text:
tv Book TV CSPAN October 18, 2014 11:52am-2:01pm EDT
11:52 am
call. and did not know what to say. i had enough trouble dealing with my own family. for now we had a seven. at times, particularly at night in that dream state between wakefulness and sleep by a strange thoughts. the pictures in my mind company images of my youth and can get and prison life in china. as a place that was mine to do whatever with no obligation to my mother, father, friends, or even that long departed but ever-present can in spirit, my grandmother. i could imagine. how did it myself. don't tell me you fell in love with some smart he does not value. young girls these days let themselves be treated like to relate spirited man comes along, does his thing, and then forgets to clean up. cranmer, abcaeight you say that? if so it is the guy's fault. it would not be my fault.
11:53 am
of course not. it is always the woman's fault. we use men and then look at the consequences. i have some leftover borscht. what some? if you don't like that we get to the shop down the road and get an accord before pastrami sandwich. grandma, i think of going to marry his corrupt. in my dream she would come up to me and gently put aside and look at me so closely connected smell of baby powder honors well, if you love her palette that is the important thing. she has a little tuzla and could see a good food. is she bought? no perris her hair is black. she is chinese. it does not matter. grandma would go along fine. all of the world will be brown one day. just love her. all will be well. here samos' the balls.
11:54 am
i forgot, you know like to buy there. enter kind and wispy strands of ashen hair would fade back into the night along with my dreams and the breeze of the south china sea to. [applause] >> this weekend on the c-span networks tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a town hall meeting on the media coverage of events in ferguson, misery at harris does state university in st. st. louis. sunday evening at 8:00 historian richard norton smith on his recent biography of nelson rockefeller. tonight at 10:00 on book tv * author and commentator and a question to five questionable practices of the collection industry. in the 20,147th festival books. tonight data clock on american history tv on
11:55 am
c-span the life and legacy of booker t. washington. and sunday afternoon at 4:00 on real america from 1964 exercise delaware, a joint armed forces' readiness operation between the u.s. and run when the two countries are allies. find a television schedule at c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us. e-mail us. send us a tweet. join the c-span conversation , like us on facebook, follows on twitter . >> here is some of the latest news about the publishing industry. the national book foundation announced his non-fiction finalists which include a generation, no good man among the living, and the meaning of human existence by edward wilson. look for our live coverage of the awards on november
11:56 am
november 19th. amazon is opening kiosks in san francisco and sacramento and according to the "washington post," the chinese government ordered the removal books by authors perceived to be sympathetic to protest and on,. stay up-to-date on news about the publishing world by liking us on facebook or follow us on twitter. you can also visit our website. >> one of the things about my day job is why you get to meet extraordinary people from extraordinary places. a week ago before i came here i was talking to a friend of mine who is a plus member. he is my age. he came into politics, as i did, and his late 20's. to liberals the same age as mine, but he could have grown up on a different
11:57 am
planet. he could have grown up under the dictatorship. his father had defected to canada. they only been able to meet once, the only place the two of them could get visas. the father said, come back with me. he said no. and indeed he was right. the free british parliament. not allowed to see it. and as we were talking he was telling me about the impact that had been made on him as a teenager by john paul the second first visit to poland. and the tell me something that i had never before. he said, you know, the holy father never once directly criticize the communist authority. he said, he did not have to.
11:58 am
he's just offered something better. and that, i think, should be the creed of the service, is just off for something better. i saw on the news as i was coming here that you picked up ag id volunteer from the u.s., someone who had decided that he was so alienated by the country was going to take up arms with those monsters blasphemers. we have a similar problem in the united kingdom, something like 200 boys born and brought up in the u.k. hill have been so repulsed by whatever was that they found around them that they have taken up arms against their country in the most extremely. and it occurred to me, isn't the answer to be offering them something better? of life experience of one of
11:59 am
those second-generation immigrant boys growing up in an english city. have you got any history of, the story of this country would have been presented to him as a hateful chronicle of racism and exploitation. almost all of his dealings with officers of the state will have taught him. when the national brand is systematically derided pen and deduced, is it any wonder if that some of our citizens began to grow around for alternatives? if you are not satisfied with being patricia quinn the identities, some people will scrub around for something more compelling and strong grip we need to offer something better. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> welcome to green bay
12:00 pm
weekend. located on green bay to the west of lake michigan, the city's skyline is dotted with steeples and smokestacks and speak to its industrial and cultural past. with the help of our time warner cable partners, over the next 90 minutes we will visit local bookstores, talk with doctors from the area, travel to places like historic limbo field and learn about green bay's prominent political cartoonists. >> i love how this cartoon, you can kind of imagine seeing this in the newspaper and kind of being hit hard by the depiction of death, destruction, and then i think this comment expresses something about his position toward war, u.s. involvement abroad that we really see throughout the entire collection. >> first, we start of our feature with a look at the mental and physical impact such a confinement has on inmates in u.s. prison systems. ..
12:01 pm
>> i realized that some of the techniques we were using for, in the war on terror, appear in our prison system. and i noticed all these odd connections between overseas policies and domestic policies. so i started looking at it, what was happening in the prison system, and that then led me to start teaching in the prison system, and it led me to another book on solitary confinement.
12:02 pm
>> the united states has the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the world with 5% of the world's population, we have close to 25% of its prisoners. african-americans and hispanic-americans are incarcerated at much higher rates than whites. and the united states holds more prisoners in solitary confinement than any other democratic nation. these are human rights issues that we cannot ignore. >> really about 30 years ago we decided we were going to develop a few system of solitary confinement. solitary's always been part of a prison system. people have been thrown in a hole. early prisons, in fact, began as solitary confinement. everybody was in solitary confinement in the very early part of the 19th century. but what they discovered is that it drove people mad, and they gave up on it. they decided this was not something they should be doing to prison inmates. but in the 1980s, this country brought it back and gradually
12:03 pm
through the '80s and the '90s we built this incredible system of solitary confinement. we have at least 50-80,000 people now in solitary confinement. some of it's this these supermax prisons, we've got about 44 of these in the country, the most famous is in colorado which is the federal supermax for terrorists and people like that. but california also has some very famous ones. each of these states built a special facility be to isolate people. we had one here, we have one here in wisconsin, it's no longer officially a supermax, but it's out in the middle of nowhere. i went to visit this prison. it's got 500 beds. it's no longer officially a supermax because they were sued by some of the inmates, and the inmates actually won. but that's part of the phenomenon, these supermax prisons were built all over the country, and people were isolated in them. but what a lot of people don't
12:04 pm
know about is within our prisons, within our jails we replicate these supermax confinement conditions. and so most maximum security prisons have 100 to 150 beds for solitary confinement. and our jails, new york, rikers island, there's a big debate about that right now. cook county, where i've been, in chicago, all these big institutions have a large number of solitary confinement wings. and so solitary is spread all over our criminal justice system. >> by reforming our solitary confinement practices, the united states can protect human rights, improve public safety and be fiscally responsible. it is the right and smart thing to do, and the american people deserve no less. >> it's very decentralized in this country, because our prison system is decentralized. when you get to prison, the pretty officials will make a decision -- the prison officials will make a decision whether or
12:05 pm
not to put you in solitary depending on their local policies. so if you're a gang member in the state of california, you can spend years and years and years in solitary until you agree to renounce your gang affiliation which nobody in a prison system is really going to do. but all kinds of offenses can land you in solitary. in rikers island, for example, they have a hundred offenses that can land you in solitary, and you don't even know what they are. so if you're fighting, obviously, that's serious. if there's violence. but if you talk back to an officer, if you write something people consider to be offense i have or politically -- offensive or politically problematic, all kinds of reasons you could end up in solitary confinement. and you usually get a couple months or what's called in the wisconsin system the 360 which is a year. but then what happens is people continue to misbehave while they're in solitary, and they just add on time. and so we have people in this country who are in solitary for years or decades. some 30, 40 years by themselves.
12:06 pm
the thing about solitary confinement is that they use all these unusual words that the general public doesn't really know about, administrative segregation, all of these euphemisms for solitary confinement. basically, what they all mean is that someone's in a cell for 23, at least 23 hours a day. and when they're released, they're released for exercise or shower by themselves. and often it's controlled by technology at a distance. and so corrections officers don't really are to have any contact with the inmate. and the conditions within the cell, you have a small, generally a small cell, often a light is on 24/7 for security reasons, but that really destroys someone's capacity to sleep. and the person is fed through a slot in the door. if they receive any visitors -- and many times they're not eligible to receive visitors, but if they receive any kind of
12:07 pm
visitors, those visitors will have to come through a similar kind of situation where they can talk to them. so a chaplain or a psychologist will come to the door of the cell and speak to them at the door of cell. they can't really attend religious services which is something that bothers me a lot because i attend religious services at the prison, and the idea that these people could be without the capacity for any kind of religious services is disturbing. and the atmosphere in the shoe or secure housing unit, in a prison it's often called segregation which is a very strange term given our racial history. segregation is the area within the prison or jail where solitary confinement exists. and often these places are filled with people screaming and yelling. it's a din. people can't sleep. they're going mad. i mean, they're screaming and yelling, smearing feces on the wall or, i mean, it's just a
12:08 pm
din. it's a horrible kind of atmosphere. >> heat and cold are often unbearable, and normal physical and mental activity, human contact and access to health care are severely limited. as harmful as these conditions are, life in solitary is made all the worse because it's often a hopeless existence. humans cannot survive without food and water. they can't survive without sleep, but they also cannot survive without hope. years on end in solitary, particularly on death row, will drain that hope from anyone because in solitary there's nothing to live for. >> you know, the effect is devastating, and i've talked to many, many people who have experienced this. psychologists and psychiatrists have studied what happens to a person, and they develop these very distinctive, one psychologist calls it the shoe syndrome. horrible paranoia, a real
12:09 pm
aggressiveness, a sense that you're disintegrating, rage, i mean, all kinds of conditions that develop pretty quickly. i think we found after maybe 20, 30 days in isolation this stuff begins to develop. and so it's really devastating. it destroys the personality. and my own works, since i'm a professor of religion, i look at this as a spiritual issue, and i think this is an attack on our spirituality, anything we mean by spirituality, because it really destroys a person's capacity to think about anything else except the condition. >> i can see no reason to subject anyone to this type of existence no matter how certain we are that they are guilty of a horrible crime and are among the worst of the worst. even if we want to punish them severely, we should refrain from this form of confinement and treatment only because it's the humane and moral thing for us to
12:10 pm
do. my religious faith teaches that we should be humane and caring for all people, saint and sinner alike. what does it say about us as a nation that even before the law allows the state to execute a person we're willing to let it kill them bit by bit and day by day by subjecting them to solitary confinement? >> i've heard about people's physical deterioration, hadn't seen the sun in years, so they develop vitamin deficiencies, and and they just, their bodies gradually sort of deteriorate. after ten years, i spoke to someone who spent about a decade in solitary confinement. i've heard about people hallucinating. that's very common. i've heard about people, you know, the kind of bodily harm they do to themselves in solitary confinement, the damage, the self-mutilation, the feces that they put on the door. this is kind of deterioration of your whole sense of self.
12:11 pm
i have no more respect for myself, i'm going to damage my body. so i've heard a good number of these horror stories in the time that, when i was preparing this and really very painful to hear a. >> more than 120 staff were seriously assaulted by inmates, most often in our high security institutions. in addition, nearly 200 inmates were seriously assaulted by other inmates. >> i mean, i spent time in a prison, i've talked to corrections officers, and i understand why we use this, because people all of a sudden can become viability, can hit -- violent, can hit people, and you can't do anything. i couldn't teach if we didn't have a minimal kind of security, and i'm grateful to the corrections officers for giving that. but i just don't think it's accomplishing, first of all, the goals that we say it's accomplishing. it's not clear that it makes the prison less violent. that's what we say, but as i said earlier, when you release people, sometimes they become
12:12 pm
more violent. sometimes you make somebody violent and 'em bittered through this entire system. and one of the arguments is that it reduces gang violence, too, in california that's one of the arguments they make. we're just not so sure. we just don't know whether this is working. but i would indicate that much short term, the united nations has recommended maybe only 5-30 day -- 15-30 days in solitary confinement, and prison systems all over the world don't really have this kind of draconian solitary con tine m. -- confinement. as a whole, we're pretty different. and so it's going to take a long time, though, to sort of back away from this. we've seen maine has gotten rid of its solitary confinement, mississippi, illinois closed its supermax prison. so all over the country people are beginning to pay attention to this and are trying to move away. >> the disproportionate and arbitrary use of solitary
12:13 pm
confinement is not only immoral, it is a missed opportunity to break the cycle of crime. this approach does not increase public safety, and it's contrary to justice fellowship's goaling for the criminal justice system; accountability and restoration. teaching people to become good citizens rather than just good prisoners is a charge entrusted to the correctional officers by the taxpayers. skilled wardens understand that insuring prisoners become responsible and productive members of society at large is paramount to the safety of our communities whether inside or outside of the prison walls. >> we know that education, if people are given some kind of formal education, we've known this for years, it does, indeed, help them once they leave prison. but, again, that's something we just don't want to spend the money on. there's a lot of public opposition to educating inmates. but there's no question that education is a way of helping reduce recidivism. so i can't point to my own, you know, particular classes as doing that, but i think, indeed, it does.
12:14 pm
i come in, we have a program called challenges and possibilities. it's a program that's about a dozen years old. it was founded by some people that used to teach in the prison system. and they're just wonderful people. they're really devoted to the inmates. and it's a three month program that requires the inmates to stay out of trouble for those three months, and they come in 25-30 of them, and they listen to lectures. and many of them have never been to school, never finished school, don't have very positive experiences with school, so part of it's a learning thing for them, to learn how to sit this and listen to people. well, the idea of purgatory would be you're not quite ready for heaven. you have to be purged. that was the idea of purgatory, you have to be cleansed of those remaining sins before you're a fit occupant of heaven. that's the idea of purgatory, okay? now, a lot of disagreement about this. i could give another class. i give a class on hell, always come back here and talk about
12:15 pm
hell if we wanted, talk about purgatory. come back and talk about any topic that you want. we do a class on anger, we do a class on evil, i did a class on hope, what is the nature of hope. and they really have things to say. so i don't really have any difficulty getting them involved. >> it's like, for example, if you clean yourself -- [inaudible] it's the same thing we do -- [inaudible] we purge ourselves of whatever sins we committed during that time span. >> absolutely. >> throughout a one-day period. >> absolutely. >> yes. mr. hill. >> i've always pelt the topic of heaven -- felt the topic of heaven and hell, purgatory are very interesting. >> sure. >> i recall a few years ago i was watching "60 minutes," and they were highlighting a pastor who was a christian. >> yes. >> i could be wrong about where this was at, but he was coming
12:16 pm
at -- [inaudible] he highlighted the point that he was starting to teach his congregation that there was no -- [inaudible] outside of the hell that exists here on earth right now. >> right. i just want them to feel that they're valued as -- and that their education, our society doesn't really think that they deserve any more education. about 20 years ago, we decided that they don't deserve pell grants, and there's really no money for these men to be educated. i also try, we're a very religiously diverse prison. we have a lot of muslims, and we have catholics, and in the prison religion is very adversarial. i'm catholic, you're muslim, i'm sort of better than you are. and i try, since i teach religion, i try to show them that we can talk about religion in a way that's not so oppositional. because for some inmates, not all, religion is just a continuation of ballots they have with each orr -- of battles
12:17 pm
they have with each other. i find that to be pretty successful. >> i've got a question. i've got a question, like, what do you feel the difference is between islam and christianity, the big differences that you see or that you teach? >> right. right, yeah. well, a big issue is the trinity which i often talk to miss -- muslims about here. both traditions worship, you know, the same god, one god, but christianity says that that god is one of three and islam rejects that. it's a kind of idea of three gods. traditional disagreement. >> you know, the church, a lot of the conflict is although it is one god, it becomes who delivered the message. >> right. >> what -- [inaudible] >> they also participate in a
12:18 pm
restorative justice program. it's a three-day program. and at the end of this class, they receive a certificate. it's one of the first times they've received any kind of school certificate. we have a graduation, and it's a really beautiful event. i've been teaching there for four years, and we do see from this program as a whole, this challenges and possibilities program, we do see that people tend to have fewer disciplinary encounters with the authorities. and so we do have some evidence that it really does help them. but i don't have a lot of strong empirical evidence that this necessarily makes people better. i have anecdotal evidence, i have people that i talk to. and i see it as more of a spiritual thing with these inmates, and it's very difficult to measure this kind of spiritual effects of feeling valued. so rehabilitation, i mean, our prisons aren't really interested
12:19 pm
in it anyway, to be honest with you. we've kind of given up that ideal. so i don't think we can sort of point to are clear evidence that this is -- to very clear evidence that this has necessarily made them, you know, more rehabilitated. but it does. i'm absolutely convinced of it. >> we're in champion, wisconsin. this is the shrine of our laidty of good health. -- our lady of good health. in october of 1859, adele bryce was walking through this area when she claimed to have witnessed an apparition or a vision of the virgin mary. the catholic church defines an apparition as an appearance of jesus christ, the virgin mary or any of the saints. there were three occasions that adele bryce believed she had visions of the virgin mary, and on the third vision, on the third appearance the virgin mary
12:20 pm
victimmed her to spread the word of -- [inaudible] and for the rest of her life she did just that, serving more or less as a missionary here in the area to the pioneer families living in a very remote and rugged area of the mid 19th century. after she experienced the apparitions, she confided in her parents and in the local catholic priest, and her father built a small shrine here at the location of the apparitions. in october of 1871, a huge wildfire broke out on the west side of green bay in a community. it remains the largest wildfire in the nation's history. it claimed more than 1200 lives. ask the wild -- and the wildfire was so great that it created its own atmosphere, more or less, a
12:21 pm
hurricane of fire. and it threw flames, sparks, heat and ash across the bay of green bay roughly 35 miles and ignited wildfires here in the area of southern door county. on that night as the flames began to spread here in southern door county, adele rice and other -- bryce and others gathered at the shrine, gathered at the chapel her father had built to pray for their safety. the following day as the fire had burned itself out and as the morning light came up, it was revealed that the entire area had been devastated by the fire except for an immediate area surrounding the chapel that had been built by her father. the shrine continued to draw pilgrims and other visitors throughout the years as a somewhat modest attraction. at first the catholic church took a somewhat skeptical view of the reports of the p
12:22 pm
apparitions -- apparitions, but they never doubted the work, the good work and character of adele bryce. it wasn't until 2008 that the catholic church convened a formal investigation into the reports of the apparitions here at this site. and in 2010 the church concluded that the visions experienced by adele bryce were, indeed, worthy of belief by the catholic church. the church's sanction of this site as worthy of belief is significant. it is only one of twelve sites worldwide that's approved by the church. it's the only site in the united states. at this time. so it ranks right up there with -- [inaudible] as far as church-sanctioned
12:23 pm
sites where there have been reported appearances of the virgin mary. >> during booktv's recent visit to green bay, wisconsin, we visited the readers loft bookstore to talk about the competitive business of independent bookstores. >> bookstores in green bay over the years have kind of come and gone and have been of a variety of qualities. and, of course, every independent bookstore is different from every other one. the readers loft was first opened 33 years -- 21 years ago by the owner, virginia crest. then it, a barnes & noble moved into town and there was going to have a major road project that was going to close our street for six month, and it became apparent that she needed to do something else. so she looked for the kind of commercial space that she was looking for, and she didn't find it. so she bought this land, and she built this building, essentially, went into the
12:24 pm
commercial property business. so right at the center of this building, which has four other rentable spaces, the readers loft -- is the readers loft. it is the largest of the spaces here. and that move probably made it possible for us to continue to exist. throughout the so-called recession, we continued to have higher sales and better profits each year. and have continued to do that. we are kind of known for literary fiction. we sell a ton of mysteries. we have the large poetry selection in northeastern wisconsin, i can assure you. even the barnes & noble has, their poetry section is pretty flimsy and has really only the popular stuff. what we're basically known for is getting the books that you want.
12:25 pm
the owner has said try as hard as possible not to say no to anybody. we can almost always find a copy of a book thanks to the internet that didn't used to be so. it used to be a are sort of medieval -- to be a very sort of medieval process. but when book dealers began to list their inventory on any number of, a variety of sites, 40 or 50 different site on the internet where book dealers list their inventories, and there are a couple of metasearch engines that will search all those sites at the same time. so within about 20 or 30 seconds, i can have access to the inventories of about 40,000 book dealers worldwide. and i can usually have an answer for a customer while they're still on the phone. because independent booksellers
12:26 pm
curate their own collections, you will find a different selection in each different store. barnes & noble stores and other big box stores are curated by somebody at the head office, and they have their own warehousing system. and if you walk into a barnes & noble in between bay or st. louis or san francisco or new york, for that matter, you will find largely the same collection of books. so that's the difference between us and the big box stores. the difference between us and amazon is that amazon has everything, and all i've got is 30,000 books here. but what we have that amazon doesn't have is live human beings. and we have opinions. and we have books that we like in our -- and our evangelists for, as they say.
12:27 pm
and we tend to recognize -- to recommend to our regular customers whose tastes we get to know books we think they'll like. and that's, there's a lot of difference between that, believe me, and and an algorithm. amazon really complicated the book business a lot more, and it's, it will still be interesting to see how that works out, their recent dispute with hashette has brought to to public consciousness some of the aspects of this unruliness of the book business. the conglomeration of the industry, most recently probably the really big thing that's happened is the merger of penguin and random house which were the two largest publishers
12:28 pm
to start out with, and now they're one publisher. we'll see how that works out. in general, it appears to me that conglomerating of imprints and of publishing houses that's taken place over the past possibly 15 years has really opened the doors for smaller independent publishers of which there are a lot more now than there were 10 or 5 years ago. -- 10 or 15 years ago. and i think that's a good thing because they have a niche to fill now. the big houses that are responsible to their shareholders are less likely to take a chance. so it's kind of exciting, watching from the sidelines here and being in an end of the business that appears to be safe and getting better all the time, which is to say independent bookselling has rebounded in just the last few years. so from this perspective, it's
12:29 pm
pretty exciting and interesting to watch all that stuff shake out. i continue to learn more about the business. i'm really happy to be in the end of it i'm in. >> elliot williams leaves a lasting legacy here in the green bay area on a number of accounts. in 1892, he led a group of indians here, and they settled on the west side of green bay. williams was an episcopal minister at the time, and it remains a vital and important part of the greater green bay community. the other legacy that eleazer williams left behind is a bit more bizarre. after he was removed from his position with the episcopal church, williams began perpetuating the story that he was the lost prince of france. in the early part of the 19th
12:30 pm
century, any number of folks in europe and in north america were claiming to be the lost prince of france. the son of louis xvi and marie ant by net, and the boy reportedly died while in prison in france, but rumors persisted that the boy had been smuggled out of prison and was living in exile and waiting to return to the throne. williams lived here on the banks of fox river with his wife. the foundation of the home still remains. for the most part, a park setting here. it was a very convenient location for williams to spin his tale to unisn'ting travelers who were -- unsuspecting travelers who were heading up and down the fox river which was one of the main thoroughfares at the time. through a chance encounter with a number of french officials and also the reporters of the day, williams continued to push this story that he was the lost prince of france.
12:31 pm
putnam's magazine ran a story that purportedly doubled their subscription to the magazine reporting on eleazer williams as the lost prince, and it sub gently led -- subsequently led to a book called "the lost prince." and williams lived off his story. he was invited to all these parties and receptions of the high society of the day both here and on the east coast, newspapers such as the new york times would announce his arrival to the city and publish his social calendar for the period of time that he was in the city. so he very effectively and successfully lived off his story for the rest of his life. williams died in new york in a cabin that was built to resemble a french chateau. his remains were returned here to the area in 1949, and at that time there was some observation done on the remains, and it was determined conclusively that he
12:32 pm
was of north american and probably native american descent which was consistent with what we do know about williams' past. but he was very successful in his day in promoting himself as the lost prince of france, probably more successful than most of the other fakes out there at the time. >> the help of our local cable partner, time warner cable, we hear about franklin delano roosevelt's four freedoms speech from green bay author harry kay. >> times like these, it is immature and incidentally uncool for anybody to prague to an unprepared america single-handed and with one hand tied behind its back can hold off the whole world. >> in 1930 in the midst of the great depression when roosevelt was governor of new york state,
12:33 pm
he wrote to a friend, and he said, he said as i see it, i'm convinced that we need to make the united states fairly radical for a generation. and he said in part it was because that's what jefferson understood, that's what the best americans have always understood, that to revive america you radicalize it, you make it live up to its projected image of itself. >> so would give up essential liberty to purchase a little, temporary safety deserve neither liberty, nor safety. [applause] >> he'd already been president for eight years, and he was reelected for an unprecedented third time in november 1940. and he knew that he had two massive crises to deal with. he still wanted to sustain the new deal. he still wanted to reduce inequality. he still wanted to empower
12:34 pm
working people. on the other hand, he knew the war has already begun, okay? the japanese in east asia, nazi germany and fascist italy in europe. and at this time, by late 1940, britain is essentially on its own. the soviets had been involved in a treaty with the nazis, and even then the nazis had turned on the soviets. but it's the british he was most concerned about. so he goes before congress and the american people, and his idea was to, if you like, offer a vision of what america and the world might pursue at the end of the war. he wants to inspire americans to pursue the creation of the arsenal of democracy. he wants to, in some ways, offer some kind of assurance to the rest of the world that we will not stand by and watch fascism
12:35 pm
prevail. >> freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world. second, it's freedom of every person to worship god in his own way everywhere in the world. the third, freedom from want. which translated in world terms means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world. fourth is freedom from fear which translated into world terms means a worldwide
12:36 pm
reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor anywhere in the world. [applause] >> that's how we sustain the republic. and then during the new deal, during world war ii, over and over again what roosevelt knew -- because he knew his american history -- is the way america survives, the way it transcends the crisis, the way it continues to be the nation it proclaims itself or at least has a chance to pursue it is by way of making the nation free or more equal and more democratic. and that generation does it from the 1930s all the way through, i believe, the 1960s. after world war ii even as americans were pursuing the four freedoms, i mean, they really did come home with the aspiration, the ambition of
12:37 pm
pursuing the four freedoms -- if i can segway a little wit -- in 1944 franklin roosevelt gave another state of the union message of equal importance. he knew war would go on for some time, but he already knew that we would be victorious. and he went before congress and the american people, and he called for the creation of a second bill of rights, an economic bill of rights. >> certain economic proofs have become apparent as self-evident. a second bill of rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station or race or creed. among these are the right to a useful and repneumonia rahtive job to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; the
12:38 pm
right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom, freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad. the right of every family to a decent home. the right to adequate medical care. be -- and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, taxes and unemployment. the right to a good education. all of these rights spell security, and after this war is won, we must be prepared to move
12:39 pm
forward in the implementation of these rights to new goals of human happiness and well being. for unless there is security here at home, there cannot be lasting peace in the world. >> and i will tell you that it wasn't simply some idealistic vision that came and popped out of roosevelt's decidedly idealistic and visionary mind. he actually had asked for surveys to be done by the national opinion research center which was then headquartered at princeton university. and they asked americans what they wanted to pursue after the war. and i'm going to round it out, but 85% of americans wanted to pursue what was delineated by roosevelt in the four freedom cans and that economic bill of rights -- freedoms and that economic bill of rights. they wanted national health care, they wanted education for all, they wanted to make sure that everybody had housing, they wanted to make sure that government, business and labor
12:40 pm
were partners in guaranteeing work to all americans. and so when americans came home, soldiers even more perhaps than the average american at home, they wanted to pursue the four freedoms and the second bill of rights. but they ran into obstacles. and not just obstacles, to obstruction. as i said before, conservatives opposed the pursuit of the four freedoms. southern white supremacists who had, you know, i mean, these were the folks who were in many ways running congress, they opposed the second bill of rights, and i'll give you the best example on the question of national health care. be they could have limited national -- if they could have limited national health care to only whites, they would have been more than happy to enact it because they wanted support for southern working people. but national health care meant that they might have to integrate hospitals, and their racism kept them from supporting the idea of national health care after the war as truman discovered when he tried to
12:41 pm
secure its enactment. and big business fought the ideas of the second bill of rights fearing in some ways that would liberate americans to no longer be subject and dependent on the bosses as some kind of paternalistic figures. so is, i mean, it really was the case that the opposition was strong, and it was very well organized. and they spent millions of dollars trying to limit the pursuit of the four freedoms by the labor movement, again, by women's movement and also decidedly by the civil rights movement. this was the most progressive generation in american history. because if you look at what they accomplished between the 1930s and the 1960s, they transformed america. and how did they do that? well, yes, they fought the great depression and gave their labors to the new deal. they fought fascism, and they won second world war. they came home, and they turned the united states into the strongest and richest, most prosperous nation in human history. all well and good.
12:42 pm
for that, we should applaud them and continue to applaud them. but we're missing out on how they did it. they did it by making america freer, more equal and more democratic from social security and the national labor relations act and pursuing the other transformations of the new deal all the way through to the 1960s. i mean, it's my parents, your grandparents' generation that really did enact the civil rights and voting rights bills, medicare and medicaid, environmental protection agency, the occupational safety and health administration was instituted, the consumer product safety commission. they reformed immigration. 1924 we had severely restricted immigration into the united states in a decidedly racist way. they rewrote the rules and laws on immigration. so from the '30s to the '60s, for all their faults and failings, it remains the case that that was the most
12:43 pm
progressive generation in american history. and in essence, that's what i wanted to remind americans of. not that we should worship them, okay? but that we should consider what americans are capable of, and we should ask ourselves do we not also still feel the four freedoms and want to make america great in that fashion? i mean, the legacy of franklin roosevelt and that generation is, actually, all around us. we walk on it, we travel on it, we benefit from innumerable ways, we lick postage stamps there in the post office, we look at murals on the wall. i get kind of excited about it. when i went out, when i set out to write this book on the fight for the four freedoms, i mean, i guess all authors go through the same thing. you go in with certain ideas and understandings, and you find out you didn't even know half the story. and i didn't know half the story. hell, i didn't know
12:44 pm
three-quarters of the story when i set out, but i knew there was something missing in the way in which we were celebrating the greatest generation. when i was writing "the four freedoms," it was like i was in a ping-pong tournament where i was reading about the past and hearing the present. so in many ways, i actually, i'm readily going to confess and admit that i wrote my book not just as a historian, but also as a historical and even a political advocate. i wanted americans to remember, okay, where we had been, what our parents and grandparents' generation accomplished and how it's now under siege, and the question for us is what are we going to do about it. i'm convinced that owl four are -- that all four are under siege. if you think of freedom of speech and expression, the degree to which citizens united threatens freedom of expression for average people, for working people. if you think about freedom of worship and consider the degree of which it depends on really,
12:45 pm
truly sustaining the separation of church of state and we've seen for the last 20 years efforts to tear down that wall and, you know, the decisions most recently around obamacare indicate an effort to tear down that wall of separating church and state. freedom from want? well, i mean, unemployment. the increasing poverty after so many years of declining poverty. freedom from want is under siege. freedom from fear? let me count the ways. i mean, the freedom from fear is, of course, both -- it's both the idea that we're going to have to realize that we live in a global age, and fighting terrorism means no turning in an isolationist direction. i mean, many people might disagree with me on that, but that's part of it as well. but it's also the case that you don't fight fear by creating fear, okay? we're americans. we don't fight fear by creating fear, i would hope. there are those great words in american history, you know, the
12:46 pm
words from the declaration, all men are created equal, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the words of the constitution, preamble to the constitution, we the people. the bill of lights, you know, that -- of rights, you know, that we have, especially the first amendment. the gettysburg address maybe the greatest -- probably the greatest speech of the 19th century. and then if you think about the great words, i think those four freedoms line up with the declaration, the constitution, the gettysburg address. >> freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. our strength is our unity of purpose. with that concept, there can be
12:47 pm
no end save victory. [applause] >> next, we speak with jessie garcia, the first woman sorts anchor in wisconsin, and author of "my life with the grebe and gold -- green and gold." >> i didn't set out to write a book at the beginning of my career, it wasn't really on my agenda. i was just going through my career. but i kept thinking to myself, oh, these are such funny experiences. if people really knew what this was like behind the scenes. and i also had some themes that i thought were common to a lot of people like being a parent, juggling kids and work and, you know, having this high profile career, but then also having my children. there's a funny picture in the book -- well, there are 40 pictures in the book, but the one i think really epitomizes my life is when my oldest son, who is now 15 but he was only two months old at the time, and i had to come here to lambeau, and
12:48 pm
he had to come with me. i had to change his diaper at one point, and i went into the tunnel of lambeau field which is where the players run out before the game, and i changed his diaper in the tunnel, and somebody snapped a picture of me doing that, and it's now opposite of the table of contents chapter in the book. that's sort of epitomizing that. i think the book is so much more than that. i sort of think of it as having three parts. one of them is juggling being a parent and having children and working and all that. the second one is being a woman in a male-dominated field. and the third is just behind the scenes with the packers and all these other sports teams, you know? i was privileged to cover the packers at three different super bowl, two of which they won, one of which they lost. went to the white house with the packers, went to tokyo, japan, with them. was their sideline reporter, hosted the mike holmgren show, so a lot of experiences i thought people might enjoy
12:49 pm
reading about. >> the straight scoop on the packers from the head coach, it's the mike mccarthy show. >> welcome to the mike mccarthy show, and thank you for joining us. wreaking into a male-dominated field, i came out of college in 1992, and at the time in the state of wisconsin, there had never been a female sports anchor. i wound up being the first one to anchor a sports cast. i knew of one who had been a relater, but they only allowed her to go out and report. they wouldn't allow her to sit at the anchor desk and actually read the nightly sports cast. so there were some role models for me on a national level, you know, robin roberts and hannah storm and some of these early real pioneers in female sports casting. but on the local level, there were none. people ask me how did you feel breaking into this male-dominated field? it's interesting, because i was born into the height of feminism in the 970s -- 1970s. my mother was a single mother,
12:50 pm
it was just the two of us. she had a very nontraditional career. she was a car pepper the when i was growing up -- carpenter when i was growing up. so to see your mother walking around with a hammer in her hands building book shelves, you just never think a woman couldn't be or do what she wanted to do. but i'm an only child, and my mother was not a big sports fan. but breaking into the field in 1992 i thought why can't a woman be in sports? so in 1992 my station, which was the cbs affiliate in madison, wisconsin, wisv, they hired me right out of college. i had interned there. and so they knew me, but they hired me as part-time sports reporter. and i was only supposed to be a reporter. that was my title. they were really nervous about how madison, wisconsin, would respond to a female sportscaster sitting at the desk and anchoring the sports. so just a couple of months into the job, the sports director was sick, and our other guy, our
12:51 pm
number two guy was out of town, and so they called me at home and said can you anchor sports tomorrow? van is sick. and i was so nervous, you know, here i am two months out of college, i didn't even have money for clothing, you know? tv clothes. i borrowed a dress from a friend of mine. it was like the movie "broadcast news," i just was sweating buckets through the entire thing. but i made it through, and they didn't fire me, and that was actually -- i didn't realize at the time that i was making history, because that was the first moment that a woman anchored a sports cast. and from that point forward, they allowed me to stay and do both anchoring and reporting. and thankfully, most people seem to agree, but i i do detail in the book several stories of, you know, a man calling me after i anchored a sports cast in madison which is where i started working saying i'm never going to watch channel 3 again. and i said, why? he said, because you're a chick, and chicks don't know anything
12:52 pm
about sports. and i said to him, i hope you change your mind one day. and i just hung up the phone. i don't know if he ever changed his mind, but that was kind of my goal can, was to maybe make people change their minds a little bit that women could talk about sports, and it would not be a big deal. really in a 22 year -- a 22-year career now, there have been very few incidents. so i feel very fortunate for that. but early on, i mean, i'm not going to sugar coat it, there were a few moments. i write in the book about a packer player who told me he wouldn't do an interview with me unless i gave him my phone number. i also write about a coach from one of our wisconsin sports teams who asked me out and sent me a box of team paraphernalia, and when i turned him down, it was very awkward for years covering this guy. so there definitely were some moments like that. so i've only had one really terrible locker room experience in my entire time, my entire career, and it was very
12:53 pm
unexpected to me. the cleveland indians, i will say their name because i put them in the book, the cleveland indians were in town to play the milwaukee brewers, and i was sent to interview the indians before the game. my photographer and i walked in and right away, led by one particular player, one ringleader, they started catcalls and making me very uncomfortable, saying that i was only there to see the guys naked, things like that. i was shocked by it. i'd never had that experience before. there didn't seem to be any managers, coaches, pr people, anybody except the team in this locker room at this point, and most of the other guys joined in. i was so floored, i looked at my photographer who was an older, close to retirement guy, and i said what do we do? he said let's just get one interview and get out of here. there was only one player who came to my defense, and that was pitcher orel hershiser, and he said leave her alone, guys, come
12:54 pm
on. just cut it out. so i thought, well, maybe we'll just ask him. so we asked if we could interview him, he said, yes. he gave me a look like, oh, these guys, you know? but as we were doing the interview, the original offender guy came over, and he actually went to my photographer's camera and flipped a switch on it while we were doing the interview. and my photographer, i think, was about to deck him, but i said forget this, let's just get out of here. ask we hightailed it out of there. i remember i had tears in my eyes. i went back to the station, and i told my sports director what had happened, and he said, well, that's ridiculous. we're not going to put up with that. we're calling the indians' pr department, and he did, we did, but the response we got was, oh, that's just boys being boys. they do that all the time. that's just the way they joke around. don't let it get under your skin, they're just having fun, you know, they do that to all the reporters. so my sense was that, you know, nothing was really going to come
12:55 pm
of my complaint that i had lodged. but at least i felt like we informed them of it, and it just, you know, in the end it is served to show me that, again, it wasn't going to be smooth sailing all the way through, and that was fine. i didn't expect it to be. people also asked me how my peers and colleagues and that sort of thing have treated me over the years and really i would say, again, 99% it's been great. when i first started, i was really the rookie, i wasn't the woman. and i had great bosses and mentors, you know, who were 100% behind me. and my peers for the part have been very open, we're just trying to do our job. and, again, if you bring this level of professionalism to your job, that, hopefully, radiates back at you in terms of professionalism. but there's no question throughout the years that you occasionally butt heads with people, and i tried to be as honest as i could in this book about some of those things. i wanted people to see what it
12:56 pm
was like working for a tv station, especially in the high pressure situation of a super bowl or something like that where we're all running on caffeine and no sleep. so i definitely detail in the book, you know, butting heads with my bosses when they wanted me to go on the air at four in the morning after working until midnight the night before, you know? that kind of thing. or some clashes that maybe have happened throughout the years with a reporter from a different station, you know, that sort of thing, somebody who thought that i was, i was honing in on his interview time with donald driver when i didn't feel that way, you know? that sort of thing. and when i talk to young women or young people in general and, you know, i tell them that when i graduated from college, there were no female sportscasters or sideline reporters, you know, on every college football game you're going to turn on on a saturday, and they look at me be like i'm nuts because they don't remember that. so i want them to understand that times have definitely changed and changed for the
12:57 pm
better, although we still have a ways to go. you know, as i said, i still would love to see more women doing play-by-play. i can only think of maybe two that do that on, you know, a regular basis for college football. and, you know, so i'd love to see more women in those types of roles. i'd love to see more women be executives for sports teams. there are not very many women in the upper echelons of any professional sports league that you look at. and yet they are trying to covet women as their fan base. so i think that they would be really well served if they had some women as general managers, you know, or just even any higher up position. so i think that that's an area, too, that we can grow in. i never considered switching out of field despite any bad experiences, whether it be a man calling to tell me he wasn't going to watch sports because i was a chick or, you know, a player asking for my phone number or these guys in the
12:58 pm
cleveland indians' locker room making me feel uncomfortable. it kind of just made me more determined than anything to go out there and show everybody that, yes, women can talk very intelligently about sports and also that we're not just these pretty talking heads, you know? that we want -- i want to be known for my words and my thoughts and not for, you know, what i'm wearing or anything like that. i'm very careful about attire and treating everybody with complete respect and professionalism, and, you know, that sort of thing. so, um, it's -- yeah, it was very important to me to just sort of keep forging ahead. plus, i loved the job, and i didn't want to leave the job. i absolutely felt like i had -- they say find something that you love to do and then figure out a way to make money doing it, and it'll never feel like work. and that's exactly what it was for me. i loved the writing, i loved the creativity, i loved telling stories about people.
12:59 pm
i'm not really much of a stats person, but i like telling the human side of sports, and so, you know, i've always tried to do that to maybe showcase a player as a husband, father, you know, son, that kind of thing, or a coach in that way. so, yeah, i just love the job and would never want to leave it, especially if it was somebody be else forcing me out. so the challenges that i faced in my career just served to hoe me that there were hurdles -- to show me that there were hurdles i'd have to go over, and that was okay because i'm not sure that i would want -- i'm not the kind of person who wants everything to be smooth sailing all the time. i kind of appreciate if you go through some hard times, you know, there's a saying what doesn't kim you makes you stronger, you know? it does make you stronger, and it makes you more appreciative of the good times or the people that like what you do, the people who might say nice things about what you do, you know, that sort of thing. so i was fine with that.
1:00 pm
and getting into it, i wasn't sure how a woman would be treated as a sportscaster. but i was starting off in my hometown of madison, wisconsin, so i had a really big friends and family base there. i look back really, really fondly on all of those different things that i covered. and just have a ton of great memories. i never took a lot of pictures, and i didn't keep a journal or anything like that, so people ask about the book, you know, how did you write it. i just remember a lot of details and things that stand out in my mind, and everything shapes you. everything make as you who you are today, and i'm glad i had all those experiences. >> we are on the banks of the fox river in downtown green bay, and across the river from where we're located was the site of fort howard, an american fort built following the war of 1812. at one time, the fort was under
1:01 pm
1:02 pm
the 100 or so. we are not sure how old he was when he passed away. the interesting part of this story is after jefferson davis abandoned his family here and was assigned -- he asked for the hand of sarah taylor, zachary taylor's daughter. zachary taylor resisted the marriage for reasons we can only imagine but subsequently when jefferson davis left the military he did in fact marry sarah taylor and they lived in mississippi, sarah taylor died after they became married, but the story of joe davis, jefferson davis's son is well known in these parts and is part of the fascinating history of two important figures, zachary taylor and jefferson davis.
1:03 pm
>> up next learn how two women brought gaming to the green bay area in the 1970s from mike hoeft, the author of "the bingo queens of oneida". >> we are sitting in the irene more activity center. is an addition where bingo was played. some slot machines where they expanded. i wrote a book with these two women, the two moms that helped start oneida, sandra ninham and alma webster. the oneida tribe is not from wisconsin. that one of the six nations of the iroquois confederacy, which in early ancestral homelands in upstate new york. is a women were always influential political counselors, they were the
1:04 pm
farmers, they grew the three sisters crops, corn been, squash, they held a lot of power in society and they were cited with the american colonists during the revolutionary war. after the war of 181201ides were forced to relocate like a lot of native nations. oneida word disbursed, broken into three communities, one in canada, one stayed in new york, one came to wisconsin. in wisconsin the oneida reservation is just outside green bay, rectangular reservation of tribal land non throttle parcels of land. it is interesting about half of the population lives below the party line as of 1970.
1:05 pm
they subsisted by drawing on each other. the book is more than a study of how gaming started by one tribe. it is also a personal story about women and family relationships. it is hot out women leadership, building community, trying to save an indigenous culture on the brink of being lost and it is about making sacrifices for others. i say that what they did was heroic. they say they were just trying to do it for the sake of taking care of the kids and elders in the community. >> i was assistant director of our new civic center and i worked under sunny king. when we got the new building, it was a gym with a kitchen and eight offices and we needed to
1:06 pm
have an in common. there was no way to make income to pay the bills for the infrastructure of that building, so alma played bingo in her younger days in michigan and when we would talk about how to pay the bills, she and another friend, patty, they would go into the churches and play been go. she came back with this idea we would start being go in the gym and that would earn our money to take care of the light bill for instance and the money we generated then held all the programs within the tribe. i remember we had one of our first big pow wows at that time and it was small and devolved because we had more money to pay for advertising and all of these things that go along with those things. we started developing -- we had a security department that started from being cooperation because i had security people
1:07 pm
come in. we had a police department that generated the side of being go. we had a retail business that was generated from the bingo operation. like it said before now we have scholarships for young people so the money we made from that operation did turn the direction of this tribe. beginning had to do a lot with economic impact of our people and our tribe and our people because as i was told one time someone yelled at me sandy, your game has put so oneida on the track, it made us, people are aware of our people and the talent our people have, back in the day they kind of -- on the
1:08 pm
welfare rolls. with gaming operation that changed everything. we were having programs within the tribes that were developing infrastructure for our people. we were becoming economic planners and developers, we were starting to build up our community all over the place and a lot of young people go back to school and that helped so we changed a lot. >> the reservation land was broken up during the allotment period in the late 1800s so the casino revenue went to reacquiring reservation land. >> that land was originally our land. we needed to bring it back into the realm of the tribe. that was one big issue we had to take care of but with how our bingo money that might not have happened. >> this book is about how two moms started a game as a fund-raiser on the oneida indian
1:09 pm
reservation and built it into a business that not only supports the tribe but contributes to the economy around green bay. >> it feels good to know that we had a part in the play of the success of our tribe. it feels really good and it feels even better when we see young people working for us, they are still working here. some are in management positions, supervising positions, some have gone to college and sit on the business committee. we have people who are nurses and so on and they used to work for us in bingo operation. it makes you feel good to know that people are successful because of what we did. >> the first european to reach this area was a fringe explore who landed just beyond here. in 1634.
1:10 pm
and was greeted by a friendly group of winnebago indians. at that time, france was sending exporters to the west to find what they call the people of the see. there is some debate as to what france was intending to find in searching for the people of the sea as they call that. were they looking for passage to the pacific coast? were they understanding they would find asia by sending explores west? so when he arrived here he wasn't sure where he was or what he had discovered. what he did discover was of course the local winnebago indians. they send him on his way, they traveled a little farther down the fox river to for returning to canada. if he continued further he would have found the upper mississippi river and subsequently been able to travel to the gulf of mexico
1:11 pm
and perhaps that would have been the destination they hoped to find all along. we set foot in the area in 1634. the centennial in 1934, a penny drive was conducted in the area. and the statute that is behind me. >> during the recent visit to green bay, wrote to learn about the life and career of political cartoonist lyle lahey. >> lyle lahey is a local cartoonist who commented on national and local and regional news and events.
1:12 pm
he is an individual born in 1931 in northern wisconsin, he served a stint in the korean war from 1954-1956 which impacted his views. after we went to green bay, for a promotion manager some of the oldest television stations in the state, for 13 years, he becomes affiliated with one of the green bay newspapers, later becoming the green bay chronicle. is a daily newspaper. he starts out as the manager or editor in the commentary page, and the cartoonist for the newspapers then. his career spans 1968 until his death in 2013. >> i am a professor of democracy and justice study and political science.
1:13 pm
at the university of wisconsin green bay, i am here to talk about a special collection we have here at the archives, political cartoons and everything else. i am going to talk through a bit of them and give a little insight into what they say about wisconsin and green bay. every once in awhile i would hit a cartoon that would be funny in a dark way. i love how this cartoon, you can imagine seeing this in the newspaper and being hit hard by the depiction of death and destruction and the comment about killing to democratize express's something about his position toward war and u.s. involvement abroad the we see throughout the entire collection so even the latest cartoon this are critical of u.s. attempts to spread democracy abroad.
1:14 pm
the iraq war is really big but democracy and being critical in the middle east, and this is one of those cartoons i felt would stop you even though there is a type of dark humor here. the type of irony that looks painful to look at. all political cartoonists, the bread and butter of their trade, putting things visually in a really 6 things way that points out, and hypocrisy and for what hear the question of how can democracy be spread if it harms people? is really important to him and another cartoon we will talk about in a minute that has the same sort of logic applied to the iraq war, something -- consistent theme so i love this
1:15 pm
cartoon because economizes the powerful things about cartooning and the first thing that is great about this cartoon that we heard throughout his work and we will see other examples is this malice. you could really set up a debate and this is what i might do with my students, and ironic commentary on what is going on, and the mouse really -- a particular partisan perspective but a small democratic perspectives, and there is a reason it is a mouse. a small characters that always is watching and noticing and commenting in clever ways but also darkly funny ways and this is happening in the 70s when
1:16 pm
inflation is driving up prices. you can see the child dying the malice and this is so nice because so much political cartooning is focused on formal -- there's a lot of that too but this is asking what does politics mean in the house hold. what does it mean when prices go up? there are tons of great cartoons about oil prices and gas prices and food prices and this sort of concern for everyday people who eat hamburgers and steaks, this mouse is standing in as a symbol for that, uniquely green bay concerned but i see that echoing the importance of common people and working class people in this community. i do think cartooning became a voice for him. there is evidence in all the
1:17 pm
cartoons and the work that he did and if you conversations i had with him. i had the opportunity to meet him and he very much was the well red man. of person who had specific views and commentary and cared about the world around him. i do know in terms of cartooning he had opportunities to take what he viewed as a more bland approach and could have become syndicated as the cartoonist but he felt cream they deserved their own cartoonist to represent their local issues and the things that are going on here. >> concerned about hypocrisy and concerned about illustrating when hypocrisy is occurring, doesn't hesitate from criticizing causes he would be. an interesting view in to what happened in the late 70s when we
1:18 pm
still have a lot of concerns about -- debate in the supreme court and the public's fear about capital punishment. a little mouse on top of green bay prison. here is a place where lyle lahey is pointing out complex idea come asking us to think about how is it you could be for dead in one situation and against it in another. these are simple ladies of the interpreted teams. his treatment of watergate is really funny. not just because the cartoonist's technique exaggerated this but because there are serious political questions in domestic spaces. i love the idea of nixon already noon leaving the white house,
1:19 pm
getting a tape recorder at the going away present and you can hear one of the reasons why these cartoons are useful, for students to be able to figure out what is going on in this cartoon and they have to learn a bit about watergate, learn a bit about what actually occurred, figure out this -- there is a whole set of associations that politically illiterate people use to deciphers cartoonists, helps them build up associations and become more critical and well-informed citizens. i love things like this and things like watergate that students have heard of a lot of them are vague on the details and they know anything with a gate on it is a scandal but they don't know what the big deal was. they know nixon saying he is not a crook but they don't know much about the nixon tapes or great cartoons about the nixon tapes,
1:20 pm
is a great way to teach these historical moments. the reason we are particularly pleased to have these is they provide visual documentation and allow us to complement and augment other materials so in the case of local politics we have the green bay city council proceedings which are from gavel-to-gavel what is happening in each city council meeting but we have the cartoons do we will capture in a different way than what is in the actual record. a lot of his cartoons, all of them out on the table. a lot of them are commenting on wisconsin politics, commenting on particularly mayors and governors and great reconstructive history of the project of the state by looking at these cartoons. and a lot of them are criticizing state legislature for raising their own pay rates or rewarding themselves instead
1:21 pm
of the common people not being concerned enough about poverty and inequality but the reason this one is fun is some of the topics while looking at the cartoons are things like pork barrel politics and terms the we have for policies past that benefit one's own district, this is thinking about a raises and using it in a broader sense to symbolize agreed but it would be a great way for my students to fill it out. these metaphors we use, where these come from and how they are depicted. a lot of cartoons, both in terms of how farming was changed, what happens when free rates come in? standing in for a role voice in
1:22 pm
wisconsin politics. what we add to the collection or holdings is to look at the body of work, to look at the information about the past. can a cartoon collection or diary collection or letters from a vietnam war soldier, does that help us bring a voice back from the past? it will be something that will likely add to our collection. earlier, that concern about u.s. abroad meant -- involvement abroad for many years of his cartooning and you could do a whole exhibit on that. but i love the way he always sty is george w. bush in cowboy boots, great attention to detail. there was a year that once again he plays on the hypocrisy of
1:23 pm
attacking in the name of democracy and illustrates what we call love bush doctrine in a small cartoon script, it is difficult to break down political concepts and succinctly explains them, and it is cleverly and easily done here. some great cartoons like -- had to be the mob because they would be beat up otherwise the illustrating this one in that playground setting and also love this because of thinking about the long-term ramifications of involvement abroad and spreading democracy in this way if you can call it that. it would be easy to think about what is happening in the middle east in iraq but also in places like syria and afghanistan. i think the cartoons in the future will capture a time we don't always have a written
1:24 pm
record. the idea of keeping a diary or a journal or writing letters is becoming passe and so you are going to lose i think that history and this is one way of capturing history of 2013 or whatever it might be so it allows us for the future to save the past. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to green bay, wisconsin and the many other cities visited by our local content vehicles go to c-span.org/localcontent. booktv covers hundreds of father programs throughout the country all year long. here is a look at some of the events we will be attending this week. look for these programs to air in the near future on booktv on c-span2. on tuesday at the new york historical society in new york city the "national review" looks at the impact the founding fathers had on abraham lincoln. the following evening back in
1:25 pm
manhattan at the moon pull for the life and military career of the marquee lafayette. wednesday at the university in charlottesville, va. david miller argues against the public's preoccupation with presidential greatness. saturday and sunday booktv is live from the nineteenth annual texas book festival held in austin, texas. for a look at some of the author programs booktv will be covering this upcoming week, for more go to our web site booktv.org and visit upcoming programs. >> here is the bottom line. i am convinced climate change represents a historic opportunity, a historic opportunity on the scale of the new deal but far more transformative and just. as part of the project of getting our e missions down to levels many scientists recommend we once again have the chance to
1:26 pm
advance policies that dramatically improve the lives, close the gap between rich and poor, create huge numbers of good jobs and reinvigorate democracy from the ground up. rather than the ultimate example of the shock doctrine, the subject of my last book, a frenzy of repression, climate change can be a people's shock. a blow from the low. it can disperse power in the hands of the many rather than consolidating into hands of a few and radically expand the comments rather than auctioning it off in pieces and where right-wing shock doctors exploit emergencies both real and manufactured in order to push through policies that make us even more crisis prone the kinds of transformations would do the exact opposite. they would get to the root of
1:27 pm
why we are facing serious crises in the first place both economically and economically and leave us with a more habitable climate than the one we are headed for and far more just economy than the one we have now. underneath it all is a real truth that we have been avoiding. climate changes and an issue next to health care and taxes. it is this civilization will wake up call. a powerful message spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts and extinction, telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. telling us that we have to evolve. i call the book "this changes everything" because if we stay on the road we are on, scientists tell us but not just scientists, some of the most establishment institutions in
1:28 pm
the world, the world bank, the international energy agency, freshwater house coopers, we are on a road leading to warming of 4 degrees to 6 degrees celsius. that happens if we do nothing. we don't have to do anything special. just keep on the road we are on. they call this business as usual but it is not business as usual because to say on that road we have to double down on the dirtiest fossil fuels, the tar sands, natural gas from fracking, mountaintop removal, coal mining, that is the road we are on. that is the bad news. if we stay on that road everything changes about our physical world. 4 to 6 degrees warming celsius is not compatible with anything we understand as an organized society. the models start to break down. they don't know what would
1:29 pm
happen, they don't know how to predict it but they know it is going to involve mass crop failures, huge sea level rise. you know the drill. i am not here to scare you. the good news is there is still time to stop catastrophic warming the. we know we locked in a certain amount of warming, we are already experiencing it but is not too late to lower our emissions in time to avoid those catastrophic outcomes or at least to give ourselves a pretty good chance. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. this week booktv takes a look at politico's online will shelf. mark paine reports the process of product innovation in how to kill a unicorn. in the end of greatness, aaron miller makes a case against the public's preoccupation with presidential greatness. also journalist reist ehrlich recounts events that led to serious civil war in inside
1:30 pm
syria. the acumen cost of war in the invisible front. political recommend cia director leon banana's where the fight. next, former new york times columnist -- russ robertson gets a life and writing of economist adam smith in how adam smith >> translator: your life. in outposts christopher hill remembers his time in the state department working in countries like poland, iraq and south korea. finally the online bookshelf, james mcpherson's new biography of confederate president jefferson davis. to see the full list visit political.com/bookshelf. this is booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here's a look at our prime-time lineup. tonight at 8:00 eastern new york university professor anna harvey examines the house of
1:31 pm
representatives on the judicial branch. former cia director and defense secretary leon panetta as he recalls his career in public service. afterwards at 10:00 p.m. eastern jay caliber and looks at the consumer debt collection industry. at 11:00 ronald kessler reports on the secret service and the first family. all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. booktv covers 14 author events at the southern festival of books and in the next six hours we will bring you six of those events featuring 110 authors on race and inequality in america, the history of the south and war. of first is the author of no good men among the living:america, the taliban and the worse for through afghan allies. the book was named a finalist at the national book award for nonfiction.
1:32 pm
1:33 pm
20 minutes. and anand gopal will be signing books directly following. >> thank you. can you hear me? so, my book, the subtitle of the book is the war through afghan nice. what i want to explain to you today is a little bit about how i got to the point of wanting to write a book through the eyes of afghans and what that means. but before i start that i want to tell you a story of the first time that a number of the tell a ban. this was back in 2008. at the time i was sort of traveling around the countryside and a motorcycle and i got in contact with a commander, someone who is fighting against the u.s. military, an insurgent commander. and was very interested to try to understand what motivates these people. and if you remember,
1:34 pm
everybody famously had a draconian regime in the 1990's which outlawed women's education, which kept women in the homes, which was, you know, they had people walking around with whips seeing how long your beard was. it was interesting trying to understand what would possibly motivate somebody to join such a ridiculous seeming regime. and so i may contact with them. he and his unit were based at the top of a mountain and rural afghanistan. i went out to this mountain. took a day to get to the top . i went through with a trail, a small village at the very top. and sure enough sitting in one of the houses were groups of fighters, about 1213 fighters. and so i went inside and sat down. sitting cross legged chemical is a cause a relapse. it took up my notebook says started interviewing them.
1:35 pm
the commander specifically and asking them questions like, you know, wire you fighting against the u.s.? what kind of society do you want? what is your assessment of the 1990's regime, when it's all bad or in power. he gave me boilerplate answers for all of it, but at some point he stopped me. he tell me, you know, you are actually the first foreigner that i have ever met. of course, the first american ever met. can i ask you some questions yap. sure. so we started asking me questions like -- and this is 2008. president obama had just as -- 2009, sorry if he just announced a troops surged. why is your president wanting to surge troops? so, i tried to explain to him about, you know, u.s. political, geopolitical concerns, domestic politics. and then he asked, why did your country come to afghanistan in the first place? it turns out he knew very
1:36 pm
little about 9/11. i tried to explain to him. in then he started asking me questions about culture. the s me, i heard that in the u.s. women walk around naked and nobody can chosen. welcome and that is not exactly correct. and i tried to explain to and the differences in culture between the u.s. and afghanistan. at some point he asks me, have you ever seen the from the titanic. i said, yes, i've seen the movie. how come your country doesn't make movies of that and more? and it turned out actually that he was a big fan, as were many members of the telegram. in the 1990's the regime had outlawed the titanic. fact, it was very popular. people would go and get leonardo dicaprio hair cuts. it was the first inkling that i got, the categories,
1:37 pm
thinking about afghanistan, the television, and the various political actors there, it gets complicated when you actually go and talk to people and here stories on the ground. and that was really -- that is really the sort of underlying theme of my book, which is that the categories that we have come to think of some as the fighting the war and terror, which is there are terrorists, there are good guys, bad guys. it makes a lot of sense sitting over here, but when you're on the ground these categories are remarkably fluid. in fact, they don't often make sense when you try to think about the men that way. and so, i learned the story. it took me many years. i came to afghanistan in 2008. i had actually switched careers. i used to do physics. but i live across the street from the twin towers. and on 9/11 i saw the tax and new people who were killed in the attacks. since that time i have always been interested and
1:38 pm
fascinated by our policy in the middle east and south asia and following the war against al qaeda from afar. it was always dissatisfied with my level of understanding of what was happening. and so in 2008 and decided to switch careers. i moved to afghanistan is a freelance art. and at the time if you went to afghanistan, usually he lived in kabul, a relatively cosmopolitan city compared to the rest of the country. it is relatively safe as well. the war is actually taking place in south double. is in the south and east along the border. and so my time as a journalist was mostly going to press conferences and riding up 500, 600 or stories about what was happening in the countryside and so very quickly and frustrated by the lack of access to what was actually happening. i covered the war but was not actually able to cover the war.
1:39 pm
at some point i decided to take a different tack. i grabbed my beard, bought a motorcycle, and i hit the road and went down to the south to the areas where the war is being fought. i take advantage of afghan has the toddy, which is very extraordinary, and i was able to live in various villages would travel idlers and village heads, usually three or four deep at a time. would be passed from one village to the next. in the process of that i met many, many, many people, hundreds of people and heard many stories. the stories that i heard challenged the preconceived notions that i had about the war was about. essentially, the problem or the question that i tried to answer was this which is that that caliban regime is one of the worst, most radical, draconian regimes in recent memory, and they were defeated very easily after 9/11. it took basically two months
1:40 pm
of an air campaign to cause them to crumble. and most that i spoke to welcomed the defeat. they wanted the u.s. to come and save them. and yet fiver six years later some of these same afghans went and started supporting the taliban. it grew from a defeated force to a very powerful insurgency which exists to the state which is still fighting u.s.-backed troops in, meaning the afghan army. a few u.s. soldiers still in afghanistan. so the question is, how did that happen? was the transformation? would cause that to happen? that is the question i try to answer in the book. i do that to try to get -- i do that by trying to get the afghan perspective. i collect hundreds of interviews, many of which i include in the book, but three in particular that the focus on. one is the story of a warlord, a politician who is aligned with the united states military.
1:41 pm
he is a powerful man. his name is john monitor on. the u.s. used to call him jfk for short. and his life is interesting because he was the school's janitor back in the 1970's, in a letter it also. and the soviet union invaded afghanistan in 1979. once that happened it sort of ushered in a cataclysmic upheaval of society and the reverberations of that still echoes today because a lot of it is sort of islamic radicalism that we see in the world. it sort of comes from the expense of the soviet invasion of afghanistan. and was the soviets invaded, the cia and various civilian intelligence agencies flooded the country with guns and money. and in the process they helped create a sort of class of warlords. and the character in my book is one of those people. he was somebody who rose from being a school janitor
1:42 pm
to becoming a very powerful warlord who operated in southern afghanistan. once the soviets left the various warlords that we have armed turn their guns on each other and ushered in a very bloody civil war of which he was one of the participants. the taliban and rose in the mid-90s as a reaction to the civil war and pushed aside all these warlords and in many cases arrested them. they threw him in jail, tortured him. in fact, when i asked him, described the worst of torture you ever suffered, he said, the worst torture i had was nothing physical. in fact, the fact that the taliban and would not let me break in my jail cell. psychological and physical torture. if he was scheduled to die, to be executed by the government in december of 2001. and in the book picks up his story from the moment which she is scheduled to be
1:43 pm
executed, and he is trotted out to the execution neared, but he is saved at the last moment. i don't want to tell you how, but he is saved. he is able to leave the prison. in the next few years he becomes a major u.s. ally, and he becomes extraordinarily wealthy as a result of the alliance with us. and so the book is -- a third of the book is about his story and how he rose to riches and power through his alliance with the u.s. military. that is the first character our focus on. the second is a housewife. and she grew up in trouble in the 1970's and 80's. you know, if you look at photographs today, a lot of destruction. it is nothing compared to how it looked in the 60's and 70's. it was surprising to me when i first saw this because i had this idea of afghanistan
1:44 pm
being a devastated country. but in fact before the 1979 invasion of the soviet union the cities were extremely cosmopolitan, well-developed. women were going to school. going to universities. she majored in economics and graduated and took a job as a teacher. in the mid-90s the civil war broke out. the civil war between the warlords that we have armed. and it caused untold amounts of devastation. fifty or 60,000 people were killed. and she was nearly killed. and so she and her husband and her young son fled the city to the countryside, to the deep south. and once she got there @booktv the book and picks up the story from when she flees. when she got to the deep south she found that the cultural mores or radically different from what she had grown up being used to.
1:45 pm
and says she came to a village in which culturally women were not allowed outside of the house. women were not working, women or audio the school. and so she was more or less a prisoner of her own home for ten years. and this is -- before the television, by the way, during the civil war. investor, how did life changed when the taliban came to power? it didn't change. added life change when they were removed? i didn't see them either. it did not matter. i was still locked in the house. for three different times, and she is an extraordinarily capable woman and found ways to get out of the house and found ways to work. an underground in the
1:46 pm
village. and at great risk tercel she taught them reading and writing and arithmetic and selling in other things. and so the book describes her difficulties in setting at these underground schools commander difficulties in essentially being a woman with that experience on the conservative countryside. 2004 her husband was killed by members of the u.s.-backed afghan government because of corruption. and so force he is left as a single woman with four sons. needed to escape the village. wanted to find a way back. and so in large part is the story effort trying to find her way back. the third character is somebody who am i met. he is a taliban commander.
1:47 pm
in the 99 ec is in charge of disarming newly conquered populations in afghanistan. and so he used to walk around with a big wet. weapons in the house to everyone as weapons in the house. if you have weapons in your house. so that was his. so a pretty important frontline commander. come around. tell been overthrown. he quits at that point and tries to blend in the civilian life, tries to get a job as a self of fixer, cellphone operator. he opens up his own shop. but something bring send back. so by 2005 or 2006 he rejoins the taliban. this point they are an insurgency funny as the u.s., and he becomes a major
1:48 pm
anti american insurgents commander. and the story is how he comes back to the taliban. it is really a story of the war. and that is sort of the pieces of the book. why did these people come back and start fighting? so to explain that i want to take you back to 2001 and explain what the circumstances were on the ground at the time. the u.s. invaded. it was not even really an invasion. it was more of an aerial campaign in october 2001. within six weeks they pretty much bombed all of the taliban military infrastructure. keep in mind, this is not that country that has a lot of the structure. the bond of it. what is very interesting, very surprising to me as i was researching all of this history was that by december of 2001 that taliban were defeated and the essentially surrendered wholesale to the
1:49 pm
u.s. they tried in droves to switch sides. this sort of repudiated the taliban, and this is not just the rank-and-file. they tried to pledge allegiance to the new u.s.-backed government headed by hundred karzai. now, it was surprising to me, but now i know from studying afghan history that it should not be that surprising. in a country that has been at war for 35 years almost, the main prerogative is to survive. you see people frequently switching sides. for example, when the soviet union withdrew from afghanistan in 1989 a lot of those people who had called themselves communists who are supporting the soviet union in afghanistan reprinted themselves as as obama's and joined the other side. out of survival, survival instincts that they did so. in the same way it was not that the television embraced the western. but they recognize that to be able to survive they had
1:50 pm
to pledge allegiance to the new authority. so they all quit the taliban and joined in the afghan government. and, for example, have a transcript of a press conference given by one of the major taliban leaders at the time basically asking people for religious institutions and madrasahs not to give donations to the taliban because there were no more. if you have any donations given to the afghan government. so one after the next taliban commanders were in public ceremonies handing over their weapons, in some cases directly to the u.s. forces. some of them began working with the u.s. forces to try and help stabilize the situation. and so you had a situation, a circumstance in early 2002 in which there are no more taliban. they have effectively ceased to exist. at the same time, al qaeda,
1:51 pm
the other main reason, had fled the country. most of them had gone to pakistan, some to iran. there is no more al qaeda left. cenote 15 in a al qaeda. however, there were tens of thousands of u.s. troops on the ground with a mandate to fight a war and terror, must special forces soldiers, cia and others who were there with a mandate to fight a war of terror but did not have an enemy to fight. and this was a contradiction the way this contradiction was resolved was actually the way in which the worst sort of reconstituted itself in the contradiction was resolved through the alliances that the u.s. made with various local actors. i call the more towards. so at the time almost all intelligence was sourced from local warlords, people like jfk, one of the characters in my book. so the cia or special forces operators would ask jfk,
1:52 pm
okay, who are the taliban in your district, and he would tell them, this person in this person. in fact, most of them were. and so what actually ended up happening was that really the people who are personal rivals of the war was became falsely labeled. going to give you a couple of examples of this to show how work in practice. one example is of a person, baker. he is almost 90 probably. but when i met him he was in his late eighties. i met him because he lived across the street from where i lived. and he was a baker. he would wake up every day at 4:00 a.m. to knead dough and to make afghan flat bread. that is what he did. and he had been a u.s.
1:53 pm
u.s.-backed mujahedin commander in the 1980's against the soviets. after they left he gave up his weapons and lived his life as a baker. one morning militia members of the afghan government showed up at his bakery and said, are you? yes. okay. you're a terrorist. what is going out? it would not explain anything. they handed him over to u.s. forces at canada our airfield to the main u.s. base in the area. there -- and this is 2002. there he was tortured by u.s. soldiers. he was electrocuted, but he insisted on his innocence. so he was released eventually back to the custody of the afghan militiamen. the militiamen took him to a private jail and hung him upside down by his feet for
1:54 pm
20 or 22 hours a day. and it would come in at various points a day in a weapon with big cables. in fashion when the person hanging next to him was a very prominent troubled. not a taliban member, a prominent tribal member. after about a week or so, this person realized why was happening. and he realized because the militiamen came in and told them, we will let you go. we know you're not a terrorist. we will let you go if you give us x amount of dollars. he had to borrow money, his family had to borrow money, raise funds demand essentially bought his freedom. the problem is that once he paid his marked for life as somebody who can be exported for this kind of money. a couple months later he is arrested again, handed over to u.s. troops again, tortured again, transferred back to this underground prison, on the upside down once more, whipped, beaten and then he had to pay again
1:55 pm
to read the seventh three or four or five times. he told me that i used to put away money for my torture and imprisonment the way you might put away money for buy any card. if he was eventually left alone after 2005 when the intelligence commander who worked very closely with the cia was killed in a suicide bombing. that is one example. another example is from the northeastern part of the country. and in the afghan language it means lawmaker, somebody who had been elected to parliament in a previous incarnation of the local government. he was a member of the northern alliance, which was our group of warlords and commanders and rebels who are fighting and resisting the taliban of throughout the 90's. so when the u.s. invaded we
1:56 pm
supported the north alliance, one of the police support. so he was an anti taliban fighters. many of his family members were killed during the 1990's. he hated and deeply. however, once the u.s. and british forces set up bases there were any of contracts to -- to bring graveled to put on the bay base, to help build and surround the base, too, you know, have militiamen guarding the base. a lot of contracts being handed out by the various foreign entities there. so ended up happening is a lot of competition among local leaked to try to get these contracts. he was trying to get contracts pretty get a contract to eradicate opium poppies. there are other strong willaert's were trying to get contracts as well. what ended up happening is this incentivize system in which people could falsely
1:57 pm
accuse other people being members of taliban or al qaeda so that they could be eliminated from the scene and they could get the contracts. that is what happens to have. he, in june of 2002, made a very well-publicized speech in a big council that was there to elect karzai. to give his speech in support of the u.s. saying, you know, made his great that the international community is here in supporting his command we need to support them so that we can ensure the taliban never returns. shortly after that he was arrested. he and a lot of his lieutenants were arrested and sent to guantanamo. and the reason he was arrested is because one of the rival commanders there in that area had a son who spoke english, had ties with the foreign forces. the rival warlords said, this person is a member of
1:58 pm
al qaeda commercial you should arrest him. he spent six years in guantanamo as well as many of his lieutenants. today if you go to that area or areas from is mostly anti-american, approach taliban, but it was not before. this was a place that the taliban had difficulty cochrane because of places like this. a third example -- and i think probably this in my mind the most. their is a young arab men to and encouraging go who fled an abusive home, he had an abusive stepfather. flea is some. he heard if you go to afghanistan and then you find your way to a western embassy you could declare asylum and be taken to the west. that was his idea, his plan.
1:59 pm
so he went to afghanistan, 1999 or so with the intention of doing this. however, he is quickly arrested by the taliban. essentially where you, what are you doing here. you're an arab. we will turn you over to al qaeda. it turned over it al qaeda. and in the custody of al qaeda he was tortured pretty severely. he underwent simulated drowning. the videotape did, electrocuted and all this is videotape. eventually confessed to being an agent of the cia and the sock to a forced confession. and then he was handed back over to taliban cassidy and imprisoned at 16 or 17. aha fast for 2001, u.s. invasion, you have charging go and six or seven other people like him who are in talent and custody who they believed were spies. the taliban and argon, and the locals did not know what
2:00 pm
to do with these guys. they handed these over to the u.s. forces. they sent to these guys straight to guantanamo. he was there for six or seven years. and to add insult injury, and 2003 the u.s. -- or maybe 2002, the u.s. found the videotape of him being tortured by al qaeda and found his sort of forced confessions. ..
9 Views
Uploaded by TV Archive on