Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20161014

Smith Memorial Foundation dinner to raise money for Catholic Charities at new yorks history historic waldorf the story a hotel. I have traveled the banker years, now they actions of one individual to close three of us not to have seats. You herelad to see tonight mr. Vice president. You said many times in this campaign that you want to give america back to the little guy. I am thatresident, man. Its an honor to share the dais with a defendant of the great out smith. Your greatgrandfather was my favorite kind of governor. The kind who ran for president al you are right a campaign can require a lot of wardrobe changes. Bluejeans in the morning perhaps, suits for a lunch fundraiser, sport coat for to nice tofinally relax to wear what an end i wear around the house. Hillary clinton and donald trump thursday night at 9 00 eastern on cspan and cspan. Org. Listen with the cspan radio app. Hour book to the exclusive are cities tour visits pueblo, colorado to learn more about its history and literary life. We have traveled to u. S. Cities for five years bringing the book theme to our viewers. You can watch more of our visits at cspan. Org cities tour. First we heard about the rock of dollars rockefellers. , i think before ludlow i dont think there is much of a neck knowledge meant perspective his i is widespread. After 1914 it is a dirty word. Pueblo was considered part of the west. We are talking about all of , aost Southeastern Colorado 100 miles in hundred miles across. They are definitely controlling this portion of the state. It is more a growth industry in the u. S. , back when they owned companies which are coal mines, this torry of immigration, people coming from around the poland. Reece, italy and also migration from mexico and africanamericans. There is a large mixture of ethnic groups. As they start controlling the hispanics are living in adobe houses. They will build coal camps that are Wood Structures and then the they will charge employees have to start using coal. They dont get an employee discount. The times are measured at different rates. They00 pounds is a time might say 2600 pounds is a time because there is raw mixed in with the coal rocks mixed in with a cold. Coaliners get paid for the that they cut. The work that you are doing is not valued. Mine there a coal are chambers that have to be late and there are safety precautions but they are not being paid for that. Company rents them homes and take it out of their paycheck. It would be a problem later because they are charging them more than they should have for the houses. There is that issue. Tore are issues in regard sometimes there are coal cap guards in the coal camp communities. They are told they have to shop at the company store. Then it is the cycle of debt because they cant get out of the rut. There are times when there is not a lot of mine production but house,e in the company so you have fathers, kids and more kids. Generations of people that are in the mines. The majority of stock in the 1800s, 440 years the rockefellers are prominent. Ecause of the ludlow massacre it starts in september of 1913. Employees and miners go on strike and are victim from their houses. They set up a 10th cholerae on the plains of colorado. 2000are fighting for pounds is one ton. Toy are fighting to be able have better working conditions. 1913 as one of the deadliest years for mine disasters. There is a push for them to have better working conditions. They are not asking for anything outside of what should have been given to them. Calls up the National Guard when they go on strike. There is a group of denver businessman who by bonds, the income. Re low they think that the National Guard, the idea of martial law. 1914, it is easter and the people in the camp celebrate with the greek miners. Then one of the National Says you have your fun and you will have yours. A war of minus will come in and attack law enforcement. They called out federal troops to stop it. They knew what was going on. The minutes from the meetings from september 13 until 14 no business happened. The rockefellerss deal with it. There are congressional hearings when they say we are just stock owners and we dont know what is going on out there. They implemented an employer presentation plan. , we are like a three leg at stool lake at stool. We are really the same people. We have never made any money off ofcs i. The documents dont reflect it as much in 1915. They focus more on them misrepresentation plan. Tried to speak of the building at a dedication of the ludlow memorial. United mine workers president walked out to rockefellers car and says turnaround, you are not welcome here. I cant guarantee your safety. Tot happened when he comes weblog the idea was you want a union i will give you a union. It will be a companysponsored union. All of the pr is that it is great and wonderful. Not a lot of documents talking about the backlash of it. But the United Mine Workers had these ludlow days when people marched to remember it. It lives on in the minds of the mind workers mineworkers. Rockefeller comes and he is welcome. Think that all of the miners dont come together, he will go less ablehen there is to protest him. New york city is protesting him but here it is the year after it happens, a company held meetings with employees, so theres not a lot of space for them to be upset with him. There is also a series of letters in the archives where they have families that are living in mining camps that were writing letters asking him for , hey for band stands donated money to build a church in the area. These moments you think he didnt know what thats how bad the situation was. But there was a difference between his perspective of the nation and the miners perspective of the nation. He is living in a mansion in new york city, and these miners are living in squalor. There is a huge disconnect between them and there is also a language disconnect as well. So many of the programs he the 100ts, this is anniversary. Report that there are reports on all of these coal mines. It gives suggestions on how to improve some of the coal camps. There is also a gymnasium that is built, bowling alleys, basketball courts, reading rooms for women and also implement camps. There will be summer camps that are held for kids. This will be official implementation of them. Competitions. They will have a nail driving competition for them. They will have a heaviest woman competition. They will way the women and whoever is heaviest will win her weight in flowers. Children,s the most the camp doctor has to sign a paper for the women who has the most children in the camp and she will when shoes for all her kids. The men have first aid competition, showing if there was a mining accident they would be able to patch everybody up. They had a spoke competitions. A yearroundmes activity. Both by the company and the employees. This is a process of americanization and baseball is the symbol. I think that happens is the idea come you get hurt you can and talk about how you got hurt. Incident reports found that it is a fault of the employees. You will continue mine strikes and colorado. He will go in give speeches throughout the United States and greatnto canada about how the plan is and you dont have to have this socialist union. You could have a company union. It doesnt work. Rockefellersor the to say these are the things were doing to improve the situation. Idea of thehe greatest generation for people who worked for them i think the big shift is world war ii. A lot of them will be in the coal mines, they will go to war a comeback back and be able to get their associate degree and be an electrician. That shifts it for them to leave the coal mines and then you work in the steel mill and that gives them more of a living wage. But nothing really changes. Idea butod implementation doesnt really work. Issues with coal mining. They are still fighting for pensions for employees. Week i met with a man who was in the mines for 43 years. Gets a greatid he pension body is a Health Condition also. Scars of what the coal miners live with longterm is still an issue that is facing our nation, still a discussion we are having. That becomes of the president ial debate as far as how do we years are Raw Materials and resources. When well have have a huge incident and shall a 39 miners were arrested. There was a mine collapse in West Virginia that didnt make the headlines. Ishink the cost of coal weighing on our nation, i dont think we are dealing with it, global made a still of the. Are still seeing discussions 100 years later. With mattn continues harris on the Founding Fathers and religion. Often hear in the media that the culture wars especially with religion began in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan and the moral majority were instrumental in bringing him to office. There is has always been a conflict with religion and the role it plays in public life. During the founding generation i was amazed about this conflict that emerged clearly. Most of the founders believed that religion was necessary in order to prop up a new generation. It was very important. One of the only things these guys could agree on an terms of what religious liberty met is there should not be a state sponsored religion but also that americans should be able to freely exercise their religious beliefs. There are a whole host of differences in the First Amendment in terms of what it meant and why they included it. Jefferson, thomas they had fought against established religions in the 1780s. Madison was responsible in 1785 for creating a bill in virginia pamphlet and his colleague jefferson wrote a bill for religious freedom in which they argued that religion is a natural right. You can believe what you want to believe or not believe anything at all. These two virginians were trying toal in separate church from state. You see the First Amendment is a reflection on jefferson and madisons effort during the debate and efforts in the virginia legislature. Print there is in their imprints on two sides of the fence. If you lookthat back at the 1770s and 80s it was a novel idea because religion permeated everything this guy did, writing the state constitutions, you had to believe in the bible in order to hold Public Office. That was the sort of things we were fighting against. Luckily let people believe what they want. Decide what that fitness is. Lets not make a pledge a believe in something. Religionrecognize that was a vital role in the nations founding. They did not talk about religion at the constitutional convention. One of the only things they said was you didnt have to hold Public Office believe in the bible or some form of christianity to hold Public Office, there will be no religious litmus test. There was a lot of pushback because there it was argued that christians were only people fit for Public Office. They did not talk about religion a lot because i think they understood how divisive it was. A lot of the folks who were there were strong personalities who want to do separate church and state. Committed christians like patrick cameron. If he had gone he would not have agreed on some of the final outcome of the convention. He would have insisted there would have been some expression of christianity in the final document. To play anry wanted a bigger role. He thought it was important for the government to pass laws that would prop up religion. States had establishments of religion. If you were living in new england in the 1700s, your tax dollars would support the congregational church, a sort of grand imperialism. You pay our taxes and it would support a church. If you lived in virginia your tax dollars would support the local anglican church. Patrick henry and others like him believe that if you remove that Government Support that somehow the churches would crumble. They would not exist and people would not want to support them on their own. And yet at the cannery and his yeta neighbors Patrick Henry and his virginia neighbors said you would not need government to impose mandates. They would happen naturally as jefferson wrote. When theye the debate were talking about the constitutional convention. Religion did not govern the front and center of the constitution convention. When the constitution was finished it went out to each of the states for ratification, where the states would vote if they wanted to support the new constitution. They had to have nine state support. Religion was a big issue. A lot of the antifederalist became these are the folks that oppose the constitution. They saw that the constitution was silent with respect to the constitution. They proposed a litany of amendments from the getgo acknowledging jesus christ as creator and lord. ,he governor of the universe asking to include a phrase in the constitution that bible is the word of god. It didnt get anywhere. But yet they tried. A stronghere was belief as her was now that this is a christian nation. Is always inevil the details. Does that mean that a number of us are christians in this country . Does that mean we should privilege christianity and which version should we privilege . At the founding, there were people who thought that this was a christian nation from the very getgo in the 17th century. They wanted to acknowledge that inianity and founding the founding documents. That was an issue for people like samuel adams and cap turn henry and somek others. Me why does ited aster if we categorize this a christian nation or a secular founding, why does it at her . We want to try to get the history right, even though it is controversial, but it does policy debates are tied into the understanding of the founding. If we think this is a christian founding, we are more likely to support a law that says we can play pay pray in a classroom. If we think it is a secular more likely to oppose tax dollars to religious schools or saying prayers at Football Games are convocation ceremonies. Historicalions are and they matter because of our connection to public policy. Most people in this country recognize that religion has a role to play it codified the u. S. Constitution First Amendment. But when we Start Talking about it, limitations on religious , including some religious groups in Public Office because you dont like what their church teaches or something, you are getting into rough water with the constitution. It is clear because it says we are not supposed to impose a litmus test on these people. ,hen Joe Lieberman was running they said can we have a jewish man on the ticket. If you believe in the constitution of course you can. We had a mormon when mitt romney ran. When the constitution said there is no group religious litmus test, that is what it means. Presumably we can have an atheist. Any member number of religious beliefs. Americans would not judge them on their religious beliefs, agenda, theirheir policy. Does, but it shouldnt. One of the things i learned about writing this book with my it was contentious during the founding generation just as it is today. The question is would they be disagreements and the conflicts we have today in the public space . I dont think so at all. They experienced it themselves. We have always said trials in our nation and will always probably will. Tv is in pueblo, colorado learning more about the citys literary fame. We talk about the Book Mountain mafia. You think of mafia being a new york or l. A. And certainly pueblo was connected with these. Pueblo was known as liberal chicago. The mafia was big care. The black hand as it was originally called. It started with italian immigrants coming into colorado to work in the coal mines in the southern part of the state, or to work in the steel mill in pueblo. They were recruited. The steel mill did not have enough men. As were sent out all over the United States and that drew the people here. The black hand, which was basically extortion came with them. Most of them had a lot of the farm, many owned various solutions as they were called outnightclubs around town on the mesa. Some of them were businessmen, one of the bars was between santa fe and main street. ,ne was owned by Charlie Blanda at that time it was called the holiday in, not like the hotel chain. This was the bar that most of us as kids knew was there and could see people going in and out. They were legitimate businessman. Some of them had machines that dispense candy. This was a different. Of time. I can remember going to the Grocery Store as a young child where they had punch boards and you could pay a penny and stick a knife thing through one of the holes and you might win the something. But usually you did not win anything. But this was a form of gambling. Nobody ever said you are a kid you cant do this. All of us did this. It was a small town. I grew up. It was 50,000 people. Everybody knew everybody. You could not sneeze with body saying bless you. You had different people with Different Levels of income. You had the wealthier and other people that were poor like any town. It was a nice place to be, i think. So the mafia didnt just prey on ordinary Citizens Walking along the street. There were two factions here that really came during prohibition, the danners fours brothers and the carlinos two brothers, and they were fighting for control of sale of liquor in the southern part of the state. One of the very famous instances was the shootout over the baxter bridge out east of pueblo on the bridge that crossed the arkansas. The danners were coming down the hill on to the bridge so they had the advantage to shoot from. The carlinos were coming across from the lower part. Two of the carleno people were killed. I need to quality it a little. It wasnt just those two families. It was all of their immediate relatives, inlaws and friends that were together in this. Anyway, the shooting went on for at least four hours, over 500 shots were fired. One side ran out of bullets and had to send back to pueblo for more ammunition. The result was two of the danner men were arrested. What was so interesting when they went to trial, just before christmas and in the book, we have the lawyers plea how could you arrest these two farmers who are only making their living on the land and leave their families at christmas without their fathers. The trial actually lasted five days. The jury debated 28 hours and it was a hung jury. So eventually the danners were to be tried again, but nothing ever happened. It just disappeared. Obviously when the two carlinos take over pueblo with boot will hing, they have all of this liquor, but there wasnt much population in southern colorado. A lot of booze, no people to buy it. So she decided to go to denver to challenge joe roma known as little caesar. He was about five feet tall. He was doing the bootlegging in denver. Shortly after they get up there, sam carlino has his house blown up and he is killed by one of his men. This scared pete, so he goes east to cleveland, to new york to stay there with the people he knows there, but eventually he comes back to pueblo or to the mesa and the Denver Police find out about it and they arrest him and take him up to denver and put him in jail. 5,000 bail, now this is a mafia head from pueblo. He has 47 in his pocket when he is arrested. Here he is in jail, who is going to bail him out . Joe roma. Joe roma comes, pays the bail. There is a picture in our book of the two of them shoulder to shoulder, arm around each other and joe says, oh, you know, he is a good friend of mine, i have no trouble with pete at all. About three weeks larry, pete is found shot west of pueblo on the way to westcliffe, but it was a business. What was it al capone said about bootlegging, it wasnt just business, it was big business. This was true. Again, they were not in your home, in your face. These people who were involved in bootlegging provided a service. You cannot have a bootlegger if you dont have someone to buy the liquor. Sandra and i have been asked many times to compare the prohibition here with the people who were upset about marijuana or drugs in general. Well, the people who sell that obviously are selling in the same way you and i go to the Grocery Store. So they provide a service. So to some degree, the mafia provided a service. They sold the booze that legitimate people bought. I have a close friend whose father owned a barber shop down on union avenue which at that time is now the place to go. Its the river walk. But at the time, when i was young, you didnt go on union avenue. Who was e, whispers, always the underboss for all of these other, very interesting man, used to go in there to get his haircut and this friend of mine who was a kid at the time said whiskers always gave he and his twin brother a penny. A penny, you could buy a little bag of candy for a penny. What he remembers about whiskers was he said with his dad, he was just a good customer that came in regularly and he always gave the kids the penny. They were just family men. They had a different job. Most people who read the mafia book, even the kids who came, you know, we thought the people we named would be very upset. They were intrigued by this, by what their family had been. They were never told this. I received a call one night from a gentleman in california carlino, i was sam thought that couldnt be sam carlino, sam is dead. He was the grandson and someone had sent him the book. I had always been told my grandfather died of pneumonia. I did not know he had been shot west of pueblo until i read your book. For most of the people, it was kept undercover in the family and your neighbors, they were Good Neighbors with other people around them. I think thats what we tried to show here or say. They just had a different business. It was a business of crime. It was a very profitable business if you lived. Announcer during our visit to pueblo, we caught up with Colorado State University Professor on her book about the way murder was viewed in the Roman Republic. The concept of the word murder is different depending on who those people are. So people who are professionals in the law know that there is a distinction between murder and homicide. One of the things that i had to deal with with my book is this question of terminology and how we use murder and homicide because technically they are different. Homicide just means you killed someone, it doesnt mean its justified or unjustified, it just means killing. And murder in the United States a criminal anth. If you kill someone intentionally with malicious intent, that is, then they are then that is what qualifies as murder. My book explores the question of murder in the Roman Republic mostly because i was looking at the development of roman public law, i cooperate find murder. I found specific acts that were related to murder, for example, poisoning or Walking Around with a weapon with the intent o kill someone or commit theft. And these but these specific acts were punishable in romean courts, at least by the late republic, theyre punishable in romean courts, but theyre not theyre not murder per se. So i started to ask, well, why is, why is murder not a crime because we expect that, right. We are like, murder, of course, its a criminal act. And so what makes it a criminal act . And crime is very closely connected with state. So the definition that im using of crime is not just a bad thing, but its an act that the state takes an interest in, so there is legislation that we pass so that we can punish people who do wrong, right, in the United States thats criminal law. In rome, that falls under the category of public law. O the roman state is interested in certain offenses that end up in someones death. Theyre not interested in murder, per se. Theyre not interested in should we put on trial someone who has killed someone. Thats not the question that they deal with. Thats not where their laws are going. The theory that i propose in my book about why the romans are ot interested in murder per se is that there is not that much cohesiveness in the state. So the state doesnt have nough of an entity to make killing someone of interest and it gets a little more complicated, of course. So there are a couple other issues at stake. The father in the roman family of what we call the right life and death over his children. And this is for the most part not practices. Ideologically, the father has the power to kill his children and the roman state is conceived of as being a community of fathers of the family and even the senators in ome are known as patres, fathers. So that power belongs to individual fathers who are obligated as roman citizens to ake sure that the people under their authority are behaving appropriately. So if the state were to take over the power, the rules about killing, then that diminishes this role of the father in the family. The question is what do we do have any rs who dont live fathers, right, so nobody has authority over them within the family and how do we treat their misbehavior or their act of homicide. And there are two answers to that question. One of them is that for much of the Roman Republic, we have very little primary source evidence. And the romans are not asking this question of themselves, so we dont get them directly dealing with this problem. And theyre interested in government and big things like war and things like that, so not so much the ordinary everyday life. There is little evidence for ordinary people interacting. So what that means for the question about how these things are actionable in a roman court is that some things we get little snip pets of information about but we dont have a lot. One of them is arbitration, that is agreements made to find a third party, right, so the family of the person who is murdered and the person who pardonned them or killed them and then that third party who will arbitrate a dispute. We know there is arbitration in rome but we are very limited in how much we know about it. It may be that some of that gets resolved by arbitration. That we do sue is see that when senators are involved, when people of higher class are involved in offenses like some kind of killing, poisoning, stabbing, whatever, that we do get the state to be more involved because the state is made up of senators. The Senators Police each other in a way, in a very personal way that they police each other. Sometimes what we have is people of upper class coming into the upper courts and being tried for offenses like poisoning. Its also very interesting in how the romans end up creating permanent courts to try these offenses because they dont, for a long time they dont have permanent courts. So the republic is founded traditional in 509 b. C. E. It isnt until the second century, 149, that we get the first standing permanent public court in rome. That standing public court is on extortion which only senators can commit, its how you behave in the provinces. After that we get a couple that are connected with homicide. Among these are poisoning. Poisoning becomes an offense. Poisoning seems to become an offense because there are a couple of strange incidences a little earlier and then again in the second century of the supposed mass poisoning cases. The romans are suffering from plague and theyre all panicked about what is going wrong and they go and they find these women making positions and but people are dying of the plague, really, and among the people who die are members of the senate and the chief magistrates of rome. So everyone gets suspicious because the romans dont think anyone dies of natural causes. So when anybody dies, ok, who killed them. With the poisoning cases, they find these women making positions and the women say were just trying to help. They say well then drink it yourself and the women drink it and die. What happens is the state does ke an interest because the people who are involved are senators, people getting killed are senators, the whole army is in a state of confusion because people are dying of the plague, right. So the reason for the involvement of the state is not that someone has committed murder, but that the state is no longer able to function because of whats going on and were trying to find some way to fix it. They try to find all sorts of ways. Its not just the poisoning trials, but its also they try to look at their sacred books to see if anything is being done wrongly according to the gods and all sorts of other ways they deal with it. One way they deal with it is they put these people on trial for poisoning. Eventually we get a permanent poisoning court. When the romans change their mind or change their ideas about when killing becomes murder, i still havent quite figured out. Im still sort of working on it. My suspicion is it occurs in the early empire. Once what you do is you transition from a republic where there are numerous senators who have authority and they have influence over each other, but then you transition to an imperial form of government and now you have more centralized government in the form of the month narc, not that they wanted to be called nth new yorks monarch, not that they wanted to be called monarches, but the form of the emperor. One reason i got caught between murder and the state and why its important for understanding the Roman Republic is that when i was writing my dissertation, i saw, i have basically a paragraph in my dissertation that is what grew into this book. It was sort of a hesitant paragraph, but what i noticed was that the romans during the monarchy seems to have a lot about murder and in the republic, i couldnt find a law hat was directly about murder. So i asked myself, well, why is this . Whats the reason that there is not a law for murder if our evidence is accurate, if were understanding its accurate. There is not a law for murder in the republic but there was in the monarchy. One of the main difpkses between monarchy and republic is the nature of government and the centralization of government. During a monarchy, you have one person in charge of government and thats the king and more or less what the king says goes, as with all monarchies, its not always that straightforward. You still have a monarch that is the ultimate authority and then this changes. In the republic, the nature of authority changes, the nature power changes and i think that the limitations on the right to kill are a way to look at how power works in the republic. The way power works in the republic is that its diffuse. It belongs to individual fathers of the family and it belongs to magistrates, but it belongs to magistrates only for a year and then its gone, not like the monarch who gets it for life. And it belongs to the power to kill doesnt belong to senators, and we talk about the senate as a body, but theyre all individual people with their own individual desires for power and things like that. So i think there is a very close connection between the ability to control whether someone gets to live or die and the centralization of the state. So part of the reason the transition is easy in the United States is because of the strength of the bureaucracy. You have the Supreme Court that stays in place for a long type. You have all of the sort of bureaucratic elements of governing, all of these institutes of various sourts where the bureaucracy remains in place even though the political person in charge changes. And the romans sort of bring their own people with them when the power chains. So that makes it less stable in a way, although remarkably asts for nearly 500 years. Take the middle age man in an albuquerque laundromat who asked me about my ancestry, he held claim to in new mexico or spain, i dont remember which. When i tell him my parents never taught me spanish, he instructed me with the condescending click of a tongue to learn. His tone was enough to reden my face like a slap you would have obliged when i implicate myself in the form of awkward con you investigations and the repeated phrases. So thinking about it now, this man showed me how we can associate ourselves with one side and denied the conquered half. When i look back, i have always been a writer. I started out as a kid journaling. I was never aware of it. It was kind of one of those surprise wizard of oz moments, you were a writer all along. I started taking it seriously when i was a college student. I started just taking some creative writing classes for fun and fell in love with it. My father is puerto rican and i mother is ecuadoran so and was born in iowa city, my father was in the military for 31 years and then he proved, after he retired, he moved to just outside of fort carson in Colorado Springs because he fell in love with colorado. I grew up on the south side of springs. Pueblo is similar to that. One half is white and others and so forth and living in pueblo has been really culturally rich. So you can hear spanish regularly and its ingrained in our food and culture here as well. The Arkansas River was originally the border for mexico back in the day, so you can kind of definitely see the cultural roots. I definitely would argue that pueblo is like the northernmost point of the american southwest, so for that reason, growing up latino, chicano here, i think also with the history of the brown bereas and and of other poets historical movements with the steel mill, i think those things make it easy to be culturally y proud of who you are. Its a struggle wherever you go, texas, new mexico, arizona, other parts of the southwest. My family stories, my culture, my heritage are definitely important subject matter that i explore. For example, the first book, my first book it was actually borne out of stories sitting at the coffee table with my parents and just hearing these crazy ghost stories, my fathers war stories because my father, like i said, was in the army for 31 years. He did two tours in vietnam and he fought in the korean conflict and he received two purple hearts. He tells a great story. My mother tells a great story bout surviving a cataclysmic earthquake in 1949 in ecuador. All of these different stories, i felt this panic for a moment, kind of saying these stories need to be told, they need to be preserved, who is going to do it . I said why not me. When i was 14 and asked if i had indian blood inside, my mothers point blank answer was no. Even then i didnt believe her. She was angry. It idnt understand why was important and it protected her growing up in ecuador. Then my second book, the siren world kind of continued where that left off where i started writing poetry about my insecurities of not speaking spanish very well because i think thats an important part of my Cultural Heritage that idea of not being bilingual or being bilingual and the shame and reservations that come with it. So i wanted to tell some similar stories about my heritage, but try to incorporate myself in them. There are stories about going to puerto rico and ecuador and when i visit those places and when im here at home in colorado or in the u. S. , im culturally diverse. So that interesting paradox. I think a lot of times there is a lot of conflict even with just the identity of being a chicano or latino or however you choose to identify yourself, frever, one of the terms is latin mex. I think the brown berets and the Chicano Movement energized a lot of mexico americans, hispanics and latinos to be more politically active and have their voices heard, echoing what the civil rights movements that done for the africanamerican community. So there is always that cynicism with people that our voices arent heard, but the Chicano Movement and other movements have reminded people that your voices can and should be heard. When it comes to the current political climate, i think that there is a lot of good intentions out there where people dont mean to be, dont mean to exclude groups of people and so forth, but there are people that do it inevitably. Were standing under a bridge that says love. I think there definitely has to be a strong intention towards inclusion and remembering our mistakes and remembering the good parts of our history. For example, i think a lot of us can agree that building a wall is, to the south of us is an absurd notion that does not speak a message of peace and inclusion. Of course, you want to have solidarity with great movements like the black lives matter because theyre doing important history has caused so many mistakes and wrongs that there has to be some way that people have to get a voice back. To forgive the native within, to smother origins in denial, these are the adopted habits before times i knew how to track a pen into words. I think about my confusion, burying a line in the sand knowing it will be erased about a riding tide and then i turn again to write future and past pressed together as the skin we wish to crawl out of, but we have to accept it as a gift. Announcer our visit to pueblo is a book tv exclusive. For five years now, we have traveled to u. S. Cities bringing the book theme to our viewers. You can watch more of our visits at cspan. Org citiestour. Announcer this weekend cspan cities tour along with our comcast cables partners, well explore the literary life and history of peoria, illinois, on book tv on cspan 2, jackie hogan, author of the book lincoln incorporate operated selling the 16th president in america talks about the marketing and selling of abraham lincoln. He is portrayed in peoria, i think, as a hero, as someone who stood his ground against the spread of slavery. Announcer then author taylor on his book brothers notorious, the shelttons, outhern illinoiss legendary gangsters. Exploring through the legendary gangster family. It led to an all out war between the klan and the bootleggers led by carl shelton. Announcer on American History tv, a historian talks about peorias history as the whiskey capitol of the world. It was primarily because of the quality of the water. The billups along the Illinois River here has water that is filtered through limestone. That was perfect for brewing and distilling. Announcer well visit the usda center where in 1941, scientists discovered how to mass produce penicillin, credited to saving thousands of allied lives during world war ii. The cspan cities tour of peoria, illinois, saturday, at 6 00 p. M. History on cspan 2s book tv and sunday afternoon at 2 00 on American History tv on cspan 3, working with our cable affiliates and visiting cities across the country. Announcer next on cspan, a Senate Debate in wisconsin and then penarodriguez versus colorado about racial bias in jury selection and later a debate in the Nevada Senate race. Now to wisconsin between ron johnson and russ feingold. Youre on cspan. From the studios of wl u. K. In green bay, the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Foundation Presents the 2016 u. S. Senate debate with incumbent republican senator ron johnson and challenger russ feingold. And now, president and ceo, michelle that are con vetter con. The Broadcasters Association is pleased to welcome yo