the next face is familiar across the world but new to congress. utah elected mitt romney to the u.s. senate. he served as massachusetts governor earlier in the 2000s. before that headed up the 2002 salt lake city winter olympics. this was his second run for u.s. senate. his first was against the late massachusetts senator ted kennedy in 1994. utah also has a new member of the house. democrat ben mcadams, now represents the state's 4th district, the former mayor of salt lake county is the only democrat in utah's congressional delegation. new congress, new leaders. watch it all on c-span. mayors thefrom across the country met in d.c. to talk about gun violence and hate crimes in their cities.

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 a very important topic, a very grave topic. earlier, we just had an excellent discussion in what mayors can do to build inclusive and compassionate cities. and the conference centers -- the conference intentional action on helping us to do that. in this session, we are going to discuss a key factor in ensuring

that not only are our cities inclusive, but that we protect our residents against those who do not value them for particular traits that they possess. not only that we protect them against, but that we send a message that we do not tolerate the ill treatment of people based on their gender, their sex, their race, their religion and any other driver 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 fbi. 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 adl has also 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.

i want to acknowledge, even though mr. leiberman will do the presenting, that jonathan greenblat, who is the adl's national director and ceo is present. mr. greenblat. just saw him. i knew he said he had to catch a flight. he is going to catch a flight. then we'll hear, after michael, from mayor bill paduto who will discuss 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. 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 celebration at our

synagogue, temple bethel, and i want to commend so many mayors and council members who did the same thing. we'll then hear from our colleague and actually i think bloomberg classmate, mayor burke who will discuss the mayor's council against hate, which he has established in his city. our cleanup hitter is our friend chief tom manger, who 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 our speakers, i want to go around

the room very quickly and ask all of the mayors present to introduce themselves and we will start with mayor paduto. >> i'm the mayor of pittsburgh. >> mayor rosetts, california. mayor kim norton, rochester, minnesota. >> mayor kirk caldwell from honolulu. >> good morning. mayor dion washington, mayor of the city of north chicago, illinois. >> john hamilton, bloomington, indi in indiana. >> john decklanburg, charleston, south carolina. >> nancy vaughn, greensburg, north carolina. >> tom magee, lynn, massachusetts. mark meyers, greenwood, indiana. >> denny doyle, city of beaverton, oregon. >> ted weaver, mayor of portland, oregon. >> colleen davis, mayor of santa monica california. >> mayor of danville and san

francisco bay area. >> mayor of the all american city of desoto, texas. >> mayor of union city, california. >> mayor of san leandro, california. >> sean riley, mayor of wakashaw, wisconsin. >> rick riceman, st. peetersbur, florida. >> ann macnerny. >> mayor of marlboro, massachusetts. >> ivan spicer, mayor of framing ham, massachusetts. andy burke, mayor of chattanooga, tennessee. >> thank you again. before i turn it over to mr.

lieberman, i want to advise everyone that we are live on c-span and i want to thank our director, phil keith, for his support, his leadership, and for always being a partner to the conference of mayors and the cities that we zf serve. so, mr. lieberman? >> thanks. good morning. we 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 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. i want to give a shutout to laura waxman who has done

extraordinary work, leading this work. they are improving data collection, on training programs, legislation, like the matthew shepherd james byrd junior hate crimes prevention act which passed nearly ten 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, a 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 statistics act, collecting data from 18,000 police departments around the country. in 2017, the most recent data, there were almost 7,200 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, 16% increase in crimes against african-americans. african-americans have always been since 1990, the plurality of all the hate crimes reported to the fbi. 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. religion-based crimes increased

23%, and crimes against jews increased 37%. crimes against jews have always been between 50% and 80% of the religious-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 fbi actually decreased slightly, but still the third largest numbers ever since 1990. and crimes based on sexual orientation increased 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 peduto in a moment, the most deadly hate crime against jewish hate crimes, the mayor of charles tong 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 kentucky outside of louisville. this was the report that adl issued just this week. there's a link to it in your app, the u.s. conference of mayors app for this conference has a lot of resources that i'll be mentioning. this report came out this week. every single one of the 50 extremist murderers in 2017 were committed by right-wing extremists. that's not been the case in the past. that was the case this year. third, mayors are problem solvers. that's what you do.

that's why you get up to go to work in the morning. we know we cannot outlaw hate, bigotry, 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 act for 13 years, working with the u.s. conference of mayors, chief major, the international association of chiefs of police, but 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 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. after the white supremacy rally, street fights, murder in charlottesville, adl and compact

delivered a ten-point plan. it's much, much more than let's just get along and sing kumbaya together, it includes speaking out, funding prevention programs, to be able to go forward in schools, training for police and supporting community programs to celebrate cultural and ethnic diversity like you'll hear from the mayor of chattanooga, mayor burke in a few moments about his counsel. inclusive and compassionate cities is a demonstration of the mayors' conference commitment. mayor benjamin, mayor fisher's involvement ensures this will be a legacy involvement for the conference and that's great. 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 that show your resolve

against hate crimes and they're easy and don't require funding. you have a policy, you can create a policy. the international association of chiefs of police has a greatpol. every city should train its officers to identify, report and respond to hate crimes. every city should collect and report hate crime data, both to the state depository and the fbi. in 2017, 92 cities over 100,000 in population either told the fbi that they had zero hate crimes or they did not report at all. that would be a really great figure if it's true. i think it's not true. chief manager files every year from the montgomery county police this report on hate crimes. visibility and transparency is a best practice.

something to be applauded. financially, you don't have to create these resources on your own. you don't have to recreate the wheel. every resource i mentioned are in the app. great resources from the fbi. i wish i could say that we're going to solve this problem after this panel or maybe even in advance of the 88th winter meeting, but we won't. therefore implementation of the mayors' compact, thinking about the ideas that will be presented on this panel are important. thank you for the commitment that you have made to these issues. ... >> thank you so much, mr. lieberman. i hope you will check out those resources on the app. i'm looking forward to seeing that report. mayor bill, you and your city have been through quite a bit over the last year. please share your response and how you all are working through this. >> 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. that's where willie stargell lived. it's 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 about your city is completely changed forever forever. an of course pittsburgh being the city that it is, the victims themselves were friends. they were family members of friends that you'd then for 20 years. you get to go through this process 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 of how the first officer arrived, upon coming out of his vehicle, walking in front of the car,

looking in through the glass windows that are tinted, 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's in 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 evil of evil that occurs when it occurs buzz 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. an you start realizing that you're dealing with a heavier level of level when hate crimes happen. but let me tell you this -- and it was very apparent very early on. in that darkness of evil there is light. you will see that light. i saw it before 12 noon. 10:00 a.m. i get the call, 10:05

i'm on site. i'm there before members of the s.w.a.t. team arrive. we're standing out at that outside corner, rain falling on us, cold morning, and by 11:00 we have the person, are taking him to the hospital. i look around the corner at that same time, and i see my friend wazi muhammad, the executive director of the islamic center of pittsburgh. it wasn't just wazi standing at that corner. it was the entire board of the islamic center of pittsburgh. because they have their meetings on saturday mornings. as soon as they heard, they got in their cars and they went directly to the synagogue. i said why are you here? he said because we need to be here. it was the monday afterwards. i was taking police officers to the different schools so that the kids who were in those schools, whether it was the community day school would understand that the police

were there to be protect them. they didn't have to be afraid because there's a police officer there. and the officers themselves engaging with the kids, sharing their first names, asking how many kids want to be police officers. as we walk out of the school, a machineny van drives bminivan d stops, and my sergeant gets out of the car concerned that somebody wants to cause harm and a wrung guy, probably seventh or eighth grade, coming 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 walk 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're handing out to people all the 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, marched for social justice. as they passed zone four of pittsburgh police station, they stopped and clapped and they said thank you. the police came out. they hugged, they saw each other. why was that able to happen? sure it was in that evil that people wanted to be good, but it was ten years of building the interfaith dialogue in pittsburgh. ten years of jews and muslims and christians working together, ten years of getting to know each other and then becoming friends. it was a mother who thougaught

son the greatest lesson, taking him out in that van and being able to pass out those flowers, and letting him know the worst time and in the most evil, there's something good you can do. and it will make you feel better, too. but you'll 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 told me this. she said it was 80 years ago today that kristallnacht happened, it was 80 years ago today that people burned down synagogue s and police looked the other way. in pittsburgh they ran into the buildings with bullets flying at them. it was 80 years ago today that jewk were killed and politics 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 ] >> 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 in cities where 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? >> thank you. thank you, mayor. thanks to both of y'all. thanks, 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? 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 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 the facility where he 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 this 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 that we said is, we're 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. 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. 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 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 started something called the strong cities network, all about how you combat violent extremism and troy 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 far east. we had tons of people and tried to learn what was happening. and this counter-violent extremism work is actually really important. there are people on the edges of our cities everywhere, sometimes they turn to violence in ways 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 city. 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 strong cities 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're not doing this in our city the way we should? so i stood up last year at the state of the city and said we were going to form a counsel against hate. when you say something like that, you can sound a little hokey. council 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 turned over its editorial page to us, where member os they have 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. 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 y'all. >> thank you.

[ applause ] thank you, mayor andy. and earlier you heard about the montgomery county report that has been published under the leadership of teague manger. would you please share your insight with us now? >> yes, happy to. and first let me thank mayor burke 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 working with you. this truly is what was described up here by these two mayors is certainly a club you don't want

to be a member of. let's think about -- you know, these awful incidents, unfortunately we have more and more mass shootings around the country. you see the statistics, they have numbers since the 1980s, 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 vandalism, 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 they sexual

orientation, they gender preference, all of those are folks that are 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 and written intimidation. these are things that you will deal with every day. let me give you a couple recommendations to how to deal with those. if you ignore those and only pay attention -- you wait for the big one to happen, that's when you react, you are going to have a lot of victims that feel like they're not cared about and not -- and frankly, living in fear. every hate crime that occurs, you should work with your police chief. every hate crime should have a detective assigned to it. that's not a big a workload as you think.

you are going to count hate crimes in, hopefully, dozens maybe. i have a million population in my jurisdiction. we had about -- a little over 100 hate crimes last year. every one was assigned to a detective. even the swastika spraypoiainpa on a rest room wall. do you have more information? if you hear anything, make sure that here is the number you call. we can follow up on it. it may be one visit. put a press release out on each one. it gives you the opportunity to give that statement, condemning that act. using that bully pulpit to remind the community, we're not going to tolerate this kind of hate. 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 -- click on our 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. there might be something in there that you might find valuable. putting that information out every year to report to your community about hate crimes and the attention you are paying to them is -- sends the right message. one of the results of assigning a detective to each hate crime is that we were able to determine the perpetrator in about a little over half the cases. in some cases, just somebody spray painting something 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 have been -- we were able to determine the perpetrator in over half of the cases. here is the interesting point. in 67% -- these are ones 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 that -- i think one things that that really calls on us to do is to use this as -- we have 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, manner of speech or any trait that is protected by law. the fact of the matter is that -- we could have another whole session on dealing with adolescent minds.

a lot of these -- the adolescent mind is different than the white supremaci supremacists. you deal with them differently. maybe even half of our hate crimes are commited ted by folk whose brain is still developing. dealing with it through education should be a priority for all of us. in terms of preventing it happening, educating our kids, helping them develop their brains on these kinds of topics. the last thing i wanted to mention, just 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 publically on whether something was a hate crime or not. the best way to deal with it is

to say 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 are on it. if it turns out it's not, you don't have to get into a public debate with the victim. one of the criteria, by the way, of whether something is a hate crime, one criteria is the does the victim feel that they were targeted because of their 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 all -- that get national attention, but as we deal with all of them that are occurring at our community, which is the majority of them, it sends the right message to the community and it makes the victims feel like, you know what, they paid attention to it, they care about it and they are condemning it.

those are the three big things i think that we want do for our victims of these crimes. >> thank you so much, chief. [ applause ] at this time, we will accept questions and comments from mayors. mayor. >> thank you, madam chair. i stepped out of the room for just a minute. i heard you mention charleston because, yes, folks we are a member of this club. and may it brought back memorier me. very similar circumstances in charleston other than our killer intentionally came to start a race war. 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. mayor andy, you are right, mayor riley was the mayor when it occurred. i was elected five months later. it changed my life. it changed the life of our city. 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 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. what have we done since that time? i just wanted to share a couple of brief things, if i may. one, even though -- 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 is one of the most intensive community engagements between police and citizens that i think you could imagine. i would be glad to share further information about that project with any mayors that are interested. hate crimes, you should 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, tom, like a swastika being 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. 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 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 for the first time in our city's history, we publically apologized. the city of charleston apologized for our role, our direct role in slavery. it just, i believe, helped send this additional message of forgiveness, that love is stronger than hate. and then lastly, mayor bill, 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 and 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. thank you. i wanted to share those thoughts with you. >> thank you so much, mayor. [ applause ] any other questions, comments? yes, mayor. >> i thank everybody for sharing and for how you have worked with your communities and share this information here. on a smaller different level -- maybe this is some questions to get feedback later on. i'm impressed you were able to get the media to work with you

to not radicalize what happened in your city. unfortunately, some of the hate crimes is not always an image, it's a verbal violence. sometimes it's very hard to figure out how to help a victim who knows exactly who is attacked by the verbal hate crime and how to figure it out. maybe there's some strategies that could be passed around so we could figure out how to help our cities and victims not be victims. when you are 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, the religion they practice or who they choose to love. also, i think the idea being able to teach our children to not give in to the hate. how do we teach the parents? usually, our kids are learning this from their parents or grandparents or adult social network. what do we do? i would love to know more on how to stop this.

it's something very important and near and dear to my heart to figure out how we can work together. there are certain things that -- i'm in a smaller city. you don't expect anything to happen. my sister city is parkland. parkland, as we know what happened a year ago in a couple weeks. you don't think it's coming so close to home. maybe there's also a way to -- we have active shooter training. what can we do for -- exactly, active hate training. what can we do together to get this information out? in this day and age, i'm sorry, there should be no hate. there should be acceptance of everybody's individuality and learn to love from that and be able to move on and accept the differences. maybe a naive comment but i bring it out there. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> i would recommend -- this will go directly to what you were talking about. bill moyers wrote a speech.

go to billmoyers.com. the title wats talking back to hate speech. amazing. very helpful. the advice you will find in that story. >> yes, mayor. >> i'm the mayor of parkland. we actually had had some hate crimes prior to february 14th in our community. swastikas written, terrible language written. our community is very proactive with this stuff. everybody comes out immediately. we have a very strong inter-faith coalition that every thanksgiving on the tuesday evening before thanksgiving, we have an inter-faith service where we celebrate all faiths. and i think as much as talking back when it happens, it's important to fill the space when

nothing is happening. when the tree of life shooting happened, we also had another inter-faith ceremony in our community to show that when you attack one, you attack all. there is no difference. we don't just talk about it. we act on it. i'm a catholic. i went to a ceremony because i wanted to show i wouldn't be afraid. we need to always step up. our actions speak louder than our words. when our actions don't mirror our words, our words mean nothing. it's also just in our day to day lives. when we hear people saying things that are wrong, call them out. it can be done nicely. it needs to be said. we also have an active lgbtq group 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. i keep going back to mayor fisher with the compassionate cities. if we take up all the space and we make sure everything we do is done with purpose and done with compassion, we're living what the example that we want to see. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> thanks so much. just wanted to make -- say two things. number one is that in response to your comment about the words and how people respond to them, when i decided to make -- do the council against hate, some people on my staff pushed me to say against hate crimes. i purposefully did not use the word crimes in that. it's a council against hate.

i thought that certainly hate crimes is a piece of this. but it goes to something deeper. so i think thinking about this in terms of not just hate crimes but hate is important to me. the second piece i would just say is we have -- every 90 days, i'm sure a lot of you do the same thing, we have a prayer breakfast. we gather religious leaders from across the city. they form a great backbone to talk about this. they want to talk about it. if anybody wants a copy of our work plan, i'm happy to share it. we have a work plan for the council against hate. if you contact me, i'm more than happy to share that. because if you do something like that, it's easy for it to just be platitudes. we want to actually work. it's hard to figure out exactly what you do to make it real. we're still struggling to get

everything done that we want to get done. i'm happy to share anything that we have done so far with people who want it. >> i mentioned earlier, you don't want to get into a debate with a victim about no, it's a hate crime, yes, it's a hate crime. that's are not helpful at all. you also don't want to get into the debate of, did it 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. even if it doesn't rise to the level of a hate crime, we will make a report. if you have something occur 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. 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? >> thanks. i brought a -- we brought 20 copies of this, hard copies of the murder and extremist report. you are welcome to get them at the end. the number one policy recommendation that we make in this report -- i'm sorry to say, after tree of life, when we were doing our policy agenda, the number one policy recommendation is speak out. 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's impossible to overstate the importance of that. >> thank you. our last comment. >> our hate crime in our city, if you are not familiar with it, was an attack on five innocent

journalists gunned down in their newsroom. free speech is at the foundation of our democracy. we have to stand up against that. i have to say to every mayor in this room it can happen in any of your cities. all of us would not expect these things to happen in our city. but we have a president that says it's okay to get even. we have a president that says it's okay to push a guy into a car and rough ride him home. that's not what mayors do. that's why i'm so proud to be a mayor and proud to be in this conference with you all. that's not the sort of leadership you see in our level. we did a drill a week before our shooting. i stood in a local catholic high school and watched the guys break through the back door with blank guns. we had simulated gunshot wounds. we watched this play out in front of our eyes. one of the jurn liournalists co that event was killed in the

newsroom a week later, exactly the same thing happened to her. i'm asking the mayors that are here that have been affected by this to come to our g-77 summit. 77 cities in this country affected by mass shootings in this century. that doesn't include columbine. we had to draw a line somewhere. we are having a conference on that. if we ban together, if we work as a unit, we can make a difference. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, mayor. we have heard a series of concrete suggestions, strategies, opportunities for action. we know more than anything that mayors are about action. data is important, both the collection and the 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 inter-faith strategy is important in cities. 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 faith community in your cities. you can't establish a church. but you can certainly work with the church and other communities of faith. i'm going to tell you, if you are in this business any time, you are going to see how important that is. >> amen. >> 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 cities network is available to us.

we also understand the importance of prevention. inherent in that prevention is education for our children, education for adults, and sometimes every now and then, our children are the best teachers. if we go into our schools and provide the information, there's 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 words purpose, care, support, compassion, forgiveness, introspection. at the base of all of those words and sentiments is the word that is the direct opposite of hate, and that's love.

so, you know, in mayors with are so inclined to be concrete. right? we want to see a report. we want 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. thank you for being here. let's keep fighting out, fighting against, speaking against, working against hate. thank you. [ applause ] one last thing. please join me in thanking laura waxman who is the engineer for all of this. [ applause ]

over the last year, the word has seen what we always knew, that no people on earth are so fearless or daring or determined as americans. if there's a mountain, we climb it. if there's a frontier, we cross it. if there's a challenge, we tame it. if there's an opportunity, we seize it.

let's begin by recognizing that the state of our union is strong because our people are strong. >> the state of the union, first postponed because of the government shutdown, will take place tonight. watch as president trump delivers his state of the union address live from the house chamber, beginning at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, followed by the democratic response by former georgia gubernatorial candidate stacey abrams. live tonight at 9:00 eastern on c-span, cspan.org or listen with the free radio app. thursday, the house ways and means committee will discuss proposals related to presidential and vice-presidential tax returns. live coverage begins at 2:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span3.

mayors from san francisco and philadelphia talk now about their efforts to combat homelessness in their cities and their approach to criminal justice reform, drug addiction and access to health care. >> good morning. we are going to get started now. my name is eugene low. i'm a member of the conference staff. i'm on the conference staff. we are very pleased to see all of you here this morning for this best practice forum on new challenges and solutions to homelessness. it's my pleasure now to introduce the moderator for the first part of the program, christen caps, a staff writer with the atlantic city lab.

covers housing, architecture and politics. working on a story dealing with the government shutdown and how it is pushing low income renters to the brink of possible eviction. he looked at how landlords nationwide have shut their doors on renters receiving housing assistance. he previously worked as a senior editor for architect magazine. >> thank you so much. can you hear me out here? i'm going to introduce my fellow panelists. i suspect you already know them. since taking office in january 2016, mayor jim kenny has implemented a progressive agenda, creates more opportunity in every quarter of his city, which is philadelphia. he worked with city council to pass