we teach our kids to stand up to bullies and all the mayors in this room understand that. thank you. [ applause ] >> we are seriously out of time. [ laughter ] having law enforcement on our side is extremely powerful politically because they give us constructive feedback of what we can and cannot do and the pros and cons. i hope to see you the 10th and 11th . >> thank you i thank you for your comments and your work, the work you do in your community . >> thank you very much.

[ applause ] >> more now with mayors from maryland, sharing stories of how communities were affected by mass shootings associated with hate crimes. this portion runs one hour. >> good morning everyone. my name is karen freeman wilson and i'm honored to serve as the chair of the criminal and social justice committee for the conference of mayors. i have the distinct privilege of leading this session on a very important topic, a very grave topic. earlier, we just had an

excellent discussion on what mayors can do to build inclusive and compassionate cities and the conference centers conference intention intentional action on helping us to do that. in this session were going to discuss a key factor in ensuring our our cities inclusive we protect residents against those those who do not value them for particular traits they possess. not only that we protect them but we send a message that we do not tolerate the ill- treatment of people based on their gender, sex, race, religion and any other driver

of hate crimes. for many years, the conference of mayors have has a strong policy condemning hate crimes and urging mayors to speak out against them whenever they occur and to ensure that there is recording at the local level as well as to the fbi. so, today working to begin with a briefing on the increase in hate crimes that we see across the country by the anti- defamation league and in the person of their counsel, michael lieberman is been to this meeting before who is presented at our meeting before and who has been working hand- in-hand with the conference they've also been a great partner with the conference of mayors and the partnership with

the joint development was strengthened with the compact to combat hate extremism and bigotry signed by 325 mayors, shortly after charlotte. i want to acknowledge, even though mr. lieberman will do the presenting, that jonathan greenblatt is the adls national director and ceo is present. mr. greenblatt? >> i know he said he had to catch a flight. so he's going to catch a flight. we will hear, michael, discussing his city's response to the deadliest act of anti- semitism to ever occur in our

country. the mass shooting at the tree of life synagogue in october. i want to commend all of you and your cities who came together in unity with the folks at the tree of life in our synagogue. i want to commend so many mayors and councilmembers who did the same thing. we will then hear from our colleague and actually, bloomberg classmate, mary andy berke who will discuss the mayors counsel, which he has established in his city and then , our cleanup hitter is our friend, chief tom manger is the police chief in montgomery county maryland and the immediate past president of the

major cities chiefs association and a close working partner as the mayors and police chiefs convene to work on issues like these together. before we hear from speakers, i want to go around the room quickly and ask all the mayors present to introduce themselves . we will start with mayor breed udo . >> i'm bill put udo, the mayor of pittsburgh . >> [ mayors introduce themselves ]

thank you again. so, before i turn this over to mr. lieberman, i want to advise everyone that we are live on c- span. i want to thank our cops director whose present today for his support and leadership and for always being a partner to the conference of mayors and the cities we serve. so, mr. lieberman? >> thank you mayor. good morning. we still have a few moments. it's an incredibly important time for the panel. it's an incredibly polarized

time in our country, there are many communities in our cities that are feeling isolated, vulnerable, alone, and there's much we can do to buck them up. , the u.s. conference has been a leader on this issue for 30 years i want to give a shout out to laura waxman whose done great work and they've been a great partner in supporting improve data collection, training programs, legislation like the matthew shepard prevention act for hate crimes that passed almost 10 years ago. i have five minutes and i want to make three points. first, data drives policy. you cannot address what you cannot measure. the anti- defamation league has been doing an audit of anti-semitic incidents in america since 1979 . we have 25 regional offices and many cities are represented

here. the 2017 audit the documented almost 2000 anti-semitic incidents, 57% increase over 2016. it was the largest single year increase ever. the best national data comes from the fbi, passed in 1990, the hate crimes statistic act collecting data from 18,000 police departments around the country in 2017, the most recent data, there were almost 7200 hate crimes reported from about 16,000 police departments around the country a 17% increase over 2016. there was an 18% increase in race-based hate crimes, a 16% increase in crimes against african- americans, african americans have always been, since 1990, the plurality of all hate crimes reported to the fbi. a

20% increase in crimes against asian pacific americans. 63% increase in crimes against native americans. crimes against arab americans doubled in 2017, 24% increase in crimes against latino. religion based crimes increased 23% and crimes against the jews increased 37%. crimes against jews have always been between 50 and 80% of the religion based crimes. you don't have to work for the anti-defamation league to be concerned about 2.4 percent of the population, and yet 50 to 80% of the religion based crimes against jews and jewish institutions, crimes against muslims and 2017, according to the fbi, decreased slightly but still, the third largest numbers ever since 1990 and

crimes based on sexual orientation increase 5%. the vast majority of hate crimes are not committed by organized hate groups or members of hate groups but some are. in fact, some of the most high profile cases we will hear from mayor put udo in a moment, the most deadly hate crime against jewish americans in american history, the mayor of charleston is here, the mother emmanuel church in july 2015 where nine worshipers were killed by a white supremacist and the two black grandparents killed in the kroger parking lot in jeffersontown kentucky outside a louisville. this is the report issued, there's a link to it in your app , the u.s. conference of mayors app for the conference and there's a lot of resources i will be mentioning, this report

came out this week. every single one of the 50 extremist murders in 2017 were committed by right wing extremists but that's not been the case in the past and it was the case this year. third, mayors are problem solvers. that's what you do and why you go to work in the morning. that's what get you up to go to do your work. we know we can't outlaw hate, bigotry, anti-semitism, racism, no executive order you will be able to promulgate will and homophobia or any of these isms. i worked on the hate crimes prevention act for 13 years in coalition with the u.s. conference of mayors and the international association of chiefs of police. i know and you know that the law is a blunt instrument when it comes to addressing hate. it's much better to prevent it in the first place, this is why were having this panel at this

time. this is a best practices panel. you will hear from the panelists about ideas, we are supposed to have a lot of ideas, we have a lot of ideas and after the white supremacy rally, street fights, murder, in charlottesville and the conference of mayors, they delivered a compact, the mayors compact also in the app, a 10 point plan it's much much more than just let's get along, let's all single biot together. it includes using the bully pulpit finding anti-bias and bully convention programs and money to go forward in schools and training programs with police to support community programs to celebrate cultural and ethnic diversity like you will hear from the mayor of chattanooga in a few moments, about his counsel. >> inclusive and compassionate cities is a demonstration of the mayors conference commitment , mayor benjamin, mayor fisher

involvement ensures this will be a legacy involvement for the conference, that's great. every city should have a hate crime policy. if you go to the chattanooga website you will find a hate crime policy of chattanooga on the website. there are things that you can do , next week to demonstrate that you have a resolve against hate crime. they are easy and don't require funding. you have a policy and you can create a policy. there's a great policy in the app and you can take the parts you like from that and make it your own., they need to respond to hate crimes. they should record hate crime data to the state repository and the fbi. in 2017, 92 cities told the fbi

they had zero hate crimes are didn't report at all. that would be a great figure if it was true. i think there's reason to believe it's not true. chief manger files every year from montgomery county police, this report this, something to be applauded. finally, you do not have to create resources on your own. you do not have to reinvent the wheel. every resource i mentioned, including some others are in the app.great resources from the fbi. i wish i could say we would solve this problem after the panel or maybe in the advance of the winter meeting but we won't. therefore, implementation of the mayors compact, thinking about the ideas presented on the panel are important. thank you for the commitment you've made to do that . >> thank you so much mr. lieberman.

i hope you will check out those resources on the app. i'm certainly looking forward to seeing that report. you in your city, mayor, you've been through quite a bit over the last year. please share your response and how you all are working through this . >> thank you, mayor. >> i can remember exactly where i was when i first heard it. i was with the sergeant my chief of staff was in the backseat and we were going up the hill to mercy hospital to check on a couple of the officers who'd been injured. on the radio they said it. it was described as the deadliest act of anti-semitism in american history. pittsburgh. >> you never think about that. when you are a mayor in your thinking about your city and your city will go down in

history for this. it would never happen at tree of life. because, tree of life is literally mister rogers neighborhood where fred rogers lived, two blocks away we are family, the most diverse neighborhood in all of western pennsylvania. people choose to live in squirrel hill because they want to live around people who are different. they embrace that. my neighborhood, i live seven blocks away. those words just hit like somebody punching you in the stomach. taking the wind right out of you. everything you thought about your city is completely changed forever. pittsburgh being the city that it is, the victims themselves were friends, family members of friends you'd known for 20 years . you get to go through this

process of trying to operate and act rational at a time when the emotions are really taking over and it becomes difficult. you hear about the stories of how the first officer arrived and upon coming out of his vehicle, walking in front of the car and looking in through the glass windows that are tinted at tree of life and seeing the shadow behind their of a person holding an assault rifle aimed right at him and throwing up his hands as the bullet went through it. going back behind the car and realizing only hours later, that he was on his way back into the car where he had other weapons and more ammunition.

i'm not really sure where he was in the rabbi who was hiding in a closet, and all the stories they start to add on an add on. you understand that what you dealing with is at the highest level of evil. there is evil when a life is taken. there is extra evil at a whole different level, those that can't help themselves, whether it's two brothers who are 54 years old who have special needs or a 97-year-old grandmother. there's a different level of evil that occurs when it occurs because of the way someone prays, simply because of the way that they pray and what the religion is. there's an entirely different level of evil when it occurs at sanctuary at the place where you are safe. then, you start realizing that you are dealing with a heavier level of evil, when hate crimes

happen. let me tell you this. it was very apparent very early on that in that darkness of easel there is light. you will see that light. i sat before 12 noon. and by 11:00, we had the person who we are taking into the hospital. i look around the corner at same time i see my friend watching mohammed. and he is the executive director of the islamic center of pittsburgh. it wasn't just him who was standing at the corner, it was the entire board of the islamic center of pittsburgh. because, they have their meetings on saturday mornings

and as soon as they heard, they got in their cars and they went directly to the synagogue and i said why are you here? he said because we need to be here. it was the monday afterwards and i was taking police officers to the different schools. so that the kids who were in those schools, whether it was the shiva community day school would understand that the police were there to protect them, that they didn't have to be afraid because there's a police officer there. and the officers themselves engaging with the kids and sharing their first names and asking how many kids want to be police officers. and as we walk out of the school, a minivan dries by and it stops. and it starts backing up and my sergeant gets out of the car, concerned that somebody wants to cause harm. and a young guy, probably seventh or eighth grade comes running out of the car with a glass of vase and flowers and he said this is for you.

and i said what is this for? and he said because you're my neighbor and i love you. and i said hold on a minute, and i walked up to the car and i look in the front seat where his mom is sitting, and the entire front seat is filled with glass vases with flowers that they are heading out to people all around tree of life. it happened the next day on tuesday when the protests came when president trump came to visit and the protest with thousands of people who had marched for many different issues. they had marched against violence, against youth by police, they had marched for social justice. and as they passed zone 4 of the pittsburgh police station, they stopped and they clapped [ applause ] and they said thank you. and the police came out and they hugged and they saw each other. and why was that able to

happen? sure, it was in that evil that people wanted to be good, but it was 10 years of building the interfaith dialogue in pittsburgh. 10 years of jews and muslims and christians getting to know each other and then becoming friends. it was a mother who taught her son the greatest lesson of taking him out in that van and being able to pass out those flowers, and letting him know that it's the worst time and the most evil there something good you can do and it will make you feel better, too. that you are going to be helping that person who is unable to deal with that situation. and it was a continual beat of police and community over years and years of interaction that allowed people to put themselves in those officers' place and let them know after the most traumatic day of their work, that we got your back this time.

i stood, two weeks later as the community gathered. we follow jewish law, we allow for the proper time. at the last funeral before gathering as a community. and we gathered at the point of pittsburgh where the rivers come together, and we stood there along with people like mrs. rogers and franco harris and all the luminaries within pittsburgh. and a young minister came up to me and she told me this:she said was 80 years ago today that kristallnacht happened. it was 80 years ago today that people burned down synagogues in czechoslovakia, germany and austria and the police looked the other way. in pittsburgh, they ran into the buildings with bullets flying at them. it was 80 years ago today the

jews were killed and the politicians turned their back. in pittsburgh today we stand shoulder to shoulder, democrat and republican to say never again. it was 80 years ago that committed leaders allow the holocaust to begin. and in pittsburgh today, we stand as one to make sure that we follow what we believe to be the right way. we can defeat hate. i loved our extraction expression stronger than hate showing the steelers symbol with the star davis and it says something about not only pittsburgh, but the response that came from around the world. it was more than we were saying that we were stronger than hate. we were saying that an attack against one is an attack against all. [ applause ]

>> thank you mail mayor beale. earlier today in another session you talked about a club that nobody wants to be in. and mayor , mayor berke is a member of the club where in cities there have been mass shootings. and i just want to commend mayor berke on his leadership and his response and would you please share that with us now? >> thank you, thank you mayor and thanks to both of you all, thanks bill for your incredible leadership. um, this is a club that many of us, unfortunately now either are part of or think about being part of. in june 2015, i was watching tv

when one of my heroes, joe riley was on their describing what had happened in charleston at mother emmanuel and i thought to myself, what must he be going through? how bad must that be? well, about six weeks later, i was in a press conference announcing some good economic development news when my chief of staff came up to the podium and gave me a sheet of paper and on it it said active shooter at a military facility, officer down. so, ended the press conference, walked out, started trying to assess what happened and a shooter who had been radicalized as a terrorist had killed four marines and a sailor in our city. had been to two facilities, had also been to a facility where he had been shot, a recruiter

for our armed forces and have been taken down by one of our officers who have walked into their there to take care of the problem. this was a huge, huge incident in our community where patriotic city, we value our connections to the military and we just had five people who were gunned down in chattanooga tennessee. so, one of the first things i did was took out our whiteboard, gathered everybody around and started writing down the rules of the road, this is how we're going to respond to this incident. our police chief who did an amazing job, we sat down and started going through what we are going to say and the first thing we said was we are going to protect every single person. it was a muslim young man who killed these five heroes, and

we know that part of what we have to do is keep our muslim community safe over these next few days. um, and we also said another rule that we put down was no one will be radicalized as a result of this, not one person will be radicalized as a result of what happened here today. and, so this started us down the road of figuring out how we combat violent extremism in our city and around our country. the young man who perpetrated these horrific acts, he grew up in chattanooga, his father actually works for city government, still works for city government today and, just to show you how interconnected all this is, and i say this almost everywhere, he wasn't radicalized in chattanooga, but he came back to chattanooga to commit these acts which means we are all in this together in

a really critical way. um, so after we had done a lot of work and had a great response, a lot of articles were written about chattanooga and our response afterward, we were contacted by the state department and mike duffin is here with the us state department, secretary curie has started something called the strong city's network, all about how you combat violent extremism and try to prevent these acts from occurring. i started going here to peer talking to other cities, they arrange that, not just in the us but all around the world and we had numerous visitors from places from the balkan areas to the far east. we had tons of people and tried to learn what was happening. and this counter violent extremism work is actually very important. there are people on the edges of our city everywhere.

sometimes they turn to violence in ways that we see every day and sometimes they turn to violent extremism as a result. we have to reach out to them and what many of you do is reach out to these young men and women and we know it's mostly men, because we are worried that they are going to join some kind of group where they perpetrate violence in our city or another thing they can do is get radicalized in commit some horrific act of terrorism. as part of that, we started talking about an international group of mayors through the strong city's network to combat hate and i thought to myself why am i talking to a bunch of international mayors about what to do all across the world and we are not doing this in our city? so, i stood last year at state of the city and said that we are going to form a council

against hate. when you say something like that, it can sound, it's going to sound a little hokey, counsel against hate. who is against it? what i found was that people were hungry, hungering for this. particularly in our religious community. they see this, they feel it, they are worried about it, they were dying to participate in something like this. i would gather community leaders and we would start working our very first piece was to reach out to the anti- defamation league. they came in and is it a session with us. the newspaper has turned over its editorial page to us where members of the council against hate are writing about it. we are gathering information, our work is ongoing, and so i just want to say to everybody first of all, inc. about getting involved with the strong city's network, i assume mike is here so if you feel the need, he can take her name. but second of all, there is a hunger for talking about hate

people see it on their phones, they see it in their lives, they watch it from our highest leaders in our country. and, it's time for all of us to step up and say this because not one person should be radicalized in your city during the time that you are mayor. thank you all. [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you, mayor andy and earlier, you heard about the montgomery county report that has been published under the leadership of chief manger. would you please share your insight with us now? >> yes i'd be happy to. and first, let me thank mayor berke and mayer 19 for your leadership. when these things happen and your compassion. it is, as a police chief it is

so helpful in terms of responding to these awful tragic incidents when you have, when your boss is doing the right thing and working with you. this truly is what was described up here by these two mayors, it certainly is a club that you don't want to be a member of. and so, let's think about, these awful and unfortunate incidents, we have more mass shootings around this country, you see the statistics we have had since the 80s and how they are increasing exponentially. but the majority of the hate crime, the vast majority of hate crimes that you will deal with inner-city, um, aren't going to get this kind of national coverage. they are going to be vandalism, they are going to be threatening letters, they are going to be swastikas painted on the school bus. and they are less likely to get the kind of attention that these kinds of instances that

we just heard about would get. you're going to have most of the hate crimes, are either going to be targeted against someone because of their race, because of their religion. you are going to have some that are targeted to people because of their ethnicity, their sexual orientation their gender preference. all of those are folks that are the most typical victims of these hate crimes. and the majority of your hate crimes are to be vandalism or graffiti, they will be some sort of physical assault. some minor all salt that result in someone's death. verbal or written intimidation. these are the kinds of things you will deal with everyday so let me give you a couple of recommendations on how to deal with those because if you ignore those and only pay attention and wait for the big one to happen, that is when you react, your community is going to have a lot of victims that feel like they are not being cared about and not, and

frankly, living in fear. so, every hate crime that occurs, whether it's a misdemeanor, whether it's graffiti or anything like that, you should work with your police, every hate crime should have the detectives assigned to it. that's not as big a workload as you might think. first of all, you probably are going to count your hate crimes, hopefully in the dozens baby. i've got a million population my jurisdiction we had a little over 100 hate crimes last year. but every one of those was assigned to detective, even that swastika spray-painted on a restroom wall. and in some cases, although that might be required by the detective to go and talk to the victim, go talk to someone and, you know, do you have any more information? if you hear anything, make sure, here's the number you call, you know so we can follow up on it. it may just be one visit. put a press release out on each

one because it gives you the opportunity to get that statement condemning that act and using that bully pulpit to remind the community that we are not going to tolerate this kind of hate. so putting up a press release on the hate crimes as well is an important thing to do. i do recommend, have a member of your staff go to the montgomery county maryland website, click on police and look and click on our hate crimes, annual hate crimes report. have them look at it, i'm not saying it's the best thing in the world but i will tell you it has gotten tremendous feedback from our community and there might be something in there that you might find valuable and putting that information out every year to report to your community about hate crimes and the attention you are paying to them, um, sends the right message. one of the results of assigning

a detective to each one of our hate crimes is that we actually were able to determine the perpetrator in about, a little over half the cases. and in some cases, it's somebody, spray painting something on a wall, or leaving a nasty note for somebody, putting something in someone's mailbox, attacking their sexual orientation. you know, things like that and we were able to determine the perpetrator in over half the cases. here is the interesting point. in 67%, these are the ones that we found out who did it. 67% of the people that we identified were under 18 years of age. they were under 18 years of age, and so what, i think one of the things that that really calls on us to do is to use this as, we've got to put

information together to educate young people about the harms of targeting anyone through a threat, through hate or ridicule based on their race, religion ethnicity, appearance, minutes of mentor speech, any trait that is protected by law. the fact of the matter is, and we could have another whole session on dealing with adolescent mind, a lot of these, the adolescent mind is different. it's different than the white supremacist who have an agenda. you deal with them differently. most, maybe even half over hate crimes are committed by folks whose brain is still developing and so, i think dealing with it through education should be a priority for all of us. in terms of preventing it from happening, educating our kids, making, helping them develop their brains on these kinds of topics.

so, um, the last thing i wanted to mention, just enclosing, there are, sometimes people who struggle, the particular incident was a hate crime or not? we make a mistake if we want to get into a debate publicly on whether something was a hate crime or not. the best way to deal with it is to say you know what? we are looking at this and we are certainly looking at it with the possibility that this might be a hate crime. there's nothing wrong with saying that. and if it turns out it's a crime you're on it, and if it turns out it is in a hate crime you don't have to get into a public debate with the victim. because one of the criteria of whether or not something is a hate crime, one of the criteria is does the victim feel that they were targeted, did they feel they were targeted because of their, you know race, religion, ethnicity? or some other characteristic. so, i think it's important as we respond and react and deal

and address every hate crime, and not just the tragic ones that get national attention, but as we deal with all of them that are occurring in our community which is the majority of them, it sends the right message to the community and makes the victims feel like you know what? we paid attention to it they care about, and they are condemning it. and those are the three big things i think we want to do for our victims and these crimes. >> thank you so much, chief. [ applause ] at this time, we will accept questions and comments from mayors. mayor?? thank you madame tier and john tech lynn burke from charleston and i stepped out of the moment when i heard you mention

charleston because yes, we are a member of this club and mayor peduto when you were speaking it brought back such memories for me that were very similar circumstances in charleston. other than our killer intentionally came to start a race war and rather than just the distinction of faith, he simply murdered nine people in a house of worship, based on the color of their skin, solely on that. and, mayor andy, you're right, mayor riley was the mayor right when it occurred, i was like five months later. it changed my life. it changed the life of our city and, you know this past weekend during martin luther king junior celebration, someone shared this quote with me that,

"a measure of how much you can love your neighbor is determined by a measure of how much forgiveness you can share, how much you can forget." and by that measure i would like to say that charleston is one of the most loving-ist places on this planet and boy, did we learn the lesson as pittsburgh has so poignantly that love is stronger than hate. so what have we done since that time, i just wanted to share a couple of brief things, if i may. one, even though and so appropriate to community policing and the cops programs. even though the police department in charleston had a very good relationship in the community, we doubled down and

created a project called the illumination project. which is one of the most intensive community engagements between police and citizens that i think you could imagine. and i would be glad to share further information about that project with any mayors that are interested. hate crimes, you speak of hate crimes and i'm sad to report that the state of south carolina does not have a hate crime law, so we created one at the municipal level. so now, we have a city of charleston a crime so that when those more misdemeanor things happen, time like a swastika or graffiti or someone hatefully pushing someone because of their sexual orientation or whatever, we are able to add another criminal offense locally through our city of charleston a crime. but the third thing i would share with you, you know, it was so ironic that this

perpetrator came to charleston. it was intentional on his part because of our city's history. the city of charleston was rooted in the institution of slavery. and almost half of the enslaved africans who came to north america entered this continent at the city of charleston. and so we took a look, a deep dive, a look at ourselves and for the first time in our city's history, we publicly apologized. the city of charleston apologized for our role, our direct role in slavery. and it just, i believe, helped send this additional message of

forgiveness, that love is stronger than hate and then lastly mayor berke as i'm sure you will find in years to come, we have commemorated the annual heinous crime that occurred with a community celebration of that forgiveness that occurred, of the love that exists in our city, in our community and remind ourselves again and again of how important that is, not only to us, but help to share that message with everyone that we possibly can. it's so important. so, take you i wanted to share those thoughts with you. >> thank you so much mayor. [ applause ] any other

questions, comments? >> thank everybody for sharing and for how you have worked with your community and share some of this information here on a smaller different level and maybe some questions to get feedback later on. i'm impressed that you were able to get the media to work with you, to not radicalized what happened in your city. unfortunately, some of the hate crimes, it's not always physical violence is a verbal violence. and sometimes it's very hard to figure out how to help a victim who knows exactly who was attacked by the verbal hate crime and how to figure it out so maybe there is some strategies that can be passed around so we can figure out how to help our cities and our victims. not the victims, when you're hit with a verbal hate crime, how to handle it, how to empower the victim for not feeling that they have done something wrong just because of

the color of their skin or their religion they practice, or the sex that they are or who they choose to love. and then also, i think the idea of being able to teach our children not to give in to the hate, has reached the parents because usually our kids are learning this from their parents or their grandparents, or their adult social network. so what do we do? i would love to know more on how to stop this and the adl is something that's near and dear to my heart. there are some things i'm in a smaller city and you don't expect anything to happen. my sister city is right here, as we know what happened a year ago next, in a couple weeks. so you don't think it's coming close to home. so maybe there is also a way, we have active shooter training, but what can we do for, exactly active hate training, what can we all do together to get this information out. because in this day and age,

i'm sorry there should be no hate, there should just be acceptance of everybody's individuality and how to love from that and how to move on and accept the differences of just maybe naove comments but i put it out there. [ applause ] >> yes, thank you. i would recommend, and this will go directly to what you were talking about, that bill moyers wrote a piece called talking back to hate speech. and you go to bill moyers.com, the title was "talking back to hate speech" amazing, very helpful advice that you will find in that story. >> yes, mayor? >> christina which husky i'm the mayor of parkland. we actually had had some hate crimes before our event, we had swastikas and horrible hate language. and our communities very

proactive with this. we have a very strong interfaith coalition that every thanksgiving on the tuesday before thanksgiving we have entered the service where we celebrate all the. and i think as much as talking back when it happens, it is important to fill the space when nothing is happening. and when the tree of life shooting happened, we also had another interfaith ceremony in our community to show that when you attack one, you attack all, there is no different and we don't just talk about it, we act on it. there was a rock shabbat event that friday in our public park i'm a catholic but i went to the rock shabbat because i wanted to show that i wouldn't be afraid and we need to always step up, our actions speak

louder than our words and when our actions don't mirror our words, our words mean nothing. and it's also just in our day- to-day lives when we hear people saying that a wrong, call them out! it can be none done nicely. but we do have an active lgbt queue that's coming in and will be doing free training with our staff on just being a little more aware of how they interact with others. and i keep going back to mayor fisher with the compassionate cities. if we take up all the space and make sure that everything is done with purpose and done with compassion, we are living what the example is we want to see. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> so thanks so much, i just wanted to make, say two things. number one is that response to

your comment about the words and how people respond to them. when i decided to make, do the counsel against hate, some of the people on my staff actually pushed me to say against hate crimes. and, i purposely did not use the word crimes in that it is a counsel against hate. because i thought that certainly hate crimes is a piece of this, it goes to something deeper. and so thinking about this in terms of not just hate crimes, but hate is important to me. the second piece i would to say is we have, every 90 days, i'm sure a lot of you all doing the same thing. we have a prayer breakfast, we gather religious leaders from across the city and, they form a great backbone to talk about this, they want to talk about this. but if anybody wants a copy of

our work plan, i'm happy to share it, we actually have a work plan for the counsel against hate. and so if you contact me, i'm more than happy to share that, because if you do something like that, it's easy port just to be platitudes and we want to actually work. and so, it's hard to figure out exactly what you do to make it real, and we are still struggling to get everything done that we want to get done, but we are happy to share anything we've done so far with people who would want it. so, i mentioned earlier you don't want to get into a debate with the victim of know it's a hate crime, yes it's a hate crime. those are not helpful at all. you also don't want to get into the debate of well, didn't rise to the level of a crime? was it a freedom of speech issue? we document, not only do we document hate crimes, we document what we call bias incidents. so even if it doesn't rise to

the level of a hate crime we will make a report. and then if you have something that occurs a week later in that same area, you might have a suspect or certainly a lead that you can work on because you documented one or two bias incidents that may have led up to a hate crime later on. and again, it's helpful in terms of sending the message to the victims of these incidents that we care about them enough to keep track of them. >> thank you. michael? >> so we brought 20 copies, hardcopies of the extremism report. you are welcome to come and get them at the end. but the number one policy recommendation that we make in this report, and i'm sorry to say after tree of life when we were doing our policy agenda, the number one policy recommendation is speak out. and for civic leaders and mayors to use your bully pulpit, obviously not just in the aftermath of a horrible incident, but finding ways, whether it's every 90 days,

regular events commemorations, unfortunately to be able to use your bully pulpit to speak out against hate. it is impossible to overstate the importance of that. >> thank you. our last comment? >> mayor buckley from the city of annapolis, our hate crime was an attack on five innocent journalists were attacked. and free speech is at the foundation of our democracy and we have to stand up against them. and i have to say to every mayor that is in this room, it can happy in any of your cities. many of us would not expect these things to happen in our cities but we have a president who says it's okay to get even. we have a president who says it's okay to push this guy in a car and rough ride him home. that's not what mayors do. that's why i am so glad to be a

mayor and proud to be in this conference with you because that's not the sort of leadership you see at our level. we did a drill a week before our shooting, i stood in a local catholic high school and watch the guys break through the back door with blank guns and we simulated gunshot wounds and we watch this whole thing play out in front of her eyes. one of the journalists who was covering then was killed in the newsroom a week later. when exactly the same thing happened to her. so i am asking the mayors that are here and affected by this to come to our g-77 summit, there 77 cities in this city who have been affected by mass shootings in the centuries. that does include columbine so we had to draw a line somewhere. so we are having a conference on that and i think if we and together, if we work as a unit, we can make a difference, thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you mayor. and so, we have heard a series of concrete suggestions,

strategies, opportunities for action. and we know more than anything that mayors are about action, data is important, both the collection and reporting of data. and even if your state doesn't collect data, this is an opportunity to impress upon them the importance of it. we also know that the development of an ecumenical or interfaith strategy is important in cities. and let me just put my constitutional law hat on. it is not a violation of the first amendment to work with the leaders of the safe community in your city. you can't establish a church, but you can certainly work with the church and other communities of faith. and i'm

going to tell you, if you're in this business anytime, you're going to see how important that is. we also talk about the fact that local ordinances, some of us can enact local ordinances that will assist in the process. we know that the strong city's network is available to us. and we also understand the importance of prevention. an inherent in that prevention is education for our children, education for adults, and sometimes, every now and then our children are the best teachers. and so if we go into our schools and provide the information, there is a great possibility that these children will take that home and begin to cause their parents to think.

throughout this discussion, i have heard the word purpose, care, support, compassion, forgiveness, introspection and, at the base of all of those words and sentiments is the word that is the direct opposite of hate, and that is love. so, you know, as mayors, we are so inclined to be concrete, right? we want to see a report, we went to see the study, we want to do these things. but every now and then, i would suggest to you that we serve best when we demonstrate the love and compassion that we have, not just for our cities, because you really can't love a city, but for the citizens that we serve. and so thank you for being here and let's keep fighting out,

fighting against, speaking out and working against hate. thank you. [ applause ] um, one last thing. please join me in thanking laura waxman who is the engineer for all of this today. [ applause ] this weekend the c-span

cities tour take you to buy celia california with the help of our comcast cable partners. >> we are the largest, one, two and three in the nation for agriculture. we are the largest county in the nation for dairy products, so as a result of that, we have a lot of industry here that is based on agricultural needs. >> saturday on book tv at noon eastern, a visit with local author jerry allman, as he shares stories of most notable criminals. in his book wild tulare county, outlaws rogues and rebels. >> tulare county was remote, it has the mountains right next door which made great hideouts were people on the run and the swamps east of buy celia for example were great hideouts for people on the run, and so if

you are going to practice criminal tivoli, you want to be able to do that without getting caught and so it made the county made it pretty convenient for outlaws to hide out. and on sunday at 2 p.m. on american history tv, we will explore the city and history of the region's agriculture and its impact today. what c-span cities tour saturday at noon eastern on c- span 2 and sunday at 2 p.m. on american history tv on c- span three working with our cable affiliates as we explore the american story. indiana governor eric holcomb gave his annual state of the state address earlier this month in indianapolis. he talked about hate crime legislation, increasing he