We host a continuing series and pam discussion entitled panel race in america. We had one this summer at our main connecticut avenue location and it was incredible and we are excited to keep it going. It is coordinated by the great april ryan. [applause] she has a wonderful lineup of authors including joyann reid. [applause] Mary Francis Berry. [applause] davis jones weaver. And soon to be here wes moore. Politics and prose is honored to host this conversation as we are committed to tolerance and addressing the most pressing issue of our time. We are thankful to have this partnership and our shared common values to host such a special discussion. If you are watching this at home or in the rest of the store we welcome you to participate on twitter with racematters. Now, our coordinator here tonight, april ryan, is a White House Correspondent. She is the only black female reporter covering urban issues from the white house. [applause] this is a position she has held since the clinton era and on behalf of the American Urban Radio Networks and through her fabric of america news blog she delivers her reader ship and listeners to a quote unique urban and minority perspective in news. Her position as a White House Correspondent afforded her unusual insight into the racial issues and the political struggles of the nations last three president s. She can be seen daily on program like hard ball among many others. She is the author of the awardwinning book the presidency in black and white and her fourth coming book at mamas knee. Mothers in race and black and white. So if you will please join me in welcoming april ryan. [applause] can you hear me now . Okay. There we go good evening, everyone. Good evening. Thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule during this Holiday Season to come and talk with us, to share with us, kind of in a cath cathartic moment. For many of us cathartic and for others a time of celebration. I am hearing the church out there. You know, it is almost like a preacher. Call and respond. But, you know, this is a very interesting time. It is a historic time. We have in the center of where everything is happening. Washington, d. C. January 20th at 12 01 p. M. 2017 there wile be a transition of power from number 44 to number 45. Okay. But literally we are less than a month away from what was the most historic election we have ever seen. Less than a month and we are still trying to figure out what is happening. So that is why we are here. Particularly when it comes to issues of difference. The other race. And as we try to grapple with what we dont know and the things that we do know and the things we have seen before i am going to give you an example of something. One of the reasons why we are here tonight. The southern poverty loss found an alarming pattern of hate crimes incidents that were immediately following the election. In the ten days after the november election, so ten days after what was the number . 860 and growing just ten days after. People wonder why are we talking about race and they say when you put the facts on the table you are race baiting but that is why we are here tonight. We are talking about an issue at the forefront and has been at the forefront since the beginning of this country and it is still here in 2016. Now, i also want to give you something. Immediately following the election i talked to chris darton, the former prosecutor in the oj simpson case. He is a black republican. He said this is a time of activism. We also heard recently welcome, wes moore. [applause] we also heard recently from billionaire africanamerican democrat bob johnson who says the time we need to find Common Ground. But this morning i talked to former naacp head and former maryland congressman who said both men are right. We are at a crossroads. How do we have parallel roads instead of being at the parallel roads . Tonight in the 90 minutes we have, we have experts here. People you know and people you trust to talk to us. We will open up the floor to you in a little bit. I want to introduce first a woman who needs no introduction. She is walking history herself. She said dont introduce me but i will. She said the only reason she came out tonight is because i asked her. And i thank you so much. Lets give Mary Francis Berry a big round of applause. [applause] not only has she served here as one of the most visible civil rights for gender inequality and justice in the nation she went abroad and fought against apartheid. She was allowed to speak after the death of Nelson Mandela and the South African government invited her to do that. She is also the author of the book, five dollars and a pork chop sandwich vote buying and the corruption of democracy which explains some campaign voter turnout activity are just another form of Voter Suppression. Isnt that something . You have to remember also she served as the chair person of the u. S. Civil rights commission. So we give a big round of applause to mary Frances Berry. Up next, i call her the dragon slayer. T she is the host of the daily a. M. And the author of fracture barack obama, the clintons, and the racial divide and the coeditor with dion in the upcoming book we are the changes we speak. Yes, the speeches of barack obama. Lets give her a round of applause. This was supposed to be the year of the woman and we have a womans advocate. It was supposed to be the year of the woman. Supposed to be [laughter] you know, sometimes to keep from crying you got to laugh; right . Without further ado, i want to introduce dr. Weaver, the author of the awardwinning book how exceptional black women lead and founder of the exceptional institute for women. You see her on tv regular and he is a regular guest host on various leading Television Programs to include tv 1, as well as tvs to the contrary. Lets give her a big round of applause. [applause] we have going to go down the road to baltimore. My hometown. With a gentlemen i saw on om with oprah winfry. We have stepping in hot cotton. I would like to introduce west moore who is a decorated army combat veteran, youth advocate and ceo of bridge edu which is focused on addressing the College Completion and placement by reinventing the freshman year of college and the author of two instant New York Times bestselling books. That is not an easy task. The books are call the other wes moore one name, two fates and the work. Lets give wes moore a big round of applause. [applause] all of you out there in the audience tonight, i want you to pull out your social media devices. I want you to go on the twitter or the facebook or the chat to snap. I dont know. Snapchat. I know what it is called. I want you to go on your device and i want you to tweet out. We are going to break twitter tonight. I want you to tweet out racematters. What you put out there people are watching. We have a president elect who is very much on twitter. So lets break the twitter tonight. I want to start off with history. We have to start with history. From where we have come from to where we are today and where we could go going. Mary Frances Berry you have seen a lot. You have protested a lot for the rights of people. Can you talk about where we today at the crossroads and is there a chance the roads will be parallel . Well, the first thing i would say, and thanks for having me and i am so happy to see so many of you, but the first thing i would say is i am not as pessimistic as some people i know mainly because i think if you begin with the knowledge of facts it will make you more optimistic than otherwise. The facts are that if we were to turnout more black voters in the cities in the midwest, milwaukee, detroit, if we had turned out and in philadelphia and pittsburgh, if we had turned out more voters hillary could have won those states. We didnt turn them out in those states not because of Voter Suppression but because old fashion things that campaigns have been doing for years and i have been involved in and i know about and written about in five dollars and a pork chop sandwich vote buying and the corruption of democracy which is putting street money and having yard signs and giving out chicken boxes and pork chops and five dollars and motivating your people didnt happen because the money wasnt on the secrete. I know that because i talked to the people trying to get the campaigns to send them money so they can do the oldfashion thinks and persuade people face to face who didnt want to vote. Especially the young people who thought barack obama had not done much and she wasnt going to do much for them. That didnt happen. So i think if we put money on the street next time, which is what my book is about, that we can get turnout. It is all about turnout which is what the book is about. Now where we have been. We have of course had very tough times. The whole long history which i wont give you. Everybody knows. But in the last few years, most of us thought we reached a new millennial and things were going well and we had to just get hillary in office and we would take the next step and everything was going our way. It didnt happen. So where are we going so if i never get to say anything here tonight i will tell you. We have been here before. You may not remember but i do when Ronald Reagan got elected. This town was people were so sad. It was so somber when he got elected and when he got elected all these people came to town with their money and i remember they were quoting the woman who said you can never be too thin or too rich. They had all these parties and stuff going on. They came to town and the attorney general announced she was going to enforce the civil rights laws which was shocking. All kinds of terrible things happened. We had constructive engagement with the South Africanamerican government and apartheid was going to stay forever. He closed down programs for women in the wows. All kinds of bad, terrible things happen. And even though they happened the Supreme Court was disgusting in some of the decisions they handed down but people mobilized, they resisted, they organized, they got over their sadness and their mourning and picked themselves up and did what needed to be done and in the end we were able to make some gains even in a very terrible time. So i am not pessimistic. I am optimistic and dont say to me, as some people have, it couldnt have been as bad as it is now because reagan has the buildings named after him downtown and an air force named after him. He was a funny fellow. I liked talking to him. [laughter] but he was just as terrible or worse in many ways although he didnt use twitter. [laughter] so we have been there before. Lets pick ourselves up and move on. Lets pick ourselves up and move on. [applause] moderator records of wisdom. Lets go to joy. Joy, you talk to a lot of people all the time and that is what makes you so great because you are industry and find out what people are thinking. But is this necessarily more so about hillary versus trump or is it about our issues being on the table for either candidate . Which one is it . Thank you again for doing this. You can hear me; right . I think the way people are doing is depressed. I am spending a lot of time counseling others and some counseling myself. I feel like i have a new profession. I am not charging but it is what i have been doing. You saw a few things in this election. One of them, mary Frances Berry is right. It was a campaign that didnt feel they had to do the ontheground campaigning democrats were known for partly because they were using the barack obama model but unfortunately that only works for barack obama. In 2008, the Obama Campaign came along inventing a new model using data modeling, deep data dives meaning you can target not only a block but a household and you would know jane in the household is your voter but john is not. So you micro target jane and not john. They had these sophisticated modeling and dramatic fundraising advantage where they were able to reach in. I saw things in 08 i never saw before. Black folks throwing a bbq and everybody bringing a 100 to give the to campaign. I met people in their 50s and 60s who never gave a dollar to a campaign in their lives. You had this energy, sophisticated datadriven campaign and this charismatic candidate. People were voting and standing out in line for hours because of barack obama. I was telling this story earlier. There was a conference in washington, d. C. For state and local legislatures. One of the good news coming out of the campaign is democrats have discovered there are other things besides the presidency you should be fighting for as a political party; right . They suddenly discovered there are state legislatures and governorships and if you dont control the secretary of States Office you cant stop Voter Suppression . We actually need have to secretary of state office so they dont throw the black and brown people on provisional ballots and throw them in the trash . Democrats discovered they have to fight at the local level and that might be the good thing. They will get femapeople to try vote in midterm elections. But in 2008, people were lining up around the block to vote for barack obama. The line was going so fast. It was a fourpage ballot and there were state and local initiatives but people were not voting for that just coming out screaming obama. They didnt vote for anything else. People were not paying attention down ballot. With Hillary Clinton, you had the opposite. Jennifer grand was tweeting a couple days ago and i just saw it today in michigan there were 75,000 voters who voted everything on the ballot except president. So it was a reverse. People came out but felt they bought into i think the media pushed that both candidates were bad. Just bad in different ways. A lot of young voters whose minimum standard for president is obama so he is not good enough. My kids, the only president in their life is obama. Thank you they think that is what a president is. Jill steins vote add up to much more than Hillary Clintons missed margins. The three states she lost and shouldnt have lost, pennsylvania, wisconsin, and michigan, the combined total of Donald Trumps advantage was 107,000 votes. That is what . A few dozen blocks in washington, d. C. [inaudible conversations] right. 40,000 more black people voting in philadelphia and milwaukee and detroit and she wins. So you had a failure of imagination because the clinton team had the obama people and model and they were using the data and saying by the data we should not lose wisconsin so we dont have to send hillary to wisconsin. We cant lose philly because they have this percentage of White College degree voters. We have data showing we can win the way obama did but you dont have obama. For a lot of reasons, Hillary Clintons campaign didnt do that. We had a media that was incredibly hostile and open to any story which depicts her as a criminal. A lot of my kids age voters saw her as a criminal. You have to understand the way hillary was perceived among even voters of color was she was a criminal. When they went into the voting booth, if they showed up, their attitude was she is not good enough for me and i will Vote Third Party or not at all. You had a lack of awareness around hyperaware democrats. But a lack of history of where we are been before. The idea every time we had reconstruction we had a backlash. Reconstruction after the civil war you get the red shirts. You have Lyndon Johnson creating positive racial chains and then you get nixon and reagan and this deepening divide among white americans saying enough enough enough of giving things to them. I want things for me. Too much focus on black people and repel. You have obama and the same thing. A backlash where a lot of white america, trump voters average salary is 70,000 a year. They are not the broke white americans. There are enough who say enough focus on lgbtq, enough with the transpeople, enough talking about safe spaces, enough talking about liberalism, and black lives matter, too much of this liberal american tinkering with the culture. We want back the culture we can connect with which is the 50s. Hillary clinton won the early voting in florida and is swamped by voters on election day with and without college degrees. It was a failure of imagination on the part of the Clinton Campaign not understanding without obama you cannot run an Obama Campaign. You have to show up and campaign and door to door. Number two a failure of imagination among Young Americans that dont understand if you want to be john lewis you better have Bobby Kennedy in the Justice Department. Okay. So if you think that john lewis good luck. This is what you are facing a hostile Justice Department bearing down on you. Failure of imagination is what cost democrats this election. But the good news is i think democrats are going to go in and have something to fight. They will have to fight like hell to save medicare from being privatized, like hell to save the social networks from being ripped away. They will have to fight like hell and it is good to make democrats fight. Moderator we talk about the Obama Coalition but where were the women . There was a good setup for the women to revolt. What happened . The women were there. If you look at the turnout the women were there. But there was a huge dynamic across race. Once again we saw that overwhelming black women voted for the democrat candidate. About 94 . But even though there was a woman at the top of the ticket still white women did not vote democratic. It is very interesting to me this is a situation where the Democratic Party, year after year after year, to me they invest millions upon