 So welcome everyone, my name is Jay hedges. I'm a third year student here at st john's university school of law and I serve as the research and symposium director of the journal for civil rights and economic development. We're really glad that you've joined us for this symposium panel. Racial capitalism as legal analysis. I want to begin this morning with a brief comment about our journal in the background of the journal, as well as some context for today's topic. Before we start though, I think it's important to acknowledge and tribute the indigenous land in which st john's university is located. I'm going to end of the line up a. In 2010. What had been the journals of legal commentary was renamed the Journal of civil rights in economic development or j cred. To reflect its status as the official publication of the brown center for civil rights here at the law school. From then on the journal has been dedicated to exploring issues of social racial and economic justice in the law. And I think what's important about j cred is that it is situated to be a publication. Which breaches the divide in legal academia that has held so much power over legal scholarship over the years. And that's a segregation between issues of public law and private law. The realm of public law being considered the only appropriate space to discuss issues of identity based oppression covered in civil rights cases and anti discrimination litigation of constitutional law. The realm of private law on the other hand being the neutral economic space devoid of any considerations of identity or historical context. Where the law of contracts business organizations and property traditionally exist. And never the twain shall meet. There's no doubt that this arbitrary divide has been a major disservice to legal scholarship. And that's why I think the most important word in our journals title is the connector and civil rights and economic development. This makes us unique position to disrespect the divide promoting scholarship, which recognizes that racial justice and economic justice go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other. And that's one cannot grasp the full picture of the legal dynamics of any given social problem unless you bring both considerations to bear. And that brings us to today's topic racial capitalism as legal analysis. I won't venture to give a singular definition of racial capitalism maybe our panelists will will give you theirs. It's a necessarily expansive concept. I do want to draw out relevant aspects of racial capitalism as a foundation for our conversation today. And this is where the works of professors Athena mature and Carmen Gonzalez have been vital in mapping racial capitalism. They point out that racial capitalism is a global system characterized by exploitation, both of waged labor and often the unpaid or underpaid labor performed primarily by women. The creation or the confiscation of human non human or natural resources without a fair exchange of value and race making the creation of social hierarchies among humans in the assignment of superior or inferior status based on specific characteristics. The key to racial capitalism is that deep processes are carried out in the service of wealth accumulation and white supremacy. And important to recognize for our conversation today is that the processes of racial capitalism, exploitation, expropriation, colonization, racialization. are rooted in legal systems and enforced often brutally through legal mechanisms. Thank for instance, the topics which I'm sure our panelists will touch on today for closure, eviction gentrification, water shutoffs, water debt, police brutality. These forms of racialized violence that are carried out or legitimated by legal mechanisms. Racial capitalism though, while it's been explored in much more depth and for a longer time in the disciplines of history and sociology. It's only recently been explored in legal scholarship. We're fortunately among a group of journals, which are now publishing on this previously under explored concept in the law. And this is actually as far as I'm aware, the third panel on racial capitalism in the law, just this month. We're proud to join this conversation through the incredible work of these three panelists. Today today will proceed. We will have brief presentations from each of the panelists about articles that are relevant to the topic, followed by a moderated discussion and then plenty of time for question and answer from the audience. For questions. Feel free to put them in the chat. I would also like for you. Once we have the specified question and answer time for you to unmute yourself if you're comfortable put yourself on camera and ask the question yourself rather than me rephrasing what you may have written in the chat, but feel free to also put some thoughts or comments in the chat. So without further ado, our panelists today are Chantoli Huck associate professor of law at CUNY Marissa Jackson so incoming assistant professor here at St. John's Law, which we are very excited about. And John low associate professor at CUNY law. We will first hear from professor talk about her article, integrating a racial capitalism framework into first year contracts, a pathway to anti capitalist lawyering. Great. Will you give me like 2 minutes. Yeah, just because I want to make sure that we give time for for questions of first of all, thank you so much, Jay and to the editors of jcred for putting together this symposium as you mentioned. This is a topic that has around for a while, but has been sort of newly discovered within legal academy and to have St. John sort of being the sort of forefront of that is very exciting. I see a number of familiar faces and names. And so, yeah. And so I won't shout out in delicately, but thank you all for for being here this morning. So, I'm going to start with a quote by Angela Harris. We go to forward to use a racial capitalism, which is a recent publication that I think sums up my essay. I think she does it beautifully, but I'll still keep my 10 minutes of comments. Um, racial capitalism that engages with the law helps advocates dream into being new forms of governance. And so, in many ways, my essay by engaging with the contracts and the law of contracts seeks to do precisely that. Um, contracts, as you know, is a mandatory foundational course for all law students. And by engaging racial capitalism with a doctrine of contracts. I hope that it provides students a pathway to public interest lawyering. And I guess I would go a little bit bolder to say anti capitalist lawyering. And I'm actually borrowing the definition of anti capitalism from professor mature regarding how the, the market redistributes and allocates resources for the material conditions of life. So won't go too much into that definition. It's in the paper. So in my brief time, what I wanted to do is just reference what I mean by racial capitalism. As, as Jay mentioned, this is a term that is contested and being elaborated. And there are different sort of intellectual strands that I think we need to sort of pull together as we're talking about racial capitalism. And then I will just very quickly sort of highlight some of the key points that I make in the essay. And I hope that that would then sort of generate some, some discussion. So racial, and I'll be periodically looking, looking down. So apologies for that. So racial capitalism can be described as the mutual interdependence of racism and capitalism. A form of capitalism that relies on and is maintained by the exploitation and reproduction of racial differences. It functions precisely by assigning measurable benefits based on race. And in this respect, law is definitely implicated in that function. Scholar Ruth Wilson Gubmore often cited quote sums it well capitalism requires inequality and racism enshrines it. Perhaps scholar Cedric Robinson most popularized the concept of racial capitalism in his book. Black Marxism, which actually was just recently republished with the forward with Robin Kelly. But I think I want to draw from scholar. This is a piece burden, Steli, who discusses in her piece modern US racial capitalism that actually many black anti capitalist thinkers of his time articulated this view from South African scholars and a lot of anti colonial scholars. So in this way, racial capitalism is while being discussed in the context in the United States is very much also an anti imperial and anti colonial theoretical perspectives. A four mother or four thinker of racial capitalism, but often gets ignored is Claudia Jones. Claudia Jones is a Trinidadian black communist feminist from Harlem. She discusses the intersection of capitalism feminism and racism. And Steli sort of defines racial capitalism broadly as a racially hierarchical political economy constituting war and militarism imperialism and exposed appropriation a lot of what Jay sort of defined earlier. But I want to also say in light of the history of Claudia Jones and the combo he river collective, the racial capitalism is ultimately a black feminist enterprise and political project. And that of global scholars of the global south. So any anti racist project must at its core be feminist. And this response to a questions I often get as a woman of color is what about gender, you're always talking about race. And here I want to sort of invoke Chandra Mahante's sort of concept of a transnational praxis, where she talks about to be anti capitalist into the anti racist that when I'm talking about anti racism or racial capitalism, I'm also inherently talking about feminism. So, in invoking racial capitalism, I'm really bringing into the fold, these multiple formulations and contest stations. And in its present iterations of racial capitalism and I think this journal and the scholarship, you know, kind of continues that. I think it's really important to, to note is that racial capitalism is a radical perspective. When Cedric Robinson is writing black Marxist was very much really involved in radical movements. Many of the scholars who have been engaging with racial capitalism have also been engaged in movement work. So for me, racial capitalism is also a theoretical praxis in the sense that it's not something just for us as academics to, you know, sort of ponder on, but it's actually something that gives us some insight into activism. And I would say in this case, lawyering in the legal academy. I think Jean has already mentioned that critical race theory hasn't sufficiently engaged with the topic of racial capitalism. So I think with Angela Harris is forward, we will see more of that engagement. I'd like to, I think that CRT scholar Cheryl Harris and whiteness and property, although doesn't explicitly mention racial capitalism in in essence describes the way in which law is implicated in the reproduction of racism and inequality. I think that whiteness has its own social identity and value. Professor Jackson Stowe's work on whiteness as contract, I think really develops that scholarship further. So it's important to again stress that both CR critical race theory and racial capitalism, both while originating as a by academics and in the academy is ultimately a movement theoretical approach. So the essay, I tried to make sort of three key points about why racial capitalism is important to the study of contracts and for first year students. And I do this essentially and I mean, the paper kind of goes into detail and so I'm going to just give you the highlights of those points in the interest of time. And I think one of the things is that the racial capitalism provides a critical analytic lands to the study of contracts, allowing students to challenge its epistemology, it's, it's foundation, it's core that we take for granted. Some of the concepts of neutrality, objectivity and universalism that gets sort of presented as normalized, particularly through neoclassical economic theory racial capitalism serves to counteract that. It illuminates the way that law and market structures maintain racial subordination. And I think, and then finally, it reveals limits of equitable contracts, you know, one of the areas as contracts professors, we think that equitable theories like restitution or promise or a stop will is going to sort of solve the deficiencies of contract. That's the place where justice sort of parks itself. And I think racial capitalism up ends that idea and shows the limits of a racial cap shows the limits of those equitable theories. Let me see how am I doing on time. About 2 more minutes. Yeah. So, so in the piece, I deconstruct Kirk see, which is a kind of foundational case that most law students read. I won't go into the specifics of that, but Kirk sees presented as a private dispute between 2 parties, a brother-in-law inviting a sister-in-law to come stay into the land. But when you look a little bit closer into the case, we see that the brother-in-law and the end the sister-in-law are essentially using contract doctrine as a way to manipulate land schemes at the time that exclude Native Americans and blacks. From accumulation of land at that time also a violent exclusion of blacks. As you remember, most of land loss that occur in the United States is through lynching and violence and both a lot of wealth. A theft that occurred in black communities that sort of to this day is, is because of that. So Kirk see, I sort of uncovered the case to provide that context and to show that it's really not sort of this. Private dispute between 2 parties that have no context whatsoever in terms of maintaining racial subordination, the ability to promise the right to even promise is predicated on white supremacy. So Kirk sees ability to promise his sister-in-law to come and live on the land is based on his entitlement as on through whiteness and being able to even obtain the land. The 2nd 2 examples just going to just kind of go through quickly because in the interest of time is I use an example of an appraisal where by racial family when it was known that the owner was a black woman. The appraisal was 40% less when the white husband then re put the house on the market, the value went up. I think this is a very excellent example for students to show that there's something else that's operating and where I suggest what's operating is what Harris describes as whiteness as property that whiteness has a value. And so whether black homeowners as buyers and as sellers in both instances because of race lose the value of of of this of the of the capital. And I'm not to suggest black owners ownership or it's not suggesting black capitalism here, but to show actually that the market is ultimately unfair. And that the solutions to redress that are not simply just to give individuals access to the market, right. And then the last point that I make an example is talking about how racial capitalism shows elusiveness of reparations. We have been for years, trying to get a study and reparations letter on reparations alone, but reparations to me is a quintessential restitution concept that has been enshrined in contract law that one who provides labor should be compensated for that. And so it's been documented in terms of the historically and to the present, the ways in which wealth and labor has been extracted from those who are experienced racism and formerly enslaved yet reparations remains elusive. And so my point there is that when we look at racial capitalism and restitution. We actually see why reparations is elusive because ultimately it's a critique of capitalism. The reparations movement will only be successful if we're willing to have a wholesale redistribution and reorientation of the economy and without a substantial shift in the economy. We're not going to really see that the last point I wanted to make just referencing Robinson and Du Bois that reparations while presented as a political concept is ultimately as an economic dimension. And so unless we really are willing to tackle that we're not going to see that as as as success as being successful. So, I'll end there just because I know I'm out of time and hopefully we'll be able to talk about what does this mean in terms of anti-capitalist learning or learning strategies. What does it mean for our students? So, so thank you. Thank you, Professor Huck. And yes, we should definitely get into that in our discussion following. Next, we will have Professor Jackson Soh present her paper, which is forthcoming in Washington and Lee's law review, Whiteness's contract, and also point out that she has recently also kind of put online to be reviewed in a forthcoming publication for article rebuilding the master's house, dismantling America's colonial politics of extraction and exclusion. So, we're excited for the presentation. Professor Jackson, so I'll put in the chair, I'll say a loud a two minute warning and then put in the chat when you're close to time. Thank you so much, Jay. Thank you everyone for being here this morning. It's an honor to be able to join you even before I, you know, sort of join you formally and it's an equal honor to share this morning with Professors Huck and Whitlow. You know, it's I have looked up to, and I've been in conversation with Professor Huck specifically and to find out that we are, you know, co-panelists and also going to be teaching contracts together is very inspiring indeed. And so, you know, I just will, what I will try to do in the brief time that we have is talk a little bit about whiteness as contract, but then I'll also talk about how whiteness as contract feeds into the forthcoming paper. Rebuilding the master's house, which was mentioned. So, whiteness as contract is actually the second installation in a series of papers. The first is coming out in a couple of weeks. That deals with the Detroit water shut off crisis squarely. And I have been studying the water crisis, the water scandal. I don't call it a crisis because crisis implies that there was something that nothing could be. There was something to happen and nothing could be done about it. Whereas this was a function of law and government policy. And so I have been following the water for since the, since it's inception, right? And I actually was living in Detroit and clerking at the time that the shutoffs began. I'm actually a group. I'm a native of Detroit grew up in Detroit. While I was clerking a fellow clerk of mine, a dear friend told me something that has got guided my scholarly inquiry ever since she said to me when something doesn't make sense. Follow the money. So, for me, that was transformative because the shutoffs were beginning in Detroit and for the life of me. I couldn't understand why, like, why was this a solution to Detroit's revenue woes. At the time I considered myself. I still do consider myself squarely within the discipline of human rights law and and secondarily as sort of a civil rights lawyer. I had not yet sort of thought of my legal inquiry into this matter as in terms of racial capitalism, right? I was looking at it as a human rights violation and I couldn't understand. You know, the UN has come to Detroit. The UN has condemned Detroit. Why isn't that enough for the government to say, you know, we're embarrassed. This is, this, this is not, this is not, you know, where we want to be. I realized that human and civil rights are not really matters of morality. As pertains to race, right? And I think that's important because human rights are often imagined as right or often presented as moral, moral arguments, right? They're, they're, they're values that we all have inside of us as humans that we are bound to respect. But with respect to race, right? As I sort of began to study modern racial formation and settler colonialism as a global project, I realized that human rights actually are more related to power than morality, right? And that the moral arguments only seem to work when you're dealing with the rights of white white people. These are the other white people. So then I was led to wonder, well, why and how could that be? So when I talk about whiteness as contract, and then talking about the rebuilding the master's house, what I'm actually trying to do is sort of tracing a path, you know, from power, how power then became transformed into a narrative around morality, right? How we can disrupt that, deconstruct that and really talk more about the foundational elements of brutality and extraction that have fundamentally informed the American project. And then what we might do about it to actually get us back to the sort of espoused values of human rights that we report, but have been betraying for centuries at this point. So I started my paper series discussing Charles Mills's theory of the racial contract. And then I got to whiteness as contract as a theory by essentially merging Mills's theory with Cheryl Harris's theory, right? And I sort of tried to bake it up and the bread that I got was whiteness as contract as a theory. Professor Harris does, you know, did an incredible job of describing the what's of whiteness, right? As Professor Huck has outlined for us this morning. What whiteness is contract attempts to do is to explain the why's and the how's of whiteness, right? By redefining whiteness as property for something for which people continuously bargain in so far as they are the beneficiaries thereof. The architects of white supremacy could be understand as the signatories to that contract. So therefore you have a system in which you have some people, you know, many people who are signatories are actually perpetuating white supremacy as an as economics, as politics, right? We are sort of, we've been in that mode in the United States for the last sort of several years, right? Under the last administration where whiteness was actually promoted, right? As an economic engine, as a political weaponry. And then you have those who simply benefit from whiteness, right? It's casually as a matter of status quo, as a matter of unchecked privilege, right? And, you know, I actually think that the people who are beneficiaries and not signatories can actually do more damage and can actually perpetuate racial capitalism more easily because there is that blurring of intent, right? It's, we're not actively racist. We are just sort of going about our business and perpetuating these systems and benefiting from these structures day after day. How many of us, right? How many of us wake up in the morning and say, wow, America actually, the United States has colonies. The United States actually is still a colonial empire with colonial subjects, none of us, right? And so that what that means is even I, as a person of color, as a black woman who wakes up and sort of goes about her business with little thought typically to the fact that Guam, that the US Virgin Islands, that the District of Columbia has no political representation, and yet we continue to govern them to roll over these territories and their people that we continue to extract resources, right? Regularly, and that those resources fuel our economy, that they actually fuel our governance, right? We all remember Donald Trump's second impeachment trial and the magisterial management of that by delegate Stacey Plaskett. She cannot vote for president. Her constituents cannot vote for president, right? And so she was able to give labor to invest the labor into a polity that has structurally and legally and permanently so excluded her from participation in the social contract. Whiteness, I define, I define to the system of separate yet interrelated coordinated commercial contracts and social contracts. The commercial contracts are those formal sort of business deals, right? They're legal, they're obviously legally enforceable. The social contracts are tacit. They may not be expressly enforceable, but they are given force through law. Now, in Whiteness's contract, I support that theory using 3 case studies, the Detroit water scandal, the Flint water scandal, and a case called Comcast versus National Association of African American media. Today, I will briefly add on 2 more examples. I add on the, the opinion in a dread Scott where justice Tony outlawed sort of lays forth over 200 pages. The United States divine ordination as a global superpower as a colonial state and talks very specifically about why we do not allow black people to become citizens of the United States. And he also goes into a discussion of why we do not allow, why we did not allow at that time interracial marriage. He defines interracial marriage as a contract illegally enforceable contract that would undermine the social contract of whiteness that in his view, there was an interest in protecting, right? And he use it as an example of why we do not why we did not at that time allow black people entry into the social contract. And so you have an example of. The relationship, right? This fundamental relationship that exists between those obvious formal contracts and this tacit invisible, but equally powerful social contract tracking that happens. The, the second professor Jackson. Of course, thank you. The second case study that I will add to that is found in professor Terry McMurtry Chubb's forthcoming book race unequals where she describes. Overseers employment contracts on obviously, right? Their jobs were to manage plantations, manage slaves, slave labor, slave output. And she makes this really compelling case for how the overseers employment contracts. Enforced and enshrined their status as men and as, as white people, but also because these were employment contracts and because the planters could take them to court and sue them for sort of loss of slave life and labor. Also had place constraints on their, their, their whiteness, the level of their whiteness and the level of their masculinity. And so that again is a really palpable example of how formal employment commercial contracts. Actually give force, right? Actually give force to the social contract of whiteness, which perpetuates capitalism in the United States and allows it to sort of be sustainable for years and years and years, right? Centuries to come. I'll briefly touch on for the next 30 seconds the Comcast case and why it's important, right? Byron Allen sues Comcast because under the civil rights act of 1866, which for the 1st time in like 1 of the few times in the Constitution mentions whiteness. It says people of color will have the right to contract that is enjoyed by white citizens. Right? This is after slavery. He loses at the Supreme Court. Why does he lose because the Supreme Court says that even though race was clearly a motivating factor in why Comcast would continue to court him for years and years and years. And refuse to engage in any business deal with him because his programming appeal to black audiences. That race had to be more than a motivating factor. This is important because it shows that, you know, even where there are rights enshrined in formal law. There is often for black people an inability to avail themselves of those rights and beyond that an inability to avail themselves of remedies, even when the right has been clearly violated. In closing, I will say, you know, I talk in rebuilding the master's house about what we might do once we realize what we're actually dealing with once we realize that the house. The United States is built on poor foundation with rotten materials and with slave labor. What we might do to transcend sort of sort of dispense of racial capitalism and move beyond racial capitalism towards something approaching justice. And so I sort of advocate for in the first instance, right, allowing these these colonies to decide for themselves, whether they would like to remain colonies, whether they would like to become states. Of course, pushing for DC statehood, but certainly also as Professor Huck said earlier, having a really serious conversation about reparation looks what reparations will look like. And considering that they are absolutely necessary once we are willing to confront the fact that we are actually a colonial still a colonial empire and that we still rely on the extraction and the brutality that comes with that extraction, even in 2021. So, with that, I will yield my time and thank you again for allowing me to present this morning. Thank you. Thank you. And now we will have a professor Whitlow presenting on his article. The real estate state and group differentiated on vulnerability to premature death. Race class geography and pandemic. So take it away, Professor Whitlow. I've never been good with titles, the title every title I come up with is just extremely clunky. First, I want to thank the good people at j cred for putting together this symposium, and also just say that I'm completely honored to be presenting alongside my co panelists who are extremely tough acts to follow. So, as Jay mentioned, you know, my paper, it takes a little bit of a different tack to this, this problem or problematic or racial capitalism. It looks that the racialized and deadly unevenness of COVID-19 spread in New York City last spring. And I actually want to start on a little bit of a personal note. Last March. With COVID bearing down on the city. I decided to leave with my family and go down to North Carolina and weather the storm. It was a little bit of a Gilligan's Island situation. I somehow thought it would be like a 2 week stay. And it ended up being a month's long stay. And from our, like, read out in North Carolina, you know, we were able to work remotely and order all of our necessary and unnecessary supplies. And of course, you know, maybe I shouldn't say, of course, and continue to have access to health care. And we also followed the news of what was unfolding in New York City. And I remember 1 event in particular that was, that was very searing, which was. You know, reading from North Carolina about a candlelight vigil held in Corona Queens to honor 67 members of make the road New York, an organization that's near and dear to my heart. Who lost their lives due to the coronavirus and for those of you don't know, make the road is a membership organization comprised of working class. Immigrants from all over Latin America who work primarily, I think in the construction and the service industries. And I worked as a staff attorney there years ago now. But there was something pretty devastating about, you know, just reading about people's lives cut short because they didn't have. Really the luxuries that my family and I had in terms of working remotely and the sort of things that I briefly laid out and. You know, that shot me that shot me directly into 2 quotes that I want to. I want to lay on you and kind of underscore and ask that you think about as I continue with my remarks. The 1st is is a quote from. Ruth Wilson Gilmore who professor mentioned she's a critical geographer and abolitionist and a mentor of mine. And the quote is this racism is the state sanctioned or extra legal production and exploitation of group differentiated vulnerability to premature death. The 2nd quote is from the poet Octavia pass who I think. You know, this is no disrespect to Ruth Wilson Gilmore, but kind of conveys the same meaning much more succinctly. He says. Tell me how you die and I will tell you who you are. In case anyone was wondering, this is not going to be the most uplifting. Talk lots of lots of death in this talk. So I wanted to really explore in this paper, these themes of who gets to live. And who dies early in the system we live in and how this is structured by race and racism and by law and policy. And more specifically, I wanted to better understand the structural forces underpinning the racially uneven deadliness of COVID in New York City last spring. And this task seemed to require an analysis that focused on how inequality is produced and unfolds along vectors of race, class and geography. So with my remaining time, I'm just going to talk a little bit about how I put all of this together in this paper. I relied on to the main theoretical concepts. Racial capitalism and law and political economy and I, I fear that my description of race racial capitalism is going to be a bit redundant because my, my two co-panelists. Did such a great job of kind of laying laying it out. But I'm basically using it to explore how capital accumulation depends on and produces racial differentiation. Subjecting racialized groups of people to disproportionate vulnerability to premature death, as I've said. And the idea here is that capitalism is and always has been a system based in exploitation and the production of inequality. And the function of race within that system is to naturalize and in so doing, legitimate that inequality. The implications of the analytical framework of racial capitalism. I think are powerful and also politically challenging. Capitalism produces in fact requires inequality, but that doesn't organically lead to a neat political divide between the haves and have nots. In fact, quite the contrary, the process through which capital accumulates has historically seized on all manner of human differences, which are often accounted for and naturalized through racial categorization. This has a legitimating and reproductive effect on the social order, cementing as normal and unchanging inequalities that are in fact socially produced and dynamic. In this process, the extraction of value from a racially segmented working class is intensified with benefits concentrated evermore in the hands of the few. I'll just note that I think there's a really important subjective dimension to this. You know that Jamaican born British intellectual steward hall noted famously that race is the modality through which classes lived. I think it's a really rich quote and I'll leave you with it and move off of it because there's sort of too much to unpack there almost. If racial capitalism is a theoretical perspective centered on the relation of racial thinking and practice to the inequalities produced by capitalism. Then law and political economy is a framework that focuses on how these inequalities are legally constituted. Law and political economy starts from the premise that laws played a central role in the creation of the various and interlocking crises we currently face. Conditioning race and wealth. Social reproduction and environmental destruction and it follows from this starting point that law also necessarily conditions political responses to the existing order. And we'll play an integral role in the construction of a more just equal and democratic society. So. Armed with those theoretical tools. Again, I wanted to look at covids unequal racialized. Deadliness last spring in New York City and to look at it through the prism of land real estate and housing policy in the city. And I'll just lay out some key moments in the story. I also should note that I think are many different ways to tell this story. I mean, I think if you wanted to focus on. You know, COVID spread through our prison system or the nursing home context. I actually think that you would have much the same analysis, but the. The sort of key moments in the, in the telling of the story would obviously be different. So, just, you know, in the interest of time, I'll try to just highlight some of what I touch on in the article. And the 1st point is to note that the fiscal crisis that New York City underwent in the 1970s. led to a dramatic restructuring of the city's political economy along neoliberal lines favoring finance capital. In real estate over labor and other subaltern groups in the crisis and post crisis years working class black neighborhoods were subjected to austerity and disinvestment. And we're essentially abandoned in an organized way to use another Ruth Wilson Gilmore kind of analytic analytical tool. And these neighborhoods were essentially devalorized in the process. We probably all seen images of, you know, the Bronx burning and we know about the phenomenon of landlords. Abandoning properties because it was actually more profitable to do that in some instances, you know, than to maintain them, which is just a crazy, crazy thing to even think about in the context of our current. Real estate market in New York. And market based housing policy in the post crisis decades resulted in the gutting of rent regulation and housing code enforcement. And the coming to prominence of zoning and tax policies that operated to Marshall private capital into many of the same parts of the city that were previously abandoned and devalorized. The result of all of this has been the construction of a highly unequal gentrified city in which precarious workers with precarity organized along racially hierarchized lines, living amid poor housing conditions, dealing with meager services, high rent burdens and often having to crowd into apartments because the rent is so high. Against that political economic and spatial backdrop. It's no surprise that the neighborhoods of the city's black, brown and immigrant working class Corona. Parts of the Bronx suffered disproportionately last spring as COVID hit the city while unsurprisingly wider, wealthier parts of the city. Did not. In other words, professor Whitlow. Thank you. I've only got 15 more minutes to go. So I'll try to condense that. In other words, I'm laying much of the blame for the racially disparate deadliness of COVID in New York City. Last spring on decades of racial neoliberalism. That has been driven largely by the political and economic power of the real estate industry. As I want to end on an optimistic note in the last part of the article, I discuss possibilities for a politics beyond racial neoliberalism and here I focus on a number of recent mobilizations in New York City. That I think offer examples of workers and tenants coming together across traditional lines of difference to fight for a different kind of society in particular. There are some mobilizations to strengthen the rent laws. This occurred in 2019. And the effort to defeat Amazon's relocation to Queens, both as examples again of the capacity of people to combine their energies and to fight against market mediated and racialized inequalities. And, you know, returning to the two quotes I highlighted earlier the bill more quote in the past quote, both of which, you know, I think explicitly have to do with death. These mobilizations offer hope for the creation of a society in which life is viewed as unqualifiedly precious. And in which the inevitability of death encloses on us all equally. I'm not sure if that's a high note to end on. But it's a it's a note. So thank you all. And I look forward to talking with you more about my article. Great. Thank you, professor. Let me make sure that I don't have a timer go off in the middle of unmuted. Thank you. Each of you, this is really helpful and a great insight into the work that y'all have labored on in the scholarship that y'all are bringing out. So I do want to, you know, kind of try to have a conversation about points of convergence where each of your articles touch on maybe a similar topic and. You all can chime in on on distinctions or dig deeper into how those concepts play out in your work. And I also want to give a maybe a warning or just a heads up for our audience to start formulating questions. Think about what you would want to ask. Feel free to start putting things in the chat as well as we are talking. And know that we will move to like a formal Q and a and really ask that you join in with us and kind of dig deeper into this conversation. So one of the first things each of your articles deal with. Theory in some way and Professor Huck mentioned this explicitly of the connection between theory and praxis or how we connect. These legal theories to actions on the ground. Some wonder if you would each of you kind of discuss what are the theories underlying your work. And how do you think or why do you think it's important to formulate a theory when you're approaching legal scholarship? You know, I think theory is something that maybe students or professors even think is an unnecessary. Thing to bring into legal analysis and legal doctrine. But others of us are really thirsting for the context that theory provides like to hear from from whomever would like to chime in on the theory behind their work. I'll jump in. I'll say that anybody who doesn't like theory is going to be really, really, really annoyed by me as a professor because theory is really what I do. I think it's important because it, you know, there, you know, there's a lot of. Theory already out there, right? And so what I, I consider myself a deconstructivist, right? I, I, there's a lot of talk right now about whether we're going to have a 3rd reconstruction. I don't know whether that's why is because the 1st 2 didn't go very well. But if we're going to do that, if we're going to do that, you have to deconstruct the faulty construction properly before you can actually reconstruct. Right. Sometimes a paint job won't do. Sometimes it's not just the windows. You have to really take out the entire foundation and make sure you're not on quick sand in the 1st place. And so. For me, it's really important, like, whether I'm teaching contracts. Property or even write the human human rights. Law or civil rights law to help people question the assumptions that are already baked into. Those laws, because I think all the 3, you know, the presentations you've heard this morning really address rather squarely. The fact that law has been instrumental, right? That, that, that racial capitalism could not. Could not function, could not operate without, without law, without government, without policy. And so, you know. If neoliberal theory has gotten us to where we are today where. You know, people are literally dying because of, you know, the combination of climate change and this era of pandemic pandemic that we're in combined with decades of disinvestment and extraction. That is racist and colonial. Then we do need to have theory that will help us to see that. Right? It's easy to not see all of this because it's just normalized because, you know, whiteness has become an arbiter of value. It is, it is the norm. If we are not able to see. The impacts, right? The impacts that whiteness as a structure, right? I'm not talking about people whiteness as a structure. We're not able to see the impact of of whiteness upon. Those who live in the space of non whiteness, then we will only we can only hope as lawyers and legal scholars to perpetuate the same inequalities and to perpetuate the same politics of death that that professor just talked about. So, for me, theory is crucial. I will be offering a lot of it and I hope that that will be okay. Maybe I can jump in here. I mean, I think for me, theory ultimately is one's way of making meaning of the world. And so that if theory is located in the point of view of the marginalized and those who are from the community. I think that if we're committed to social justice, then we have to engage in the ways in which communities are making meaning of their world, right? I think that there's ways in which in the academy theory is presented as an elite enterprise. And so not to toss in another theoretician, but I'm very much influenced by Graham. She talks about all of us are theoreticians, you know, recently this past week I lost my grandmother. My grandmother is a theoretician, right? And so I locate theory in traditions that are about movement and social change. So I do make a distinction between which theoreticians I'm sort of like referencing which intellectual threads that I'm actually carrying on and carrying forward, because I think that it does make a difference. And to say the law does not present a theory. In contracts, law presents a neoclassical economic theory very much clearly. It espouse a particular value. So one of the things I do in my paper is to say that, you know, sometimes work used particularly who who might sort of tilt a little bit to the left is indoctrinating our students. But in fact, what I say is that by not providing counter theories or different insights into how we understand the law. We're actually in simulating our students into one theoretical perspective, which in contracts is a neoclassical perspective, neoliberalism, we're actually not doing our students justice. We're not providing pluralism and a democratic education. So for me, it's like, that's how I look at theory in terms of it's really about how do we make a meaning. And so the scholars I look towards I mentioned are going to be scholars who are very much deeply rooted in the movement work who have this sort of a connection to movement work. And, and I hope I'm just a new new newbie to this profession as a as an academic. I hope to sort of be part of that and like professor so I, you know, if you're a student in my class, you're also going to get critical legal theory. I think it's essential for social justice lawyers. The last thing I just want to say, I actually start my paper with a quote from Bell hooks, who is another in a person who, you know, I think informs very much a part of this. This, and pushes back on this sort of anti theory, right? Because if you think about the long tradition of global South scholars and black feminist scholars have always engage with theory. If you eliminate theory from our ability to make meaning, ultimately, you are denying the opportunity of a people to make meaning of their lives and for liberation. So to me, I'm suspicious of anyone who tries to deny me the ability to engage in theory, because ultimately, I think it's anti liberation project. So just I'm going to end with this quote, I came to theory because I was hurting the pain within me was so intense that I could not go on living. I came to theory desperate wanting to comprehend to grasp what was happening around and within me. Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in theory, a location for healing. That's from teaching for teaching to transgress. Yeah, it's a blessing. It's a blessing and a curse to go last year. So I don't know that I have a whole lot to add. I mean, I would just say, and I think it's probably more complimentary than, than. New, these would be what's already been said that. You know, I think theory helps. It helps you and like, you know, sort of old, according to that, like the old Marxist quote. It helps you to interpret the world. But the point really is to change the world. And, and I think the challenge is, you know, you could be. One could find themselves as sort of in the position of sort of arm chair theorists. And I think. One of the really cool things about this panel is I think we're all trying to articulate theory to practice in a way that really does intervene meaningfully. In, in these hierarchies that that I think we're all deeply invested in dismantling. Thank you. Thank you. I do want to, you know, I've got a million topics that we could discuss. But before we go any further to that, I would love if students have questions. If you would go ahead and unmute yourself and ask you could ask either specifically about any of the panelists presentation or generally to each of the panelists, but want to open us up to that. And Jelisa, I see you with your hand raised. Go ahead. Hello, everyone. I loved all of your remarks today. My question is particularly for professor for so. In your, in your presentation and specifically in your paper, you discuss the case Comcast versus. Um, national national association of African American own media. And I actually wrote my no topic on that case and a lot of the students edited it for it to be published later and blog posts on it. So I think you don't realize how much you using that case specifically to kind of advocate your theory resonates with a lot of us. And so, I guess I wanted to know, particularly with how you theorize and what is his contract. How do you, how does your theory, you can specifically also tie it within that case if you would like, how does it. How does it allow for a more. More accountability, I guess, within within the law school practice, but also within. I guess the contract of whiteness, how does it, how do you think it would push for more accountability to. For more of racial equity in those spaces and secondly, how would it. How do you think it allows for the empowerment of voices that have consistently been marginalized because I know in your paper, you talk about how anti discrimination law. And when you try to kind of voice voice your complaints and kind of how marginalization has happened and how extraction has happened. And you try to kind of enforce their things through the tools that are already provided. Unless there's kind of a smoking on a very clear high threshold of burden that is met. It's unlikely and virtually impossible to kind of get the redress you're kind of looking for. So, I think my paper was an attempt and, you know, I hope that someday we could talk about those things further because I think they. Your, your work and the work that is burgeoning within St. John's law really communicates very well with each other. But yeah, I would just kind of like to know your thoughts on those things. Certainly, can you hear me? I'm having issues of my mute. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you for that question. Thank you for in the comments and I'm really glad to know that you're writing on that topic as well. I think, I think we have to talk about these cases and really what you're doing when you're talking about a case like Comcast is you are breaking down the silos between private ordering and public law. And what happens is that racial capitalism is able to flourish because it's sort of, we often tell ourselves and we tell, tell students that private ordering is, is sort of beyond the realm largely, not totally, but largely beyond the realm of public law. But then you see ways in which, right, as you see in this case where public law actually provides a veil shroud for private ordering to perpetuate gross inequalities and, and, and to your comments about the smoking gun. We've seen in cases where the smoking gun is not enough because the court will say there's not enough smoking gun right in Comcast. They never said that there wasn't any racial discrimination. They said, it just, you know, it's just not enough racial discrimination. Well, you know, as, as a person who is, you know, vulnerable to racial discrimination that feels that just reads entirely violent because, you know, there's this idea that there's a tolerance level for racial discrimination. And if you just, there's just a little bit of it, you can deal. Right. Meanwhile, Mr. Allen, who happens to be very rich by the way, right. I'm not make a total victim of him is actively losing money. He's actually losing resources with the tolerable level of discrimination, right. The Supreme Court has decided exists so much more so for those who are not like Mr. Allen. A middle class working class and poor, right? When they are dealing with, you know, these, you know, every day, you know, choices that people are making in the private realm that is just business and just that is just choice that the government is not supposed to intervene in. So I think just to try to answer your question squarely and succinctly. I think it's really important. I think it does provide accountability to those of us who are teaching commercial law contracts property to, to not continue to to. I guess I will say that, you know, neoclassical contract and property theory. Right as it is right as it as it was when I was taught it is violent, right? It isn't a violent experience to go into a property class and to learn that to be taught that Johnson versus Macintosh is good law, right? That that is somehow that a valuable way of constructing a republic. And so I think that when we use theories such as whiteness as contract, whiteness as property, the racial contract and all the others are theories that you heard this morning. There's a way for us to present the, the, the unvarnished truth about how our theories of property rights, how our theories of bargain and exchange are inherently informed by massacre. Genocide lynching slavery, sexual violence and so on and so forth. And that will propel us hopefully to seek alternative ways of doing business and of doing government and for us doing law. Thank you all. I see Jeremy with your hand raised. I also, maybe we should do back to back questions and then the, if there are, if they are general questions rather than specific. So you, Jeremy can go and then Ryan can go and then the panelists can respond as they'd like. Hello, thank you again for speaking with us today. I'm sorry I was a little late. So if this question was already addressed, like, I apologize. You can just kind of ignore it. But my question is how we can put into practice, like pushing back against these kind of baked in theory, dominant theories that are violent as lawyers, rather than just outside of like outside of the academy or outside of like academic work. Day to day work as lawyers, or especially as younger attorneys, how can we push back against what is violent and what is like baked in already as like attorneys day to day. And Ryan, yeah. Yeah. How's it going? Thanks for coming. So my question is intro to so voting is held up by many as the way to influence and change the system and is valued as a nonviolent means of change, which I just don't believe. Meanwhile, free and fair elections legitimize our violent white supremacist capitalist system. Do you know of any attempts that have done to tabulate the extent of US kind of hegemonic violence or to explain all the different ways that this system is violence. To the people that it oppresses. Should we just take these in any order J. I guess I can start since I had the luxury of going last last time. I was like waiting. Yeah, yeah, I probably should not have waited as long as I did. I mean, I think these are 2 very heavy important questions. I guess to just address them in order. I mean, I think, you know, Jeremy, you're asking how do you. How do you put into practice or how do you go up against theories that are violent and are also. So, so dominant that they're essentially like baked into the institutions that we're all. To 1 degree or another, like navigating within. And I, you know, I kind of, I guess I, I go back to the 1st question that Jay asked about the role of theory. I mean, I do think it's important here to have. You know, a theoretical framework that hopefully is. Dynamic and not rigid that allows you to sort of identify 1st and foremost. When you are up against a violent. Hegemonic system that operates sort of silently in some ways. And I go back to something professor Huck said, which was that. You know, I think it isn't. It is really imperative that. We kind of recognize our privilege as attorneys, but also. Recognize that knowledge is produced from below. As much as it's produced from above, even if the knowledge that's produced from below is not necessarily empowered or credited as such. And so. It's maybe a bit of a, like, platitude to say this, but I think it's, I think it's real and and that is like, you know, I think, I think we need to listen to people who are. Directly impacted by these systems. I think we need to listen to organizers. I think we need to take our lead from from social movements. And I, you know, obviously, like there is a tension there, I think between. You know, really taking in the knowledge of people who are directly impacted and also not losing your own. Your own framework, because you have something to bring to bear on all of this as well. But I do think. You know, I want to, I want to give, I want my answer to sound as messy as I think the problem is there is not a neat answer for this. And that's my best cut at it. And then, I guess, Ryan, I might need you to just, I'm sorry to do this. Could you. Ask your question again, because I got hung up on the voting part. And then, and then it ended with like destroying capitalists to Gemini. And then I got a little bit distracted by that. So if you could just re ask the question. Yeah. Yeah. So there's like, just this assumption that voting is non violence, you know, we're voting in Joe Biden, you know, it's non violence. It's like, are you kidding me? This is gassing Colombians right now. So, is there any kind of tabulation that shows just how widespread the violence of this system is, be it, you know, from Flint, Michigan to bombing buses in Yemen, there's just so much violence that is perpetuated by our system. And I really think that if people knew what they were voting for, they wouldn't vote because it's just ridiculous. So I'm just, that's why I was trying to put it in that context. So just tabulations of violence committed by the US over the course of its, you know, capitalist history. I think you're muted. Sorry. Sorry, I was going to say, and I will say, I don't know that when you say tabulate the violence, you know, I think that. Certainly that that is a, there's some like quantifiable way to deal with that question, but I think for probably most of us. You know, the jury is already, I mean, you know, you read the black Jack events by seal our James and like, that's enough to know. If you didn't know already that our system is intrinsically deeply violent and like hierarchized along, you know, racialized lines and, and, and, you know, you could look at any. You could look at like various sites around the world. If you did want to, you know, like tabulate somehow, I think your question about voting is. It's probably 1 that it's almost too big to take on here and if there's a matter of like, you know, you know, political tactics and strategy that I, you know, I think like. Probably like continues to vex the left to some degree. I mean, I'll just say, and then I will like back out because I don't want to monologue too much that I, I think certainly Biden. Continuing like us Imperial hegemony continuing the kind of violent, you know, state violence that I think you're gesturing toward. Also, you know, I think many of us legitimately believed that the threat of, you know, white supremacist authoritarianism. That was, I think, authorized by Trump represented. You know, at least like a unique enough threat that. You know, we could vote for Biden without holding our nose. And I think, I think there are. You know, tactical questions around that that have to do with the nature of the nature of the other larger evil. And what you think voting does in relation to sort of building an actual grassroots movement. And I'll kind of leave it at that. I don't, I don't really have a definitive answer because I don't like to impose clarity where I myself am not particularly clear. Thanks y'all, and I want to recognize we're at time at 11. So if you need to jump off, that's totally fine. If the panelists are able, maybe we could do like a 5 minute extension. And Ron, I see your hand up, but I want to make sure Professor Huck has a chance to respond because we did promise her to talk, you know, ability to talk about social movements and any capitalist lawyering. If you would like to add anything. Oh, I'm Marissa. Do you want to also respond to the movement piece? So, I'm going to just respond to right. I think what your, you know, project suggests sounds like an evidence mapping. And you may be a, a geographer, a legal geographer in the making. So I would. I don't know of that project, but I would definitely encourage you to think about that in the human rights field. There is actually. A whole sort of area of evidence mapping of connecting international human rights to specific practices and whether they're enforced. So there is some background for that. So that's the extent of responding to, to, to your second question on kind of, I don't think I'm going to add too much more than what. Professor with lower John is added in terms of really being, you know, really each context is going to be different. And I think a framework allows you to understand how does inequality. racial and economic get reproduced. So part of what I talk about in the paper is the reason for introducing racial capitalism as 1. Framework is that it allows students to be able to see other strategies, illegal strategies or solutions that they might employ. So just 1 example just to concretize it. You know, Mercer talks about this in terms of limits of anti discrimination law and contracts, right. In 19 section 1981, if we know that just access to the market, a market that's already racially hierarchical reproduces racial hierarchy. Anti discrimination discrimination laws or unconscionability in those documents are not sufficient. And so, then the advocates have to think about, well, what might be certain legal strategies to address that. So, some examples of the housing discrimination has come up is greater regulation over flipping homes. Greater regulation of appraisers that, you know, the, the real estate marketed to some extent is very much unregulated. And so this idea, even that the market is ultimately going to be fair and it's not going to discriminate. So challenging that and then looking at alternate sort of strategies is what I think. You know, if you were sort of in on the, on the ground with community based organizations. Most recently, you know, the excluded workers fund. It sounds like it's passing through the state 1 could not imagine, right? I don't think so of 10 years ago, as someone who works both at the intersection of labor and immigration to say, oh, we're going to be in a state that, you know, with current governor that's going to actually provide any funding to individuals who are undocumented, although we know, you know, and I think, you know, John's. A piece or talks about sort of the vulnerabilities of different communities that came about because immigrant communities were pushing with labor for that effort and then lawyers assisted in terms of the drafting of that. So I think like, again, I couldn't underscore enough listening to directly impacted folks. And most importantly, I think is where there is a proposal that you think, oh, there's it's not articulated in law or you're like, oh, that will never happen. Just don't ever say that to think about how can you make that happen. And so I think just that's your, your expertise or your, your role. I talked specifically about anti capitalist lawyering. Because I think there's a lot of literature on movement lawyering community lawyering public interest lawyer and I just wanted to very clearly and transparently locate myself in terms of, I don't think racial equality, economic equality is going to be able to fully be realized under a capitalist political economy, just because of my understanding of racial capitalism. And so a lot of the strategies that I'm going to sort of support are going to be more sort of social democratic and nature, universal healthcare, guaranteed jobs, housing as a human right. So, so those, those perspectives are informed in many part by my understanding of like racial capitalism. So lawyers are needed and each of those movements and those fights. I think there's, there's an enormous amount of work that can be happened. So, you know, we can go more into the weeds of it offline if you're interested. But I think that if we're really trying to think about how do we build the architecture of a society or the legal architecture, if you will, of a society that's really truly about liberation and justice. We have a role that we can play in thinking about that. It's not only about law, because ultimately law has its limits, but it has, we do have some role to play there. So, I hope that was responsive. That was great. And Professor Whitlow, I know has a time constraint might need to jump off. But I did want to give you first right of refusal Professor Jackson. So if you've got a comment or response on any of this and then I promise we will, we will wrap things up. That's very gracious of you Jay, but if Professor Whitlow would like to say something before he leaves and then I could just close the makeup. Okay. I will, I will make a pitch here. And I think this is responsive to a couple of the questions that came up around voting and what Professor is calling evidence mapping and human rights law and putting some of what we've talked about this morning into practice. And I want to sort of make a pitch for, but also just point out sort of make, you know, sort of aware, raise awareness around the work that many radical black feminists have been doing in this space and continue to do in this space. Now, I actually take a very sort of expansive view of what it means to be black, right? And I also take a fairly expansive view of who can be a feminist, right? So I won't try to like issue any definitions of who is and who is not here this morning. But what I will say is that, you know, with risk, I'll just use voting as an example because that I thought that question was really interesting. Black women in the United States and sort of wherever modern racial formation has been in effect, so like globally, literally everywhere, have figured out that under capitalism, that under the global institutional order, that there is really no system under that order that works to the benefit of black women, right? Precisely because they're women and precisely because they're black, so literally the inverse of whiteness. And so you'll see black women moving in public spaces sometimes in ways that look that appear to be conservative or more conservative than one would like, but it is actually subaltern movement, right? It is actually utilitarianism. It is actually survivalism. It is actually harm reduction on the way to liberation, right? As a black feminist myself, I privilege liberation over equality. I have no illusions that under the current US government that there is ever going to be equality, nor do I desire to be equal within an unjust system. What I am looking for is liberation. But as Professor Whitlow pointed out, under the Trump administration, it meant more to me as a woman, as an individual, as a mom. It meant more to me to get the current occupant, then occupant of the White House out than it did for me to really sort of interrogate the new, the now current president, even though my personal politics may not have neatly aligned with his, right? It's a harm reduction strategy. And so I think it's really important to give respect to that movement and those actions because while they may not necessarily align with what appears to be progressive politics, it is important to note that even the progressive political movements that exist currently have failed repeatedly to be responsive to black women's stated desires and needs. And black women have completely have repeatedly requested or demanded that those movements name race, that they name black women and beyond sort of the elevation of tokens within those political movements. That they actually are responsive to those systems and we cannot get positive responses there either. So we continue to work with each other to sort of push society along and continue to carry the Republican along on black feminist backs, even if it results in incrementalism where we would prefer transformations, right? So I just want to put that out there and to call attention to the ways that that work is even happening in legal scholarship now. You know, Professor Allen here at St. John's has had some really incredible forthcoming work. And while it, you know, I don't know that necessarily that she would identify as a feminist or as a radical black feminist, that work is doing radical black feminist work in calling out the violence and the pain that women, black women even in the academy are experiencing as they try to move education forward towards transformative justice. So I just want to just sort of lift up the work that black feminists have been doing and continue to do and to also sort of just, you know, clarify what I think has been a really unfortunate tension where you have people who say, you know, the system is all messed up. Why are you guys who are who are affected the most still operating within the systems? We're not operating within the system. We are using the system to try to move forward because we already know that the system serves nowhere. So it just makes, you know, we're just trying to get ourselves out of the extreme necropolitical to a place where movement building can continue. And I think that work should be recognized and appreciated for what it is. So I just wanted to say that, and I think we know Professor Huck said at the beginning that this work, this work, feminist work must be anti-racial and must be anti-capitalist. I will say that anti-capitalist work must also be anti-racist and must also be feminist. And I will just sort of close out my remarks with that thinking you all once again for what has been an incredible morning for me and I hope for everyone else. I mean, thank you all. This is has been tremendous and I really appreciate that for in time that y'all gave us for this. That is a wrap. I want to thank especially Ryan Anaclerico, the journal's editor in chief in Dilara Islam for the managing editor for being so supportive and bringing this together and helping bring this symposium together. I also want to thank our faculty advisors, Professor Rosa Castello and Elaine Chu, who have also been very encouraging and supportive in this. And want to give a special thanks to Kylie Springs, Jalisa Amala and Katie O'Brien for specifically helping me organize, prepare and bring together this event. It could not have happened without all of their help. So I appreciate it everyone. And like I said, this is being recorded and we will hope to get it up online as soon as possible. But this was excellent. I appreciate everyone.