot. and the and the fact that successfully through some odd combination audiology it has become not the thing to do to get involved politically but not to get involved politically is an incredible boon for those corporations that i am talking about and an incredible loss for people who want self-governing society. so i say absolutely get involved, and i would love to talk to you but please do a politically as well. >> i would say i watched politics like you watch the kardashian's. you kardashian's. you can find anything funnier than lindsey graham talking publicly. [laughter] and i really enjoy that. i like the give-and-take. we can watch these things and be aware and informed if we simply look. and it is politics. you know, but know, but i do think that engagement and awareness is the 1st thing but the most important advice that i have is, find anything you care about and talking fix it. this go find the a thing that is wrong and fix it. whatever that looks like to you, whatever capacity you have, whatever joy it brings you are does not find something wrong that you cannot live with it being like this and don't fix it. and i don't think it gets much more complex than that really. >> this is a stereotype that women are likely to think they need to be the very best person for the job before they choose to seek out the job whereas again this is very broad. men men are more likely to think, i want to do that job therefore i am the right person for the job. so if you're out there thinking, i'm not the best person, i'm not the best person to fix it that is in the question. the question is whether you would like that job to be part of fixing it. >> i would go further and say i am not the best person for this job. i am not the best person for any job. no one should give me power anything like that but they did because the world is an insane place. and as long as the world has the collective delusion that i i am saying something of value i'm going to roll with the. i found that no one else knows how you are. people comment brave, nobody knows your secrets his secret fears no one we will come for you by the things you're worried about. and that fear turns out to be valid but overblown in a lot of cases. so find something wrong and don't fix it. >> and you have no idea how flawed everyone else's. >> oh dude everyone is faking it. they put me up your on a panel. look at the people i'm next to. these people have liked degrees. >> we have a question in the audience. i we will go ahead and see if you can get a microphone over. >> thank you, microphone lady. >> am curious as a corollary to some of the things you have been saying is what you see is effective ways to organize. once you once you get this idea and see something you want to fix the characteristics of effective organization versus an effective organization. you were talking about sort of the big picture, but there are a lot of studies out there that say we get paralyzed when faced with big picture. how do you how do you break it down for the people who do feel empowered? >> i workout class and gender mostly, but you notice i speak a lot about race. that is how you keep the forest and line. this is what i no about, what i am an expert and in makes my heartbeat, what makes me move but all these other things are correlated an important also. you will run across folks who want to work on these issues. all right. be free. go do go do your thing. that is how we get them covered. no one has to specialize in everything but everyone has to specialize in something. do something. do we have weak spots people organizing on an issue closely tied and if so can we get them in some capacity? you know i work on race and gender. i went to ferguson because that is where they needed warm bodies and cameras command i had the time so off i went. and i went. and it is not have to be more important than that. but as far as how to know where to start you start by talking to your neighbor. every time i have been outraged by something it is because someone said something dumb on the internet. and you just talk to them and say, that is a really dumb thing. why would you say that. maybe a little more gently unless your me. you just talk to folks. folks. that is what organizing is, exchanging lines. it does not have to be more formal than that. if you wanted if you wanted to be, the internet exists. you can google it. feminism and 520 groups. some total of human knowledge is in my hand. this is for an incredible. people get mad because you're on your phone all the time. i'm reading wikipedia guys leave me alone. you can find you can find information on the internet which includes organizing resources or you can just call someone that is already organizing and say, how did you get started? that we love nothing more this talk about our own careers, let me tell you. >> two answers. one is that bad organizing is still good. and i think a lot of times -- i have had very strong views on this. i've been organizing for over a decade in one form or another. people would come to me with ideas and i told him the ideas that i thought were bad. i no longer do that because i think that there is almost a bureaucratic quality to organizing on the democratic left where we wait for the perfect and lose extraordinary opportunities to learn. as a good friend of mine said, everyone needs to reinvent the wheel and organizing is if you just tell people don't do this don't this, don't do that then they never learn for themselves. and 2nd i do have some ideas. one, i did not finish the story on tracking. they followed andrew cuomo around for five years. i think that in person present protests of those in power is incredibly important, whether those in power or your governor or city counselor or someone who is running the corporation or someone who -- whoever that is figure out who is in power and then being present. whether online whether online or off-line meetings with a small group of people ideally under 12 is important. meetings over 12 people, you feel good that a lot of people showed up, but one or two people end up taking responsibility instead of the small cluster. so three to 12 groups of people, i think, think is incredibly powerful for figuring out core organizing it is always important to check your tendency to be afraid. the natural tendency is to say if i i do this and i'm going to lose this hour. this salad is not agree with me on this or that. and that leads and that leads to an enormous amount of silence. the problem is, there is a real risk of speaking, but i actually think that we need a lot more speaking. so openly saying what your.of view is there is energy in that. so much of what we need in politics is self energy and people being drawn to that energy. i love organizing. and every situation is different. >> go ahead and start hearing from you all out there. >> maybe this is an extension of what this other woman asked, but what about measuring specter. for example we saw hundreds of thousands of people out there on occupied. what do you think -- is that effective? was that effective? what came of it? you know probably i also would ask, say, about the walmart or mcdonald's thing. we are hearing more about, zero, they are going to raise wages for some people. i i still don't know what that means when i read that. raise wages for some people. you know, we are talking big, not the small little organizing group. those groups got very big, but were they effective? >> a lot of different questions are embedded in that. one, occupied did change the language in a serious way. 99 percent the 1 percent talking about inequality had been latent and became a fundamental part of our political dialogue. that does not mean that changed today or it or whatever. everything that occupy everything that occupy might have wanted, but there was a real change their. but another question you are asking about why should i engage if i do not know that there will be something that is effective? i would say about anyone of these fights that we are talking about taking on power. is really what we're talking about in most of these. some areas we are not. perhaps perhaps with legalizing are decriminalizing marijuana, that may not be a fight against entrenched power. it's a fight about changing attitude. most of the fights we are talking about our fight against taking on power. the odds are you will lose. so if i were a rich man -- [laughter] -- i would i would not be looking for those situations where i thought there was a 51% 51 percent or greater chance of winning because those are incredibly where. i would be looking for situations in which there was a chance of winning which may mean one in ten tanzer one and 15 chance but if you look at an incredibly successful event recently the fcc -- i am very clear about my politics. you may disagree, but i am clear. the fcc announced they would be net neutrality. i didn't power map a a couple years ago and it was impossible. so if you say should we bet on net neutrality based on who is engaged and who might be involved? the answer is, is no we should not engage because it is actually impossible. they organized with great generosity, different groups came together very outspoken and clear and one. it does not mean i was wrong a year ago. it means that we cannot see the future, which is both what is so terrifying and so wonderful about politics. >> i would add i would add that there are different things that we are trying to change. zephyr clearly is politically active about numbers and data and how to have a plan and a very firm idea of what it is that she does for a living. i, on the other hand, talk to people. >> that's not fair. i talked to people, to. >> i mean, but i don't do anything measurable. the only thing that is measurable about my work is my book sales. and let me tell you in a whole lot of burger king workers buying that at 2795. i have no idea how much impact my work is had. what i do know is that there are people who are top-level organizers who do the actual strategy, the actual numbers and the moving around and then they're are people who do not have that talent. my talent is in having conversations with people. i have shifted hundreds, if not thousands of mines. i no that because i see my e-mail inbox. is that different really? you need both. you need people that are look, i'm on newsmax to the talking to conservatives when i am liberal. zephyr is very partisan and that is the path she took in her career, and neither of those have more or less value. what it comes down to his measuring the effectiveness of occupy. i am not a huge fan of the people who would think that camping is a fantastic idea in a city. they are just not my people. fine. but what they did was tell all of america that you could do that. and that and that subtle change -- and i we will go back to ferguson kaman night three, the 1st night that they gave us a space that we were legally allowed to stay out past curfew because they were sending everyone home part of where the violence was happening, pushing folks that need to do needed due process. they finally got smart and so we will give you this lot a group of kids they call themselves lost voices 14 started occupy. these are 15 -year-old kids from st. louis years after occupy happened, but they knew that they could just a there and refused to leave, and the reason they knew that was that they heard somewhere that some people did something like that that's what they told me. how do how do you gauge effectiveness? i think it's kind of impossible. i understand why you want the metric. but there are some things you can put a metric on in some things you can't. >> culture, art conversations, these are actually the things that all these structures hang on. fundamentally it comes down to, i think, a moral vision about what kind of world we want to have command expressing that world vision is the only way in which we have previously cost change. we can look at the different moving elements of this. >> i really agree i really agree with that. >> i recognize you from yesterday. that may come down front 1st year. year. i think a microphone is coming to you. >> about going for what you can when is not given to us. >> not giving us our -- [inaudible conversations] >> it is not. [inaudible] he spoke that chicago school tried to split up all the struggle of racism and sexism. i have been hearing the word hierarchy here more. it seems to be about the union. ky are. and i am -- it does seem a useful idea. >> it is. i is. i think that when you are talking about hierarchies and power it is important to remember, at least from an organizing side that whoever needs that help most right now is on top. it top. it does not matter your issue, who is in charge, you will have people fighting about stuff. no one will remember your name if you were the 1st one to a protest. the.is that you went and that warm body was there. but i. but i think that when we are trying to value our own work and what we're going to put our energies and how we understand what we are best after almost passionate about, about, most effective at and who needs the help most. is it the thing that i have on right now, or someone else's thing and then they will come in time and help me. as far as hierarchy that is how i formed. we got one more question appear. >> couple quick comments and concerned that shift the conversation a little. i think measuring is elusive yesterday i saw on the news that in frankfurt germany they are using occupy language. they are lining up the street. so that is influence and it is a little harder to put a metric on it but it certainly is effective. secondly an example of stove piping while the younger generation coming up, i up i think, does have a very different understanding of this, when you talk about something like equal pay for women or women's equality you cannot talk about that without talking about reproductive rights. they are also linked. and so the language in washington needs to incorporate that. the language or does which is why put it out there. one word i have not heard enough today and on this panel is the word community. we are talking a lot about organizing, but one of my concerns is, even as we create online communities and we have people organizing and meeting up the street, my fear and in meeting rooms my fear is a loss of committee in other ways that used to support people. and i wonder if you can talk about that and finally here is a little dance -- >> you are the best. , my gosh. i can't even do that. >> i have to take my scarf off. >> we won't put you through that. >> i'm good for like the whole panel now. i believe that the best kind of organizing creates community. i sometimes think the word organizing makes people who want to be political feel like it is another thing because it sounds scary and difficult, complicated a strategic whereas if you say i want to have people over to talk about fixing a stop sign banning tracking not not i want you to come over as an organizer. that is a little more inviting. i pushed the idea of meetings where you can have a beer, a beer have breakfast together, but some kind of other ties essential one of the things when i was -- after sb 1070 was passed, 1070 was passed, i don't know if you remember this in arizona my spent the summer they're working with a candidate who was opposed to sb 1070. all these incredibly long powerful marches 5 miles from 8 miles, 10 miles. what is with the tradition of these marches? in the tradition is in part that people spend time together not just as a symbol but to show that when someone gets sick and needs what are they will help them. if you know someone will help you with a glass of water on saturday in arizona and they will also help you out in the way that man is talking about three years and now when you're working on different things in creating the kind of trust that is absolutely essential, i believe that one of our jobs are now is to lay out a positive vision of the world that could be includes community, for me is all incredibly diverse, exciting small business economy with an extraordinary amount of innovation in life and community that comes out of the market. it is a celebration of a different vision of the market command i think i think if we can lay out that vision is a positive vision that involves all of us in this way and so many of our fears because right going to have those fears and those moments that may last year's. it just it just gets in the way of action. i've never liked the term community organizing never have. it seems to me i like a special focus club where people who understand the terminology can go and do stuff that may or may not affect me, but i have never felt connected to that term. most of the people i no have never felt connected to the term. because what we're doing is fighting for dignity and respect fighting for human rights, fighting to call ourselves as valuable as everyone else's. i do not think that has anything to do with communities or organizing. it has to do with being human. and my fight is not organized. i don't fight in organized fight. i fight -- anytime i see somebody being told that they are not good enough for any reason for any reason bring them along and you should not do that. but for me it is not about -- i think community organizing as far as i understand it is much more of a specific outcomes and specific actions. we would like to get this law passed, see this rule change, get this nonprofit set up and funded. my work is about all of human dignity. it does not matter what it looks like. i don't like seeing people marginalized and oppressed. and that, i don't think has a lot to do with the laws we have passed. if you did we would not see so many people marching away from the press. were we able to politically pass a law that said you cannot be a jerk your neighbor i would run afoul of that law incredibly quickly. but i do think that -- >> wait, wait, wait. >> so do you believe that the way we fund campaigns does not matter? >> i think it matters inherently. >> that is what i said. >> it is an extra layer. so layer. so you have campaign-finance regulations, citizens united am a corporations are people, the coke brothers will spend however many billions of dollars it took them to buy this next election. that is all going to happen. underlying that for me is a fundamental lack of respect for people who don't have a bank account your size. this is where we come at it. >> i just wanted to see. i think i agree with you up to a.in a.and then you said you did not the laws mattered. to me that would be the dangerous step command i do see that step with some people i guess i don't have any other word to use organizing. >> someone up they're. >> but i think it leads to a kind of withdrawal. >> the clarity year is that the lot absolutely matters. you cannot legislate respect. you cannot legislate the other people give people dignity. you cannot fix that with law. >> but there is a dynamic relationship. a dynamic relationship. if you have a public financing system, what you are saying is do not spend all your time as a sycophant to a handful of wealthy people. you may not respect everybody, but at least your tendencies to have a broad respect and be encouraged. there is a dynamic interaction between line respect. >> it is a question of where we come at it from because i have never once -- for example, there are laws that say that if you run a restaurant you have to provide safety equipment for your own sake. that is incredibly solid. even when i reported it multiple times i still had a pair of other laws that we cannot get the companies been $35. now, the fact that the law exists was no protection. me the way i see me the way i see it from my experience and my fight is to go to the people that would not buy the club and make explain himself to me. >> but you could also go to a court of law and get a lawyer and have a weapon in your hand. i'm sorry. >> that actually is fantastic. decriminalizing marijuana. these are cause with which the people they can beat the people. >> assume that you made $213 a week, the sole support. tell me where you we will find a lawyer and how much money you have for a cushion to wait for the eeoc to decide to do his job? tell me. >> maybe you try to engage people's compassion, but if you know the law you can use it as a weapon to achieve your objectives, and i have to disagree with you. >> is a fair disagreement but i we will tell you this i am eloquent i am intelligent, i am a very very accomplished person. had i been able to access a lawyer, honey, don't think i didn't drive. i called 18 i called 18 lawyers, 14 locally, city and state legislators can senators said the damn letter to the white house. i could not get my oven gloves. >> you persisted and here you are and all of us are listening to say that. >> and that is fantastic fantastic, but tell me about the 45 million other people the still don't. >> but i love this. people -- people formerly known as the audience. >> i love that. >> but i think you and i deeply agree on this. this. i just want to check. >> i think -- i think we need the different ways to get to it. >> i think that is right. >> so we are right up against the record now. i did not want to interrupt that great conversation. to finish to finish i we will say, just ask really quickly since we have a room a room full of but festival people, in a recent interview you said i think when he more poetry and politics. politics. we have a room full of writers and readers are. very quickly you know talk, talk to the writers and readers about their role in organizing and all of this and quickly what you would say to them in terms of doing their work. >> well, hundred lord well under lord says that the difference between poetry and rhetoric is that you kill yourselves instead of you children. she wrote this palm after the shooting of a teenage boy by some police officers several years ago in response to the rhetoric that was used to explain the killing. so i believe that in order to engage in a new political moment we need a more poetic moment where we're putting our whole cells in our whole souls online instead of using simply crafted phrases >> i am not a poet. [laughter] the mold -- the more poetic writers. look, i think that organizing is about expressing an idea and bring people to come around to some kind of understanding which obviously requires words them a but a but i do not think they have to be good, eloquent, anything but true. and if you say enough true things people will eventually understand what you are trying to say. you can have disagreements and political fights and spats and all sorts of different on commonalities. you just saw zephyr and i go no no no. it is really just about saying true words and eventually someone we will understand what you mean. >> please help me thank zephyr and linda. [applause] >> i do have one more thing i always tell my panelists them if you have a question or concern or think of it in five days or five hours my e-mail address is bootstrap industries @gmail.com.@gmail .com. you can find me on twitter at killer martinis. it is my job to answer questions that people have. if you have some, please absent. bootstrap industries@gmail .com. >> and if you have comments or questions to me right bootstrap's industries. >> a singular bootstrap, and i will forward everything to zephyr, all of my e-mail comes to you now. [laughter] >> and we have her books up front. they may be able to stick around for a little bit of people want to come up and talk or have both signed. thank you for being here. please complete your evaluation forms. forms. and please one more round of applause. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> book tv continues with more from charlottesville virginia. next, a panel on money and politics. .. this event is it is going on you can do it at hash tag the abook2015 and i say that is if i had any idea of what i just said. on behalf of the virginia foundation of humanities, the sponsor for the va festival of the book i would like to welcome you to this program. my name is josh wheeler, director of the thomas jefferson center for the protection of free expression. the sponsor of today's event. this is the 21st va festival of the book. this is also the 20 fifth anniversary of the thomas jefferson center and it is a source of great pride at the thomas jefferson center of the we have been involved in every one of the 21 edition of the va festival of the book. we believe one of the best ways to combat censorship and protect free expression is to remind people of the tremendous societal benefits that we received when we have a society in which people, artists authors can explore any idea subject, what better way to celebrate and protect free expression than the va festival of the book. this is an incredible festival, it is done at no charge but that doesn't mean it doesn't cost money to perform. if you agreed that you feel this is something that is worth supporting i hope you will turn to v abook.org after the program and support the va festival of the book. also learn more about the thomas jefferson center you can do so by visiting our web site at tjcenter.org. the title of this session is twisted quote the competitive world of competition and crochet. that is not right. [laughter] >> i brought the wrong notes. >> you have us worried. >> no. today's session does have a first amendment free-speech aspect to it and the question is an issue that we have explored and is talked about very much, very timely when money speaks, who will be heard? this is a discussion about the recent supreme court decisions regarding limits on campaign finance, limits on using money in election campaigns. to discuss this topic we could not have asked for or received two more qualified participants. ronald collins 11 is an old friend of the thomas jefferson center but old-time the age. and of this festival. he has come to participate in a panel we sponsored. he served on the law review from the university of california and santa barbara. after working with the legal aid foundation of los angeles and legal aid society of orange county ron went on to be a teaching fellow at stanford law school and taught at a number of leading law schools across the country. what i would like to emphasize, both of these gentlemen, too many accomplishments but i would like to focus with ron said he is an incredible scholar and prolific author. a partial listing of some of the books he authored, co-authored and edited. the fundamental holmes, a free seat chronicle of reader, we must not be afraid to be free, stories about free speech in america the death of discourse, the trials of many bruce the fundamental hugo black, and 2013 he published three books absolutism the first amendment followed by a mania:the story of the outrage and outrageous lies but wants the generation and on decent, its meaning in america. we are here today to talk about one of his more recent books, "when money speaks," the mexican decision, campaign finance laws and the first amendment is somehow wrong also finds time to teach and in 2012 he received

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