These are things that are not kind of accidentally detrimental to the political participation and people of color. We still have the struggles ahead of us. But it also is just simply the reality. Is it then that do we need to change attitudes first and the structural change, or do we have to go directly to changing structures and have attitudes change afterwards . I guess thats a question for all of you. I would go as is structures and change the structure. I mean, i think that the polling these things are always a little hard to read because people do say what they think that you want them to year, particularly when it comes to race the many polling on race matters. But i would say, you know, culturally we are very. The new american majority, you know, the tolerance and the attitudes of the millenniums to miami, we are so far behind. We have a saying in our office. Dont recruit people you will have to lobby later. It is moving, and we need to structure catch up. One of the things that i learned as a human organizer is that in general the loss follows the organizing. It does not work the other way around. So i think it points to the necessity for mobilization as the public demand for change. And, as you said, this is not an accident. The people control the structure will change the structure when they feel that they have no other choice. And what do we learned from examples of cities close where, in fact, the power structure is very different. A town, Country Club Hills right nearby, same demographic of a completely different. Right. And both of these municipalities are kind of right on the council said lewis and so close that you can leave st. Louis and enter one of them without even knowing necessarily the u. S. Left the city of st. Louis. Well i was there i got into conversations with elected leaders from small towns, small municipalities called Country Club Hills which just a few years ago they had a police force that was entirely white and the black population that was about 70 or 80 percent black. And it was you know, the mayor, that turned back the current mayor told me of the record that he had the experience of being swept up by police and that is what led him to want to run for mayor and political office. And so in a concerted way they set out to change the demographics of the police apartment. And so when i talked to the police chief there he said that he went to high school and encouraged gen people to go to the Police Academy. He went to the graduation from the Police Academy and found people who were about to graduate in did not have a Police Department. Well, consider working for us. And then we went to other municipalities and said we would be interested in having you as standout. Have to think about working here. And now the Police Department is about half people of color and have white. And both the mayor and the police chief talked about the way in which this and at least facilitated a better understanding with the community. Now, thats the Positive Side of it. The other side of it is that i am in new yorker and know that there was a black officer involved in the shooting of john bell for in 2006, the africanamerican man who was on the verge of his the night before his wedding and was shot, some 50 something bullets were shot. Killed him, and injured one of his friends greatly. They were unarmed. There was an africanamerican officer present, you know, during this. And there have been other instances, africanamerican officers are officers of color. I dont think its simply a dermal change where everything falls into place. Not recruiting people you have to later lobby. You also have to have structural changes to say that we actually believe that there is a limit on police authority. The police are not the law. There are some distinctions that we dont that we somehow lost track of. The last a. M. Will say is in ferguson i did see when people began teargas income before they began tear gas in the first night protesters, there were a smattering of black officers who were there. And several of them had covered their faces with, you know, bandannas are stars. Some people said they did this because they lived in the communities and are going to have to face, you know, criticism for what they were doing. The other side of it was much more ominous. These are people who would cover their faces because they were about to do something that they knew exceeded the browns of what Proper Police baby should be and these were two black men. Are really striking, striking detail that you were able to be there and see that. I am also struck in listening to you that were talking about structural change but at the same time that happens on a personal level. Happens through people changing institutions from within, sometimes in a very 111 way. You said coming into this that you were willing to tell tale and really get up close and personal in describing some of what you have seen in practice within institutions. Ostensibly well moving people, practices that end up keeping them women and people of color. You know, in order to be perceived as a viable candidate you have to, you know, have your own personal network, you have tac have or be part of or be accepted into a broader political network. You have to have access to donors. Theres all this work the i am a progressive. When an Organization Called progress of minority. We recruit people to run for office. Our biggest fights have been over candid its a color and women and women of color obviously. And we started the Racial Justice campaign to prioritize, not marginalized , the recruitment of people of color and making it a priority within our organization from the beginning. And, you know, progressives are often our first problem. I would say to a candid it, if you are relatively new youre going to have to get through our advisory council, then the, you know, then progressive community, then the Democratic Party commanded we can Start Talking about republicans. But you have to get through these hurdles first. You know, we have often and our Advisory Councils and our states are comprised of some of the most talented and romney political people across the nation. So these are really wellmeaning folks. But the Progressive Movement just like the broader Political Movement is mostly led by white people. And mostly white men. Probably looks a lot like that. And so, you know, we will bring someone in. Never heard of him. Well, thats not surprising. That is why i am introducing him to you. Picking keep going from there. And it is not at all they are not, you know, with in this orbit, we have had to do a lot of convincing, even within our own organization to get people across. And it has gone so far the favre story like to tell because the staff person, we had a fight that escalated very highly in one of our states. One of our staff people called and said, gloria, i cant do this. Of all white guy. And not used to fighting over race. I was like, thats your job. And basically what happened was we recruited and native American Woman to run, very talented woman who had served in her states administration, quite accomplished. Had her own network. Recruited to run for the state senate, and it was immediately no, no, no. It is not going to work. And then the party decided that the profile of this district because that is the other thing that we do you guys dont know about. Before we start finding a candidate we create a profile for what the ideal candidate in this district should look like. In some people like me to decide that. It is sometimes a problem. And then so we recruited this woman. It decided, no, they needed a white man. So they found this white,. Well, we kept going. Our candid it was up performing on every metric. Our job is to try to assert our candid as a more viable candid. This escalated. Folks that cherry pick terror donor list and never going to major donors telling them that gloria is prioritizing race or viability. And i was literally had to fly out. I state director was doing all the work to become the political front. Ahead to meet with other donors on by one and say you have known me for two and a half seconds. I fired my mother and my best friend of a lifetime. I do not prioritized anything over viability. And so at think thats amenable. Thats my story. What kind of changes to we need within our institution check to we have to take some radical steps . A couple of things. And not so radical step, we changed our criteria for who could be on guard advisory council. Making itself more diverse. We have the political director, had to represent some political entity. Some community leaders, clergy leaders, people that open up access to a more diverse pool of influential people who could be on the committee. So there are things that you could do like that that open the. Yes. I think that we need to call it out. I mean, people were shocked that i would fly across the country and in and knock on their door and say come here is what im hearing. You believe in this . And as a donor to our organization and it shows a commitment to our mission camino, dont let them believe this way because that is what it ultimately was. Yet to stand up to it. It cant just be left for people of color or women to stand up to it. Is going to take all of us. With your anecdote. , white guy, i cant do this people have to politicians are already in office, have to get beyond their comfort zone. Wondered if you could say more about that. Make this a topic of conversation for everyone. That level of distancing. Discomfort on the part of white people. Unfortunately i think the circumstances are such that these things do have a way of presenting themselves. We would not have had to grapple with the reality of Sexual Harassment in the workplace and the way that we did. Going back to ferguson, i think that will be a looking at there is reflective of a broader set of trans. I will talk historical for a minute. We saw in 1967 the Carter Commission report which said that there were kind of largescale urban disturbances to my riots that were a product of the systematic exclusion of africanamericans from opportunity. And out of that we have reforms that people considered liberal reform, people considered them to be superfluous. The Supreme Court effectively said that the Voting Rights act was discriminatory against white southerners. And the decision, and so we have debates around things like affirmative action and whether not people of color actually belong in a position. I didnt see that. So we kind of the question that is implicit with and that is if you remove those circumstances, if you replicate the circumstances that existed, do you not have the same out comes . Do you not produce the same kind of problems that resulted in this kind of cyclical situation . In that think that it is maybe a skeptical or pessimistic point of view, but because we have this historical amnesia we keep doing things that result in negative outcomes and saying, well, if we do this we put our hand on the fire we get burned. Lets move our hand. And then five matt sutter command would be interesting to put a hand on the fire and see what happens. You have talked before about what people are or are not willing to think about or talk about. One thing that people often have trouble with in america is talking about structural change. Your research and get results basically in looking at that, but you have also said that it is sometimes difficult to get people there. You saw it even in the course of doing research. Wonder what you have seen about peoples Comfort Level and will ways of approaching the topic of underrepresentation theyre comfortable with or not comfortable with. He touched on some of this. The conventional wisdom i think is that ordinary americans cannot really grasped structures. Its sort of too complicated you know, kind of arcane and we cant get into that. I think that really shortchanges most people. It is true, most people do want that to our policy briefing on the political system and the United States, but i think that there is actually far more opportunity to move people in their thinking on this than we give them credit for i mean, its sort of stands to reason and await that if you just look at these numbers and you are not somebody familiar with the way that the politics works, which is most people. Why would they be . Its a strange kind of arcane world. If you look at those numbers and you leave it to your imagination, why they are that way, you will come up with sort of easy answers. Well, maybe women just like politics. I dont know. Maybe people of color dont really participate. Of course, you know, we dont need to get into a fight about whether there is centered around the edges, but our experience in our research that we have briefly described here is, people get it. Does not take a twohour briefing to my dissertation. When your name specific structural barriers people say, oh, yeah. That makes sense to me. In the level of understanding. Other some people who get it more than others to back between Party Affiliation or men and women, you know, if you are somebody who has unexperienced structural Barriers Holding back are you less likely to see them . It is true that women and people of color sort of perceive the structural barriers more clearly or more readily, but again, not limited to those groups. So i think this is not as complicated as we like to think that it might be in terms of making people think about this differently. That think that we have all lot of room for changing the way people think about it. Sharing some interesting thoughts in the greenroom beforehand about the parties are or are not doing right now. And to me know, some interesting observations about what the Republican Party is doing at the state level. At the that is worth sharing , what you are observing right now. The Party Apparatus on both sides of the aisle is the primary candidate recruitment operations. And they tend to have a very narrow silent approach to it. So you are the recruiter. You have your database in front of you, and youre looking at when the party, you know, is the next one down to the local party chair, an anc members. And they tend to not go to outside groups. So that is something that we need to change. Our groups need to be more proactive about bringing people into the party for consideration to and the parties need to be more mindful of reaching out beyond that structure. The second thing that i think is important from the partys perspective cisplatin is money. What i shared in the green room was that on the republican side, the republican state committee, the its like the state Level Committee for state legislative seats like the teacher paul v. Is for congress. We have the equivalent on the democratic side, the dlc see, Democratic Campaign committee. And so the rspc rflc, sorry, has spent since 2010. You all know the story leading into 2010, the 40 million spent, the strategy, the massive investment in state legislative races in order to pick up nearly 700 seats and i dont even know, 21 chambers in 2010. That was a big deal. Since then they have spent 3 million just on candidate recruitment of women and people of color in this cycle, 2014 cycle, the aspen 6 million. Some 9 million just since 2010 exclusively on the recruitment of republican women and people of color. Now, we know what every Party Affiliation, that this is not the grand old party of yesteryear. These are going to be very, very conservative folks. And they have recruited as a result of this investment more than 150 people of color and more than 300 women. In they have increased the largest major increase in the number of republican female state legislatures, by 27 percent in just says 2010 or including 2010, im sorry. So, you know, there is a major activity happening. There is nothing equivalent to that of the democratic side. The dlc see does not, you know, read grant money to state parties for the exclusive purpose of canada recruitment. There is no, you know, significant 55 theyre program is called ironically they have a name for the female program and not a name for the people of color program. It is called white women right now. There is also one at the congressional level called project growth. So there is a similar investment happening at the congressional level. And it is just nothing on our side. You know, donna does not get 39 to recruit women or people of color. It just does not happen. So we have got to try to tap figure out that in balance as well. Democrats traditionally i mean, democrats have i think there are 1100, maybe 1200 state legislative seats that are held by women and republicans have 636. Some Democratic Women have always done better. But they will catch up. I know from our business, we record 200 candid its a year and we dont have a 69 budget. It is not hard for them to catch up with the investment theyre making. It is fascinating. Probably we will avalon of questions from the audience. I mean, all of you have brought up new and interesting things today, which is great. I want to in would you. In your writing you, you know, looking at it all together you present, i mean, an interesting vision looking back historically. If you can read a glass halfempty or glass half full. We have all of the signs of progress in terms of lets say having a black president , black mayors in gary, indiana, detroit, newark. The red since 1970 a number of black elected officials in the United States has increased nearly tenfold. We have these programs, and on the other hand, its terrible. It is really, really bad in terms of the numbers and in terms of incidents like shooting a Michael Brown and everything which was not an isolated event necessarily and everything that comes up so how do you balance it in your mind . Where do you land . Recalcitrant optimism. Which i think there is also realistic optimism that a person who looked at our contemporary state of affairs, is skeptical person could say, well, you know, all of this or