Havent gotten your copy lees do so at the end and we will have the signing line going straight back from his table towards the back of the store, single file please. Flyers for Upcoming Events are available so grab those. Great stuff coming up. Tonight so that will be recorded by cspan so will be passing around hightailed mics for the q a suggested weight at the time, well be around to hand a mic to everyone before questions happen. All right. Our. Our interview this evening is jazmine hughes. She is a story editor and writer for the New York Times magazine. She is a 20 recipient of the next awards for journalists under 30. She will be speaking with our featured author charlotte alter. She is a National Correspondent for time coming the 20162010, 2020 election women in politics and the rise of the grassroots level. A work has appeared in the New York Times, the wall street journal, and she is appeared on good morning america, learning joe, the last word and cnns reliable sources. Her new book is a hopeful glimpse into a bright new generation of political leaders and what america might look like when theyre in charge. The book has received praise by multitude of fellow writers including and helen peterson, walter isaacson, rebecca traced her aunt amy chose a consent for anyone who has dismissed millennials or who cares about our country future charlotte alter footnote riveting essential book. In bringing to vivid life a young upstart who ultimately hurt our democracy, she has intimately given us another vital young voice that will shape our political future, hers. You are in for Something Special tonight. You have the chance to ask you questions after that. Please join me in welcoming charlotte and jasmine. [applause] thank you. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for coming out tonight everyone and congratulations to charlotte. Her book comes out today. [applause] charlotte and and i been frs for a few years now and some of them, it we both love gossip. So anyone who has cost about anything we would love to hear it at the end. Just come out right now. Can able here is okay by the way . Cool, cool. Charlotte, you work at a magazine. [inaudible] youve written a lot of cover stories, long future magazines. How did you know this was not a long magazine story and this is going to be a book . Such a good question. I mean, like, mostly because i pitched it as a Magazine Store and they were like no. But actually this started as a Magazine Store in some ways because they came out of this story i did in 2017 about the lineal mayors. Essentially the genesis of this project is that trump withdrew the paris climate agreement in 2017 and i went temporarily insane, and i just spent the whole day. I see my friend josh over there who was sitting next to me. Remember that . I was like anyway, that day i was googling about age and generations, and i was thinking like this guy 71. Hes the oldest firstterm president ever. He was elected by older white voters, overwhelmingly people over 65. Senators who wrote to him encouraging them to withdraw from the paris climate agreement were mostly guys in the 70s and 80s, and that day i was like this is the first shot in the generational battle. Its a generational war right now. The more i thought about it, the more i realize so many of the things trump was doing from his actions that affected young immigrants, to banning trans people from military, something that young people cared way more about that older people, the Climate Change to changing roles run student debt forgiveness, all these decisions were made by old white people that have just portions effect on young people and i was like, okay, im just going to look more into that. Oh, sorry. With my mic not on . Does that make sense . Oh, my gosh. Thats way better. You also have a super loud voice. [inaudible] am i cutting you off . No, im done. Im done. As someone who doesnt know a lot of like a noticed, what do millennials hold dear . Whats the difference . Ha ha ha. Such a good question. Listen, i dont want to generalize about all boomers because hashtag not all boomers, all that stuff. What i can say is what this book examines is sort of a fundamental shift away from a 20th century style of politics that was much more about , particularly like an 80s and 90s in the reagan and the clinton era was sort of like swinging to the centerright where you had reagan on the right and clinton in the middle and clinton was triangulating around what reagan wanted, which was privatization and tax cuts and all other things that are led to the situation we are now in where our universities are underfunded, where big business has run of the economy and with the social safety net is eroded for us in a way that wasnt for our grandparents. What this book is about is this sort of swing towards the left, which is not, for julie or unfortunately is not going to go as far as some progressives in brooklyn wanted to go. Its not like is a socialist utopia and it is our future and i can get into that later. But its about kind of like the pendulum shift and how the events since 9 11, from 9 11 through the wars in iraq and afghanistan, to the financial crisis, through obamas election, black lives matter, occupy, and in the rise of trump, all of those things have shaped the way millennials think about politics. That the way we define generations. Something you go into is the fact millennials, like the first major global event that something millennials experience was 9 11 side is that of an on the politicians . Everybody remembers 9 11. This generation its like where were you when jfk was assassinated . Pete buttigieg, for example, was lying in his College Dorm Room dorm room and defendant from his roommate and he went on like this long and like meditated walk where he thought about his generational purpose, which is very Pete Buttigieg thing to do. Aoc was a seventh grader and school got, school didnt get this this but a bunch of parents and her suburban came and got the kids in school to the school kind of like emptied out. When she got home from school her mom wasnt home yet as you turn on the tv and she saw the towers as she thought to herself, is my mom going to be home before the apocalypse . Part of the purpose of that chapter is to kind of get at like who these people are come with a background are, who the families are, what kind of situation they were growing up in. At least Elise Stefanik whose republican i have in this book theres a a couple republicansn there, she was a senior at a private school and upstate new york and one of her friends had a sister the work in the towers, and we found out about it, this girl obviously got incredibly emotional, and that, that was a huge moment watching her friend think that her sister was dead. Turns out the sister was not in the towers today and she was fine and the friend was fine and it was all okay. But everybody that i talked to had it on something that intense in terms of like watching some rethink their sister had died, something that, it was a moment for the period it jolted them. And make them realize america wasnt alone in the world. And then we go into these wars that further complicate and destabilize these characters, opinions of some of what americas role in the world is and how much we should be interfering in other countries business, and all those attitudes and for mouth millennials think about politics now. And you are not a politician. No. How did 9 11 affect you . Not necessarily with your political view. I was in seventh grade and we were taking a spanish quiz, and the nasa came on the loudspeaker, then he made as finish the quiz. Thats what i remember. [inaudible] yeah. And also when i got home from school, i grew up in new jersey and theres a sort of high point in mount clear as we went up to the high point and watched just like look at the smoke because it was, it was very clear even on the day that this was a major historical event that was going to be a significant break, a departure from the past. I think thats what i started the book they are because in some ways for people in this age group conficker the people im talking to, theres a before 9 11 and after 9 11, and millennials grew up in the air of after 9 11. Thats why its the beginning of the book. Another thing you set up in the book is theres like before harry potter, and after. I mean, i want you to tell everyone how like the Harry Potter Series affected peoples viewpoints and how to be a person in the world. Yeah. So the second this is fantastic. This is what i didnt want to do a reading reading because a new love you guys need to hear me recite statistics. The Second Chapter of the book is called harry potter and the spawn of the boomers. Its mostly about all the ways that boomer parroting was fundamentally different from parroting of earlier generations. Just boomers, and this is my generalize take on boomers, boomers suck at almost everything except raising kids. They were super good at raising kids. They did not do well in terms of making our economy work for everybody. They did not address Climate Change when they had the chance. The did a lot for the activism in the 60s and 70s about justice and social justice, and actually those movements were not led by boomers. Martin luther king was not obama. Gloria steinem was not a boomer. A lot of the things boomers take credit for like peace and love, they didnt start that. They just kind of enjoyed it. [laughing] were on cspan right now. [laughing] but one thing that boomers really threw themselves wholeheartedly enters raising your kids and the truly intense and sort of intentional way. So thats why, like the word parenting it and even really a thing until the late 80s and 90s. All of this idea, all these ideas about enrichment and your kid has to have piano lessons and they have to this number of words before they are three and that you like go through 1000 books or they will be a literate. All those things are part of the boomer preoccupation with parroting. If a look of the culture of the time, its like parenthood, three men at a baby, mrs. Doubtfire, the genes that they were were called mom jeans. They were really into being parents, and so they raised these kids that were super, its what people think of millennials as snowflakes sometimes because, because they raised a generation of franklin overprotected, under endangered kids. You have to remember this is also the time when people started for the first time be really worried about the kid that he kidnapped. You couldnt like write your bike down the street because there might be a stranger and stranger danger and dont get in a car. All of that was new in the 80s and it was because of this new preoccupation with child safety. In that context this book is written that is about and under parented, over endangered, orphanage magical power. To say that Everybody Knows harry potter was a phenomenon but people dont understand that it was literally unprecedented in human history, this book. [laughing] there was an article written about jk rowling in like 2003 and is said at first we thought basically it was time, you know, theyre going to compare jk rowling to Charles Dickens but actually shes more influential and harry pot is literally unprecedented. This was a book and wasnt only that kids read this book once a cut over. Every kid read this book and then read it six more times over the course of a young adult because they read it when there were 11 and then when they were 12 and then they read the third book when youre 13, and harry potter sort of aged alongside a lot of these people. Im being very rambling but there are studies that show people who are fans of harry potter tend to have more progressive values, partly because the themes of the book are about tolerance and bring in social outsiders in rejecting authoritarianism and kids banding together against evil. At a notice like when i was interviewing a couple years ago now not the type of harry potter a lot. They were like yeah, rick scott is baltimore. Oh, my god, he totally looks like kim. [laughing] and it was just something kept kind of coming up in a really kind of mine away just people would sort of do these throwaway references like soandso is so like you know, maybe think of course this is something that still informs what people think about politics and power and morality. This was a cultural event that had never like happen before, like nothing is ever permeated childrens minds the way harry potter did. Of course they remembered. Did any politician should it have anything, did they sort themselves for you . They didnt. So aoc was really into it, according to her brother, and some monetary some of the younger ones were much more into it. Pete buttigieg was like that was before my time. Dan crenshaw when i i was liked you read harry potter what he was like, no. Obviously there are some exceptions and after and out ag cat got that nothing im saying applies a literally every moment. If youre like i didnt read harry potter. You know, thats fine. Were talking billions of people. Nothing will apply to everybody. Document some broad trends that apply to most people. In the way that 9 11 and harry potter and other things affected a millennial generation what you think will affect the next generation . Thats such a good question. One of the things i found in my research is a social scientists have shown that event you experience between like 18 and 26, give or take, determine your politics for the rest of your life. They might move a little bit, like if you buy property or youre starting your kids to school, that might change a politics round the edges but its rare for someone to go from like like a hardcore leftwinger to a hardcore rightwinger. In fact, what tends to happen is that popular president s attract young people to their party, and unpopular president s repel them. Thats one of the reasons right now Millennials Vote democrat because in the lifetimes they saw unpopular president bush, popular president obama and then another unpopular president trump. For gin see, i think Donald Trumps election will be a Pivotal Moment for gen z in the way that some of these other moms have been pivotal for millennials. I think about being 19 or 20 when donald trump is elected. That must really shape your conception of american politics. It must really shape your opinion about frankly who knows what theyre talking about. One of the other things i noticed is there were such a loss of faith in conventional wisdom after trump was elected because so much of the conventional wisdom said its definitely going to be Hillary Clinton, do not worry come shes going to win. And then all of the people who are supposed to know what they were talking about were wrong. Thats why so all this millennials being like, you know, the people in charge said this wouldnt happen and then it did. So they clearly are operating on old information and dont know whats going on. Were going to take the wheel, basically. I wonder what people, its hard because you reported what people thought about these views . A lot of them are getting their information from social media. Then youre reading newspapers, like i dont know, the New York Times that otilia hillary is going to win the 2016 election. What do they think about journalism . Thats a great question. I mean, its something that is challenging. I need people all the time who dont believe, dont understand journalism, dont believe journalism. Think that journalism is thick. Thinks that things are made of. Angst that, for example, journalists are in the habit of making up quotes, which is ridiculous. Its one place where i think its going to be really challenging because youre right, for a lot of millennials they get the new some social media, not only that, they get their general attitudes from social media. When they see a news story that challenges their general attitude, they are much more likely to think, thats all shit. Ive what iphone twitter says this but the New York Times says this. The New York Times is full of shit. S1 area that concerns me frankly because what happens when you surround yourself only with people think like you and reflect back to you what you already think is that your mind gets close off to things that might challenge that. There were some social media is good, use a lot of social media to get can you give us tips for those of us who [inaudible] how did you do all this . Okay. So basically if you can stock your exboyfriend common you can find auditions old facebook videos. I did come across one of the things i got really, really lucky with with this book was about the exact time i was looking at happen to be the time that facebook was encouraging people to do live video on their feeds, which by the way stays of their forever. [laughing] i mean, unless you delete it which aoc didnt. So now think of a journalist is trying to do what i epidurals was trying to do this for this time right now it would be a lot harder because a lot of the things that were put on Facebook Live in 20152060 i now put Instagram Live and that has delete after 24 hours. What i found was, for example, i had an interview with aoc asia talked about how much Standing Rock shape your politics, and rather than giving her recollection of it was great, i learned so much, i found 12 hours of live video of her journey to Standing Rock with her friends. That really was something that allowed me to see deeper into her thought process, like from the time she was actually there, what she was thinking and feeling and what kind of stacks that ate, what kind of music they listen to. All of that was so helpful in helping me paint a picture of that moment. Braxton winston who is a a City Council Member in charlotte, north carolina, i was really looking for somebody, again ts is a book that is about electives. Its not a book about activists. Black lives matter was such an important part of this generations social awakening suss looking for somebody to come from big at black lives matter activist deserving in elected office and Braxton Winston and charlotte, north carolina, did that. Not only did he do that, he also had recorded on facebook all of his time that he was in the