Transcripts For CSPAN2 Young Radicals 20170611

Can hear you. Before we begin todays program we have ask that you silence your phone. Please welcome our interviewer today alexander. [applause] thank you, thank you for coming. Not quite the afternoon yet but neither is the morning. Were talking about the times we live in. So i will take advantage of that. We have a little plan, jeremy is going to tell you a little bit about his book, so i dont support it but also hes going to read from it so you get the idea of what it is about. The book is called young radicals in the war for american ideals. I read it and i loved it so please welcome jeremy mccarter. [applause] thank you, there we are. Good morning or afternoon. As alexander said. I would like us to go on a little trip right now, i want you to try to imagine your way out of the moment of crisis we are in as a country, i want you to think about the time we werent looking ahead with dread about the next bad thing that might happen but we were looking ahead with hope toward the next phase of progress that might come our way. I want you to think about a time when the institutions of our democracy were strong and were not under assault and there was this moment of your politics, you can feel there is this feeling of it dishonesty in washington. The moment i want you to think back to his last summer. Because by some crazy coincidence, exactly one year ago this morning, or afternoon, i was standing on the spot 80 at this exact lectern, those cameras rolling, maybe some of you in the audience, same unbelievable heat happening outside. To talk about a book. The book was different that day. It was the Hamilton Book i wrote with my friend lynn manwell. The real difference is in what was in all our heads that morning. Because that morning, i think most of us assumed that the progress that this country had made over the last few years was bound to continue. That week it seemed we were on the verge of electing a woman president. That was the week Hillary Clinton clinched the nomination. She had won the votes she needed in the primary that week, president obama had endorsed her. The morning i stood here the New York Times wrote this Hillary Clinton enters the general election with considerable advantages over donald to j trump. She has a stronger and better phone founded organization in the electoral map is tilted in her favor. We know how that turned out. I think a lot of people took that for granted that morning and i certainly took it for granted to. And i should have taken it for granted less than anybody else. I want to explain why because i think its the best way i can try to explain the book in the context of what happened to us lately. For 5 and a half years and before election night, i had been writing, ive been involved in these two projects about american history. I got to the backstage at hamilton and watched what my friend lynn create this mender masterpiece and one of the reasons hamilton is so compelling is because he doesnt just show you what happened, that show makes you feel that it didnt have to happen. Theres this sense of this precipitation danger in what theyre doing. Im assuming lots of you heard the show but you know that the conditional tense is there a lot. They sing, hamilton sing to their children if we lay a Strong Enough foundation. They know it might not work. I wrote this book with lynn and i got to go back to the other project at 5 and a half years ago which is my book young radicals. This is a book about this unbelievable moment of progress in the years right before world war i. All at once, socialism, progressivism, modernism and feminism served and the people i wanted to write about are these young idealists were trying to push progress even faster. Now, the problem is that that moment right before the war with all of this stuff was happening and it like that. Woodrow wilson the country into war in 1917, climate where all these good things happen was gone. To be an idealist after the United States went into war against germany to be an enemy of the state. It was all these young idealists could do to hang on to their liberty in their lives. Let alone dreaming about a better tomorrow. We forgotten about how bad it got in this country in world war i and the more the present looks like world war i, the more concerning is for me. I mean to say is i spent 5 and a half years with these two projects which should have taught me not to take things for granted. To know, try to imagine how it felt when the world turned out to the opposite of what you expected it to be and when that happened to me, to all of us on election night, i still wasnt ready for it. I even have from that night what we have learned lately is called contemporaneous accounts. At 11 30 1 pm, chicago time on election night. At around the time when it was clear that pennsylvania was slipping away, ice sent an email to my editor and this is what he said. I feel like im living my book. I also feel nauseous. Its strange to spend five years on a project and at the very end, have it meaning Something Different from what you thought it meant. I thought i was writing a book about the chapter in american ideals that we could recover as we were entering a new phase of american ideals and what happened on that night as it became a very different story. The events of what happened 100 years ago didnt change but the way the landscape can look different daytime and nighttime, only everything seemed different but i realize then its a story about how you keep fighting for your ideals when the building youre sitting in is on fire. This gave me a couple new insights as you can imagine. Even for people who still ultimately got what they wanted, like alice paul, the militant suffragist, the cost was so much higher because the United States went into war and everyone went crazy. The repression,censorship, race riot, when i realized , i got a slightly better feel for this word hope that we all toss around. And hope that seems so essential to our progress. I think if you had asked anybody, if i had thought to ask from the state, do you think hillary is going to win you wouldve said i hope so. Everyone that she was going to win. Yet after the election, one of the things i heard a lot of people say is if only we had known, if only i had known that this could happen, if only i thought it was possible that the election could have turned out this way, i have wouldve worked so much harder, theres so many things i wouldve done differently, i wouldve knocked on doors or made phone calls or anything like that. What i realize about hope is that if were talking about hope as assessment, as a feeling and not as a step towards action, then both is actually worse than useless because hope in that sense is only breeding complacency. And complacent people lose. I think it now in terms of the way i think about charity. When we say that someone is charitable, what we dont mean is that they feel kindly towards other people, we do terrible things to help people in their communities. So i got much more interested in hope as a fuel for action and action as something that creates progress. But what i want to do now before we start our conversation and read a section of this book is that to me is a kind of case study in this kind of hope, this active hope when the building is on fire. This is a part of the book as things start to come apart and come apart very quickly. Is a little concerning the way the 2017 is like 1917 because you cant believe how fast things went backwards in this country. Woodrow wilson gave his worst beach about going into war to make the world a safer democracy on april 2. Two weeks later, we created the committee on public information, the First Federal propaganda operation the United States had ever had. A month after that, the Selection Service act passes which means now we got a draft. A month after that, the espionage act was passed. You may have heard about this lately because of the leader thats been arrested was charged under the espionage act. The espionage act made it illegal certain things that were against leaking secrets to enemies overseas but it was also a censorship. It was to stifle dissent. It was to prevent people who might not agree with the war from interfering with enlistment. The course, that could be a pride broadly or narrowly in the condition of wartime, it was applied very broadly. Only only three months after the United States goes to war, most of the socialist publications in this country have been threatened or shut down under the espionage act and one of them is one that was a big focus of my story up to that point was called the masses. The masses is a magazine unlike any we have today. Try to imagine the most beautiful magazine youve ever seen. It was an art magazine but the words and it were flaming red calls for revolution. It was funny, it was a reference, it printed things that the moneymaking press wouldnt talk. It was an index of radical causes and easier and it was a sign of how the art rebels and political rebels were the same people. Its editor was max easton, a young, handsome charismatic editor poet who was in a disastrous marriage and felt he fell in love with an actor named lawrence deshawn. He was a kind of comic figure which made him a good match his friend john reed who a lot of people know from Lauren Beatty still red. These men and read fashioned the masses into something that would pursue revolution with a light heart. They were also leading to founding members of the town players. This is what i mean about the way the art rebels and political rebels were the same people. Theres this great play by susan castell call the people. Its a fictionalization of what it was like for them at the masses, to be changing the world when you have to change all your Writers Strike things. Artists profits. The masses was shut down by the Wilson Administration in 1917. At the point of this account im about to read you, the legal action was still underway. The end had come and easton was still looking for ways to get his message out even though he didnt have a magazine to do it at this point. This is like a 10 minute section in the book. And i just want you to try to imagine this on november 9, the morning after the election when i opened my laptop and got back to work, this was the exact section i was looking at. I spent the whole winter trying to think of the worst possible consequences are going to war and advertising in the public press but i never succeeded in thinking up anything half so bad is this, eastman told the new york crowd that summer of 1917. The attack on the masses is only one part of what hes describing. A month after the passage of the espionage act he marvels the American Government has the socialist press more quickly and completely than the germans did. You cant even collect your thoughts without getting arrested for unlawful assemblage, he continues. They give you 90 days for quoting the declaration of independence, for six months for quoting the bible and soon somebodys going to get a life sentence for quoting Woodrow Wilson in the wrong connection. This speech is one of the first event held by the similarities zero. This offshoot of the American Union against militarism. It seeks to promote a couple ideas that that are novel to america in 1917, there is an Intrinsic Value to free speech for everybody, not just the better sort of citizen. That American Free speech deserves adequate legal aid. The need for this work grows so fast that the organizations leaders Roger Baldwin and kristin make beautiful independent organization that will soon be called the American Civil Liberties union. Refusing to email magazines maybe the miles form of repression that summer. The president declares that unanimity is necessary for victory, officers of his government taken literally. Any form of organized suppression or organized opposition and even many private dissent comes to be regarded as dangerous and disloyal. Chicago here, federal agents read the headquarters of the socialist party. Big bill haywood and more than 100 members of the eye iw are rounded up in a mass arrest had in new york, socialist meetings and antidescription rallies are disrupted. In boston, soldiers break up a piece parade. We always use to say that certain things would happenin this country if militarism came , writes john reed. They are happening. The most grievous harm that summer isnt perpetrated by the government but its what americans inflict on one another. While the department of justice is wrapping up his bureau of investigation of what will come the fbi, attorney general Thomas Gregory ask every loyal american to be what he calls a voluntary detective, reporting any suspicious activity. It is often swamped by thousands of reports every day. People who are so eager to spy on their neighbors are likely to stop there. In san jose, a brewery worker is hard, feathered and chained to a cannon in a public park for making progerman remarks. And it probably still Illinois Citizen is dragged from his phone by a model 500 people and accused of being a german spy, wrapped in the American Flag and murder. Sometimes the violence doesnt have much to do with germany. And its nearly a cover for oldfashioned industrial warfare against the workers. In busy arizona, 1200 striking miners and their allies are herded into cattle cars, shunted out to the desert and left there without food or water. The worst violence befalls black americans. As northern workers enlist in the armor army, black families warm up from the south to take their places. In east st. Louis a volatile mixture of factory workers, Union Members and black newcomers explode in race riots that leave more than a dozen day. Eastman rightly connects this violence to americas shameful tradition of lynching. He notes in the masses that a black man has been lynched in this country every four days since 1885. His only mistake is called is the culmination of that legacy. The most striking fact about all this economic and social violence is how little is perpetrated by rabblerousers or outlaws longstanding. Much of the organized repression including the slacker raids use to round up or intimidate thousands of young men was instigated by organizations such as the american protectively, the National Security league and the American Defense society. Their members are primarily businessmen, lawyers, community leaders, upstanding citizens of one kind or another. Strange how little it takes to turn a banker into a vigilante. The masses which keeps a running account of these horrors reprint the quote from the wall street journal, we are now at war and militant pacifists are earnestly reminded there is no shortage of health or lampposts. Medical organizations persist anyway. The Peoples Council arranges speaking tours in the midwest but will give speeches . It requires more than idealistic commitment and oratorical flair to stand up for radical ideals in 1917. It requires raw physical currents. Does not sound like a job for max eastman. In his 34 years, maxis own little interest in throwing a punch and less in taking one. Is one reason why you like john reed so much. His wiring belligerence complements his political desire to invite his needs. Summer of 1917 is a particularly dangerous time for easement. If you with the post office get to name an enemy within my new york tribune. Still, eastman is troubled by a gap between his words and actions. Provide years he has been spouting statements of revolution of the masses. He thinks of plato, the subject of his longago studies at columbia who was invited to trade security of athens or the pharisees where he would help the licentious young ruler to become a philosopher king. I feared to see myself nothing but words, plato wrote, explaining why he chose to go. In the summer of 1917 easement makes the same choice. He does so knowing how things turned out for plato. The world greatest philosopher got detained by people in syracuse which improved not a bit because of his teaching. In august in the midst of his fight with the post office, eastman bids farewell is the love of lawrence to sean and board the train. It takes him from new york to detroit and into chicago and two points west. As nervous as a rabbit all night, he told florence. Some of the crowd that he addresses are receptive, some are stolen. The whole thing comes to seem absurd. Initially hot, the train rattles camp and he fantasizes about telling the tour organizers that he is dying or that he has enlisted in the army. On top of Everything Else, florez stopped answering his letters. This is the most difficult thing i ever did in my life and i do mark your help, he writes. You dont know how loyal it is to be alone with all the power and prestige against you. In this downcast heart sick state, he arrives in fargo. From the moment he steps off the train, seem wrong. Ominously wrong. All of the meeting calls are close to him. The proprietor of his hotel tells him if he tried to give a speech under his roof, he will shoot eastman himself. Max improvises andmakes a plan to speak outdoors at a busy intersection in the center of town. The local militia announces they will hold a rally next to his meeting site with a right. Be prudent course is to do nothing. Stay silent, move on. Eastman a child of two ministers wildly overcompensates. He decides to make a stand. That night hundreds of people jammed the Fargo Civic Center and hundreds more luster outside. Some want to hear his message, others want to make trouble. More than a few just want to see how badly things are going to go. The answer is very, very badly. Five minutes in his speech, the door burst open and a half dozen soldiers stream into the room. Low in a row, begin the torso he thinks. Eastman tries wrong by inviting them to sit on stage. Even backs up a few sentences in his speech so they can follow his argument. The russians have offered germany civilized terms, no annexations and no indemnities but the president , president wilson hasnt responded. Wilson is even refusing to answer a letter from the pope who is trying to broker a peace based on those terms. Eastman demands that wilson state his intentions clearly and prove once and for all that hes waging a war for democracy. The soldiers shouting down. Touching show of faith and democracy, eastman proposes a vote on whether he should get going. All 11 people in the audience raise their hands. The motion rose anyway. Are we goingto work for a cause that has been officially announced, yells easement . Yes, patriots yelled back. Its not the answer max wants. Hes frustrated,baffled, why did the vast majority of his listeners , those who raise their hands remain silent, leaving only the disruptive minority to speak. Why will they fight . Only later does he realize that those quiet midwesterners had done him a favor. They noted at thefirst sign of real resistance, he could be shot. The door bangs open. More soldiers pour in. Company to the front, somebody shout. Troops rushed the stage. In a flash, 15 men surrounded eastman. All the ladies will please leave the building, one of them shots. Eastman hold his ground. This escalating terror held in check but by his desire not to let everybody see how terrified he is. The soldiers do a gloomy rendition of the dear old flag. Its too loud for easement to be her area leaves the stage, coupled with his host. One of them says if you were eastman, he would start giving a speech about Something Else eastman refuses. He would literally rather die and rollover that way. Soldiers now sing on every side. Max feels call despite his growing certainty hes about to be beaten, maybe lynched. He wouldnt be the first. He thinks of florence. Then, reallife fears for the theater. Flash of north dakota. A communicative woman emerges from the crowd she says that she has traveled a long way to meeastman , to tell him how much she loves the masses. This is almost precisely what happened to his alter ego in the student black hills play the people ask eastman the Guardian Angel stands near him hoping it might prevent or at least slow down whatever the soldiers plan to do to him. Max thinks maybe she saved his life. The soldiers are singing the starspangled banner now and when two men refused to stand, they are dirt patriotically to their feet. It is maxes you to go. He walks through the gerund crowd and steps through the door with extreme leisure , he will insist to florence later. Another crowd knows outside but once he stepped into it, he disappears. None of them know what he looks like. Couple of friendly locals spot him and whisk into a house where he will be safe. Somebody calls to warn him not to go back to his hotel. Around by soldiers, some say they want to throw him a necktie party, he appears. But max shouldnt stay where he is either because soldiers are on their way there too. Eastmans post give him a hat and coat to disguise himself and a loaded revolver for when the disguise fails. He dots outside, through the neighbors yard and behind a bush where he waits until a car up. He lies on the floor of the back seat with the gun. He feels sick. He feels cold. He makes it past the posse and out of town. Across the state line and keep striving. He thinks he loves that gun more than any other object in his whole life. Next is desperate to get back to new york and to florence. He tells her so in a terror rattled, nonsensical letter writing so again, to prove that i am a man that i am not, i am a baby and i your for your breasts. My beautiful and beloved, i want to lie down in your arms, that is all i want. Except he doesnt go home. Not yet. Eastman is scheduled to give one more speech in defense of his ideals, he gathers up his tattered courage and he gets it. Thank you. Its a great passage in a great book, ill talk with Everything Else, this is a very compelling page turning read because even though you know the outcome , and whats going happen, there are stories of people in the book are extremely compelling and interesting. I would like us to track back and tell us who the young radicals are, there are the five main characters and what are the outliers of the story . The five are not self identified group. I picked them because i thought i liked the way they hung together as a story and the relationships among them. There are a few harder classmates and friends, classmates turned rifles. Theres max eastman who is a poet and a socialist editor of this magazine who had always misadventures. Theres paul as i mentioned, you know it and suffer just to is a political genius and unbelievably brave even when things went south. And then randolph for, and unjustly overlooked critic turned profit who saw things in this era that most of us contemporaries and understood things about america a lot of people dont even understand today. What was the connection between the five . There was an endless field of possibilities around those times. This mania, theres idea wells who shows up in the book a little bit. Why these five . What kind of stories could you get out of focusing on them . Part of it was by radical, you didnt want an adjustment of the tax rate. These people wanted fundamental change in american society. Thats the radical part. The young parties, i went into this because i thought the arrow was interesting. I thought thepersonalities were interesting and at some point , forum started telling me what the book was going to be about. If its going to be about young people who have the most change over the course of these years, then you start looking at well, its going to be people born in the 1880s because theyre going to be entering public life in a significant way around 1912. So then that immediately makes an error in ida wells who is an incredible figure is already out of contention because she is a giant of American Life from the 1890s on. Once you start looking at people leaving their colleges, you start thinking what is the shape of this story exactly . And i was struggling with how to think about it and as they say in the introduction, i had the same experience they which is to find the answer to my puzzle in the writings of William James because james the philosopher and psychologist tried to describe how we move through life for this overwhelming, we can choose among many options. And he used the image of a constellation. He said that you look at the stars in the sky and when you pick out a group of them and give them a name and we follow them and thats how we know where we are. I thought well, these five just feel right to me. They feel like they tell a story it would be worth following so thats my constellation. You could absolutely rerun it with five or 10 who are these five. In relation to that constellation we follow, i think significant, its a formal choice in some ways that at the same time as a moral, political implication. If you married all the stories and present text, whats behind it . Part of it is i talked to my editor a lot. It is in some ways, its a technical thing because i wanted it to start in 1912 but i also knew i was going to need to, how do you know when youre in the now in the book and before in the book . Youre talking about from us in the 21st century talking about two separate moments in the past, one way to distinguish them is that where in the now in the narrative in the present sense and the other is that it felt like now. I started to draft in the past tense and switched it to the present tense and it was easier for me to feel my way into the struggle because they do feel very close to me. When one wasnt present tense it was easier to find a way to express that. One of the essential characters in the stories in the book, and essential for recognizing the constellations is Woodrow Wilson. Who you know, was kind of in the middle of a crisis of identity. Hes interesting in more ways than one. Could you tell us a bit more not about Woodrow Wilson, a lot of people know what is the relevance of Woodrow Wilson in the lives of these five young radicals . Woodrow wilson is a complex and contradictory figure and i admire him and he makes me crazy so much of the time. He was like many of these five, he was an intellectual, he was a scholar. He wrote books about democracy, decided to go in politics and in less than three years went from someone who had never run for office to the president of the unitedstates. Thats not novel today but it was in 1912 when he won. And what you see is the same sort of change happening for him area he was approachable to these radicals, max eastman got to see him quite a bit. Walter whitman wassomebody , some newspaper reporters and whitman was the fairhaired board of the Wilson Administration. You see someone in wilson who is fighting for some of the right things. Hes fighting to end Economic Justice and the horrendous income inequality of that era but hes also unbelievable racist, not by the standards of our area, by the standards of his. People at the time knew he had these retrograde views about people of color. And what you see in that, theres this moment and its amazing to me that we dont marvel more. The great wilson speech is not a war speech about making the world safe for democracy. The great wilson speech is peace about victory she gave six weeks earlier, this is when he goes to the senate and says this is what america stands for. We want to create a family of nations, a new International Order that will spare us or having going to war like the powers are fighting and across the political spectrum, people embrace this. It was a great moment in our, the progress of american ideals and reasons that still are entirely clear to people, six weeks later he changes his mind. We know that the germans are seeking american ships again, there was the Zimmerman Telegram at the German Family thought they were going to get mexico to invade united. It doesnt get us to the point where he says actually its better to five. And then his relationship to these five completely changes because now hes not the sometimes hopeful leaders of impulse in the right place. Hes trying to break them. I want to ask you a question thats a little more widely ranging or at least more political. Heres a book about a group of people in 1970, a century ago. For us it is time seemed to be changing so fast and as you said in the past six months so much has unraveled and so much more will unravel in the next couple years or maybe even couple of months. So its philosophical but also an ethical question, why study something that happened 100 years ago . Why look for continuity in a situation in a country where this continuity is overbearing . There are lots of clichcs that sort of answer the question. If we dont study the past, we are doomed to repeat it. Partly its because there are a bunch of different ways to write a book about stuff that happened 100 years ago. You can make a strong argument based on what happened, you can do a survey about what happened and i had , i went back and forth to my editor about this a lot. I just wanted to tell the story. And i wanted to leave it to readers were picking up now to make whatever they want of what happened. As it happens, thats not quite possible in the way that i thought it was going to be because the world has now brought us right back to 1917 in a lot of ways. But you know, its funny. I started writing this book before i got involved with hansen but there is something marvelous and frequently miraculous about this countrys story. And what i found in the research i did for the Hamilton Book applies to why i wanted to write this book, i guess, even though i started writing this book 1st. In the 1770s and 1780s, these guys really had the explicit feeling that if popular government was ever going to work, ever, it was going to have to be here. We never have a better chance to work andthose guys did. Its the last best hope. I still kind of field. Its taking too long to get there, its continues to take too long to get the ones that we had and maybe its going backwards now but i just thought theres something in this moment 100 years agowhen they had bigger and more vibrant and more vivid dreams and we tried to like, figure out what inspired them. And do better in our time. Speaking of ideals, one of those things when i was reading now, what exactly makes these ideals american . Its socialist, is not an american ideal but there are obviously people who share the idea and at some point the russians hijacked it and ruined it for several generations but it was not an american ideal as such. The womens right to vote, that had been passed before that or at least it was considered. It was not simply speaking and american ideal so among these fivepeople, what exactly identifies the ideals or ideological positions . I guess american ideals could mean ideals americans area and its not quite the sense i meant it. I meant it more ideals of americans that its true that socialism gets its income from the United States but in 1912 when eastman and read, when i saw those stories it before the russian revolution. The traditions they are attaching to it are homegrown traditions. This is the year when eugene debs wins six percent of the popular vote in the president ial race. And there are great books about this but i wanted to watch it happen and see what it felt like to be a socialist when that wavehits , suddenly socialism isnt what debs has been saying, is what lenin has been saying and its not this messy polyglot heterogeneous tradition, its the 21 positions that fromcommentary. But then about the americanness of this these ideals, its that all five of them in different ways were making the argument from american traditions. They were just saying i would love to see this happen, they were saying this is somehow essential to the american character. Ask read when he was on trial for his life for violating the espionage act, the way he saves his neck was my getting this unbelievable closing argument. He had to do it himself and the way he gets out of spending 20 years in jail is by making this argument where he says that socialism is in the american tradition one. Socialism is free the same way that henry and sam adams, all of founders and in some ways theyre the only ones who take it seriously. Randall for this ideal in 1916 before it all fell apart that people were upset that ethnic unities were still existing. Was making people nervous because war is happening or germans are going to start buying russians in new york, blah blah blah and this is great, if you can come here, claim to the identity of your homeland, contribute to american society, that is the fulfillment of american promise, not the betrayal of american promise in the ida he articulated coming out of that, we need more now than we did then. It felt to me like the ideals they were articulating were big and vibrant and fit into those years and one of the things that was up in the air was, what is american democracy for . Ultimately its the democratic ideal that is the one that theyre fighting about it also brings up and plays out in your book as now, theres a conflict between america as a potential field where humanity fulfills its promise and america as a field where americans fulfill their nationalist promise, that is between a humanist universal global extent of the possibility of change and the nixonian for bush or trump pretty much every president after that. The notion that all we care about is taking care of their selves, make America Great again so in other words, even if those ideals came from american tradition, they were still antinationalism. Decent smithsonian switch as they were was told towards nationalism. I would say that wilson, the application of will also and is now has lined up with the sense that its in the pursuit of american, american interests. The opposite of what he meant when he articulated it. In the 1916 wilson is talking about, the United States is creating, its a testament to the ground last week neutral state standing. It had these resources, like Everything Else in the 1920s, there was the surgeon what america was capable of and he wasnt going to use it for us to be a belligerent power, it was for us to help you peacekeeper that would be in the interest of everybody. So it was a Truly International vision. It didnt work. He, theres an alternate universe where the United States fight a war and is completely fall apart at home, we get the red scare and race riots, eugene debs goes to prison because he violated the espionage act and wilson still prevails in paris and it goes through the peace negotiation. We get the league of nations, United States jointed. Maybe then there is a way that we understand from the beginning that american internationalism is not just us pursuing our National Interests by another name. We dont know because its another great will sony and complexity is that he failed in paris. And he failed to show it to the american people. We have a little time left but i want to ask you a couple things. One is a theme running through your work and life between history and politics. And the inner and american politics. So as it is with hamilton in here, theres a great chapter about the importance of players and the involvement of a few of these characters who promise some players. Can you talk about that. What is the simple difference, where do theater in history overlap . They overlap in stories. Its partly by spending all this time just completely serendipitously in these two worlds over the last five or six years being around hamilton in writing this book that you realize, everyone understands the freespeech case for political speech, you should be able to give, you should be able to express yourself as a citizen and say what you believe in and there are strong protections for that but to me, it seems to me that is not like our brains when you walk into a theater you can somehow say okay, im not going to be affected by what i say for the next two hours, four of course be affected by what you see. That ifwere changing all the time ,then our , what we , the way that we act as citizens is shaped as much by our storytellers, i dont know how as much but its shaped by our storytellers as well as the people to give the speeches. What a load of the story is the down players is when they were starting and read and eastman were around at the beginning, that they understood that being able to their truth, to express themselves dramatically had a social value just like they were able to do in the masses. That if you really want democracy to thrive, its as much about 30 of expression as it is about the strictly political expression. And im lucky, the whole time i was writing this book, i was on the artistic staff in the Public Theater which is how i got to be around hamilton and thats the place that joe pat founded it, that has sincerely pursue this idea that theater and other forms of storytelling are one of thethings essential. I think theres this value in theater and not just theater but narrative art and being able to and that an alternative realities which would allow us not only to reflect upon this reality as it were but also project into some kind of utopian possibility. And we were talking about, one of the recurring themes or questions in the book is when you get freedom, what you do with it . Were talking about it in relation to our Current Situation so i am for resistance of all kinds in fighting back the horrendous rise of fascism but the focus and resistance might and this is your idea, might sort of blockbuster imagining what to do beyond. Suppose we when, then what . How do you imagine and theres a beautiful quote by Randall Burns that addresses that. Can you talk about that need for possibility please of imagining a reality beyond this one. Randolph bourne is this incredible figure, he has three or four separate astonishing achievements in the span of six years, five years. And one of them is to understand that the way that liberals flock to washington to help with the war effort suggested there was something wrong with their liberalism. That there is a way that americans get caught up in process and they lose sight of values. Somehow things are working, that must be good even if you may not looking be looking at where the engine is taking you. And boring, once we went into the war declined to join organizations where he and his new friend max eastman been fighting together. Peoples council tried to enlist randall horn to work with him in 1917 and he seems to have refused because he doesnt work with the organization. And its about stories. Its about bourne saying that if our political speech is being censored, then we can still look to our artists. If the water is rising and the artists are always going to be on the highest high ground, theyre the least course people in American Life and from then, maybe we get our renewal. This great quote i found, thats one change in the book. I had to rewrite my introduction. I got to rewrite my avalon with the womens march which was was a much more encouraging thing to write about. But there was a quote, something that randolph wrote that i found very moving. Could you find it and read it and we can end with that . He said why it was important not to, it was necessary as you say to resist. It is also necessary not to become so wrapped up in resisting that you are caught flatfooted when tomorrow gets here. Because when tomorrow gets here, then the reconstruction begins and the reconstruction is when youre going to read, im not sure if i can find this actually. What he saysis hes talking about being , here it is. This is what he writes. This is when the draft is happening. And people are going to jail for avoiding the draft. He says let us compel the war to break in on this if we must, not go us pitifully comedic. Let us force it the battery in our spiritual law, this attitude need not be a factor with hiding in the sand, denying reality and when we are broken in on, can yield to the inexorable area those who are conscripted will have been broken in on. They do not want to be martyred, they will have to be veterans, they are entitled to whatever alleviations are possible in inexorable world. But the others can certainly resist the attitude that blackened the full conscious sky of war, they can resist the poison which makes art and all desires for more impassioned living and idle and even shameful. Many of us, resentment against the war has been a visitor consciousness of what we are seeking in American Life. Thank you very much, thank you for joining in thinking jeremy mccarter, the author young radicals. Thank you, you can purchase the book and book signing outside the auditorium, thank you. That was a look at political and civic activism in america before and during our involvement in world war i. Now in a few minutes, more live offer presentations from the printers row let fast. We have water here if you need it. [inaudible]. Thank you. [inaudible conversation]. [inaudible conversation]. [inaudible conversation]. [inaudible conversation] thank you so much for something i like is a story. [inaudible] lets stay in touch. Congratulations. Take a look at it. Awesome, thank you so much. We will be in touch. [inaudible conversation]. This weekend we are alive at the chicago tribunes annual list that book fair. We thought we look at the most popular nonfiction books according to the Chicago Public library. Topping the list is jd vance with his recollection of his childhood in a rust belt town in ohio, hillbilly elegy followed by animal, vegetable miracle about a familys attempt to eat locally grown food for an entire year. By barbara kingsolver. At the back of a neurosurgeon, paul wallace biography about his battle with stage iv breast cancer. Next on the list is daily show was memoir of growing up in south africa, born a crime. Followed by the undoing project by Michael Lewis which called the nobel prizewinning organ to psychologists. Most popular nonfiction books according to the Chicago Public library continues with the lifechanging magic of tidying up by marie condit. That is even on ferraris look at the future of humanity in hobo days. Number eight on the list is National Book awardwinning author tommy c coates spot on the current state of black america in between the world and me. That followed by chicago native Natalie Moore who weighs in on segregation in the city. Our look at the most popular nonfiction books according to the Chicago Public library is our legal shield report on the political right. Strangers in their own land. Many of these authors have or will be appearing on book tvwatch them on a website , book tv. Org. How you might wonder did not end up in gainesville when there are always other communities are losing work too. And i didnt know this community, i didnt have any family here. I didnt have any friends here. But i had heard about samuel which i had never heard about before in 2009 when i was looking for a setting for one of the stories i did not recession effect for the washington post. And somebody mentioned to me there was a community in wisconsin just had lost a big old General Motors plant. And i thought that was interesting but i didnt come here at the time because this is just happened. And eyes you know a lot of people were still getting subsidence today. So the economic pain for some people had really begun to see ben. So i didnt, but gainesville lingered in my mind and as i was getting close to Getting Started after i did this kind of scary thing is taking some time off from my job, i kept thinking about variousplaces i could go , something inside me kept telling me that Jake Gainesville might be the place. So why was that. One reason was that i need to find a place that had lost a lot of jobs and you definitely qualify. No, i dont have to tell you thousands of jobs lost from around here, there are different figures that you can see but looking at the bureau of labor statistics figures, in 2008 and 2009, about 9000 jobs left the county. A lot of jobs. And if you look at what happened to the Unemployment Rate here at that time, in june 2008 when the announcement was made that lotus was going to shut down production here , the Unemployment Rate was 5. 4 percent. In march 2009, a few months after the last of these jobs disappeared, unemployment shot up to over 13 percent. On the job loss fronts, you are a winner. Or a loser. Beyond that, i have the sense that i wanted to tell the story of what this big recession had done. So it was important to me that i find a place that is not previously been part of the rust. X i didnt want to find myself writing about accumulation of economic decay. I wanted to show what one bad time did. So flint michigan was an old story and i wanted to find a place where economic trouble was new. And obviously the General Motors Assembly Plant here had been shrinking a little bit and a little bit more and a little bit more over a couple decades. But it always got a new promise. So just in closing, this was really a very different thing that nobody in town experience. And that was very appealing to me, not that i was happy for you but very appealing to me as a place to potentially do this writing, do this talking to people about what was happening in the community. And i had the sense that no place is exactly like everyplace. As much as possible i thought it would be interesting to find a community to write about where the pattern of job losses match pretty well the National Pattern of jobs that went away in this great recession. So if you think about what happened nationally, the largest portion of job that disappeared were the manufacturing sector. A lot of the jobs that were lost paid pretty well but had not required a lot of heavy education to get. That was in gainesville. For men and women lost jobs in this recession. That was sort of janesville. So i thought that this was the community that had a number of the qualities in the lost jobs that other people around the country would understand and could identify with. I also have a sense that things that might fit nicely into the sweep of history, i remember the first time i found a Youtube Video for a speech that then senator barack obama gave in december plant in february 2008. I dont know if anybody remembers them coming. And i remember the first time i listened to the video saying the promise of janesville is the promise of america. And that line gave me goosebumps because i heard that Youtube Video couple years after the Assembly Plant closed so there was i ready by then to what this president ial candidate who became president was saying. And of course gainesville had been part of the strike of the 1930s