Every weekend, book tv brings you 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on cspan 2. Keep watching for more television for serious readers. And everybody got quiet right on cue. Thats never happened before. Im bradley graham, a coowner of politics and pros along with my wife, and on behalf of the entire staff at p and p and everybody at busboys, welcome, thank you so much for coming. Were very fortunate this evening to have with us eric liu 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 at the bookstore have been approached many times by customers concerned about the course that 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, but trumps election is one manifestation of a mounting turbulent in u. S. Political and civic life that weve all been seeing for some years now, whether its the tea party, the occupy wall street movement, the sudden success of Marriage Equality activists or the black lives matter protests. Theres been a rise of citizen power, what eric calls the great pushback. Bernie sanders and donald trump both ride this populous wave and now eric has channeled it into a book about civic power, what it is, how to practice it, why anyone would actually want it. The writer, educator, and civic entrepreneur, eric has been thinking about Democratic Values and the role of citizenship for a number of years. Back in the 1990s, he was a speech writer for president bill clinton and later, the president s domestic policy advisor. More recently, founded and remains ceo of a university, citizenship through a variety of programs. Hes the executive director of Aspen Institute citizenship and american identity program. Additionally hes a regular columnist for cnn. Com and a correspondent for the atlantic. Com. And hes written several previous books on such topics as mentoring, patriotism, the roles of government and citizens in our society, as well as a memoir three years ago that told not just his story, it was a broader exploration of cultural identity. His new book were out of a 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 id like to thank two other organizations for joining pnp and sponsoring this event, Citizen University and erics program at the Aspen Institute, the citizenship and american identity program. We greatly appreciate their support. So ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming eric liu. [applaus [applause] good evening, everybody. It is great oh, i may have messed up your mic here. Its great to be with you this evening and i want to begin with a round of thank yous. Brad, to you and lyssa for your part of the busboys and poets partnership itself. When i lived in washington, this space did not exist much less this conflict of meshing food and ideas in this way that is really at the root of what civic life is supposed to be about. Civic life isnt supposed to be about well, eat your vegetables. You cant eat your vegetables tonight, but eat your vegetables and enjoy eating your vegetables in the company of others in a space like this. Its really just wonderful to be in a to be with you this evening and 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 of different kinds and thank our friends at cspan to be with us today and cover this conversation. And what id love to do is just share some thoughts that are embodied in this new book youre more powerful than you think and open it up for conversation and discussion that can take the form of q a or just the form of you sharing your sense of the state of the union right now. So, let me just begin in the first place with a word about this moment that were in. Brad said in his introduction, were living through times that, you know, we know they are tumultuous and without precedent and yet, still, its sort of staggering to take in the reality of what we are experiencing right now and im not talking only about the election of donald trump and the immediate aftermath, staggering as that has been, im talking about the ways over which the course of many years now, really, if you think about it, tectonically over the course of several decades in the United States weve had this concentration and wealth and opportunity and polarization of our politics and this severity of inequality that has given us exactly the kinds of uprisings that were seeing across the left and the right here in the United States. And they are the same kinds of uprisings that youre seeing all around the world right now. The arab spring, the orange revolution, green revolution, the umbrella revolution, all of these movements, like the movements that have sprung up here since at least the tea party and occupy wall street through the current times, are movements that are in progress. Some have achieved electoral victories and some have achieved little in the way of tangible outcomes, but all are a part of the swirling moment that were in and i think naming this moment as a moment of incredible crosseyed logical citizen power is really important for us. And i think part of being in washington d. C. , and being in the capital, is there is emanating from the city, not necessarily places like busboys and poets or policies and pros. Emanating from the capitol theres politics and civic life is essentially the house of cards. Its this dark, apocalyptic topina vision of being in the public. Widening our lens and looking beyond the beltway and this town is realize from left, right and center there are incredible surges of bottomup citizen power going on all around the country. Now, part of that surge, weve seen just in the weeks since 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 checked out of politics, who had long decided that the game was too rigged to participate in. That brought donald trump to power in the first place. So, recognizing that all of these are part of the same moment, the same arc of civic power, is i think the first thing that i want us to reset and do. The second thing id like to say this evening is just to unpack a bit what i 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 thats so ambient and so everpresent that people stop naming or describing rigorously what they mean by the word. I want you to know what i mean. The capacity to ensure that others do as you would like them to do. Some people that is an uncomfortably menacing definition, some people think is sounds authoritarian or domineering. Step back and think about it not just in the context of power, but your relationship. Family, friends, coworkers, all of us are all the time in this swirling eco system to assure that others do what wed like them to do. That power as it plays out in seive civic life is common concern. So much of the word in this house of cards, age, has a negative moral balance is that power inherently is neither good nor evil. Power just is, its like fire. Simply because it can be put through this use, its understanding how it can be put to good use. So, 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 may get literate. We have to learn how to read power and how to write power. To to that in talking about power and civic life, we kind of boil down the patterns, the ways that power unfolds in our common and political life into three broadly speaking three laws. I want to say a word about each of the laws of civic power. The first is this, not a surprise to anybody, but yet, its worth naming. Power compounds. Rich get richer, the powerful get powerful. And people with clout get more clout. And power compounds and it concentrates in ways that turn the game ultimately into a winner take all game. The power left to itself yields monopoly and thats 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 voice, you tend to get less voice. When youre on the margins, you you tend to get pushed further out into the margins. You dont have to talk about National Politics and this is the life of this community, washington d. C. , this neighborhood in washington d. C. , in tremendous flux. Its full of opportunities, but mrs. Displacement. The way that power concentrates and compounds. Thats law number one. Law number two, the power justifies itself. The civic life, every kind of narrative, propaganda, ideology, background story or explanation we might have about why the economy works the way it does. Why white people tend to have more wealth than nonwhite people. Why men dominate our institutions and not women. All of the explanations that people offer for these states of affairs are ways in which power justifies itself. Power will create narratives and ideologies and just the stories to explain to everyone who lacks power, why it is they rightfully lack that power and why it is that those who happen to have concentrated and hoarded that power are the rightful holders of that power and again plays out in our life. The economics, the ideology of trickle down economics is the classic instance in the way in which power justifies itself. That those who already have privilege and wealth need to be coddled and taken care of so you dont kill the goose that lays the golden egg. And so that their wealth can ultimately trickle down and leak its way down to the rest of us. Its a story that many people tell and that many people left and right, democrats and republicans for decades have bought into. If you take the first two laws, the ways in which power concentrates and you can get into a grim situation. A situation that you can see, well, certainly around the world right now if you think about how institutions are collapsing in places like venezuela today where the legislature and now the courts are beginning to yield and concentrate power to a single dictatorial authoritarian leader. This is one realtime instance a place where power is concentrating to a monopoly, winner take all system and justifying itself with ideologies and stories why it has to be so. If it were just those two, wed be stuck in a grim doom loop. What saves us from the loop and helps us break out of the loop is law number three. Which is this. Power is inif i infinite. Power is infinite. I cannot underscore this enough. Power in civic life is not like energy in a physical system, you have a law of concentration of energy and only so much in the system. If you should get more energy, that must mean that someone else is getting less energy. In civic life the amount of power that the system can hold is infinite so if you learn how to give a public speech. If you learn how to organize your neighbors. If you learn how to frame an issue in a way thats compelling to the media, you dont diminish by one whit the liability to give a public speech or to frame an issue or mobilize my neighbor. All youve gone is add to the net amount of power circulating through our eco system. Now, to stay that power is infinite is not to be polly anna and naive and all people are equally powerful. Of course not. I mean that all people a the all teams no matter the endowment of power they think they have at the moment are capable of generating more out of thin air. How . This magical, magical act called organizing. And the simple act of inviting one other about person to join you in 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. So, this third law about the infinitude of power and public life saves us from doom laws number one and two. All of these laws actually yield for us as citizens and by the way, i want to say, in almost every instance that i use it, in the name of our organization, Citizen University, in the language of citizen power, when i talk about this, i am not talking about a limited motion of citizenship as document status under the u. S. Immigration and naturalization laws. I mean citizen in the deeper ethical sense, the member of the body, pro socially contributors to communities, one who believes in leaving something behind thats greater than one self. Being a nonsociopath. Its harder to live up to than it seems and there are fewer examples than you might like in our mreks right now, but i want to just say that that notion of citizenship proudly defines, when we think of our roles of citizens, three imperatives of action for us. So from the first place, the reality is that power compounds and concentrates and it tends towards these monopoly winnertakeall games. Our first imperative, to change the game. In the second place, power justifies itself and is always spinning ideologies and narratives, how the people who have power and wealth and clout have it and our imperative as citizens is to change the story. And the third place we are reminding that power and civic life is in fact infinite, not zero sums, not finite, not limited to current allocations and current structures of power. The imperative for us at all times is to see where we can change the equation. Changing the game, changing the story, and changing the equation. The way that i think about our work as citizens and in the course of this book, i describe under each of the three imperatives, several strategies for us, whether you are an activist, whether you are an interested bystander and somebody who has been involved in civic and political life, all your career. And whether you are one of the millions who today are just deciding for the first time that i should get involved. I should actually step off the sidelines into the playing field. No matter who you are, its a time for us to become literate in the strategies of citizen power so we can change the game, change the story and change the equation of power and civic life. Well, let me say a few words just about a couple of examples about each of these as grist for the mills as we open up the wider conversation. To think about changing the game of power and civic life, you know, one of the examples that i often share from my home state, washington, i live in seattle. Ive been there since the left the Clinton Administration in year 2000. And one of the great virtues of being in the other washington, what we think of as the sane washington, is that youre in a place that is deeply woven into the fabric of National Economic and political life, indeed Global Economic and political life and yet, you have 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 differently and having slightly different tool sets of what you can do on different issues. One issue that a group of friends and colleagues of mine in seattle and Washington State got motivated on after the sandy hook massacre was gun responsibility. We decided of course, we made a push as many in this room and around the country did was to try to get our congress to act on responsible gun reform legislation. That failed. How about in the state legislature of washington, we can get our legislature at the time was democratic controlled to move on responsible gun reform legislation. That failed, too. What we realized was, in both cases, both the United States congress and the Washington State legislature, it didnt matter particularly that large majorities of the people of the voters and constituents supported things like universal background checks for gun purchases. What mattered there was a finite number of legislators and a finite number of legislators who could be controlled and bought or threatened by the n. R. A. And other groups in the gun lobby, for the n. R. A. It was effective to play an inside game. An inside game of legislative action to make sure a small number of legislators could not even be particularly threatened, but 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 chill and freeze and kill any effort at reform. We were frustrated, we were angry, we yelled, we stomped and decided we needed, in fact, to play a different game. And in Washington State, like 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, exhibitcled signatures from across the state, every county in the state and we 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 and deciding to get people in our state and all over our country to pay attention, washington became the first in the union to pass by a vote of the people, universal background checks for people for gun purchases. [applause] this is one simple example of how you decide youre going to change the game and not just on the terms and format that the game previously has been rigged 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, actually, as you walk into the store here today, you might have seen some of the placards on the polls there for an upcoming black lives matter rally about Police Violence or the demiliterization, the fact there are placards and posters and a conversation in the United States about Police Brutality and Police Violence, is not a result of elites, of policy makers, of congress, its the result of unsung citizen activists, many of them for the first time getting involved in civic life. Some of them marching, some pressing policy makers, all of them getting quickly literate in the strategies and tactics of power. And one of the fruits of black lives matter movement, Campaign Zero. It was start by