Faster, and we wanted and efficient way to adjudicate their patents. A consequence was that people were using them to validate pharmaceutical patents. We worked 14 years to bring a product to market and spent 2 billion and now we dont have the same standards as the civil courts. You have others shorting or taking a patent into patent review and shorting the stock. Theyre using it away of making money. Were trying to get this change. So we go to congress and the senate says if we change it car they said it has to be paid for because of the patents are protected its going to cost society more money. You have to pay more money and have it paid for for the score to be zero. I thought patterns were a good thing. I thought patents created wealth. I thought patents were a central part of our society. If patents are being destroyed, we will score positively. Our system is so crazy that we have to pay so that we can reestablish the right to have a patent. I Hope Congress gets one of york coins before its too late. I hope i get one of your coins. It sounds awesome. Thank you very much ian read, its been awesome. [applause]. Thank you very much indeed. If washington adopts the node jerks policy we might all be in a better place. That was a fascinating discussion and were grateful for you being with us and thank you dennis. Thank you all for being here this morning. I want to pay special tribute to our sponsors. Thank you for joining us, we couldnt do it without your support. That concludes our morning session and we will be back in january. We look forward to that and in the meantime have a a wonderful day and thank you all for being here. Goodbye. [applause]. Tomorrow night on cspan, a look at how congressional gold medals are designed and a look at the highest honors. Thats the eight eastern time. Friday night, the annual Hispanic NationalBar Association conference with a keynote from the director of immigration and customs enforcement. Watch it at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Hello this is hillary clinton. I want to thank you for letting me speak with you about an issue that is central to our childrens future and critical in our fight to restore this nations economy. Solving our Nations Health care crisis. There is no prescription or role model or tip book for being first lady. The future is created every day. Is not something that is out there waiting to happen to us. The future is something that we make. I have said and i believe that theres a good possibility that sometime in the next 20 years we will have a woman president. She experienced many first in her role as first lady. Her and her husband bill clinton have been political figures since college. Hillary clinton, this sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan original series, first lady. Examining the public and private life of the women who filled the position of first lady and their influence on the presidency. From Martha Washington to michelle obama. Sunday at eight pm eastern on American History tv on cspan three. Political activists and academics at the university of massachusetts discuss the history of nonviolent political protest from the Civil Rights Era to black lives matter. This is just over an hour. Just going to introduce our moderator for tonight. I am really please to introduce professor dan. He is a real inspiration and longtime activist for a great many of us on this campus. Most recently he has been very active in building the educators for a democratic union, the progressive caucus within the Massachusetts Teacher Association which is the Largest Union in the state. He has been a tremendous organizing power. So i will turn it over to dan clawson. Thank you. So heres how the evening will work. Ill give you a brief overview of how the evening will work. I will do a few minutes on the theory of direct actions and some questions to vague about this evening and then ill turn it over to our panelists. Each of the five panelists have been asked to speak for not more than 12 minutes. Ill give him a time check near the end. The focus for tonight is on direct action. How it operates, whats involved, its effects on the participants in the larger movement, what works and what doesnt, the concerns raised within the movement and by then those on the outside and similar questions. Our panelists will focus exclusively on personal stories, specifics, this is what happened on this occasion, this is what we learn from it, this is why it worked or didnt work. The focus tonight is not primarily on the issue that led to the direct action. Selfish night we are more interested in resistance and rather than why the war was bad. We want to know more about what black lives matter rather than how the police treat black people. We are going to focus primarily on non violent direct action. After the panelists be, we will throw the floor open to people in the audience and we very much want audience participation. You do not have to pretend to be asking a question. You can just make a comment, but just as we are limiting the panelist, we will limit the people in the audience and people can have up to two minutes but not more than two minutes for the questioner. We will collect several questions or comments and then go to the audience for responses and each panelist will again have, not more than two minutes to respond to the set of three or four questions that they received so they can choose to focus on just one of them. So let me pose two questions to think about tonight as we hear the specific stories and remarks. First why engage in direct action . Why is direct action the way we should approach something . So by that i dont mean what moves people to action in the first place but why choose direct action and what does it hope to accomplish . I will suggest three possible reasons to do so, to take direct action recognizing that there are others that believe every action will have a mix of reactions. I refused to drafted and be somebody who is asked to go out and kill other people. I will not do it. That is what this is about. Thats all there is to it. Second, you could do it as a way of bringing public attention to the issue. The media will not cover it this that if we mount a large demonstration, if dozens of people or hundreds of people are arrested they will have no choice but to cover it that will bring publicity to our issue and help raise awareness. Third people do it as a way to change conditions. I dont care whether or not the media covers it. Nobody is riding the buses in montgomery until they are integrated. We will keep not riding the buses until we win. So that is a third purpose. We can do direct action in a variety of ways and its partly determined by the goal of the action. If the goal of the direct action is to get Media Attention and in my experience, these days, that is most of the direct action is intended for that purpose. Then the action is usually planned by organizers who notify the media in advance, often notify the police in advance, often negotiate the terms of the arrest and how the whole operation will operate. In general, the more people arrested, the more Media Attention it will get. So they usually want more people to get arrested. If you taking that approach, there may be some tendency to being more likely to recruit people who have some level of privilege, whether that is racial privilege or class privilege or whether they dont have a fixed employment schedule that they will lose if they dont show up for work because its easier for them to pay the costs in those situation. None of this is inevitable. I want to emphasize that. Thats a good thing. Thats what we want the panel to do. If the aim of the disruption, if the aim of the direct action is to disrupt the normal functioning of society in ways that matter to the people with power and that society and uses sustain it until the people with power have to give in, then you have a somewhat different equation. In that case may be the goal is to not get arrested but you can continue the demonstration as long as possible. So especially young people have dozens of demonstrations where thousands of people show up to protest and they disrupt the flow of traffic. Sometimes two or three different groups are in different places and they rejoin later. If its done properly, you hope nobody gets arrested but you had a successful action in some way. Those are two different ways of thinking of it. Generally speaking most of the direct actions that we will be hearing about will be in public but thats not always the case. We were talking before the meeting began where some people broke into the fbi office, backed the truck up and stole all the files that were in the fbi office and released all the political files which was a lot of files. Those people were never caught. They told their stories to the media long after the event was over in the statute of limitation was over but the goal was not to wait around to be caught. It was to do it without being caught but was definitely a form of direct action. Now let me turn it over to our five terrific panelists and we will take them, as it happens in the order that is on this sheet and thats also the order that were sitting up. Table so if you dont have a a sheet yet we are going to get copies and pass them out. I will say the name of the person thats doing it because the sheet has more information than i could do without taking up a lot of time. Our next speaker will be randy keeler. Its good to be here with you for this very important discussion. To tell you the truth, i dont really, really know exactly what direct action is. I dont know if theres a direct or correct definition. If there is i dont know it. In my life ive just done what i thought made sense to me in the face of certain circumstances that made sense to me both strategically and ethically. I think loosely defined, i think ive spent most of my adult life engaged in direct action. Some of that is in the program you have. I think many of us who first get involved in direct action of any kind, there is a moment in an issue that gets involved. For me the moment was 1966 and i was 22 years old and the issue was the u. S. War in vietnam. I went gradually but steadily from peaceful protest to out now resistance and noncooperation in a very public way. I turned in my draft card and was arrested by the fbi. I spent 22 months in federal prison as a result. In other years i found that organizing was something that i like to do and i could do and seemed like a helpful thing to do. So wasnt just an active participant, but i spent far more time organizing them. Whether it was to stop twin Nuclear Power plants from being built in the 1970s are stopping the construction which we did not succeed exceed of the Nuclear Power plant in New Hampshire in the 1970s. A number of things like that. I also started early with my wife. The war was so horrendous in our mind, in so many ways whether it was the korean poverty and abuse and destruction of land, i didnt want to give my body so we have been for text resistors ever since 1976 as a result. We had our First Bank Account seized and then our wages levied and finally our home in 1991 was seized and sold out from under us. We had hundreds and hundreds of supporters which was an amazing thing. Most of the 80s and 90s i spent organizing two Major National campaigns. One for Nuclear Disarmament and one for the abolition of privately financed campaigns. After trying to recuperate from my exertions, i tried to stop the power plant in vermont. That has now been stopped [applause]. The people here have been very much involved in that. Now, im one of many people, including a number of people here tonight, who is trying to determine the role of direct action in this huge pipeline project that wants to destroy major pieces of land through towns throughout western massachusetts to carry unneeded gas that should have never been fractured in the first place for the corporations that want to build a pipeline. Thats a whole other issue and i think well talk about that in the discussion. So let me just share a few observations or conclusions about things i have learned from the activity ive just described. [inaudible] direct action can be any number of things. Not just blocking or stopping things which again is a a primary activity and ive been involved with lots of things, that can be impromptu speak outs and hanging banners on buildings. You name it. Direct action is usually a key factor in political change. Its rarely, in my estimation, unable to do it on its own. It is often a key element of a broader strategy that involves all kinds of other things from neighborhood organizing to public education, using them media and others. As they said, there is a risk in direct action but the risk is undeniably always almost greater for people of color, to women, to our working class or poor class than it is for myself who are white male privileged people. I think that always needs to be recognized. I want to also say that acts of courage and passion are contagious. They are contagious. When people step out with courage compassion, passion, they take a risk in the mix inspires other people. It is contagious and that is key to building a movement. It spreads and it inspires. Next i want to just mention, some people have told me, why do you bother risking arrest or risking taking time off from work or disrupting family events or anything for a direct action event when you know wont do any good. You cant fight city hall. Who will care, it doesnt matter. I want to say that ive heard them many times. I want to say that no act can ever be said to be futile. Simply because we dont know what ripples throw out from what we do. Who listens to what. In my own life, i was giving a speech in 1969, just giving a talk. I was talking about the fact that i had been arrested by the fbi and felt it was almost certainly on the way to federal prison for draft resistance. Unbeknownst to me there was a man in the audience who later revealed to the public the topsecret pentagon papers. I didnt know he would hear something i said which was what could any of us do more than what were already doing if we were willing to risk imprisonment. He said when he asked himself that question he knew that topsecret study had to be revealed to the public showing years and years of lies about the war in vietnam. So he did that and he faced a possible 115 years in prison. but you never know down the road. Those of the examples i could give. And winning is they keep beecher and should be a strategic focus. We will end when we get enough people if not joining us but supporting us to pressure Decision Makers to change things to affect other people and i want to say that people that are so afraid of violence to matter who they are or their cause. If there is the reason to win over others. This is an ethical and spiritual question it coincides with my values to feel good about the actions over the long haul. There is something called the of lot of ends and means. And we dont get what we want but what we do. If we use violence that is the story of the tragic story so that is one reason to think about how not just what impact it had on us. [applause] now our next speaker. I want to note what i see as direct action is any number of things sometimes sitting sometimes marching sometimes walking or sometimes just standing. I remember talking with one of miamis sisters with one of my sisters and said what did you want from me . Is sometimes a what he tuesday and with me because if youre white this will protect us and sometimes the what you to walk behind me. The person that seems to have the beast privilege has to be the voice. What i think about direct action i think of the different factions and their realized one of the things that keeps me going is the sense of community that i have. What i have done tonight i could talk to for 12 years about the power of community. Dont worry i have not. I brought along my sisters the raging grannies are here. Because this is one of the things our communities to, we sing. We pass out song sheets for you to join us because were not doing a concert, one song so what if we do that right here . So it was about the pipeline that we just talked about. Hit it. Please join. Viewer not seeing the same notes dont worry that is just another way to do harmony. [laughter] [applause] not only was that a nice song in that wonderful rendition but in singing with us become part of the community. Some of us are already are but any way that we can emphasize those connections is a good. Thanks for singing along. That was just a couple of minutes. I am paying attention. But what i wanted to do was to look at how i came to this and my real story that i grew up in new orleans for 1943, some of you your grandparents were born about then. In the apartheid south. It was an amazingly horrific time and i didnt know it because i was very privileged. But i had another dimension of my life with my parents who were extraordinarily already quite advanced alcoholics. So where did i turn and find a voice . I found support in the church with the nuns and the priest who were strong people, carrying people who provided the early seeds of my appreciation of community. Not only were they there to nurture and carrying but also the people who were aware of the Racial Injustice that was happening so through them i learned what was happening in the various dimensions of the involvement and i was there when we took the signs down. In those days we were working for integration be the better not. But it was a step and as i talk to my other friends like the white southerners who also learned how not only did the people of color suffer, but we did because we bought the lie. And it has taken many years to undo those lies. But those are the release seeds. Since then, i have realized we are in this world, where all context matters. Is so important with some of the students here and i realize each of us is abetted in where we came from with their own stories. Delaying those histories and stories we are informed to participate in what we find ourselves, this present and it is an extraordinary time. When they were talking about once upon a time when we did activities and actions i remembered to be part of the women pentagon action that was part of the washington post. And today we have at the Regulatory Commission protesting and walking out im sure you have read all about it. Because we dont have a press that covers anything of substance but of a story that happened last week i was in washington, last tuesday, the day after labor day a man was speaking at the Am