he previously -- brindisi to congress. before that he was an attorney in private practice. representative antonio delgado was also an attorney prior to his election to congress. but he also had a brief career as a rapper releasing one album a couple years after his graduation from harvard law school. max rose was elected to represent the 11th district which includes staten island and southern brooklyn. he previously served in the u.s. army, including leading a platoon in afghanistan where he was wounded by an i.e.d. earning a purple heart and bronze star. representative joseph morelle joined the house a few weeks ahead of his classmates after winning both a seat in the 116th congress and an election to fill the seat of late congresswoman louise slaughter for the remaining weeks of the 115th congress. congressman morelle had previously served in the new york state assembly since 1991, including five years as majority leader. new congress, new leaders,

watch it all on c-span. >> and now mayors and gun control advocates discuss gun violence and hate crimes in their cities at the winter meeting of the u.s. conference of mayors in washington, d.c. in this portion the mayors from annapolis, maryland, parkland, florida, charleston, south carolina, and pittsburgh, pennsylvania, share stories about the mass shootings associated with hate crimes. this is about an hour. >> good morning, everyone. my name is karen wolfson and i am honored to serve as the chair of the criminal and social justice committee for the conference of mayors and i ave the distinked 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 center's -- the conference intentional action on helping us to do that. in this session we will discuss a key factor in ensuring that not only are our cities inclusive but that we protect ur residents against those who do not value them for particular traits that they possess. but we send a message we do not tolerate the ill treatment of people based on their gender, their sex, their race, their driver and any other

of hate crime. for many years, the conference of mayors has had a strong policy condemning hate crimes and urging mayors to speak out against them whenever they occur and to ensure that there is reporting at the local level as well as to the f.b.i. so today we are going to begin with a briefing on the increase in hate crimes that we're seeing across the country by the anti-defamation league and in the person of their counsel, michael leiberman, who has been to this meeting before. who was presented at our meeting before and who has been working hand-in-hand with the

conference on these issues. the a.d.l. has been a great partner with the conference of mayors and that partnership was strengthened with our joint development of a compact to combat hate extremism and bigotry, which was signed by 325 mayors shortly after charlotte. want to acknowledge, even though mr. leiberman will do the presenting, that jonathan greenblat, the a.d.l. national director and c.e.o. is present. i knew he said he had to catch a flight. so he is going to catch a flight. hen we'll hear, after michael, will to who ill

discuss a city's response to the deadliest acts of anti-semitism to ever occur. the mass shooting at the tree of life synagogue. and i want to commend you and your cities who came together in unity with the folks at the tree of life. in the city of gary, we had a unity solution at our synagogue temple bethel and i commend members and council members who did the same thing. we'll hear from our colleague and actually i think bloomberg classmate, mayor burke who will discuss the council against hate which he has established in his city and our cleanup hitter is our friend chief tom

manger, who is the police chief in montgomery county, maryland and a close working partner the mayors and police chiefs convene to work on issues like these together. before we hear from our speakers, i want to go around he room very quickly and ask all of the mayors present to introduce themselves and we ill start with mayor peduot. -- peduto. >> i'm the mayor of pittsburgh. >> mayor of los angeles, california. >> mayor of rochester, minnesota. >> mayor from honolulu. [indiscernible] >> john hamilton, bloomington, indiana. > mark myers, greenwood,

indiana. [indiscernible] [indiscernible] [indiscernible] >> mayor of santa monica, california. >> robert store, mayor of danville in the san francisco bay area. >> mayor of the all-american city, desoto, texas. >> mayor of union city, alifornia. [indiscernible] >> sean riley, mayor of waukeshau, wisconsin. >> sharon westin, mayor of baton rouge, louisiana. >> mayor of st. petersburg, florida. >> mayor of houston. > mayor of sunrise, florida. [indiscernible]>> mayor for the

city of vancouver, washington. >> mayor of hillsboro, oregon. >> mayor of largo, massachusetts. evan spicer, mayor of framingham, massachusetts. karen: thank you, again. before i turn it over to mr. leiberman, i want to advise everyone that we are live on c-span and i want to thank our cops director who is here today, for his support, for his leadership and for always being a partner to the conference of mayors and, of course, the cities that we serve. so, mr. leiberman. mr. lieberman: thanks, mayor. good morning. still have a few more moments in morning. it's an incredibly important time for this panel. it's a polarized time in our country.

there are many communities in our cities that are feeling vulnerable, alone. there is much we can do to buck them up. the u.s. conference of mayors has been a leader on this issue for 30 years. want to give a shutout to laura waxman who has done extraordinary work, great deal of work. they are improving data collection, on training programs, legislation, like the matthew shepard hate crimes prevention act which passed about 10 years ago. i have five minutes. 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 in

many of the cities that are represented here. the 2017 audit documented almost 2,000 anti-semitic incidents of 57% increase over 2016. it was the largest single year increase ever. the best national data comes rom the f.b.i. passed in 1990, the hate crimes statistic act collecting data from 18,000 police departments from around the country. in 2017, the most recent data, almost 7,200 hate crimes reported from 16,000 police departments around the country, 7% increase over 2016. there was an 18% increase in race-based hate crimes, 16% in crimes against african-americans. african-americans have always been since 1990, the plurality of all the hate crimes reported

to the f.b.i. a 20% increase in crimes against asia-pacific americans. 63% increase in crimes against native americans. crimes against arab americans doubled in 2017. a 24% increase in crimes against latinos. religious-based crimes increased 23% and crimes against 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% of the population and yet 50% to 80% of the religion-based crimes against jews and jewish institutions. crimes against muslims in 2017 according to the f.b.i. decreased slightly, but still the third largest numbers ever since 1990 and crimes based on sexual orientation increased %.

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 peduto in a moment, the most deadly hate crime against jewish americans in american history. the mayor of of charleston is here, the mother emmanuel church in july of 2015 where nine people were killed by a white supremacist and the two black grandparents killed in a kroger parking lot in jefferson town, kentucky, outside of louisville. this is the report that a.d.l. issued just this week. there is a link to it in your app. the u.s. conference of mayors app has a lot of resources that i'll be mentioning. this report came out this week.

every single one of the 50 extremist murders in 2017 were committed by right wing extremists, that's not been the case in the past. it was the case this year. third, mayors are problem solvers. that's what you do. that's why you go to work in the morning. that's what gets you up to do your work. we know we cannot outlaw hate, bigotry, anti-semitism, racism, no executive order you are going to be able to promulgate will end homophobea or any of these isms. i worked on the federal matthew shepard and james byrd jr. hate crimes prevention act for 13 years, working in coalition with the u.s. conference of mayors, chief manger from the major city chiefs, the international association of chiefs of police, but i know and you know that the law is a plunt instrument when it comes to addressing hate -- blunt instrument when it comes to addressing hate. it's much better to prevent it in the first place and this is why we're having this panel at this time.

this is a best practices panel. you'll be hearing from the panelists about ideas, we're supposed to have a lot of ideas. we have a lot of ideas. fter the white supremacy rally, street fights, murder in charlottesville, a.d.l. and the conference of mayors delivered a compact, the mayor's compact also in your app, a 10-point plan. it's much, much more than, let's all get along, let's all "kumbayah" together, it includes speaking out, funding prevention programs, to be able to go forward in schools, training for police and community for police, celebrate culture and ethnic diversity like you'll hear from the mayor of chattanooga in a moment. inclusive and compassionate cities is a demonstration of

the mayors' conference commitment. mayor benjamin, mayor fisher's involvement ensure this will be a legacy involvement for the conference and the mayors' conference commitment. mayor benjamin, mayor fisher's . every city should have a hate crime policy. if you go to the chattanooga website you'll find the hate crime policy of chattanooga on the website. there are things you can do next week to demonstrate that your resolve against hate crime and they're easy and don't require funding. you have a policy, you could create a policy. the international association of chiefs of police has a great model policy. it's in your app. you can just take the parts that you like from that, make it your own. every city should train its officers to identify, report, and respond to hate crime. every city should collect and report hate crime data, both to the state repository and to the f.b.i. in 2017, 92 cities over 100,000 in population either told the f.b.i. that they had zero hate crimes or they did not report

at all. that would be a really great figure that that were true. i have reason to believe that's not true. chief manger files every year from the montgomery county police. visibility and transparency is is a best practice, something to be applauded. finally, you do not have to create these resources on your own. you do not have to reinvent the wheel. as i mentioned, every resource i mentioned, including some other ones, are in the app. great resources from the f.b.i. i wish i could say we are going to solve this problem after this panel or maybe even in advance of the 88th winter meeting but we won't. implementation of the mayor's compact, think about the ideas that will present on this panel, will be important and thank you for the commitment you have made to these issues. >> thank you so much, mr. lieberman. i hope that you will check out hose resources on the app.

i am certainly looking forward to seeing that report. mayor bill, you and your city have been through quite a bit ver the last year. please share your response and how you all are working through this. mayor peduto: thanks, mayor. i can remember exactly where i was when i first heard it. i was with a sergeant, my chief of staff was in the back seat. we were going up the hill to mercy hospital to check on a couple of the officers who had been injured, and on the radio they said it. it was described as the deadliest act of anti-semitism in american history, asterisk, pittsburgh. you never think about that, when you're a mayor, you're thinking about your city, your city will go down in history for this.

and it would never happen at tree of life. because tree of life is literally mr. rogers' neighborhood where fred rogers lived two blocks away. stargell willie lived. 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. and they embrace that. it's my neighborhood. i live seven blocks away. those words just hit like a -- like somebody punching you in the stomach and taking the wind right out of you. everything that you thought bout your city is completely changed forever. and of course pittsburgh being the city that it is, the victims themselves were friends. they were family members of friends that you've known for 20 years. you get to go through this

rocess of trying to operate and act rational at a time when the emotions really are taking over and it becomes difficult. you hear about the stories 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 there of a person holding an assault rifle aimed right at him and throwing up his hand 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 in order to be able to go to another synagogue. it's about the officers that were running in not really sure where he was and the rabbi who was hiding in a closet and all

those stories start to add on and add on. and you understand that what you're dealing with is at the highest level of evil. that there's an evil when a life is taken. there's extra evil when it is a whole different level those that can't help themselves. whether it's two brothers who were 54 years old who have pecial 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 their religion is. and then there's an entirely different level of evil when it occurs at sanctuary, at the place where you are safe. and then you start realizing that you're dealing with a heavier level of evil when hate

crimes happen. but let me tell you this. it was very apparent, very early on. in that darkness of evil there is light. and you will see that light. saw it before noon. 10:00 a.m. i get the call, 10:05 i'm on site, i'm there before members of the swat team arrive. we're standing at that outside orner, rain falling on us, cold morning, and by 11:00 we have the person, are taking him to the hospital. look around the corner, around that same time and i see my friend wazi muhammad, 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? and he said, because we need to be here. it was the monday afterwards and i was taking police officers to different schools so that the kids who were in those schools, whether it was the community day school or the others, would understand the police were there to protect them, that they didn't have to be afraid because there was 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. as we walk out of the school, a minivan drives by and it stops. 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 glass vase of flowers in it and he said this is for you. and i said what's this for? he said because you're my

neighbor and i love you. and i said hold on a minute. i walked up to the car. and i looked in the front seat where his mom is sitting and the entire front seat is filled with glass vases with flowers that they're handing 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 was thousands of people who marched for many different issues, marched against violence, against youth by police, march ed for social justice. as they passed zone four of the pittsburgh police station, they stopped and clapped 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 working together, 10 years of 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 the worst time, the most evil, there's something good you can do and it will make you feel better too, that you're 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 to 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 followed jewish law. we allowed for the proper time period after 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 it was 80 years ago today that kristallnacht happened. t was 80 years ago that people burned down synagoguing in czechoslovakia, germany and austria and police looked the other way. in pittsburgh they ran into the buildings with bullets flying at them. it was 80 years ago today jews were killed and politicians turned their back. in pittsburgh today we stand

shoulder-to-shoulder, democrat and republican, to say never again. it was 80 years ago today that community leaders allowed 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 expression stronger than hate, showing the steelers symbol with the star of david. it said 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]

mayor freeman-wilson: thank you, mayor bill. earlier today in another session you talked about a club that nobody wants to be in and mayor burke is a member of that club. the club where in cities that -- there have been mass shootings. and i just want to commend mayor burke, too, on his leadership and his response and would you please share that with us now? mayor burke: well, thank you. thank you, mayor. thanks to both of y'all. thanks to bill for your incredible leadership. this is a club that many of us unfortunately now either are part of or think about being part of. in june of 2015, i was watching tv when one of my heroes, joe

riley, was on there describing what had happened in charleston at mother emanuel and i thought to myself, what must he be going through? ow 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 had 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 shot a recruiter for our armed forces.

and had been taken down by one of our officers who had walked into there to take care of the problem. this was a huge, a huge incident in our community. we're a patriotic city. we value our connection 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 take 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 are we going to say, and the first thing we said is, we're going to protect every single person. t 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. and we also said another rule that we put down was no one will be radicalized as a result of this incident. not one person will be radicalized as a result of what happened here today. this started us down the road f 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're all in this together in a really

critical way. so after we had done a lot of work and we had a great response, a lot of articles were written about chattanooga and our response afterwards. we were contacted by the state department and mike is here with the u.s. state department, secretary kerry had started something called the strong cities network, all about how you combat violent extremism and try to prevent these acts from occurring. i started going peer-to-peer, talking to other cities. they arranged that not just in the u.s. but all around the world. we had numerous visitors from places -- from the balkan areas to the middle -- to the far east. we've had tons of people and ried to learn what was happening. and this counterviolent extremism work is actually really important.

there are people on the edges of our cities 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, many of you do incredible work at reaching out to these young men an women as we know it's mostly men. because we are worried that they're going to join some kind of group where they perpetrate violence in our cities. another thing they can do is get radicalized and commit some horrific act of terrorism. as part of that we started talking about an international group of mayors through the trong cities network, to combat hate and i thought to myself, why am i talking to a bunch of international mayors bout what to do all across the world and we're not doing this in our city the way we should? so i stood up last year at

state of the city and said we were going to form a council against hate and when you say something like that, it can , council ttle hokey against hate who is against it. what i found is people were hungering for this. particularly in our religious community. they see this, they feel it, they're worried about it. they were dying to participate in something like this. i would gather community leaders and we started working our very first was to reach out to the anti-defamation league they came in and did a session with us. the newspaper has turned over ts editorial page to us where members of the council against hate are writing about it. we're gathering information. our work is ongoing. i want to say to everybody first of all think about getting involved in the strong cities network. i assume mike is here so if you feel the need he can take your name. ut second of all, there is a

hunger for talking about hate. people see it on their phones they feel it in their lives, they watch it from our highest leaders in our country, and it is 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're mayor. thank you all. mayor freeman-wilson: thank you. [applause] mayor freeman-wilson: thank you, mayor andy. earlier you heard about the montgomery county report that has been published under the leadership of teague manger. would you share your insight with us now? mr. manger: first, let me thank mayor berke and mayor peduto 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 kinds of awful, tragic incidents when you have -- when your boss is doing the right thing and orking with you. this truly is what was described up here by these two mayors is certainly, it is a club you don't want to be a member of. so let's think about, you know, and these -- unfortunately we have more and more mass shootings around the country. you see the statistics where the numbers we have had since the 1980's, how they're increasing exponentially. but the majority of the hate crimes, the vast majority of hate crimes you'll deal with in your city, aren't going to get this kind of national coverage. they're going to be vandalisms, they'll be threatening letters, they'll be swastikas spray painted on a school bus. they'll be 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're going to have some that are targeted to people because their ethnicity, their sexual orientation, their gender preference. all of those are folks that are the most typical victims of these hate crimes. the majority of hate crimes are going to be vandalism or graffiti, there'll be some physical assault. some minor assaults that don't result in someone's death. verbal intimidation, written intimidation. these are the kinds of things you'll deal with every day. let me give you a couple of recommendations on how to deal with those. because if you ignore those and only pay attention -- you wait for the big one to happen and that's when you react, your community -- you are going to have a lot of victims that feel like they're not being cared frankly not -- and

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

give that statement condemning that act. and using that bully pulpit to remind the community we're not going to tolerate this kind of hate. so putting out 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's 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're paying to them 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, just some -- somebody spray painting on a wall or leaving a nasty note for somebody. putting something in someone's mailbox. attacking their sexual orientation. things like that. and we've been able to -- we were able to determine the perpetrator in over half the cases. here's the interesting point. in 67%, and these are the ones that we found 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 that -- i think that one of the things that that really calls on us to do is to use this as a -- we've got the information together to educate young people about the harms of

targeting anyone through a threat, through hate or rid -- ridicule based on ethnicity, race, appearance, manner of speech or any trait that's protected by law. the fact of the matter is, and we could have another whole ession on dealing with the adolescent mind. the adolescent mind is different. it's different than the white supremacists who have an agenda. you deal with them differently. maybe even half of our hate crimes are committed by folks whose brain is still developing. 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, maybe making -- helping them develop their brains on these kinds of topics. so the last thing i want to

mention in closing is, there are sometimes people struggle with, was a particular incident, was it 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, look, we're looking at this and we're looking at it with the possibility that this may be a hate crime. there's nothing wrong with saying that. if it turns out it is a hate crime, you're on it. if it's not you don't have to get into a public debate with a victim. because one of the criteria, by the way, whether something is a hate crime, one of the criteria is, does the victim feel that they were targeted -- that they feel they were targeted because of their, you know, race, religion, ethnicity, or some other characteristic? i think it's important for us 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 occurring in our community, the majority of them, it sends the right message to the community, it makes the victims feel like you know what they paid attention to it, they care about it and they're condemning it. those are the three big things that we want to do for our victims of these crimes. mayor freeman-wilson: thank you so much, chief. [applause] at this time we will accept questions and comments from ayors. mayor. >> thank you, madam chair. i'm john tecklenbburg from charleston. i stepped out of the room for just a minute. i heard you mention charleston because, yes, folks, we're a

member of this club and mayor peduto, when you were speaking, it brought back such memories for me. very similar circumstances in charleston other than our killer intentionally came to tart a race war. and rather than just a distinction of faith, he simply murdered nine people in a house of worship blased on the color of their skin, solely on that. -- based on the color of their skin, solely on that. mayor andy, you're right. mayor riley was the mayor right when it occurred, i was elected five months later. it changed my life. it changed the life of our city. and you know, this past weekend, during martin luther king jr. 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 forgive. by that measure, i'd like to say that charleston is one of the most lovingest 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 f brief things if i may. one, even though -- and so appropriate to community policing and the cops program, 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 has been one of the most intensive community engagements between police and citizens that i think you could imagine. i'd 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 hate crime so that when those more misdemeanor things happen, like a swastika or graffiti or someone hatefully pushing someone because of their sexual orientation or whatever, we're able to add another criminal offense locally through our city of charleston hate 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 look at ourselves and from -- see the rest of this conversation on our website c-span.org. type u.s. conference of mayors in the search bar. the u.s. house is about to return. members are expected to offer brief speeches. legislative business gets under way at 4:45 eastern today with work on several financial services bills. and now to live coverage of the u.s. house. mr. capuano: corporation corporation --