Transcripts For CSPAN2 Eric Liu Discusses Youre More Powerful Than You Think 20170507

At the tmp and everybody here at busboys, welcome. Thank you for coming. We are very fortunate this evening to have with us eric lou to talk about his new book youre more powerful than you think. A citizens guide to making change happen. What a timely work. In the wake of last novembers election, my staff and i the bookstore have been approached many times by customers concerned about the course of events have taken and wanting to know what they can read to help them decide how to get more involved in civic life and effect change. Well, erics book is now a good place to start. He began writing it before donald trump launched his bid for the presidency trumps the election is one manifestation of a mounting turbulence in us political and civic life that weve all been seeing for some years now. Into a book about civic power, what is, how to practice it, and why anyone would actually want it. As as a writer, educator and cic entrepreneur, eric has been thinking about Democratic Values in the role of citizenship for a number of years. Back in the 1990s he was a speechwriter for president bill clinton, and later the president s deputy domestic policy advisor. More recently founded and remains ceo of Citizen University which promotes the art of citizenship to a variety of programs. He also is executiv executive df the Aspen Institute citizenship and american identity program. Additionally he is a regular columnist for cnn. Com and a correspondent for theatlantic. Com. And hes written several previous books on such topics as mentoring, patriotism, and the role of government and citizens in our society. As well as a memoir three years ago that told not just his story but was a broader exploration of cultural identity. His new book grew out of a ted talk that eric gave in 2014 on civic power. Its a very popular talk which i urge any of you who havent seen it yet to watch. Before turning the mic over to eric i would just like to thank to other organizations are joining us in sponsoring this evenings event. Citizen university, and erics program at the Aspen Institute for citizenship and american identity program. We greatly appreciate their support. So ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming eric liu. [applause] good evening everybody. It is i may have messed up your mic. It is great to be with you this evening, and i just want to begin with a round of thank yous, brad, to you and lisa for your part of the pmp busboys poets partnership. When i lived in washington this space did not exist much less this concept of making food and ideas in this way that is really at the very root of what civic life is supposed to be about, typically isnt supposed to be about, well, each of vegetables. You can eat your vegetables tonight. Enjoy eating or vegetables in company of others in a space like this. Its really wonderful to be in, to be with you this evening. I also want to thank so many friends, so many friends who are, some as longstanding friends that they are family, some who are newer and colleagues at different kinds. I want to take offense at cspan for being with us today to cover this conversation. And really what i have in mind this evening is a conversation. So what i would love to do is just share some thoughts that are embodied in this new book, youre more powerful than you think, and then open it up for some conversation and discussion that can take the form of q a or can just take the form of you sharing your sense of the state of the union right now. Let me just begin in the first place with a word about this moment that we are in. As brad said in his introduction, we are living through times that we know they are tumultuous and we know they are without precedent, and yet still it is sort of staggering to take in the reality of what we are expensive right now. Im not talking only about the election of donald trump and the immediate aftermath, staggering as that has been. Im talking about the ways in which over the course of many years now, but you think about it, over the course of several decades in the United States, weve had this concentration of wealth and opportunity and this polarization of our politics, and the severity of any quality that has given us exactly the kind of uprisings we are seeing across the left and the right here in the United States. They are the same kinds of uprisings using all around the world right now. The arab spring, the orange revolution, the green revolution, the umbrella revolution. All of these movements like the Movement Status from the pier since least the tea party and occupy wall street through the current time or movements that are in progress. Some have achieved electoral victories pick some of achieved very little in the way of tangible outcomes that all are part of the sorting moment that we are in. Naming this moment as a moment of incredible cross ideological citizen power is really important for us. Part of the thing about being in washington, d. C. , and being in the capital is theres emanating from the city not necessarily places like busboys poets or politics and prose but emanating from the capital there is a narrative right now in American Life that says politics and civic life is essentially the house of cards. It is this dark apocalyptic dystopian vision of what it means to be in this republic. And the thing about widening our lanes and looking beyond the beltway and looking beyond whats happening in this town is you realize that from left, right and center there are these incredible surges of bottomup citizens are going on all around the country. Part of that surge wheezing just in the weeks since donald trump became our president , and the label resistance has been attached to that surge, but again it was a surge of civic power from people who had long check out of politics, who had long decided the game is to break to participate in, that brought donald trump to power in the first place. So recognizing all these are part of the same moment, same arc of civic power is i think this thing i really want is to reset into. The second thing id like to say the seating is just to unpack a bit what even mean by power. Talking about power in d. C. Is sort of like talking about money in wall street or new york, or talking about image in hollywood. Its just a thing that is so ambient and so ever present that people stop naming or describing a really thinking rigorously about what they mean by the word. But i want to see what exactly it is that a mean when i say power in civic life. I mean simply this. A capacity to ensure that others do as you would like them to do. To some people that is an uncomfortably menacing definition. To some people that sounds very authoritarian or domineering, but i invite you to step back a second and think about it not even in context of partisan politics but just in the context of your relationships. Family, friends, coworkers. All of us all the time are in this swirling ecosystem of power in which we are trying to ensure that others do as we would like them to do. That power as a place out in civic life is on issues of course public common concern. The thing about power, even though so much of the word in this house of cards age has a negative moral valence is that power nearly as neither good nor evil. Power just is. Its like fire. Simply because it can be put to go use does not mean that we are absolved of the responsibility of understanding how it can be put to good use. One of the ways in which this book aims to explore the topic of power is to frame it in the first place as a subject upon which we must get literate. We have to learn how to read power and we have to learn how to write power. And to do that, talking about power an in civic life ive kinf boiled down the patterns come the ways that powe are unfoldine common and political life into three broadly speaking three walls. I want is a word about each of these laws of civic power. The first is this. Not a surprise anybody yet it is worth naming. Power compounds the rich get richer, the powerful get powerful, people with clout get more clout. Power compounds and concentrates in ways that turn became ultimately into a winner take all game. Power left to itself yields monopoly. That is true in economic life. Its true in civic life. Its true in community life, and that dynamic of course is true as well of powerlessness which also compounds. When you dont have a voice, you tend to get less voice. When youre on the margin you tend to get pushed farther out into the margins. And again you dont have to think about National Politics and president ial politics. Just the life of this community, washington, d. C. , this neighborhood in washington, d. C. , a neighborhood in tremendous flux that is full of both opportunity but also tons of displacement is a story about the way in which power concentrates and competence. That is long over one. Law number two is that power justifies itself. In civic life, every kind of narrative, propaganda, ideology, background story or explanation that would might have about why the economy works the way it does, why white people tend to have more wealth than a nonwhite people, why men dominate our institutions and not women. All the expeditions that people offer for the states of affairs are ways in which power justifies itself. Power will create narratives and the ideologies and store six point everyone who lacks power white is that they rightfully lacked that power. And why it is that those who happen to have concentrated that power are the rightful holders of that power. This aiken plays that are so many, many domains of our life. In economics of course the ideology of trickledown economics is the classic instance away which power justifies itself. That those who already have privilege and wealth need to be coddled and taken care of so that you dont kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. So that their wealth can ultimately trickle down to leak its way down to the rest of us. Thats a story many people tell and a story that many people left and right democrats and republicans have for decades bought into. If you take these first two laws the ways in which power concentrates and power justifies itself you can get into a pretty grim situation. You could into a situation that you can see certainly around the world right now if you think about how institutions are collapsing in a place like venezuela today, where the legislature, now the courts are beginning to yield an concentrate power to a single dictatorial authoritarian leader. You realize this is one realtime instance of a place where power is concentrated towards a monopoly winner take all kind of system, and it is justifying itself with ideologies and stories about why that has to be so. If it were just those two laws will be stuck in a pretty grim doom loop. But what has saved us, what helps us break out of that loop is law number three. Which is of this. Power is infinite. Power is infinite. I cannot underscore this enough. Power in civic life is not like energy in a physical system where you have a lot of conservation of energy and is only so much in the system and if you get more energy than that must be someone else is getting less energy, right . In civic life the amount of how the system can hold is infinite so that if you learn how to give a public speech, if you learn how to organize your neighbors can if you learn how to frame an issue in a way that is compelling to the media, you dont diminish by one with my ability to give a public speech or to frame an issue or to mobilize my neighbors. All youve done is added to the net amount of our circulating through our ecosystem. To say that power is infinite is of course not to be pollyanna or naive and to begin that all people are therefore equally powerful. Of course not. What i mean is that all people at all times no matter what end, the power they may think they have at the moment are capable of generating more out of thin air. How . To this magical magical act called organizing. The simple act of inviting one other person to join you in some kind of common endeavor generates power where it did not previously exist. The simple act of inviting or creating a space where theres permission for a few other people to join in to explore what our common purposes and endeavors ought to be generates power where it did not previously exist. And so this third law about the infinitude of power in civic life is the one that saves us from the doom loop of laws number one into their call these laws actually you for us as citizens, and by the way i want to say in almost every instance of users, if the name of our organization, Citizen University, in the name of language power when a talk about it, im not talking about a limited notion of citizenship as documentation status under the u. S. Immigration and naturalization laws. I mean citizen in the deeper ethical sense of a member of the body, a pro social contributor to community, someone who believes in leaving something behind that is greater than oneself. I mean a nonsociopath. And that notion of citizenship being a nonsociopath [laughing] is harder to live up to then it seems. There are few examples then you might like in our politics right now. I want to just date that notion of citizenship properly defined when we think about our roles in lives of citizens, these three laws of power ive described yield the three imperatives of action for us. So from the first place the reality is that power compounds and concentrates and it tends towards these monopolized winner take all games, well then our first imperative is to change the game. If in the secondplace power justifies itself and is always spinning ideologies and narratives of why the people who have power and wealth and clout have it, then our imperative as citizens is to change the story. And if in the thirdplace winner reminded that power in civic life is in fact, infinite, not zerosum, not finite, not limited to the current allegations and current inherited structures of power, then the imperative for us at all times etc where we can change the equation. So changing the game, changing the story in changing the equation is a way i think about our work as citizens. In the course of this book i describe under each of those three imperatives several strategies for us, whether you are an active is, whether you are an interested bystander, whether youre somebody who has been involved in civic and political life all your career, or whether youre one of the millions who today are just deciding for the first time that i should get involved, that i should actually step off the sidelines into the plainfield, no matter who you are right now it is a time for us to become literate in the strategies of exercising citizen power so that we can change the game, change the story, and change the equation of power in civic life. Let me say a few words just about, a couple examples of each of these as we open while debtor as a open up water conversation. To think about changing the name, what ar of the examples i often share from my home state of washington, i live in seattle. I been there since i left the Clinton Administration a year in the year 2000. One of the great virtues of being in the other washington, what we think of as the same washington, is that you are in a place that is deeply woven into the fabric of National Economic and political life, india Global Economic and political life and yet give a great distance from the conventional wisdom that captures so many imaginations in this town. One of the benefits of that distance is thinking slightly typically and having cited different toolsets of what you can do on different issues. One issue that a group of friends and colleagues of mine in seattle in Washington State get really activated on after the sandy hook massacre was gun responsibility. We decided that of course would meet it an initial push us home in this room and run the country did to try to get our congress to act on responsible gun reform legislation. That failed to weaken thought how about the statement of such washington. We can get her legislation which was at the time democratic controlled to remove on legislation. That failed. What we realize was in both cases the United States congress and Washington State legislature, it didnt matter particularly the large majorities of the people of the voters and constituents supported things like universal background checks for gun purchases. What mattered was the was a finite number of legislators and a finer number of legislators who could be controlled and bought or threatened by the nra and other groups in the gun lobby. For the nra was a very effective thing to play an inside game, and inside game of legislative action to make sure that a small number of legislators could be not even particularly threatened but just sort of warned about the price that would be paid if they were to put their name behind legislation for reform. And that was enough to chew and freeze and kill any effort of reform. We were frustrated, angry. We yelled, we stopped and then we decide we needed to in fact, play a different game. In Washington State like in many western states we have a different game available to us which is going straight to the people. So we began to organize people to get a ballot measure on the ballot, collected signatures all across the state come every county in the state, and would put a measure on the ballot to enact the background checks for gun purchases that the legislature refused to pass. And after that kind of mobilization, after bypassing the legislature after deciding to get people not just in our state but all country to sit up and pay attention, Washington State became the first in union to pass by a vote of the people universal background checks for gun purchases. [applause] thats just one simple example of decide how youre going to change the game, and not just a on the terms and in the format of the game previous he has been reached in. Changing the story is a similar act and a similar set of choices for strategy. When i think about changing the story, i think, as you walk into the door hit you you might see some of the placards on the polls there, and upcoming black lives matter rally about the location of the police force in washington, d. C. , the fact that there are these placards and his posters, that theres a conversation in the United States about Police Brutality and Police Violence is the result not of the elites, not a policy makers, not of congress. As a result result of unsung citizen activists, many of them for the first time getting involved in civic life. Some of the marching, some of them pressing policymakers. All of them getting quickly literate indians and out house d the strategies and tactics of power. One of the strategies, the fruits of the black lives matter move is something called Campaign Zero. Campaigns there was started by four of the leading activist in this movement, including my friend brittany, and what Campaign Zero is, is not just a pr campaign that a policy agenda that is aimed at changing the story. The story when it comes to Police Violence, when he comes to Police Killings of unarmed civilians, particularly civilians of color, is hey, this is the price that a free society must pay for order. That is a story we have all begun to internalize in different ways. And that story is one that increasingly in the last years, because of the spate of highprofile and videotaped shootings and killings of unarmed black man, its a store that is beginning to change their people are beginning to challenge and say its not quite enough to simply say that the price of order any free society is that every now and again and unarmed United States citizen will be killed by the police force meant to guardians are citizen. Thats not okay. But in addition to some to protesting or challenging or say no, what the organizers of Campaign Zero did was to create a compelling alternative narrative that is embodied in the name of this campaign. Campaign zero is aimed at reducing the number of Police Killings of unarmed civilians in the United States, not by half, not by a lot, but 20. They didnt call themselves campaign lets cut it down by 35 . Campaign zero, and the name of the campaign and the agenda which is not a pieinthesky agenda but one that is quite closely thought through at the level of legislative policymaking, at the level of Police Department practice, at the level of citizen engagement, it is an agenda for how all of us take ownership of the work of reducing to zero the number of these kinds of killings. But setting a goal at zero and telling a story about how it is possible to get 20 as some jurisdictions in the United States have come as many of the countries around the world do, that it is possible to get to zero is reminder and a shifting of the frame of the possible that is so much a part of this work of changing the story of power. Well then finally comes to changing the equation i think about a couple of different examples. One actually has its roots in washington, d. C. , took some of you may have heard of a fellow named bob woodson who has been for decades running something in washington called the center for neighborhood enterprise. Bob started out as he puts it somewhat on the left, and assignments gone by, he finds himself now a counselor on issues of urban poverty and urban opportunity to folks like speaker paul ryan. But no matter who he is talking to rob which it has a simple notion in the work of the enterprise which is to take mainly africanamerican neighborhoods that iraq both by poverty and by violence and to treat them not like the objects of government care, not as the postlude which government largess should be poured into. But as agents of their own salvation, as agents of their own remedy. And to say that in every one of these communities there is more smarts, more capacity, more trust, more problemsolving ability than its ever getting tapped from the Vantage Point of the welfare state. And though he may be coming at this issue from the right, he actually has a counterpart who comes at the same issue into the same conclusion quite from the left and thats another person who i write about in the book who founded our position clear across the country in oakland called the family independence initiative. Same notion, taking high poverty, low income families of all kinds. Starting in oakland come out so services around the United States and saying these are not just beneficiaries. Not just clients of the system. He cut his teeth as director of welfare for the state of california and he had to resign when he realized after many years in that system that all he was doing was managing a system that was rearranging the deck chairs of urban poverty. That he was not actually making anybody out of that poverty. He quit that institution to start fii, from left and same with bob woodson coming from the right realize that theyre so much untapped bottom of the capacity in these communities. What did it in unlocking the voices and ingenuity and the capacity for mutual aid in his low income communities is they change the equation of power. They said that these communities that are hitherto have been voiceless and seen as anonymous clients of the state are, in fact, people who get to the authors of the own economic and civic fate. Changing the equation that way something that crosses party and ideological lines. All of this work right now, and bottomup citizen power, theres a lot of energy right now postinauguration that goes under the hashtag resistance a lot of energy, whether its the fantastic surge of activity that indivisible made possible, the group of current and former congressional staffers have made a 26 page guide for citizens about how to apply jujitsu pressure on your member of congress and make them buckle under that pressure so that they will listen to their constituents. That guide went viral and social media and has no spawned over 6000 chapters, self organized citizen neighborhood chapters around the United States in every Congressional District in the country. Theres a lot of the energy right now that is met as indivisible is meant to assist the trump agenda. But i want to be super clear. This surge of civic power right now, this bottomup great pushback against concentrate monopolize power is not the province of the left only. This is something that is happening across the board, something were actually some of the most interesting change in work that is happening is happening on the libertarian right. My friend matt kibbe just walked in with his wife, and they are cofounded of relaxation called free the people which we worked a lot at Citizen University and for the people his workstation that is speaking to particularly millennials and across ideological way about principles of liberty and libertarian thinking. There are a lot of folks right now, whether they were told supporters or Bernie Sanders the board or people who checked out completely from the process. There are a lot of folks will be drawn to a message of pacom dont like a duopoly . How about trying a different oligarch approach to politics. Hey, dont like this force finally into what to pass the city engagement . How about think about ways in which a principle of liberty lead you to different notions of how you and your friends and your neighbors can organize each other to develop your own civic voice and capacity . Is well on the reform conservative side and are plenty folks were equally troubled who are as troubled by the overreaching of this executive as they eventually will buy the overreaching in their view of the previous executive. That across these ideological lines right now there is a sense that from the bottom up everyday Citizens Organizing each other, finding each other for things like indivisible yes, through social media, but so often now in beautiful face to face ways. Brad was telling as we were starting today about a politics and prose at the Flagship Store in upper northwest has been holding a series of each ends this year to teach ends that if impacted because the people wanted to run the basics on one issue or another that a step thrust to the forefront of the news. In seattle were Citizen University is based we been doing since election a gathering called civic saturdays which are probably speaking a civic analog to church. These gatherings that are not about, its its a church. Its a church or mosque or synagogue religion but it is not american civic religion. Inviting people to come to a gathering where they can see one another, be with one another, sing together, read together, text of the Great American scripture, spend time reflecting on our moment, hearing sermons from speakers. And the notion of civic saturdays this, that we are in a moment, though it is aided and feel by technology and the networking that Technology Makes possible, we were in a moment where americans are hungry, are starved for the power and the purpose that comes from facetoface engagement that is to me why i am not in a naive or pollyanna way she too optimistic about this moment. I do not deny that the system is raked in many ways. I do not deny that we are experiencing the most severe and radical income inequality and concentration of wealth seen its country before the great depression. I do not deny that we are seeing thathe most severe kinds of Political Polarization since before the civil war. All these things are real and all these things will continue to play out in ways of probably mean that our politics will get darker and more broken before they get brighter and more healed. Bubut i do believe they will get brighter and more healed because across the left and the right right now there is this is incredible pushback of everyday citizens finding their voice and finding their power and connecting on issues that run the gamut from national to hyper local. So let me close with this. I have spoken a lot about power, about loss of power and impaired is a power and about the ways we ought to get more literate in power. And i also said earlier that my definition of citizen and citizenship is about being a nonsociopath peer well, heres the thing. If you truly want to be a citizen, it cant just be about opting literacy and power. That literacy and power must also be coupled with a grounding in character. When i speak of character im not talking about individual virtues like perseverance or diligence. Im talking about character in the collective. Im talking about a moral sense, what adam smith called in his second most famous book, the moral sentiments, of trust, mutuality, a sense of shared obligation and shared responsibility, a sense of common fate and respect, a sense that mere tolerance in a divere country is necessary but woefully insufficient, that the on tolerance we have to be able and willing to cultivate habits both with empathy and with fellow feeling. This sense of character in the collective has to be coupled with low literacy and power. The sense ultimately centers around a very simple word which is of this, inclusion. I dont care what party you are. I dont care what you call yourself right or left are some in between. The only question that is used as a filter if youre engaged in bottomup citizenry power now is this. Are you engage because you what more people, more of the time to be more included in more arenas of civic life . If you do, lets play. Lets partner. Lets find ways to collaborate your clips find ways to cook things up together. But if you dont come if you only want to get literate in power so you can restrict, so you can hoard, sick and monopolize, so you can keep this up what knowledge is gained about how the system works and about how the rigors ricky things, then you are on the other side of the line. That line is not a red blue line. Its not a dr line. Not a coast versus heartland line. It is light and whether you in fact, believe in the american idea or not. And the american idea, and this notion that we as citizens are called right now and are indeed i would actually say blessed right now to be living to a time of incredible ferment means that everyone of us now when we break bread, spend time in conversation and go forth into argument of his and our workplaces, that we have to be committed with humility and a sense of integrity to learning from each other, to truly seeing one another and committing to ourselves to get literate in the reading and the writing of power. Thank you very much. [cheers and applause] thank you very, very much. It is, i really just want to throw it open to the questions. We had a roving mic that davis over here has. And so please died in. Dive in. Thank you so much. This is a shortterm immediate question but i know a lot of people who would like to not be gorgeous. And now that ther theres goinge a filibuster [inaudible] a question about the nomination of judge gorsuch to the Supreme Court, well, i think its happening as we speak right now. The fact that at least on my last check of headlines before walking in your that it appears since democrats have achaemenid enough votes to sustain a filibuster. Is itself the result of citizen pressure but it is the result of lots and lots of people in this country, some of them getting activated by groups like the aclu, some of them getting pushed by other organizations to do a whole checklist of ways of engaging, calling your member, emailing your member, showing up at town meetings and berating your member of congress or the senate to do the right thing, applying pressure in a way that again changes the print of the possible, changes the calculations of a lot of these members. And changes the story there is one way to tell the story which many advocates of neil gorsuch are saying, which is this guy is a judges judge. This guy is every credential you want and if youre doing this in a neutral way, then this guide by all rights ought to be on the court right . Thats a pretty compelling history. The guy has a pretty compelling resume. But what i can sit down on the other side is shift the story away from that debate about neil gorsuch is modifications and is seemingly spotless record and so forth into a question about, number one, in the first place their place in the senate as an institution and what had happened to the prior nomination of merrick garland. But number two, a story about the kinds of people and the kinds of causes that gorsuch and his record stands for and stands against, right . I offer no opinion right now on the validity or not of that storytelling. I simply note that that storytelling has been affected because it is applied pressure to make members of the senate in the view of democrats get a spine. Whats going to happen now . Look, i think this is one of the ways, one of the rules within the broad imperative of changing the game is about sizing the arena. So when i describe the ways in which we in washington reform and gun responsibility have to expand the arena from the cloistered corners of the state legislature where the nra could wield disproportionate control and expand that arena to the entire electorate of Washington State, that sensibility about when is it healthy to expand or contract the arena is not going to be a place of nomination. There is a fight within the arena of the senate, and well see what republican members of do and whether they will use the socalled Nuclear Option and so forth. Thats an inside game. Frankly, however that game plays out, activists like you, citizens like you want to engage and to be right now, where neil gorsuch is not on the United States Supreme Court went to figure how to continually expand that arena and make this a broader fight about the broader legitimacy of our broader institutions. And to be changing this into a battle that is about hold on a second here, we have a Supreme Court nomination, number one, coming on the heels of a nomination that was blocked against all senate norms. And number two, that is coming in the wake of the president ial election that itself is increasingly under a cloud of illegitimacy. Thats history i would tell if i were you. And how to expand that. The reality is for people on the other side, they are going to focus as in other ways which you and people like you are responsible for blowing up National Politics. You are radicals were trying to undermine the way that National Government can work and you are very much part of the swap that this president needs to drain. All politics is a game of infinite repeat play. All politics is a perpetual tugofwar between these kinds of framings and his kind of choices. For you as a citizen getting activated and organized and really, i dont know, remember on Election Night some of the newspapers like the New York Times had a meter of the odds of Hillary Clinton that started out 93 as a night went on a kind of dwindled and dwindled and dwindled, this is kind of a statistics thing now, a data thing. I dont know what they meter says right now about the likely of neil gorsuch becoming a justice of the Supreme Court. I get it is still pretty high, right . Part of the challenge for you is to define victory or defeat not necessarily even in what it ultimately gets pushed through, but what broader avenues of mobilization get opened up, what broader stories you told as people begin to see themselves and see this not a son inside baseball fight in the u. S. Senate but as their fight, too. And if that works and that happens, then even a successful move to get neil gorsuch on the court could yield positive dividends for activists like you. Yes. Swing around this way. Wwell come back to the front. My name is mark. I love your i find it tough with some parts to tolerate those who are intolerant. I was one if you talk more about that. If you dont think transgender people dont have the right to have easy access to public bathrooms or even dont think that black lives matter systemic issues of race, how do you suggest we engage those who refuse to engage, its not small versus big government. Its just i i dont recognize you as rights and privileges . How do i engage in those folks . Mark, thank you for the question, and tell me again the name of your venture . Action met. Mark is a social entrepreneur, one of his ventures right now is called action map, and is one of the ecosystem of tools that are just popping up, created by citizens right now so that if you want to get engaged in the way that our last commentor spoke about a Something Like a Supreme Court Nomination Committee on something more local concern, you go to a map on action map on the app and it will navigate you to the elected officials, the ballot measures, the choices, the legislative action that are pertinent to your jurisdiction. That kind of thing is sprouting up all of the country right now. So first of all thank you for being part of that great civic search. I think its a good question that mark asks about inclusion, about tolerance of the intolerant, right . And i think part of, all i can say is from my Vantage Point, into what do we do at Citizen University, which i should hasten to add come is work that is completely cross partisan and cross ideological. We work with folks that run the gamut from former Tea Party Leaders and activists to court black lives matter leaders and activists to folks from 15 now movement, dreamers, you name it. Across the spectrum. If their interest is in bottomup citizen power and in widening the circle of inclusion in the civic arena, then we have some business to do with each other. In that work one of the things i have learned is that sometimes if youre come up against somebody who has a story that they are telling, that makes them constitutionally incapable of including somebody else because she is transgender, because he is muslim or because whatever, right . Or because he is Charles Murray and holds the views that are controversial on race and iq. If you find yourself kind of finding and calling Somebody Just de facto kind of an tolerable and unacceptable, one of the things that i find is really important is to invite yourself to change your own story. And ask yourself what is it that im trying, what notion of identity and my reinforcing that makes me unable to tolerate this other person. If you asked that about yourself first, thats a really good way to invite the other person to ask that of herself. But if you start with hey man, why are you so close minded . Why are you such a big it . Thats a pretty big way to end the conversation, right . Theres a wonderful book that a wanted man to all of you by somebody who i read for many years and about three weeks ago i had kind of the thrill of talking to for the first time, i guy named C Terry Warner who is a retired professional of psychology at Brigham Young university and about this book about 15, 60 years ago called bonds that make us free. Its a book so to like my and a sense that its principles and ideas can be applied at almost every fractile scale of life, whether its spousal relationship or international diplomacy. In this book bonds that make us free, C Terry Warner describes a very simple dynamic that he calls collusion that we all engage in all the time. It goes like this. I accuse you in order to excuse me. Thats human life right there. I accuse you in order to excuse me, right . Why do you take out the garbage . Why didnt you do the dishes . Hey, why dont black lives matter . Well, why dont blue lies matter . People doing this countering of accusations, this kind of oneupsmanship of moral cleaning. Cleaning. And the only way that c terry one talks about being able to break the cycle of collusion, the cycle of relentless selfjustification is in fact, to release the impulse to justify yourself and make yourself a first object of scrutiny and examination. Let me tell you about how my own heart, im kind of narrowminded when it comes to people who believe x, and a pretty intolerant of people who think why. I think it over this instinct i have. I think extending that invitation and just letting it sit there not think i would like your turn to confess, but actually putting it there with all come in all seriousness to say look, i dont know if youre going to reciprocate by do know the other way will break the cycles of collusion and light in our politics is for me to start, thats what it means to step up as a citizen. I do believe that that is a nom that is contagious. I do believe that when people like all of us here in this room who have networks in different arenas start behaving that way, we do make it more possible for people to let down their guard and then as themselves, why is it and is a possible for me to frame my story of identity differently . Some of you for campaign junkies know the phrase deep canvassing, which is this body of work that is been unfolding over the last couple of election cycles. That isnt just doorknocking and asking people their opinions on stuff but is actually talking on a door on a contentious issue like Marriage Equality, for instance, and then really spending the time of the person who answered the door and asking them to tell their story of self. Asking them to reveal how it was they came to the values and identity. Only after kind of drawing that out of them beginning to find points of connection. I see that Family Matters to you. I see that tradition matters to you. I want to tell you about my friends who are in a samesex relationship who seek Marriage Equality because to them, Family Matters, too. And tradition matters hugely. And you shouldnt seem necessarily as the inning of tradition. You should see them as the agents of the revitalization of this tradition, right . The only way you can get to the point is if youve done that deep time canvassing and really hearing with all sincerity hey man, where are you from rex that question of where are you from, where are you really from is something that we as citizens have gone out of the habit of asking one another. I think again thats why put such a premium on spaces and places like this where we can see each other engage each other and feel each other rather than what social media both allows and permits. We will come back here and back over. [inaudible] [inaudible] i have a picture of a hint of what you mean by risk but see more about what you mean. Lets say, for example, be careful what you wish for. In the filibuster debate there could be a downside to pushing for a filibuster with the nominee that is getting through one way or the other in all likelihood. So theres a risk involved for democrats [inaudible] so i would like you been a very upbeat discuss it, author. Tell us about evaluation of risk [inaudible] you mean with david . So the question is really important and im glad i asked him to follow because there are two levels here of thinking about risk and civic power. David, you were talking about this kind of from a Leadership Perspective and i want to get to that second the cows i think youll find when you read this book that i talk hardly at all about leaders and leadership. I dont mainly about citizens and citizenship. I dont really, not to see that people have titles and who have authority and a formal positions of power are not themselves citizens, but my focus is on how everyone of us no matter where we start is more powerful than we think. And so the evaluation of risk i think, i think naming the factors important because what are the ways in which again i dont want to be naive or pollyanna about civic power is that there are costs involved with every action we take every stand we take. And so one of first things that weve got to do in evaluating risk is in the first place to take inventory of our own power, and, frankly, our own privilege. There are various forms of power that i described in civic life, money power, ideas hour, people power, social norms power, state power. Everybody in this room, everybody watching on tv, everybody in america has some little pile, maybe in some cases, some big pile of capital that is the key relation of these various forms of power. You may not feel that way. You may feel quite the opposite. You may feel voiceless and help us and powerless but he could take a candid inventory of the kinds of power that you have at your disposal, the ability to mobilize other people is available almost to anyone in this room, the ability to activate money is available to you at least in the withholding of your money and boycott power, if not in the link out the piles and piles of cash. All these forms of power are available to you. So taking a candid inventory of that, number one pick in the number two, taking a candid inventory of privilege. The word privilege whether it is attached with White Privilege or other forms of institutional privileges is widespread abuses that i just want to mimic your privilege, by privilege i mean simply under the articulated on your benefit of allocations of power. So here i am the son of immigrants, all i had to do was have a dumb look to be born in the United States, and bestowed upon it with the privileges and immunities of citizenship of United States. I did 02 on that, except be born at vassar hospital in poughkeepsie new york in 1968. Thats a pile of privilege that he take the global perspective is enormous, the privilege that have at the United States passport, the privilege that i have when i walk into a room anywhere on planet earth and canseco number one, im an american, and number two, im going to go back to american epic you cant stop me. Its a giant pile of privilege. So taking inventory on the power and your privilege in different ways, it can be gender privilege, education brothers, whatever. I say this not to embark on some, i know some of your thank you some seattle dude tried to get us on some new selfflagellation thing all of privilege because i wanted to im saying get real about who you are and what you got here im saying lets get real together about who we are and what weve got, right . In this moment right now beginning with that allows you then to make the more clear eyed since of calculus of what are the risks . What am i willing to put at risk . Am i willing if i work in a federal agency, for instance, am i willing to be somebody who creates a guide like the indivisible guide but instead of a guide for how to plant pressure on your member of congress that the guide how move the federal bureaucracy, a guide how to get a regular agency to do x or y but it is an insider skyping are you willing to take that risk . You have to weigh yourself the public purpose it would serve, the cost it might incur upon you but you do not realize that almost nothing in civic life worth doing is cost free. I have two friends who are part of our big broad extended family of work at Citizen University that want to just about the consistently of what david is talk about when he talks about risk. This is a bit more at the leadership level. These two friends, Jose Antonio Vargas, the other guy is mark meckler. Jose some of you know because he is to be a journalist here in washington at the washington post, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and he is probably my whatever measures one might use for such a thing americas most famous undocumented person. Not only because hes a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist but because he came out as undocumented in a new times magazine cover story. He did that a few years ago because when he discovered as a teenager that he was undocumented, that he had been brought illegally as a kid, he felt for many years they had to keep this a tight tight secret. And he had this little web of of course family but also the grandparents who raised him, but also teachers, chorus teachers, guidance counselors, first boss of them mentors at the polls, others who as he moved from Higher Education out into the world helped pose a keep the secret, right . And jose kept on telling it. He kept on iraq if accolades integrate journalism and kept on being a big citizen of the United States in the sense that i mean not about documentation because Jose Antonio Vargas is the living substantiation of the notion of their many people here in this country who lack the papers to live like citizens to her and many people who have the papers and dont peer but housing Antonio Vargas kept the secret up to the point he could no longer keep it. He said you know what, i cant do this. The secrecy is too heavy and too painful. Number one. Number two, i have this privilege all around me are the general people, these dreamers, is an document activist who are putting their lives and are saved on the line for coming out and saying they are undocumented. If they can do that, that i must be able to as well. Thats why he came out and the chemistry of the New York Times magazine and is me himself, even during the Obama Administration, which lets be very clear, was very active at deporting undocumented immigrants. Even during the Obama Administration he had a bit of a talk on his chest and on his back. It is gotten bigger and brighter now that when the trump administration. Talk about risk, heres a guy who believes in this country because its on the country is known and loved, who wants to help define and redefine what it means to be an american way second include a contributor liking. You going to get in the back of the line and get on a pathway to citizenship is the real Immigration Reform that is willing to put his views out there and put himself on the line and risk physical deportation, risk the obliteration of life as he has no, it. I look at Jose Antonio Vargas and i think i am not risking nearly enough. I look at the people behind me here waiting, watching and dreaming, right . Think about the dalai lama, think about gandhi, think about dr. King. Aninc. About long before they became icons that you put on posters for gatherings like this, they were people who made, and started making little choices to put things at risk, the choices accumulated and those choices ocular into the story of self which it im somebody whos of something bigger than me and want to put something at risk for that, right . Instead of saying gosh im tired of the Government Spending so much money and never being able to curb itself, they dusted off the constitution and what that article 5 and said theres a provision here that says if we get a quarter of the states to ratify, to approve a resolution calling for a new convention, we can have a new convention. They are trying to call a new convention whose sole purpose would be to dramatically reduce the size and scale of the federal government. So theres risk here on a policy level because if they should ever impact yet to 37 states and have the bell ring and say okay, were doing this, we are having a Constitutional Convention in philly, if that happens there almost no way they are going to be able to contain that convention around the additional subject of reducing federal spending and reducing the size of the federal government. At that point, all bets are off. At that point all the folks on the left who want to repeal Citizens United and before from the right want to embed term limits and all the folks in between are going to have their free for all with a Constitutional Convention. I dont know how close we are to that but i know that in putting the idea out there intellectually, they are taking a risk by saying you know what . We grant there is the possibility this will be a runaway train but we believe in off in our privilege and our cost to set that train in motion. And mark is one of these folks who has put himself out there and being one of these activists from the tea party who has been shall we say quite at loggerheads with the irs. Thats been saying that hes been persecuted by the irs for tea Party Activism so hes another guy from the other side of the spectrum who has been taking risks intellectually and personally to push the ideas that he wants to believe in. This is a question for all of us. Not everybody in this room is the head of the movement, but no matter where you are or not, its a question of what do i have . What am i willing to spend . The notion of spending is not like, set on fire and burn it, by the idea of spending, i mean circulation. When you realize what kind of capital we have social, intellectual, relationship or whatever, once you become clear eyed about that pile of stuff we have you face a binary choice, the choice is this. Shall i hoard or circulate . Thats kind of it. Everything else is rationalization in the details. Shall i board or circulate . And again, you can be of either party, any philosophical view and you can be a hoarder. Same thing for being a circulator. My job here at this university and my aim in writing the book is to give an impetus for circulation because as it is in the body, so it is in the body politic and more circulation, the healthier we are. And the less circulation the more clothing and clustering and plotting that the lifeblood of the body is quicker we are and thats the United States in 2017. A country where one percent of the body as 42 percent of the blood. If i have 42 percent of my blood in this pinky finger id be falling off the stage right now. Id be choking and what weve got to do as a body politic is to circulate intentionally , that kind of understanding of risk. A couple more. Lets hear all three of these and ill try to wrap it up. From religion, theres religion authority. We are facing a question in terms of thinking about the question of locally where nationalism is spreading versus the idea of there being interconnectivity that you just mentioned. And as for ritual, with next saturday i was talking to our friends in monticello about integration holidays and they said we do a naturalization set ceremony every year on july 1. But when you are saying to mark, its an interesting question that people take pride in where theyre from, you think it could be a tradition howard . Keeping it around. Im an advocate of statehood, i think its key to think about all these other things. I dont know what you care about in respect to the citizens and house members, the electorate and what the supposed benefit on the state of religion is about especially when its involved, then it becomes making more sense. How can we get through to the antiestablishment deep into thinking about it and winning hearts and minds and a change for the better . Hi, i wanted to ask about specifically empowering gaps. I know you talked a lot about the role that people in finding their potential and mobilizing can have but i was curious to get your thoughts on how is that considered disenfranchisement, the specification of gender, race, etc. Can actually whether or not its necessary that theres a meaningful change that takes place prior to them being able to exhibit their potential and ending up weaker, getting their potential in terms of engaging that. One more up here and then i will stitched together here. Thank you. [inaudible] whats their number one rule on changing the game and if you have president obama who is working with attorney general eric holder, theyre all working on the issue of gerrymandering, it goes to the concentration of power and so it they are going to ask you eric, your opinion, your recommendation on how to change the game, how do you change the game so that we can review this concentration of power and the gerrymandering that is causing not everything but a true obstacle in reform and the project. Great question and i as odd as these questions may seem there are some Common Threads here so let me say by way of answering them and bringing us to a close, a few things. First, on andrew slack who asked the first question and it was another living embodiment of the power of changing the story, andrew is the creator of something called the Harry Potter Alliance which is activated the millions of fans of the harry potter books and movies to be as he puts it heroes in real life. Being introduced on civic causes in the United States and abroad ranging from engagement and rights to adhere to fighting hunger or genocide in darfur for and other places around the world and so that emphasis on story is core to the dna of an organization like the Harry Potter Alliance but it is as andrew points out core to the moment were in right now. You can boil down the question to the question who is us . When we say us right now, whos us . When donald trump spoke of an america that he wanted to make great again, he was implying and in some cases people around him weresaying explicitly the particular notion of us. When Hillary Clinton was talking about stronger together as her slogan, she was talking about a different notion of us, that in some directions was more inclusive and capacious but in other directions left people leaving left out of the conversation. And i think this notion of overlapping stories, the Great Community organizer marshall gas was indeed one of the tutors of barack obama , Marshall Ganz always thought about these stories that are at the heart of any active community organizing, a story of self, a story of us and the story of now. Any winning organizer or effective political candidate is able to run a through line between a story of self, which is who i am or an us versus who we wish we were and a story of now, heres why we got to be that thing we wish we were. Obama nailed that in 2008, that alignment of cells, us, now and trump kind of nailed it in 2016, at least enough to get the Electoral College victory got but i think this notion of story is so central in a moment where nationalism and populism are surging as reactions to the underlying structural reality of globalization. We are in this great age of reaction and very little, i dont care how many trade agreements we unwind, very little will undo this. Is going to undo technological interdependency, is going to undo globalization so the question has to be, this is why i think for the question of that you are asking here about disenfranchised groups, people who are whether by color or class on the margins of political and civic life and whether in the first place there needs to be structural change and reform in order for them to feel like they had a stake in the game. Part of my answer to that is well, its basically you are asking the chicken and egg question. And my answer is eat something. Start somewhere. And for some people, their work is going to focus on structural policy driven and social norm driven choices that make redlining or gentrification or Racialized Health disparity or racially disparate outcomes in education or policing that makes these things happen. Some people are going to focus on the structural level. Some people like the folks i named earlier, theyre going to dive right in there with families on the ground right here saying what do you got . Put it on the table. When you take your inventory, what do you know, you know, what church network, what family networks, what music, what art, what can you mobilize . Were in an age where we have to get beyond the notion that its an either or. You might want to focus on the structural side and god bless and for someone else it might be i got to get in there in this neighborhood in gary indiana or in this neighborhood in milwaukee or oakland and philly and ive got to get in there and start facetoface talking to folks who are left out, forgotten and written off by our system of race and opportunity in this country and show them it is possible to find a voice and create power from thin air but i think that this largerquestion of the stories we tell our key. So the story that we have to tell right now and this goes as well to the archive, your question which i take to be larger than janet gerrymandering. If president obama and frankly any of you were to think about what do we do now or gerrymandering is one of the most visibly rigged of rigged games. Right . It is the very definition in electoral politics of rigging the game where politicians choose their electorates. And so gerrymandering is a thing to focus on and for all of us in a way that i think is possible. Who wouldve expected that so many millions of americans would be fluent in the particulars of the emoluments clause of the constitution . I wouldnt have guessed that a year ago. Things that you think are doing dirty, specialized, too arcane, you never know if you are working at it and pounding away at it, when the moment will arrive or that to be an issue that everybody all of a sudden feels like ive got to get up to speed on which states have redistricting commissions in which states let legislatures rigged the game and draw districts for their favorite and screw each other over. Ive got to do that the up but beyond redistricting your opening up a larger question of the rules of the game of democracy itself. And these are rules both of elections go beyond district drawing. We live in a country where weve taken for granted the idea that all elections should be 50 percent 1, first half of the post, one winner and everybody else is a loser. All around the world, guess what. They figured out other ways to play the game and whether that horse no representation, whether thats right choice voting, there are other ways of structuring votes so that people who are in minorities in a community and get some representation and its not just 50 percent plus one as it is in a president ial race. There always of drawing the rules of these electoral gains that more people feel like they have more to say. The Organization Fair vote is one that i would draw your attention to. Not just our voting. Its about money in politics. Here again comes the story. I want to close with this story of whats been going on in seattle, where im from. And i love dc, i had some formative years here working on the hill for president clinton but i believe that my entire worldview about citizen power has been shaped by being in the other washington, being in seattle and what ive learned in seattle has been coming from experience. From the experience not only on the gun issue which i described earlier but on the issue for instance of the 15 minimum wage. This goes to your question, 15 now, its here in dc, 15 is everywhere. Spreading either like wildflowers if you like them or a rash if you dont but its spreading from city to city in the United States. It started not even in seattle, it started in the shadow of seattle in seatac it is a little town where the seattle own International Airport is based. And what a group of mainly immigrants, mainly low income women workers who worked at the airport jobs, have worked in hotels surrounding the airport, what they managed to do was to organize and find a voice and say you know what . We are going to make the case for 15. Were going to make the case its not based on charity or niceness, were going to make a case for when why we get paid 15, to clean bathrooms in the airport hotel, if i manned the rental car station at the airport during the night shift, that when i make 15 an hour its not just good for me, its good for the entire community because i circulate those increased earnings into the grocery store, into the restaurant in seatac, i help initiate positive feedback of increasing demand. These airport workers were structurally ground down. They were the kind of folks you are talking about that the deck is stacked against them and they have every reason to say i dont have time for this and i dont have any reason to believe its going to change but they made time. They made time before church and after church to start giving the first public speeches of their lives. They made time to start canvassing and knocking on their neighbors doors, to select signatures and they got seatac to pass 15 which completely not the nominal over for seattle which at the time was in a mayor mayoral race and all of a sudden they were scrambling to catch up to be the first for 15 there and now its spread around the country. The stories we tell our not only the stories of we are as a people but the stories we tell you in with the stories we tell about ourselves. And whether you in fact think you are powerless and voiceless and unable to do anything against rigged game. That mayor knight may notbe true in the moment. If you tell yourself that story but it will be selffulfilling. If you tell it. It will come true if thats the story you tell. And what i want to leave you with is the simple idea that whether you are thinking individually as a citizen or hopefully more frequently collectively in the company and fellowship of others or fellow citizens, newcomers in a room like this, remember that when you tell a different story that says you know what . I may not have much but i have the ability to put two and two together and i may not see it in my lifetime, bc statehood. But the folks who got the ball rolling on abolition, the photo got the ball rolling on womens suffrage, the full two got the ball rolling on the civil rights movement, the full two got the ball rolling on Marriage Equality, they did not in many cases get to see the ball reaches destination in their lifetime. They just got rolling and started clearing a path for that ball to build momentum and that is the story weve got tell right now, if every one of us have the power to set in motion change that will change this republic and help the country live up to the promise is made to all of us, thank you for being here tonight. [applause] a very inspirational topic. And he called and theres potential to power. Eric will not only sit in that chair, will be signing books and you have the books there for you, if you would like, please remember to pay for it at the checkout counter. As you leave