Transcripts For CSPAN2 Texas Book Festival 20171104

Yet to take it one day at a time and think about all the new day she survived already. I glanced at cynthia to see if shes appreciating this and her eyes are wide and a wet with amazement. We are witnessing a pivotal moment, a collective responsibility to care for someone else and no one wanted to end. You can watch this and other programs online at the tv. Org. [inaudible conversations] the texas book festival live from austin continues and this is the knob author conversation about race and the Justice System. Good afternoon. Welcome to the texas book festival and our panel on mass incarceration, racing criminal Justice System. Im a professor of Public Affairs and history at the university of texas at austin and we have really two very very brilliant and important scholar activists today talking about two brandnew books. To my immediate left and to your right is James Foreman junior, professor professor lott Yale University in his new book. Terrific book and i am going to give it some play right here. [applause]. Professor foremans left in your right is Danielle Allen who is University Professor at Harvard University and her new book is called cause, the life and times of michael a. [applause]. Before asking her questions really both of these books are about what i think is the number one civil rights issue of our time. The Police Racial massive cars ration in the and the way in which mass incarceration has disfigured and really distorted american democracy on multiple levels, levels of race, class, gender, Mental Health and citizenship. Of both of these books readable really utilize Academic Knowledge and personal expense and reflection. Especially the book by danielle. My first question professor alan and down yell, if i may, is you are trained well known classicist, political theorist and philosopher and this is such an intimate portrayal of a cousin of yours who got caught up in our criminal Justice System. What inspired you to write this book . So, first of all i may just say how glad i am to be here in austin. Gay austin. [applause]. Thank you so much to all of you for turning out for this panel. I agree this is a civil rights issue of our time, so to have you here listening and thinking with us means a lot, so thank you for being here, so to answer that question i want to read the final chapter of the book because i think its perhaps the shortest way of answering it, a paragraph long, chapter 30 my heart locket. In my hearts locket, five gangly round brown skinned kids, cusson who will be forever outplay in a pair of trees bathed in the june sunshine i love to climb trees as much as my cousin, michael did. An arm here, a lake here just out from the tree floral sun dress with the pink and purple blooms. When we found on bloom debugs we would gently press at their knobs until the skin flipped and a fragile crinkled blossom emerged whole. Meanwhile, inside the house through the living room picture window the adults beloved are forever passing their time and glancing distracted talk so how is that an answer to your question . I grew up in a huge set of sub cousins sprawling. My dad had 11 brothers and sisters and there were five of us that were particularly close, myself, brother and the three children of my mothers youngest sister and the baby of the family was michael, baby cousin from this huge sprawling family and we grew up together as equals. Best the point of that final concluding passage, bound by the love of family and starting in the same place. Im a professor at harvard and my cousin is a dead. He went to prison at 15 on a first arrest rate attempted carjacking. Terrible thing to stand in public and talk about the person you love to attempted a committed carjacking and the only good thing that can be said is is is that the only person who got hurt was michael. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital he confessed what had happened, but in addition he confessed to having robbed three people that they previously, another person the week before. He had not done anything like this and we were caught completely by surprise at. California passed the three strikes and youre out law and what this meant was that he went to trial and was convicted on all the things he confessed to and would receive 25 years to life so he accepted a plea deal of 12 years and with the prison at 15, transfer to adult prison at 17 for reason that are opaque. Got out when his 26 and while in prison he pursued his education. I helped him with College Courses and i was the cousin on duty when he got out with trying to help him with reentry. Of the short of it is by 29 he was killed by someone he met in prison during the 11 years he spent in prison, so i wrote the story partly because to convey the pain of the way inequality works in this country, so we talk about inequality of abstract saying. Its got emotions. Think of the five kids growing up together playing in a tree can look at the different world we live in and this is not something purely a matter of different choices we made. Yes, michael and i made different choices, but it has to do with different degrees of difficulty presented to each of us as he ended up a 15year old in South Central los angeles in the early 90s with the dangerous world of gangs and temptation and if that degree of difficulty that was presented to the young people that come up in different circumstances, different neighborhoods that we have a collective responsibility for and thats the story my book is about and i wrote it, why because a professor at harvard asked me to give a series of lectures and i kept deferring and kept giving him abstract titles like im going to talk about politically inequality and injustice and kept postponing and finally he said kid, you are going to have to give these lectures and i realized that the only way i could pretend to speak with a question of whats happened to africanamericans in the last 30 years was to tell my cousins story, so thats why i wrote the book. [applause]. James, this is both a nashville the history and kids study our criminal Justice System in washington dc in the Nations Capital, but also very personal as well. How did your experiences as a former public defender really shape and inspire you . Thank you and i went to join danielle and thinking the audience for coming out to this incredibly important conversation and to camille for moderating it. I wanted to write a book there was some a representation of public defenders in the media and they are almost all bad. They are almost all the spear dude, overworked, dont care and sellout their clients and of course thats part of the reality of our criminal system and we need to do a lot of things including funded the offices better to hire lawyers and support them to do a better job, but even under the current constraints there are valiant eager energetic, desperately Mission Driven public defenders all over the country and in washington dc i was in an office full of them so part of it is i wanted to write a story that told about the criminal system through that lens, through the lens of my client in the lens of the lawyer that represented him. The other way in which the public defender motivated me to write the book is that the job because i viewed it as a civil rights work of my generation and this was in the mid 1990s. We didnt have the term mass incarceration at that time. Thats a term crated in the year 2000, but we knew one and three young black men were under the supervision of the prison system. We passed russia and south africa to earn that dishonor and we also knew the way i entered and i thought about mile my, my parents were in the original Civil Rights Movement. They mock met in the student nonviolent coordinating committee. They were an interracial couple at a time when many of those relationships were illegal in many states of the country. The fight changed america profoundly made a possible someone like me could have opportunities that were unheard of for a black man of my fathers generation, but at the same time we also had inequalities that danielle talks about. We also had the neighborhood like the neighborhood michael grew up in. We had that one in three number i cited earlier, so i wanted to make sense of this and try to figure out how these two things could happen at the same time and in particular wanted to figure out how it was that in an in franchise Africanamerican Community Like Washington dc where theres a lot of black judges, a lot of black prosecutors, the mayor was black in the city i was working in, the police chief was majority africanamerican and all that representation we were creating, helping to create, participating in some ways the same unjust system that the nation was creating and so i wanted to figure out how that could be. How could these injustices be happening in a majority black jurisdiction. Thats great. Thank you. [applause]. Just to keep our discussion flowing i ask no more clapping until the end. Im excited as well. This is for danielle. One of the most inspiring parts of reading cuz and i read cuz in one sitting. I would really tell everyone and run out get this book. Its that compelling. You talk about your cousin intellectual development and theres a portion of the book for you have some of his writings, reprinted word for word and you and your cousin talk about dantes inferno and it made me think about prison intellectuals. I thought about malcolm x reading this book and all of these Different Things. I wanted to ask you about michaels intellectual Development Even while he was incarcerated because its so profound and we never think of those who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated as being intellectuals or people excited about ideas of intellectual work, but it runs throughout cuz that michael was someone who was gifted intellectually and really tried to pursue that with your help and encouragement, so i want you to talk about that. I think again in order to do that i need to read this passage from one of his essays. When michael was arrested he was in an Early College program at southwest community college, a program for Gifted High School students who were going to combine high school in the first Year Community college in the first four years of high school and he was always hungry for learning and school between his arrest in september, 1995, and sentencing of june, 96 he completed his ged. He went into prison always think about college and so forth and at california that time was stripping its Educational Opportunities out of this esteem other than a vocational ones. The federal government stopped letting programs be used, so he got a certificate in electrician and so forth, but always a hunger for college so finally we worked out to sign him up for correspondence courses at Indiana University and for him this was the greatest day of the years he was admitted to Indiana University. Again, a confiscated experience because he had been admitted and we went to sign up for courses and then you learn you cant have him sign up for any course requiring hard cover books so i had to go through the catalog and connie instructors to figure out which courses only had soft covered books and that only left to classes, lit 101 and philosophy 101 so we dove into lit 101. I will read you a section of his essay about dante and the inferno, which had two titles, final title in survival by oneself. Like dante i am forced to defend dissent lower into how to achieve a full awakening, forced into depression, scarred by its entities, war after war, but each war i survive im a step closer to a full awakening. My hell is no longer demonstrating what i am capable of doing in order to survive. It has become what i can tolerate and withstand in order to live. I cannot help but to judge those around me. I am one of them, but we are far from the same. Like don tate im cursed with discernment which allows us to see the truth. There are many who might despise were sick beyond healing and should never leave this place and then there are those who await their destiny. I see in them a sincere apologetic hard for their deeds. They are the ones that will change the world positively or positively change someones world took hell cannot hold a latter of two opposites, but will set them back into society to do whats right. The hell i live in cannot hold dante. I will contest and try oneself but not hold dante and will not hold me. In the inferno the dead are trapped forever. Surely the biggest and most important difference in the inferno is my hell, prison is that i have a way out. So, the point of reading that is just partly to convey michaels intellectual hunger and convey the fact that it is possible for people to grow and develop in prison. Its a hard passage because michael is sort of simultaneously recognizing lots of other people in prison like himself who share that possibility of growing into the future though hes also setting himself apart from some people hes met inside a prison so its a complicated tricky passage to think about, but i think the important point is there is talent everywhere in this country and there is a huge amount of it in prison and its a big question about how it is we have let it happen that so much talent gets routed into prison. We talk about the School Prison pipeline and its something we need to take seriously. Angela dated davis has been talking about this for decades and its taken us so long to actually see clearly this is happening. This is not to say everyone in prison is always reaching for these things, but there are a lot of people who are into the point you made about what we built, getting more than 2 Million People then then this you. The first book i wrote was out punishment. Ive been thinking about punishment around the span of Human History and the world has never seen, never a penal system like the one this country is built. We have to own it and understand what we have done and figure out how to undo it. Can i just say to follow up [applause]. You guys dont take direction very well. I went to followup on danielles last point about undoing it and connecting that to her, the story she read about michaels essay and his intellectual journey and development. One of the things i think we will have to be clear on if we are going to do this system the likes of which the world has ever seen is that we are going to have to create space in the movement, the movement against mass incarceration for people who have been incarcerated, who have been convicted of crimes and now come back to our community, so its not just when daniel talks about that talent, that talent is also leaving prison, so right now we have 700,000 people every year that are leaving prison and jail and many millions of people that are leaving court houses with felony conditions and misdemeanors. Historically, its been the case that even advocates, even activists, eagan even organizations fighting against this inhumane criminal system have not typically lifted up the voices of people who have themselves been incarcerated or convicted of crimes. People have been worried about stigma, worried if we put that person in the from the microphone than that might bring that cause down. The problem with that attitude is that it then reinforces the stigma and so we really have to listen to these voices of people like michael and we have to elevate them and put them in leadership positions of the movements to reform the system. I saw someone wrote an article recently where they said imagine if the Civil Rights Movement all the black people had been told to stay home and the white people had marched and strategized, how much sense for that make . Thats what weve done in the criminal Justice Reform movement its been incarcerated people we told to stay home while the rest of us march and strategize and we have got to stop doing that. Thats a good segue into it will bleed informed most of you, your book, sub crime is crime and punishment in black america and reading both of the books you get a profound sense of class stratification within the black community and that is something we often dont talk about. Gates has talked about it and had a documentary by two black americans. In locking up our own we really see people like mayor marion barry who was a civil rights hero calling black young people thugs. We see city counselors who are afraid to decriminalize marijuana for fear that they are abandoning back black youth, but by not decriminalizing marijuana in the 70s we relegate black youth to really harsh sentencing and a lack of opportunity. Want to talk about class and you talk about that as well, danielle, and the variation between the different sides of your family, the loss of opportunity at times. Michaels mother had been victim of domestic violence, so i really want to talk about class in our community because sometimes when you think about racial progress we know theres been tremendous racial progress in the last halfcentury. Of this panel is reflective of that on some level, but what segment of the community has been able to enjoy that racial progress . Yeah, absolutely, i mean, thats one of the things that you know, we saw it every day especially if you live in a city that has a significant africanamerican population, dc, jackson, detroit, new york, but even in other places as well you start to see some of the class distinctions in the complicated question about all of this is that there are Family Networks and danielles book is a perfect example of that, so its not a easy dividing line where you say we have these poor black people over here and then we have these middleclass people over here. Its not so simple because a lot of people have a cousin. A lot of people have a nephew, but having said that, its true when we look at some of the numbers, for example, we see that if you are black man that has dropped out of high school and you are 10 times more likely to go to prison than if you are black man whos attended college. We dont have the same statistics for black women, but there is every reason to think that you see similar discrepancies there. The problem is that you the people africanamericans that have made it into positions of power and authority who are passing a lot of these laws are, well mainly almost exclusively from the group of people that made it economically thats made it educationally and a lot of the laws passed are being inflicted upon that part of that community, that part of our community that has not succeeded in the same way. You see them policing practices in a place Like Washington dc. In the 1990s and 2000 they unleashed a style of policing they called pretext policing where they went and stopped cars for any basically any reason. Pulled them over and try to get consents to search, but where did they do it . Where did they do this style of policing . They concentrated it most aggressively in the poorest parts of town and in some of the more middleclass parts of town including some of the more africanamerican middleclass parts of town they said pope back, pull back. Of course, this is where you get complication. Class is not a complete protection. We see that driving while black, so its this complicated story of how class of both matters and it doesnt at the same time. Its interesting, i mean, these are very hard issues and for me it matters to put them in in an even bigger context of broad changes in the country. Its important what we have done with mass incarceration is to build a society that penalizes at an extraordinary rate affecting beyond africanamericans and also affects latino americans, but the group of people with the highest increase in race incarceration between 2000 and the present was white women because we simply as a country extended criminalization and penalities to a degree that happen that has not been seen historically. That affects everyone, it doesnt stop with a particular group. No class is ultimately not a protection. Simultaneously the other thing is the reason i started my comments by reading that passage about the five skin kids is because we were in those trees in Southern California playing together in the late 70s and early 1980s. Whats happened to this country between then and now . Two things simultaneously, the Remarkable Growth of income inequality, wealth inequality started in the early 80s and its extraordinary. If youre not found the charts that show the increase in income inequality, you should. The point im trying to make is that that transformation of our country is not a matter of abstract economics. Its about taking five kids who were equal in where they came from, equal in their resources and gifts, equal in the extent that family that brought them into the world, equal in the amount of love that extended family had to give them and pulled us apart convict us apart like this and its the lives and feeling that we all have. Theres not an American Family that has not felt the destruction of the stratification of our society and again it crosses all race lines. We have to come to grips with what these a broader sort of macro changes mean for our lived experience, the texture of our relationship with one another. Incredibly important. Thats why i have started to use the sort of vocabulary about the degree of difficulty that we produce for young people for example, i dont know who is a gymnastics fan, but i love watching gymnastics any of the vixen last year was this gymnast from india and she was going to do a vault and the thing is she had picked the move with the highest degree that difficulty in this meant the whole coverage during the olympics is will she make it or will she breaker back. Everyone else was doing a lowered to give degree of difficulty. Our Gold Medalist in this country, for example in that sort of what the situation is like for some young people if you come up and it urban city center that degree of difficulty facing us propound. You can make it, but if you dont make it you will break your back, where as a kid growing up in the suburbs or easier part of the country i think thats the way to think about the relationship between responsibility and the collective choices that we have made that have patterned our country with this amazingly desperate set of degree of difficulty for young people in different places. Yeah, no, i think thats a great points and i think in our contemporary of mass incarceration the whole notion of the Opioid Crisis and the response that politicians have had Opioid Crisis proves your point. If we try to humanize and empathize medicalized people who have problems, the state has a whole different response. I want to move forward and go off script here. In terms of both of you, one of the things you show here is the impact of people like eric holder, people like marion barry , africanamerican politicians who are real civil rights advocates and the impact they had on producing mass incarceration, said eric holder in the 1990s is going to be much different than he was as attorney general where he was a pro civil rights attorney general, so i want you to talk about that in the sense of you talk about Police Chiefs in dc. You talk about the police force the coming africanamerican and there was a feeling that if that happened things get better, but what did you find out . Well, maybe the best way to try to talk about that generation and to some of the complications that i saw is by mentioning a story i tell early on in the book involving the representing a young man by the name of branded, and africanamerican teenager charged with possession of a gun and a small amount of marijuana. He pled guilty, so hes facing sentencing in dc superior court. Im asking for him to be put on probation. I have a letter from a teacher, one from his counselor and its his first arrest. But prosecutor in the case is asking for him to be locked at. She wants him to go to oak hill, which is the name of the juvenile jail in washington dc at the time and like juvenile jails in many parts of the country whatever you call it officially, the reality is it was a dungeon, place where kids left off or spend when they went in and the judge had to make a decision in the case. Africanamerican judge, looks out in the courtroom and sees this young black man facing sentencing. Thats it not unusual. If you go to superior court in dc you would think there are no white people in dc. Then you see black defense lawyer, black prosecutor and the judge looks at brandon before imposing sentence and said sun, mr. Foreman told me you have a tough life and that you deserve a second chance. Let me tell you about tough. Let me tell you about jim crow recs see the judge had been a child in those years and proceeded to tell branded about what that was like and he said so heres the thing. People fought, marched, died for your freedom. Doctor king died for you and he didnt die for you to be running and gunning and tugging and carrying on an embarrassing your community carrying that gun and embarrassing your family. That was not his dream at all so i hope mr. Foreman is right and you turn it around one day, but right now in this courtroom there are consequences. Your consequence is oak hill. Heres the thing to understand about the judge. I was so angry in that moment when he locked up our client and im still working through the anger, but one thing to understand about him is that he saw himself as protecting the same community that i was motivated to fight for. He saw himself as engaged in that fight, also. He thought he was acting out in part to the Civil Rights Movement. He took that same history that motivated me to become a public defender, that same civil rights history and flipped it on its head and used it to justify locking someone up, so figuring out people like that because hes not alone. There are a lot of people like that and every time i tell that story someone comes up after me and says i hear that over thanksgiving dinner. I know that person. Thats a great story and very moving. Danielle, one of the things you talk about in the latter part of this book is this concept [inaudible] developed in los angeles and really the important part of this book thats both intimate and in the part with the social sciences coming out and you talk about how this developed alongside los angeles really invisible and sort of michael and his family, that part of your family get caught up. Can you tell us what you mean . Sure. I think its important to understand how how the civil rights generation could misunderstand the moment we live in presently, so my book has characters, my family members and michael everything, but another character in the book is Los Angeles Los angeles went through this incredible transformation from the early 70s to the president and i try to tell the story about transformation and to tell the story yet a breakthrough family secrets and in trying to understand what happened to michael i had to break to family secrets and try to understand what happened to los angeles i had to break through a different set of family secrets. There are secrets about the way we approach drugs in this country, so i like to stop and ask people who in this tent knows how much americans spend on illegal narcotics every year . No one knows, family secret, hundred billion dollars. Its an equal opportunity activity. Everyone participates using and selling. Hundred billion dollars a year, this year, laster, year before. A Corporation Study did this for the white house and these are hard usable fax. Now, when you have a black market that big and you are not paying attention to it you are not noticing the way it distorts your entire society and this is what happened to los angeles in the 1980s and 90s basically to put it briefly the federal government wants to crack down on narcotics, it cracks down on narcotics by targeting lowlevel street level distributors. Lots of them are coming from outside the country that are originally the French Connection from the middle east into the country. Nixon broke up the French Connection opening up the market for cartels in south and central america. If you have 100 billiondollar a year business, are you going to let control of your distributors go . No, you are not, so you will fight back against a state fighting for control of your distributors for the estate tax distributors with mandatory minimums and harder and harder sentencing, getting rid of rehabilitation replaced it with deterrence and the producers of drugs fight back through the structure of gangs. The purpose is to keep control over the distribution. The people who are most vulnerable, it becomes a literal fight between the state and the judicial system and so forth. Kids ages 10 to 14 who are desired by the distributor system to be distributors for this hundred billion dollar business and then the state tries to shut that business down, but rather focusing on streetlevel purse [inaudible] completely destructive of opportunities for young people. That is it. Thats what we had been living through without being able to see it because we lie to ourselves about what we are doing with drugs. Last thing i will say. Its not just 100 billion of drugs people are buying. Thats a hundred billion dollars worth of self dissection every year. No wonder our country is suffering. You cannot have that much dishonesty in a diss society and thrive. Thats it. With the time we have left to questions and i will start with you, james. When i read that epilogue i thought it was very very moving and i think one of the things that locking up our own makes an argument for is that we need to have compassion, not only for nonviolent offenders, but for those who have been convicted of Violent Crimes and we need to have compassion for them, so i want to ask you wise this so important . You make a case that even if we let go all these nonviolent drug offenders would still have prison. Why is it so important for us to think about us having compassion for violent offenders. I have been as someone working on these issues for over 20 years now and in the early years just feeling nothing but kind of isolation and other than a few colleagues at the Public Defenders Office and people like angela davis not getting a sense there was a lot of commitment to care about these things and one of the things thats been thrilling in recent years is that more and more people, eric holder, president obama lots of other folks around the country have started talking about this issue and politicians have taken up the issue. One thing thats been frustrating to me is how many people say including president obama and i love him to death, but how many people say we are going to do this for nonviolent drug offenders, but the violent, the people committing Violent Crime are offlimits. And what i want to say and make clear in what i try to make clear in the book is i tell that story is that there is no one that we can close ourselves down to peer there is we control away there is no one we can write off based on a charge, based on a label because theres always a story. Danielle tells the story of michael. That is a Violent Crime. When you finish the book, though , michael is not a violent criminal. Hes michael in all of his humanity who committed a violent act. Thats very different. The person i write about to the same end, my same goal is a young man who ive represented who committed an armed robbery. Walked up to a man and a bus stop with a knife, stole the money and was arrested a few blocks later with a knife on him, with the money on him. No matter how good a defensible your you can be you cant do anything about this case and the prosecutor wanted him to be locked up for a long time. I went to talk to the man that he robbed because i knew that the man he robbed only new 12 seconds of brandons life. He only knew that moment at the bus stop and if all you knew was that 12 seconds you would want him locked up, also. When i sit down with mr. Thomas, the man he robbed and tell him abouts story and how brand its mother was addicted to drugs in a city that had one bad for only 10 addicts who needed it, how he was raised on the street. He was sucked into this heresy. How he was the robbery was an initiation into a local gang. First they humiliated him and then said the way you get into this gang issue commit this robbery. Brandon was also incredibly good with his hands. You is this master work woodworker and he has been admitted into a program for carpentry. So, sit down with mr. Thomas and i tell him brandons whole story and by the end of it and to make a long story short by the end of it mr. Thomas has thought it over and when he meets me a couple weeks later he decides yeah, i can go along with this program you found. I wont ask for jail time in this case. 10 years pass, im in washington dc walking down the street, walking by a construction site and i look up and i hear a voice, mr. Foreman and i look up and it takes me a minute because its been 10 years, but it was brandon. Heat from the site we had conversation and he told me the program had been grueling and the pastor almost kicked him out a bunch of times, but he made it through and got his degree and he was working construction full time raising a son of his own and he was raising him in a way much different than he had been raised. Brandon is a violent criminal if you are going to define a person solely by that moment, by that action, but none of us wants to be defined that way and when people say to me as they probably say to daniel, people say that is brandon. You told us his story. Everyone has a story. I just happened to tell you his. This is a great way to close. Im going to ask danielle, in terms of michael i read this story as incredibly difficult, but also inspiring and you really humanized michael and the route you make sure the reader knows michael is really not just a stand in, but you are getting an intimate portrait of one of the many millions who are caught up in this system of mass incarceration where we are judged by the worst thing weve ever done, so i want to ask you and you can close our panel with this. How are you feeling after writing this book . I mean, are you optimistic because you shared this book. This book has really caught fire and i agree, the political and literary event playing in the dark, how do you feel . How do you feel in terms of now . Im so glad to see all of you here. Thats what matters and what matters is each of you here being able to talk to another handful of people and spread the word. We have built something so terrible that we really do have to figure out how to unbilled it and the only way we are going to do that is if we think collectively about that, so im inspired by the fact you are all here and i hope my book has provided hope, but the hope i get comes from all of you. Now, we can clap. [applause]. Thank you so much. [applause]. Danielle and alan. Of the book is cuz and locking up our own. They will be going to the tent after this. You can go and get your book signed and have a chance to talk to the authors. Thank you so much. You been listening to a discussion on race and criminal justice with a Danielle Allen, author of cuz and james forman author of locking up our own. We are going to take a short break while we set up the next panel and to look at drug cartels in mexico and central and south america. This is book tv on cspan2. [inaudible conversations] book tv records hundreds of other programs throughout the country all year long and heres a look at some events we will cover this week. Monday, we take a tour of the book publisher in washington dc to interview some people responsible for bringing a book from acquisition to publication took tuesday we to the Pilgrim Hall Museum infamous, massachusetts, where Rebecca Frazier will provide a history of the mayflower voyage through the eyes of a puritan family that traveled to america in 1620. Wednesday, we are at the City University of new york, where robert while publishing director will receive the Fourth Annual editorial excellence award. Thursday, that and and jerry moss theatre in los angeles. Cartoonist scott adams will discuss how donald trump used the art of persuasion to win the presidency. Friday, we are back in the Nations Capital of politics and prose bookstore to hear Msnbc Lawrence Odonnell recalled in 1968 president ial election. Sunday, emmywinning actor ed asner will share his thoughts on the constitution in todays social and political issues in oregon. Many of these events are open to the public. Look for them to air the near future on book tv on cspan2. What about your kids . Your kids are going to ask . I asked my mother, 1973 and im sure people ask all over the place. Imagine you are white and your kids say you can always tell someone is black even if you cant see them, mommy. Of the impulses to say thats not true. Black people sound like southerners. No, thats not true or the impulse to say no, everyone talks in different ways and you should not stereotype. If your kid has an iq over 40 they will think im not stereotyping. So, what do you tell the kids . I think we need to get comfortable saying black people have a slightly different sound because they often spend more time with one another like white people sound more like what because they spend more time together and that is true of all human groups, not racist, just true and harmless. Theres nothing wrong with the way viola davis sounds with opposed to the way Melissa Mccarthy sounds, but she definitely sounds like and i can tell you because she does the voice of a queen on the disney cartoon series, sophia. Yes, its in my house because i have small children and once i had my back turned in the queen said something and i had never seen the character and it was that little doll that went off and i thought the queen is black. Issued . I turned around and i forget what the queen looks like, but i went on to imd and asked to the queen was. I was hearing what any american could hear. I have a chapter about that in the book. Third in the book is the answer to a section that its traditionally level against you cant talk that way the Job Interview someone always says if some of the complexity and how we shouldnt mock the language because you are mocking the speakers and someone will say yes, thats true, but they cant talk that way at a Job Interview. Okay. No one said they were going to. No one needs to be told that and i think that why you get that response is because of a sense that we often have that the way someone speaks casually is going to interfere with their ability to speak the formal variety where they are. With black english thats even worse because everyone think that if you talk that way you wont be able to speak standard. Even if we understand its not a mistake theres a sense that if you use that system that will keep you from using the standard bats an american kind of misimpression, perfectly understandable american impression because our dialect diversity is relatively thin. English has not been here for 2000 years as in for example england where different ways of speaking have been doing this for much longer and is so theres theres english there that really sense to english to us. America is 15 minutes old so we dont have that depth. Its just there hasnt been this much of this going on. Some creel, south carolina, hawaiian, louisiana creole, french, those fridays are spoken on the geographical margins of space and louisiana creole french essentially at 16th and its not that many people who speak those, so its a dialect of differences, but a certain vanilla aspect to the weight push goes here. Black english is the most divergent form of english heap when the us has any reason to hear. So, what we missed is that living in two very different dialects of the same thing is a very ordinary Human Experience and in the legions of places where this is normal no one worries speaking the home thing will interfere with speaking the formal thing. No one in sicily is worried that someone who speaks sicilian will use it in a Job Interview instead of standard italian and in sicily standard italian is the italian a language takes him him in college and then there is sicilian, which is really different, but if you roll the dice again sicilian will be considered a separate romance language. Very different. If you see Something Like the godfather or the boardwalk empire you will seat translation of sicilian rather than italian because to anyone that knows the territory to show the terror characters speaking textbook College Italian would be ridiculous. Would you see one of the sicilian sense of the godfather speaking that language they are really speaking something almost different from italian and spanish, but that person speaks standard italian in school, in the Job Interview. Theres no debate in sicily about whether sicilians threaten standard italian would would never occur to anyone. Similar in most arab speaking countries you know someone who speaks arabic and when they say i speak arabic they really mean i speak a latin and french. They speak to things, standard language and then what they learned on their mothers knee is something so different that it is although often the speaker so funny having it flipped this way because its a cultural unity. Its really different language. Moroccan, the language they learned was like french and then they went to school and lunch Something Like latin. A moroccan will say i learned moroccan and then i learned arabic. Any arabic speaker you know them as the are roughly from malta they are like that. The idea that ejection arabic is a threat to standard arabic, no. As i mentioned this article in the new yorker last week that actually addresses that almost beautiful a linguist gets to this article that actually dwells on standard arabic and egyptian arabic and idea people need to let go of that objection because it threatens the standard, no. Its the other way around. Black english is the same thing, so what it is is that black English Speakers are going to hit you with terminology and this is in a term just made up for black people in the us. This is people speaking all of the world idea that you learn something on your mothers knee or fathers knee and then you go to school and pretty much the same way of speaking is what your teachers use msn way of speaking is on the printed page and everyone around you speaks that way and so you have learned this standard formal way of speaking at home. About sound sorrel normal to us. Thats very strange. I would venture that at least every second person in the world would never dream of that being the situation and that was even more the case until about 200 years ago when literacy became widespread in many parts of the world such that vernacular languages were used on the page. For a very typical experience is that the way you speak most spontaneously is with your family and friends of any go to school and whats on the page is something rather different. Not a different language, but different. Its as if you say house, but whats on the pages domicile and you have to know its with ben. And you just make your way and you learn that school way. Thats humanity. Thats how it works only about 100 of the world 7000 languages are written in a real way so most people have to make a jump. Black english is that situation. Black people have a larger english than most white people. I want to call one of my books larger english and they didnt like that. What i meant was that black people have more english. No one will try to use black english at a Job Interview. If we understand its really an okay form of speech, but different. Something else that any black person into it is that there is a we speak here and another way you speak they are, so if black english is not a problem in that way you can watch this and other programs online above tv. Org. Heres a look at some of the current bestselling books. Topping the list is kate dawsons report of environmental disaster that hit london in december, 1952, while at the same time a serial killer was on the loose in the city. Chris gill about offers this advice on watching a profitable business, inside hustle followed by marx account of the turning point of the vietnam war. Next, russianamerican journalist marcia reports on the generation of russian two came of age during the Vladimir Putin regime. Jacobs advice structuring your thought process. Our look at the bestselling books according to book people bookstore in austin continues with bestselling biographer Walter Isaacsons leonardo da vinci. Former first daughters Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush share their experiences growing up in the political spotlight in sisters first. Is. [inaudible conversations] and youre watching book tv on cspan2. Live coverage from the texas book festival. Starting in just a moment a discussion of drug cartels south of the border. [inaudible conversations] hello, and welcome to the 22nd annual texas book festival. What a great crowd to join a discussion with three great books about three great books from three great authors. The texas book festival as you know is a nonprofit organization. Its proceeds go to support lowincome texas public school. The festival is also created the opportunity for book at each Cash Register you can donate 15 to help support Harvey Relief efforts, so please be generous and think about all the ways in which your attendance at the book festival can multiply your support to very important texas schools and victims of the disasters weve had this year. Just a reminder to please silence your phones and that would be very much appreciated it after the session, the three authors will be in the book tent to sign their books, so, again, we really encourage everyone to make your way over there and im sure after youve had the opportunity to hear them talk about their book, that well have a. Strong presence in the book tent. So thank you very much. The book sales, by the way, are hosted by book people here in austin so we really appreciate their support. The panel, the three books, im going to introduce the authors in sequence. First is bloodline, the truth story of a drug cartel, the fbi and the battle for horse racing dynasty by melissa del bosque, investigative force. Her work has been featured in many places including marie f claire, guardian, time, United Kingdom as well as msnbc, pbs and npr. Shes currently a reporter for Texas Observer and atlanta and reporting fellow in the investigative fund. At the other end of the table is guadalupe corera cabrera, lose zetas, inc. Criminal organization and civil war in mexico. The Security Studies at the university of texas Rio Grande Valley not anymore. Im george mason university. Currently at george mason university. Thank you, i wished i had asked you that. Sorry. Shes the author of democracy in two mexicos, Political Institutions in oaxaca and nuevo leon, frequent commentator in news media on Drug Trafficking issues and drug violence in mexico. She would also be a wilson fellow which as you know is the premier think tank for all things mexico. Finally, we have epolito acosta which book in the deep shadows under covering the ruthless world of human smuggling is its actually the second book that epolito has had at the festival. The third book, excuse me. Im totally misinformed by my friends here. Epolito is a son of migrant workers, highlydecorated officers in the u. S. Immigration naturalization service, the author pulitzer, agent and with erwin. So the three books are really well selected for this panel. I was really excited at the opportunity to be the moderator. There are so many linkages between the two works. I thought we would start with each of you asking you to give us a short summary of the book and what brought you to this topic. You want to start melissa . Sure, well, i have been writing about the border of mexico for some years and its hard to get people to care about it, i guess, it feels like and so much going on in the world right now, i mean, in our own government, you know, its like the onehour news cycle now so we had this big trial here in austin in 2013 with the fbi and irs of Money Laundering scheme through American Court and we had some of the founding members of the zetas cartel who were going to testify in the trial and the zetas are a new kind of criminal organization, 21st century cartel in mexico. Their military, special force, soldiers who deserted and then ended up forming their own cartels so they used military training, military weaponry and when they got involved in the beginning of the century in the drugwar conflict, the violence really spiraled even more out of control in mexico and on the border. So i was reporting around this specially in 20120 when they split off from the gulf cartel and in reynosa, tamaulipas which is right across mcallen and brownsville, what happened the trial, the narrative is a nice way through this sort of crime detective story tell the larger story of whats happening in the conflict, politics and organized crime in mexico and hopefully you have people interested in not normally want to read about that, they might want to read this really compelling investigation, so thats kind of how i got started on it. Hipolito. Im honored to be here. I bring a unique perspective. I have a federal agent for more than 30 years, i was born and raised along the texmex border. I had the honor of serving our country 13 years in commission including eight years where i served as an agent with our missions in cuida juarez, monterrey, mexico city, the largest human cartels in the United States, i posed as smuggler, migrants coming to the United States searching for a better way of life, i was thrown in a mexican jail where my identity was revealed to the human smugglers that i was operating with and i barely escaped or was able to get out with my life. Im pleased to share a lot of the stories that the Success Stories that we had during those years of children being smuggled into the country, human smugglers outside of the United States, not only hispanic migrants, central america, south america, the far east, pakistan, india, and so i hope you will take a little bit of time to look at the stories and i hope reflects a little bit on what some of our agents are doing every day protecting our country and im grateful to be here. Its hipolito. [laughter] very much hipolito. Realtime factchecking. Hello, first of all, honor to be here. I appreciate that all of you came to listen to our stories. I start today write this book when i was working at the border just on the other side, there was the city of matamores and brownsville. I used to teach the university of brownsville, now its the texas Rio Grande Valley university. There was a very important conflict of whats happening on the other side that we have never imagined. I had an encounter with a zetas that i didnt understand and as many other mexicans i was borned and raised in mexico, born and raised in mexico city but my family comes from another state of mexico and my father was was threatened by them and was asked to pay extortion fees in the year 2006 and he and my brother had to leave their land at the time and i didnt know how to how to understand that, but it was not the time that i was interested in in writing about this. It was when i went to brownsville and when the war started, i just arrived there when the war between the zetas and the gulf cartel started in the year 2010. I arrived in 2009 and my students start today come to my classroom, some of them saying that they were not going to attend class again because their participants were kidnapped or paying extortion fees and that connected me and to their stories. In 2010 to listen about what was happening, the violence elevated to levels we never imagined, we started knowing about heads being thrown or bodies, corpses, and 72 migrants that were found killed in a ranch just some miles from where i was living at and therefore there was an opportunity for for me to understand what was taking place and i understood that the narrative that the government of mexico was was having i mean, that it was like a fight between the good and the bad, that this was about criminal organizations that were distributing everything and not necessarily what was happening and i analyzed and i wanted to analyzed the structure of the criminal organization from the beginning, from its origin and it was born exactly on the other side because the organization that gave birth to this organization was born in matamores, the cartel of matamoros. The gulf cartel. It was easy to form a group of networks and i understood that this Organization Works like a criminal corporation and and theres many players that we dont talk about government story piece, governments of other countries and the responses to this type of violence in the in the end have other winners and i explained what the businesses that are illegal also benefit other businesses or Transnational Companies that are involved in the creation of Energy Particularly in hydrocarbon sector. From a personal story, im from a desire to understand what was taking place at the moment that i didnt understand, some other conclusions came, this is the product of seven years of work. At the border and understanding and speaking english and spanish helped know conduct all of this interviews with the actors. And i thank you for being here and im very grateful. So [applause] im going to do a quick followup with you guadalupe and ask you to describe because the zetas occupy a very unique place and the mexican organized crime and i wonder if you can describe to the audience, what was the concept, what allowed the zetaa zetas, side man, sub said. Subsidiary to the gulf cartel, what came to that . One of the main points of the book is that the zetas transformed the face of organized crime, i alleged in mexico and probably in western hemisphere. This is my thesis because the involvement of military tactics, armed caliber and logical of operation as military group transformed the whole panorama of organized crime. We are not talking about truck cartel and Drug Trafficking organization. We are talking about an organization that because of this access to military training, to high caliber of magnitudes that we have never imagined, we have they have the capacity of extracting rent in every illegal business. Its very important to understand that today we are not talking about drugs only, we are talking about extortion, we are talking about other illegal activities that at some point there were certain groups that that were involved in this criminal activities and all legal policization of illegal activities that where possible because of this now this military logic that at the same time this military logic, at the control of territories of big amount of territory that were not necessarily drug routes. Sometimes coincided with the drug routes but the control of territories of this organization i mean, extended to other parts of mexico and they started dominating half of the country and the model that they incorporated to other organizations like la Familia Michoacana of michoacan and not only that, but the response of government with the military to this new militarized model that generated the war that ly call it the civil war, how two armies in a territory encounter themselves and displace massive amounts of people that in the end benefit other actors, national actors, producing companies, the transnational Financial Sector and the military Industrial Complex and Transnational Companies that are involved in the Energy Sector because its territories as happened to be territories that concentrate important amounts of Natural Resources and that are related to the creation of energy. Not only hydrocarbon, natural gas, but water, coal, they have a logic that i tried to show in the book and i try to show where maps where this this this control of territories, so they changed the whole logic of criminal activities in the country and i nealg allege in the western hemisphere. Thank you. I wanted to ask melissa and hipolito, so your books, you have a character who is the accountant well, i dont know if he would characterize himself that way. Hes a prosecutor. He goes through a mountain of words and trying to figure out the Money Laundering. Right. Hes basically a guy whos in the offices of a Law Enforcement agency and at the other end of the spectrum you have people like hipolito who are on the ground who are going undercover, who are truly in the raw mix of this stuff and what i want toed ask both of you to see if you could speak to is that spectrum of Law Enforcement when it comes to mexican organize crime because plays an Important Role in in making impossible to prosecute these guys and hipolito in the evidence that you talked about Critical Role and apprehension and comprehension of the criminals. Talk about Law Enforcement in terms of the multiple arms or strategies that are involved to really make it work. You want to start . Sure. I think the there are many different facets of investigation. I identified different members of cartel, narcotics, finding the avenues to be able to go in and sell yourself as a crook while still having to operate within our rules and regulations because even if youre undercover you cannot break your own laws so you have to be very careful. You want to make sure that we are able to get our hands on the individuals that are criminals, for example, in my second book, two of the major targets were in nicaragua and never been able to get somebody from nicaragua. One of them is a british citizen and the other from el salvador. I had to set up what we call a rendition and i personally went into nicaragua, worked by myself without backup and any weapons and successfully bringing them to the United States to justice. So you have evidence gathering that that particular case we have a Money Laundering statute that we are trying to enforce, first criminal wire, wired tap for the agency, so ricardo, youre entirely right, theres so many Different Things that an agent goes through and i have a unique perspective and normally you have nowadays im glad to say the agency has a lot of agents to work on this, many of the cases that i did i was either working by myself or one or two fellow agents, for example u i was undercover by myself in ecuador, in Central American countries, something that we will not permit nowadays because of safeguard, so theres a lot of different basic that is you go into the perspective. When you have to build the case from the bottom up after you develop the information, make sure that everything you do it, you do it correctly, gather the evidence, you write it up and ultimately to be successful in prosecuting the individual and im proud to say that every single defendant that i arrested was convicted on case that i did. [applause] well, i think writing this book and spending time with the investigators i really got an appreciation and understanding of how difficult it is to prosecute on Money Laundering because of nature of money, circular, you know, form that it comes in is they send the drugs here and the market is here, where the money comes from, the money goes back to mexico, so what they had to prove was buying of the corridor horses, they had to prove that the money had come from drugs but how do you do that when youre using mexican business who is are legitimate businesses but they are commingling the funds with this drug money and the mexican businesses are not going to just hand over all their records and say, here, take a look, you know. The irs has they can formally request records through mexican banks and so forth, but most often they dont get any response and i mean, i hear it happens, it works both ways, mexico will ask for stuff from here and they wont get it either and it becomes a real challenge to prove the underlying criminal activity that would link to the money that they were use to go buy the horses and all the people that were involved down to like people who were taking the horses out to get them warmed up and so forth knew they were part of a criminal conspiracy, so it becomes a very challenging case and steve, who ricardo refer today as a referred to runs a task force, he does drug cases i35 all the way from dallas down to laredo and so he just has a sort of knowledge of criminal organizations and groups over the years who have been involved in running money up and down selling drugs, so he did he took a sort of more unusual attack in unraveling the conspiracy in his knowledge of all the past cases with the trevinos, in jail outside of mexico, outside of mexico city but the family is from a laredo and dallas. So he was able to, you know, with a lot of other investigators, it was pretty painstaking involving tons and tons of documents and also witness testimonies and it took about three years and then another five years for all the various trials and appeals, so, you know, thats eight years and a lot of resources poured into into Money Laundering investigation, so, yeah, because i always think, we need to do more, you know, why dont we do more of these investigations and now i understand how difficult they are, so [laughter] yeah, i respect to those guys. So here is a question ive been dying to ask which is and this is specially appropriate because this is the texas book festival, why horses . So your character my pineda is fascinated with horses out of juarez, right . He he i think he comes to new mexico, hes really engaged in it. Carlos perea. Perea, right. Of course, your whole book melissa is about fascination, i mean, millions and millions of dollars being poured into horses, right . Yeah. So can you talk a little bit its kind of a perky thing, right . I dont think the mafia was into horses but while we do have the severed of heads. [laughter] if you can talk about that, you can jump in as well, guadalupe, so yeah, i mean, its a total status symbol and its a great type of asset to launder money through. I mean, theres minimal paperwork, some of the horses go for a Million Dollars at auction and when you breed them you can sell, you know, the offspring for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Its a very expensive industry to invest in but if you have that kind of disposable income, i mean, its a status thing, all the kingpins run horses against each other at races, you know, in mexico, at least they used to. I think you could probably comment more on that, its probably less likely now with the conflict going on but, yeah, its a very appealing investment for guys that have it all have everything they want already anyway. [laughter] hipolito. Growing up along the border, as a matter of fact my brother who is here use today love to racehorses and there was we were aficionados, if you will, for folks along the texmex border where its a passion with horse races and we have seen with the cartels even a few years back, some of the members of los zetas that were arrested after purchasing horses in the United States that were worth millions of dollars and i think its a its a support that people get into, its a very extensive sport and attracts a lot of attention but theres a passion for doing that and melissa is entirely right, its a status symbol when you do Something Like that. Theres all those factors go into play when you have that type of activity. Guadalupe, you want to add something to that . Well, i dont write about horses but i have a comment to make that we are talking about regular people and the way that i see this organization is not like this this drug lords or these people they are people and they find i mean, they find a job in this criminal group that benefits further interest, but at the same time we are talking about people that are conducting their own activities and horses is something about texas and its related to people that find jobs in the crime criminal groups. Ricardo, guadalupe mentioned something about evolution of the book of how cartels changed over the years. Do you remember the late 1990s, juan guerra in matamores, dispense favors to people that would show up at his location. Things have changed and guadalupe talks about this in her book. Thats one of the differences with the cartels, the evolution of what has happened where its no longer one godfather, dispensing favors, now youre talking about businesses, bankers and so theres a whole set of different characters that come into play now inside the cartels. And thats the corporate framework that guadalupe fleshes out in her book, right . Exactly, and this coincided with other processes globalization and democratization, at the same time that this was happening in early 1990s and end of 20th century, we observed the processes of globalization and democratization coming together and how democratickization in mexico the process itself allowed this structure to change and the control that the party in power at the time exercised over all the criminal activity. So, yes, not only they they look more as more sophisticated companies, companies that are globalized, that involve, you know, different areas, different structures, more like a corporation, not only a business. They have always been irregular businesses but the logic has become much more complex and involved now technology and involves much more people like a corporation. So i try to i mean, to compare different types of companies and different sectors, for example u Companies Like exxon mobile or companies that provide private security services, how nice with this new framework that not just includes one company but a corporation but other companies and how money like money is managed in the Financial Sector, this new organization this organization with this new logic operate as these corporation that is im trying, that i analyze in the book. In terms of censorship it is intense, and when i was over there in 2010 and this is right after i mentioned earlier when i was broke off from the cartel i was working on an immigration story and i was working on a story about mexican children who were being repatriated unlike the Central American kids theyre not kept in detention cells theyre immediately kick back into border cities and i thought what is going on with all of these kids who are being kicked back into the middle of this conflict. You know, i thought well im doing an immigration story im not doing a cartel story soy wont have any trouble with these guys when im over there. But i was wrong. I went to the migrant shelter and started talking to the people who were inside the shelter and this is a shelter that is run by catholic nuns and they said we cannot leave we will be kidnapped the kidnappers are right outside. And i remember looking up and there was a building right next door with a ledge and there were a bunch of men standing there watching us in black and they were just like looking down into the shelter i thought oh, my god. So i ran into a journalist that i had used to work with because i used to work at the monitor in like around 2000, and covered the elections, and i was trying to reach Central American kids. And i used to be able to find them back in 2000 and this was 2010 and everything was completely different and i was looking for he said i can help you but i have to ask the cartel first. And i was like oh, great. Well if they dont already know im here which they probably do at this point because i was going in and out every day for two weeks. I thought oh, my god and i didnt know what to tell him and he said he just told me what the situation was we have to run it past them and they tell us if it is okay or not, and i was like well, let me think about it. And then i had to go home and decide whether i was going to follow up with him or not and i decided at that point just to cut and run i was like im not, not equipped for this u you know this has more like skillset you would need for covering conflict overseas and im a domestic reporter or so that was like my wakeup call you know because i was talking to it a person i had worked that was you in war zone incase so, i mean, i knew this guy pretty well, and hes like the deal, and i was like oh, my god e he told me the situation with all of the newspapers there that you didnt do anything, and they actually even assigned people to the newspaper and who tell them this is what you can write about and this is what you cant write about and they have total control over like what comes out. Were going to move to question and answer with the audience so if you all have questions if you would come up to the microphones please we have about 12 minutes or so for that, and then we will have some concluding remarks. Thank you. If you would keep your questions brief and please make sure theyre questions and not statements. [laughter] yeah, thank you. For most of us our most direct involvement with cartels is the movies. What do they get right and what do they get wrong . In your opinion . That might be a question for you. One getting wrong, one of the things that the movies 630 o minutes to 180 minutes done ratter quickly and by the way, gives me an opportunity to say that all three of my books have been booked up by producers in hollywood so hopefully well get a chance to see some of the good things on those particular events. But look i think theres a lot of, you know, they have to cut back into the going into play. Theres a lot of dramatization on some of the things that are done and some of the things that the way that overcover agents are portrayed i think also you know we have a cartel presence in the United States throughout and im sure by coauthors will tell you that we have members of every single cartel all the way through United States including austin, with texas, here so you know what had i think that whole story is not told the way it should be told and it is very difficult. But you can read it in my book and theyll tell you the right story. [laughter] im sure there are drug cartels throughout the world. But why did this seem that mexican cartels are particularly vicious with beheadings and the gruesomeness with which they operate . Thats a good one for you. Well this is, this is something that is relatively new. This is why i am why i was i said this setup transform all states of organize od crime in mexico and in the western hemisphere. You know, drug cartels are paraded under the logic of businesses. They didnt allow truck detention their lodger to sell drugs to the United States there are markets. Theres ab important market in the United States. I mean, money lets a money making machine here. However, the lodge pick change when is they incorporated special forces of the mexican army into a business to protect certain cartel to protect a certain where a lot of drugs were pass by the city [inaudible conversations] corridor, and like this new logic of military station people that were not like necessarily drug traffickers that were involved in military operation at some point so the viciousness and the level of violence you know you know was completely and they use violence because of this new logic of extrorgs, i mean, they have to exercise violation to others to make you to make you pay extortion fee because they needed to make the violent approaches credible so if you dont pay extortion fee ill kill you and kill your family and im able to do that so i throw and i show buddies in order to continue the operation. Its part of the logic of a market being like aria in a business. Right you utilize violence to really, you know extract rent. This is something new. And they they said a message i think thats the purpose of that particular viciousness. Theres no doubt whats going to happen, and they show it in real, real time thats the issue with the drug cartels by the way, here in the United States many years ago. There was a lot of violence in the early 1900s as well very public because they were protecting, trying to gain more, and thats i dont think it is at a different in mexico and in other parts of latin america by the way. If i make small comment that this is not only about drugs. We call them drug cartels but they are expanding their their criminal afnghts and we are not utilizing some times the correct label or the correct understanding to i mean, to understand really what this group is all about. Also the larger thing to countries yes drug cartel in countries but they operate differently considering state of official development and powfort state. In the United States they dont operate with violence and viciousness if they operate in mexico because of corruption levels in mexico because the state of mexico the state is weak. Here Law Enforcement exist, and so i dont believe that we need to be so much worried as in mexico. Thank you all for coming sounds like this is a very complicated issue, how do you see progress moving forward currently or in the future to try to make things i guess more peaceful. I think they really need to crack down on corruption and i think corruption in mexico is part of the violence and of the conflict. And you know, here in texas we have a lot of former mexican governors who are living here on the land stoinl,wood lands, funneling a lot of money through real estate, and other assets ie United States i think those people need to be brought to justice. Im not sure that will ever happen but they need to send a mnldz at the very top that corruption wont be tolerated and then i think it shall that could start, you know, some truth and reconciliation in the conflict. Let me just add by the way, theres a lot of Different Things. But we in our country have a appetites for drugs. So what happens in the late 1990ss i think there was like 300 million tons of coin being brought into the United States which represents tremendous amount of huge amount of money to be made out there. We can make it harder as Law Enforcement officers and the price goes up, and they continue to do it. So i dont know what the easy answer is. But i think it takes work at all different in all dirveght areas. I want to know how close are the cartels to gaining political control of mexico and say some of the Central American countries . Well so until places theyre one in the same no thats already happens thats the problem is that they say choose who runs for office, and you know, its like gangster politics. Dont you think there are differences in different parts of the country to extend to which thats a fact. I dont to say that for every single state in mexico. But i would certainly say that for the state of cruise, tom lisa. What about the National Government . Where the violence is the high fest right now. What about the National Government . Well, i dont know. [laughter] i just want to i want to try to spued to this question, i mean, we cannot talk about United States. We have to talk about corruption at the highest levels of the State Government and maybe connections with the federal government. And money that is activity shows by court by some of the public officials. It is. But at the same time we are talking about, i mean, turning a blind eye on all of this money that moves through u National System of this country. So its much more complex. Were not talking about total like, like the structure of the Mexico Federal government like benefiting activity per se but highest level of corporation that we have probably ever seen in mexico government today. Because of the because of, of course, the processes and the involvement of governors of this current president protecting this cartel and everybody protecting themselves. But were talking about people and were talking about much more complicated businesses that also are supported by the consumption of drugs in the country also by the movement of money in Financial System of this country so this is much more complex, and movement of money involves all kinds of corrupt authorities or those that turn a blinked eye on this afnght. We have time for one last question. If it will be brief and ping well need brief answers as well so thank you. [inaudible conversations] which exist in the United States so for a consumer [inaudible conversations] [speaking spanish] we talk a lot about drugs but the consumption is here, and how are kilos turned into smaller units of sales i guess. [laughter] yeah. But not enough in mexico for consumer [speaking spanish] okay. So are there programs many our schools in in the United States to help kids and people in america from consuming drugs at the rate that weve been consuming them that are at the heart of this problem . This briefly respond i will share that one of the statements that i made it was that we have an appetite in the United States for drugs. And as a consequence cartels drugs into the country because of the high level it is of money or that are involved. [inaudible conversations] secondly we have officers working each and every day to try to cope our streets safe. We have a long way to go. We have a cartel presence in the United States and for all 1500 cities throughout the country so we know that that has evolved not only from mexican citizens, United States citizens, legal residents of the United States. And [inaudible conversations] [speaking spanish] members of the cartel also in dallas and chicago i participated in arrest of a gentleman that i talk about in this book more than 40 years ago for delivery of 13 pounds of heroin right now hes two sons that were born right after i arrested him are in the federal penitentiary used as witnesses against el chapo continued over the years. We have to stop there. Thank you. [applause] its been a real pleasure having these three authors my name is rick consider doe director of the Mexico Center at the university of texas. And melissa [speaking spanish] i want to thank everybody to book signing tent where authors are eager and waiting for you. Thank you very much. [applause] [silence] and booktv live coverage of the texas book festival will continue in just a few minutes. Up next the final author discussion of the day, its Software Engineer ellen who is talking about changes in technology. Stay tuned for more live coverage in austin in just a minute. Heres a look at books that are published this week. Best selling for robert explores political life of franklin d. Roosevelt obama takes an inside look at the presidency of barack obama through the lens of former chief white house photographer pete and playing with fire, msnbc recounts the 1968 president ial election. And former Democratic National Committee Chair donna brazil reflects on russian hacking of the dnc and the 2016 election in hacks. Also being published this week, in 8 seconds of courage captain recalls his military career from his childhood in paris to being awarded congressional medal of honor in 2015 first grant to receive honor since the vietnam war. In president mckinley historian robert mary looks at legacy of the 25th president. Former cbs news anchor shares thoughts on patriotism in what units us. And in when the world seemed new jeffrey ang physical examines president george h. W bush looking for titles in book stores this coming week and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on cspan2. Honored to speak with you and many of your books as one of our most beloved and noted historian. Can you comment on the most recent elevated efforts to take down our National Statues those that have been withstood time for 150 years. Thank you. Well, i started this very complicated and emotionally charged issue. I think that when the statue was built about when the emphasis was created in memory of someone, has a great deal to do with whether or not it is something that may be hard to come down. The statue to the hero of the confederacy put up many the 1890s were being put up at a time when racism was rampant in the south. When black people were being hanged by mobs. It was an ugly awful time on the ideal of a equality in our country. If it was a monument erected as per George Washington who owns slaves, and it was long well before the civil war they be i say no. Thats how they felt about the subject then was very different. Keep in mind the civil war was fought on the principle that slavery had to stop. Slavery was evil and those brought against that were saying no slavery is all right. It can last. It can stay. Thats very, very different. If we lost more human beings in that war than any war weve ever been involved with, and to ignore that as one side was right and the other was wrong, is to live in the kind of haze of romantism and im more concerned about the monument statues we have. Here we are in our in this cases capitol and theres no monument no building in the memory of john adams. One of the most important figures in all of our history. So we ought to be thinking more about the people for whom we should be honoring. I think there ought to be stat chews to the most gifted and devoted and important and influential teachers in our country in every city we have. And every town because they are doing the most important work of any of us. And they have been doing it all along. And they dont get enough credit its not that theyre not paid enough. We dont celebrate them enough for what they do for all of us. For our children our grandchildren, and for us. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Booktv is on twitter and facebook , and we want to hear from you, tweet pus, twitter. Com booktv or post a comment on our facebook page. Facebook. Com booktv. I want to talk about the future of technology and that portion of the conversation actually starts in an unexpected place youre with your son he was born with scree brawl palsy he writes in detail about your early struggle with this but it has totally changed jr. Outlook on the world, on technology on your life walk us through that if you would. Yeah, as they know if i was born when i was 29 years old and his book perhaps more than anything else has shaped a lot of who i am perhaps today as especially probably one of the more harder parse of writing in the book to go back to reflect on it. In more concrete terms. As to what he is taught me. And as a 29yearold with, you know, both my wife and me, you know we were only children of our parents so when zane was about to be born all exciting in the house and we were looking forward to him, and ready and whether we would get become to her work or how quickly can she get back to her work as architect which she had just started but, of course, that night when he was born everything changed born with with severe brain damage which was led subsequent palsy and not laid out plans of mine as sort of a , youyou know a midlevel or o midlevel engineer at microsoft, were all sort of out of the window. I needed to sort of recap recall brit and why is this happening to us and he but only by watching my wife who even after recovering from her csection was driving zane up and down bridges here to get him to therapies. And give 4eu78 him the best shot and thats what perhaps really got me out of o my stooper and said okay what do i as a father have to do and over the years weve been blessed in in Community Whether its the childrens hospital. The speech therapist physical therapist and Community Around us and the connections and the role of Technology Things have gone through many, you know, soofort hardships you know medical sort swharnlings have yd one incident that i remember one day i was sitting waiting for him to come out of his surgery room, and then all of the equipment around me that a lot of that was window. And i was saying hey, all better work. And you know gave me the feeling of the understanding of the responsibilities of a platform company. A Technology Company because thats one of the things thats very unique about microsoft in every power grids were in every hospital were in every critical part of our society and our economy. And we have to take that responsibility very, very seriously. How is this shaped your views on the accessibility of technology and making sure is that everyone can access the power of innovation . And to me my personal life is a great influence on what i think about the technology but one of the things that im seeing inside of microsoft is this universal design and in accessibility as a real driver of true innovation and one of the apps that we launched recently which uses cutting edge e. I. In cloud or Computer Vision and gives anybody with visual impairment of capability to see, in fact, angela is coworker of mine who i had worked with really early on was telling me this story of how she now can go in to our own in microsoft order with confidence to see the food, read the ingredients and walk into concert rooms we have braille rearsd but issue is she wants to walk into the Conference Room knowing that thats the right one and not barge into something thats not the one that she needs and she can do that now with confident so she can fully participate shes empowered through a. An app called seeing you can hold it up to the world that ifs people who will tell you approximate age of somebody like a petry dish that is really cool. Really cool, in fact, going to try to make it like rxz currency it is awesome. It just it gives people a more empowerment who need it. Similarly like a learning tool like we have some Amazing Technology around reading which now makes for the eye can change outcome with one in one note you have learning tools that kids or anyone can start, you know, reading faster, better, more comprehend text. Steve came to a group of passionate people sort of said what can we do for a station who has the ability to move has eye gaze but all of the other muscles cant be moved but can they communicate and so now we have in windows ten, in fact, in the fall creators update, eye gaze is is input mechanism so i feel one of the things that the unlock is is the fundamental recognition that its not just about accessibility as ap technology, in fact, many hicksically in microsoft think of it as wow, this is something that you do as assistive technology. And as a nearby as something that you do on top of having built the product. But the reality is, that one thing that is truly all for all of us is at some point in our life, we all really need something with some sense of ours. And with the universal truth that we can help everybody and