[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] connected afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. How is everyone doing . I am sitting next to wes moore. Can you believe that . [applause]. Thank you. Im sitting next to mohammed. Can you believe that . [applause]. First and foremost we want to thank everyone for coming on out to our special session as we have another great conversation with a native baltimore in, and one of the big things about the baltimore book fast that always is beautiful is the highlight of authors from baltimore. So, today is not any different and we will continue to follow that tradition, but i have to say when the opportunity arose they said, well, who do you want to talk to and they gave me the list and mr. Westmore. So, on the half first and foremost i am an onair personality for wda a 88. [applause]. A little shameless selfpromotion my show is called listen up, friday nights at 7 00 p. M. On the half of us, the wonderful folks here, the staff and all of the wonderful folks here at the baltimore book festival we welcome you to the 20th wow, 20th annual baltimore book festival. Baltimores celebration of the literary arts. We hope everyone enjoying themselves up our . [applause]. We want to invite you all this weekend. Make sure you check us out on our Facebook Page at baltimore book festival and like as an of course, share it. Follow us on twitter. We want to say special thank you to all their partners because we have so many wonderful partners and sponsors of this years festival and we want to thank, of course, the city of baltimore, maryland state bar council, blue cross blue shield, intimate easy him, midatlantic forward dealers in marylands favorite. The baltimore book festival is certainly presented by the Mayors Office of Stephanie Rawlings blake and produced by the baltimore arts. The Nonprofit Agency that serves as our counsel, Film Commission and special agency. Please note after your presentation today volunteers will be on hand at the festivals Guest Services and that they are happy to accept your donations. Again, thank you for your help and support to keeping the baltimore book festival free for everyone. [applause]. We are going to have a very spirited conversation. This is a conversation that i think is really critical considering all that are great city has gone through over the past six months. In this day and age when we are wondering or questioning what does it mean to rebuild . What does it mean to be involved in your community . What does it mean to be socially conscious . Its always good to give us to hear folks that can give us a little guidance on how to do the work and so a special guest or the baltimore book festival today is native baltimore in who has a very very busy like history herein baltimore and abroad and we will get a little bit more into that he might be the poorest gone of baltimore. [laughter] but, we are certainly happy and we welcome to the stage and to the baltimore book festival to talk about his latest book the work my search for a life that matters. Let us welcome with a warm round of applause, wes moore. [applause]. Thank you. Good afternoon first i want to start and say how humbled i am to sit next to him right here. Im not only an avid listener, and supportive follower im a grateful beneficiary of the work you have consistently done for the city, so thank you so much for your commitment to the city and to all our lives. [applause]. Also, i would be remiss if i didnt give a special shout out to the person who didnt just who not just gave birth, but gave me life in every definition of the word and that is my mom who is here in the front row. [applause]. And to all of you for coming out here. This is a very important time and its a very powerful point in the history of not just our city, for all of us in baltimore, but even for all of us who come from a mound the country and around the world to where we all are as a society. About the conversations we are trying to have. About the impact we are trying to make, about the differences we are trying to see in the world we live in. When to Say Something quick and then read a bit of the book. I run a platform a social enterprise and i know you might see a couple of our scholars running around, but they secrete hopes to address the College Completion crisis by reinventing the freshman year of college because that is the chokepoint for most. When we lose them its not necessarily in their junior year , but when they first the chokepoints freshman year than why do we reinvent the freshman year and i can talk a bit about that later on, but there is a point i want to make to all of our scholars that i went to share quickly today as well. That is that when you first walk on College Campus the first thing people will ask you always is what is your major. What are you studying . What classes are you taking and then they ask you those questions as if its the most important question you will ever be asked in your life. I remember when i first got the college they affect questions of a times that i just started making things up so people would stop asking. Until i realized the question of what is your major, actually starts losing impact quickly. What you studied, how you did, what was your gpa all of that stuff is important, but the most important question to that people will ever ask you is not necessarily what you are studying. The most important question people ever ask you is who did you choose to fight for. Who did you tissues to stand up or when it was easy . Who did you choose to advocate for what it wasnt convenient . Who did you stand shoulder to shoulder with what might have just been u2 standing there . But, you did it because it was the right thing to do. Everything else will happen in our lives and i realized quickly that will fade and people will forget it. The question that will never fade is, who did you fight for. Because that is a question even long after you are gone people always say about you. Who is important and who did you advocate for . I think at times like now in our city and our state and our country and our world that question is more pertinent than ever. When i thought he would do is read a small part of the book and then we can turn to a conversation. A bit of context, i wrote this i wrote this part of the book from the work. This is when i just came back from afghanistan to read, paratrooper and i thought in afghanistan with the 82nd airborne and this time i just come back from afghanistan, and i was working at the state department as a white house fellow. For those that dont know a white house fellow is a nonpolitical nonpartisan fellowship where you work as a Senior Advisor just because they want you to have it sent to be engaged in where you are. And to see what its like at that level in government. I had the blessings of working at the state department and this section is talk to bit about when people are talking about foreign aid and foreign assistance and what it means to reach out and help people around the world with our resources and such a misses the point and what you briefly make. It says this is a tricky point navigates. Why should we care about whats going on thousands of miles away . Afghanistan was a conceptual issue, he might think youre here is a country whose instability and takeover of radicals has led almost directly to attacks on our own soil and get, before long americans became fatigued by stories from afghanistan and evergrowing number of american casualties. We became frustrated by the slow progress of the countrys development towards democracy and stability. Afghanistan, despite its importance to our responsibility for its pretty great quickly started to seem like a sinkhole. If we are impatient about unexceptional case such as afghanistan, then how much more impatient will we be when our efforts are driven by more communitarianism and compassion that self interest and security . Even when you talk to aid workers are workers of nonprofits, whose work take some overseas they will tell you that american asked them what are you just spoke a year work on america . I go to africa or asia or south america to help kids or help with disasters . Why not do it right here . There are conflict pitted answers to these questions and working in the state department only began to understand them. I am not a warmonger by any stretch of the imagination carried on like many who are have worn the uniform im particularly averse to war. I am also not someone who believes in an empire building or in an imperialistic attitude about the world outside of america or within america. But, our passion, influence and responsibility as humans can never end at our borders. Of course, the United States has eight Important Role to play around the world. Our resources has given us the job upfront, funder, enforcer, patroller, peacemaker, peacekeeper, supporter, healer allinone and this applies both to our government into our nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations. This work me justified from pure selfinterest to simplest foundation of which is this the read we live in an interconnected world. We cannot hide in our own country while the world around us implodes. Everything from terrorism to epidemics to environment of crises affects us all even if it happens on the other side of the world. Its the crudes case for american engagement internationally and further urge of many individuals and nonprofit steel to commit to work overseas. But, there is a more moral case. It goes beyond the actions of governments, humanity is borderless. Compassion is universal. In a brilliant letter from a birmingham jail doctor Martin Luther king junior expressed similar sentiment after he and other civil rights leaders were in prison for leading a peaceful march about segregation in birmingham, alabama, they received a newspaper with an oped entitled a call for unity. The oped was penned by a group of alabama at clergy who deplored the action of the jailed civil rights leaders as untimely and unwise. Doctor king and his team are called outside agitators and told that their actions were actually detrimental to the progress of the movement. Doctor king decided to respond to the clergys opinion piece taking on each of their points with a poignancy and clarity that made his letter one of the most important doctrines in american history. Responding to accusations of being an outsider by virtue of being from montgomery, and not birmingham, he wrote but more basically i am in birmingham because of injustice. Just as the profits of eight century bc let left their villages and carried there thus save the lord barbie other batters of the hometown and just as the apostle paul left his village to read the gospel of jesus christ to the far corners of the world, so i my compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my hometown. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in and in Scalable Network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, texas all indirectly indirectly. The huge challenges the globe faces can be met only if we are all willing to pull together and if we make use of all the worlds Human Resources and for people driven by religious secular ethics its hard to argue that the needs of americans are somehow more important than the needs of people elsewhere around the world. The question is, what these can i help best address . For some of us we can do our best work in our homes, communities and others of us are called to do works in other parts of the world. The opportunity to help is not limited by borders and the beautiful part is that we when we reach our hands across the globe to serve others, we dont return emptyhanded. The reason i wanted to briefly start with a piece is because whether we are talking about work that is happening in afghanistan, or work happening in sudan or work happening in argentina or work thats happening in thailand, the work is ours. What happening on one side of the globe affects us directly to read what happening in east and west baltimore, impacts as record. So, if we are not willing to both acknowledge it and do something about it, we are complicit in its. What affects one of us directly affects all of us indirectly. So, as we think about the work that we do, im compelled to live by and urge others to live by the same standards that i wanted to set up for our scholars. Remember the most important question you are going to be asked is not what you study or where you live or where you work or what you drive or anything like that. But, the most important question we will ever be asked now and always is, who did you choose to fight for. Because that is the question that will actually last. [applause]. Lets hear it for mr. Wes moore. [applause]. In that passage come its loaded with so much, but for those who may not truly see your understand what is the work, because if you are working in community development, social entre nous ship justice, we get into this kind of a vocabulary of im doing the work and its interesting. And i love the title of the book , but it can be very generic, ambiguous and very abstract for a lot of people, so how would you define the work . So, one thing i say about writing and i will show how that leads back to the title is im not really a writer like that. I am more of a quantitative mind and a qualitative my. Like i like numbers and data and all that kind of stuff and a quick twostory my mom when i was first writing my first book, the other westmore, my mom called me up and she is like hey, hows the writing going and im like its going well and she was like a lot of writers use ghost writers. [laughter] im like mom, what you saying and shes like im not saying anything just a lot of writers use ghost writers. And i think my mother cant think i can do this and i said why you say that she said that she says because she keeps on saying i need a ghost writer. I said do i and they said right the first chapter and send it to us and if you need some help we will get you help. I was like, cool, fire at the first chapter and i sent it to them and i waited like a week. Finally, i get an email back and it just says this is exactly what we are looking for, keep writing. I sent it to my mom, forwarded it to her. The part of the reason why let the idea of writing and hot translates into the work is that i feel like writing is the best way to heaven undirected conversation with someone. Were often times you have a conversation and theres time restrictions or television and radio is the worst because you have a producer in your ear the whole time screamingly got to go to commercial. If the best way of having an undirected conversation with someone and when i think about the idea of the work i actually dont believe that there is a single thing that we need to pull people to. I often feel like service is never going to be a onesizefitsall proposition because as you know, this work is hard. This is hard work and if it wasnt hard that it would have been figured out already. So, the thing that i urge peoples i always want to tell people im not trying to tell you what to think. I am asking you to think. Think about that thing that breaks your hearts. Think about that thing that breaks the worlds hearts and do anything in every thing you can do to try to solve it, so if that thing happens to be veterans issues, juvenile justice reform, it happens the economic inequality, if it happens to be seniors were young people or chert Early Childhood ed, what it is is almost less important than the fact that you are willing to give yourself up for it and give to fix it. That becomes the most important thing, so when i think about the work its when your greatest passions and your greatest gifts begin to start overlapping with the worlds greatest needs, and you actually choose to do something about its and that is everyones work. [applause]. You might be getting the holy ghost up there because it is a very spiritual journey. You mentioned and you talk about this level of self discovery and i think that sometimes when we have when we get involved in any endeavor, we seem to think that it doesnt require a level of south africa rise sacrifice that you speak of. Can you shed some light on this because in your book you are chronicling your professional history. The first book was about your origin and your background and this is like your professional life. But, there is still level of selfsacrifice that is required in selfdiscovery. Selfdiscovery and its a journey that each and every one of us have to go on at some point to understand what does what is that he met gets us going. I feel like i have been blessed beyond belief. I mean, i have had people who first by my mother. I think my younger sister said it best when she said, our mother were a sweater so we could wear a coat to read my mother sacrifice everything for us. She raised us on her own, but the thing that i think my mother always says in her beautiful humility is she was a single mother by every definition, but we had hundreds of parents. People who saw something in me before i was ready to see it in myself. People who understood that Second Chance it should actually mean something and people who were there and people people often say to me is the problem we are having right now the breakdown of the family and i am like listen, we can have a very technical conversation about the breakdown of the family and gas, gas on the to do with whats going on, that i think the brig or problem is that we have the breakdown of the definition of a family. Because we somehow think because someone was blood is that that is all they are responsible for. We need to read read the great and redefine what families are supposed to mean. If by definition we are all gods children then that means by definition we are all brothers and sisters, but we dont act like that. So, when i think about the process that i have gone through to try to find what it was i was supposed to do, a lot of that was led by the influence of others. People that you should do this or do that or explore this were in many ways it became about what their hopes and dreams were and not necessarily what my destiny was. Most of the people were coming out of pure love and respect and admiration and they werent telling me something to beat nefarious or evil. They were telling me what they thought was the best opinion, but i also have some point realized in my own life that i can take other peoples thoughts and i can take other peoples suggestions and i can respect them and i can process them, but it the end of the day the final decision must be mine. It must be something that i know its not just true to me, but something that god honors and i had a mentor when i was leaving i came back from afghanistan, and i was getting ready to head and finance in new york and i remember talking with