 We walked together down an important street. That street was Constitution Avenue and only 27% of the 52% of the American people voted for our president. America has gone to sleep. Collective Town Senabilities should be utilized by all of us in order to try and help make this world a better place in which to live. Hello, that introduction. Hi, hi, hi, hi. I'm Chelsea D. I'm your moderator this evening and I'm also a co-curator and associate producer at the National Black Theater. This is the MBT at home conversation series, unbought and unbossed reclaiming our vote. And this is part two. Catch us next week for our, well not next week, but October 29th for our final conversation in part three. These conversations are happening in tandem with the release of our digital commission series. This is a series of public service announcements coming at you from black women artists letting you know what's really going on, what the truth is and what we need to be doing in this election season. Those are coming at you every Wednesday to check out our Instagram, our Facebook and website to catch those. Last week, we released My Right to Voice, My Right to Vote by Mahogany L. Brown. Check that out. And this week we've just released in Guzzi Anyanwuz. You're going to be okay. So check both of those out. Really inspirational stuff. And we have so many more lined up and so many that have been released. So dig into that. This series is in partnership with Michelle Obama's When We All Vote. This is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that is on a mission to increase participation in every election and close the race and age voting gap. So without further ado, I would like to welcome this evening's guests, two of this evening's guests. And we'll be joined by a third special guest later this evening. But I would like for everyone to give a digital snap-snap round of applause. Welcome, welcome, welcome to our guest, Stephanie L. Young and Ronda Ross. So we're going to get into right now, letting the folks know who you are, what you are, what you are about. I know that seems like a big question. What are you about? What is your whole mission in life? But just get to know you a little bit with our check-in, with our check-in questions. So today, I'd like you to give us your name, your pronoun, and your accessibility. Tell us a little bit about who you are, your art form, what you do, and when, why, how did the political become personal for you? And the final question is, what does it mean to you to be unbought and unbossed politically or personally? Or both? Uh, let's see, Ronda Ross, do you want to start us off? Yes, hi Chelsea, so good to see you. Those were a lot of questions. That's for them all, that might be our whole time. So we'll go back and forth. I'm Ronda Ross, my pronouns are she and her. I'm out in Los Angeles right now, though I live in New York. I am a storyteller at heart. Most of my stories come through song, but many of them also come through prose and poetry and and theater. I am in the process of doing everything I can to empower myself, to calm myself during this time, to keep my eye on the prize. And I like to say keep my eye on the why why I'm here, why I'm doing what I do, why I want a different world, a different a different a different way of being than we've had, why I want to vote, why I want to get everyone else to vote. So I keep my eye on the why's and in my my work, I do that personally and I'm doing that now. So if I'm a little distracted, that's where my head is. But at the same time, I do that in my storytelling, in my music, in my poetry. That's what I do. I hope that my work empowers and leads people to to a sense of of deep self understanding and self love. I mean, I feel like you're living in a place of being unbought and unbossed. Oh, and I didn't even answer that question yet. That's the last one. You were knocking them out though. You want me to keep going or should we speak? Yeah, we'll just answer for us. Like, what does it mean to you to be unbought and unbossed? This famous phrase from Shirley Chisholm. Yeah, you know, I love that you I love that you asked that and I love that you all are creating this whole program around it because I hadn't I had thought about it, but I hadn't really thought about it. So so so in prep for this, I've always said unbought and unbossed unbought and unbossed like as if it's a one thing. But when I looked at it, it really is two separate issues. And and what I see is is unbought has to do with someone. I saw a lot of carrot and stick, right? I saw a lot of good cop, bad cop. I saw a lot of strategies that use both the flattery of you, the compliment of you, the gift giving of you, the money giving, the bribery of you, what they want you to do, or the threatening, the extortion, the pain, the the the the intimidation of you to get you to do. So to be unbought and unbossed is this is this straight and narrow between that where you keep your eye on the on the wise on the prize, where you're focused, where your your focus is unconditional. Neither side of neither side can can can can deter you, right? So that's that's what it means to me. And that's what I'm what I'm trying to do. And what I'm hoping we as as a people will do, keep our eye on, let the distractions on one side or the other deter us or distract us, right? I so appreciate that. I so appreciate that because, you know, and that's one of the goals, I think, with this conversation series for me personally is like, where is the clarity? Where can how can we see through this historical moment? Because we think, you know, we have been in situations like this prior, and we have found our way through to this this present moment now. There's so many things happening on so many levels that can take the breath away at a moment's notice that can keep you up at night, that can, you know, take all your your patience, all of your you know, like every and there's so much going on that I think we have to just keep getting present, getting focused, you know, staying clear about healing and our own balance. And for me, and that's why I'm looking forward to hearing so much of what Stephanie has to say for me, getting informed is a huge part of that huge part of that because there's so much coming at you. You don't know how much of what's real, what's not real, what's biased, what you know, you got to get you got to get informed, you got to get educated. And that helps you become unbossed and unbought, right? That idea of educated that you know what you know, you know what you know. Yeah, know the wise. I love that. I love that. Keep the eyes or the wise wise going to get that. Stephanie. Oh, young. So excited to have you here. Let's check in. Let's check in. And just if you need a reminder, just let me know. I'll pepper you a question. Luckily, you guys have in this chat. So I will glance over. I feel like I should have gone before Rhonda. Okay, because that was amazing. So let me let me try to keep up. My name is Stephanie Young. I go by she and her. That's my pronouns. I'm currently in Atlanta. I do live in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but I'm home in Atlanta been here since quarantine started with my family. Okay, the next question is who I am, what my art form is. I am a communicator. I work very hard to make sure that through my work as a political communicator, I can be potentially a culture shifter. And I give people the tools and resources that they need to empower them to use their voices in a multitude of ways, be that become more civic engaged, be that just become more informed, be better citizens, vote in each and every election. I am passionate about the intersection of culture and politics, because they both influence influence each other. I think we can see that even more now. So it is so incredibly important for these types of conversations to happen with these creative minds and beings, because you have so much power to shift culture to tell stories to inform people in ways that are not just creative, but can really spur people to action. And I really hope that moving forward, we can continue this open dialogue because our government, our politics won't survive if there's not this partnership, I think, with the art world holistically. When, why, how, and who, we kind of get political in my family, or not in my family, but in my life, I'll say that I became political probably when I didn't realize it. I was eight years old when I lived in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1992 to 1996. So I got to experience the transition from apartheid to democracy. I got to see President Nelson Mandela be elected. I got to see my parents hold voter registration and education drives in South Africa for the country through our denomination, the AME Church, where my father served as a bishop there for those four incredible years. And that has imparted so much on my life and has given me a sense of responsibility to use my gifts and my talents to help move this culture forward in every way possible that I can. I have worked forever in politics, but again, I can't tell you how much I'm in love with theater. I'm in love with culture. I'm in love with the arts. And I see the great need for, again, that marriage there. So it's always been personal for me to live out my ideas and my ideals of who this country can be and use, who I am to help make it better. And I'm bought and embossed. You know, Rhonda, she covered a lot of that. And I agree with pretty much everything she said. I'm going to hold in on one thing she mentioned, which was staying focused. When I think about things I bought, it is staying focused. We have been thrown into the ringer beyond just the misinformation that we get continuously from a multitude of different platforms. We have been in complete and utter chaos and it is so easy to get distracted. It's so easy to get depressed. It's so easy to lose focus and to lose hope. And that's a part of the plan. And I think that we have to remember some citizens that is so important for us to stay focused because the moment we take our eye off the ball, which we have, we end up in situations that we don't recognize. So when I think about on-bought, I think about staying focused and embossed. I think about our power as women. I think about the recent debate with Senator Harris and Vice President Pence. And when she had to say, I am speaking about sitting at tables every day where I have to say that or getting on a Zoom call. Now we don't go to meetings, but getting on a Zoom call and people say, am I only talking to you? Yeah, you're only talking to me. I think about being embossed in that way and standing up in our power as women, as Black women, being afraid to speak up and to show the world who exactly we are. So glad to be here with you both today. Oh, awesome. I'm so glad to bring up South Africa as well because that was actually, studying their history was one of the first times I realized art can be used as a social tool. It's not just an elitist practice that only a few people get to engage in and only enhances a certain demographic's life. Art theater was being used to talk about things, to address, to keep people focused, to keep people clear about, this is the creation of a new nation here, which is really exciting to be in this election season and thinking about that again. Yes, please. I remember saying Seraphina, I probably was four or five, but saw that in the theater, actually here in Atlanta. So I still remember faintly, right? I remember that moment. And when we moved there, my sister thought I was going to have to go to a school like Seraphina, which I did not have to do that. But you're right, that that movement really permeated American culture and popular culture in a way that I don't think other movements did. You know, we knew obviously the movement in the 60s was huge, right? And a lot of artists, as we know, were a part of that movement. But the way in which the anti-apartheid movement really was in the culture is on a different world. It was, you know, there were so many different things that people tapped into and were creative about. So yeah. And Rhonda, can you talk to us a little bit about your work for 100 years, 100 women in partnership with NBT? Because this is such, sometimes I think, oh, I'm just an actor. I'm just a writer. You know, and I'm just involving myself in these things and trial and law. But, you know, I really appreciate Stephanie, you highlighting the relationship between culture and between and politics and society and how all of these things are so intermeshed. So Rhonda, do you want to talk just a little about what you did for 100 years, 100 women, and how do you see your storytelling in all of the ways that you mentioned how you can convey a story? How do you see that as part of your civic engagement, like a part of how you are opening the door for people to become involved in yourself as well? Yeah. Thank you. That's really an important, it's such an important question. I think especially for we artists, because we have a tendency to feel like if we're not, we're not on the front lines in a very literal way that somehow the art that we're doing may not be making a difference. But I know that it is making a difference and it's something I think about a lot. So let me start with what my work is, is I like to take difficult, sharp emotions and situations and thoughts and feelings and put them into words in such a way that I and hopefully the listener of my song or whatever can untangle them, pull them apart, see them for what they are, not be so afraid of them. And when you're not so afraid of them, you can sit in their presence and they are de-escalated and you can heal. And I believe that it's that healing that leads to all of the other things that we're wanting, all the other things that we're fighting for, going for, hoping for, dreaming for. It starts with a personal healing where once you're healed and you love yourself and you know your value, you know that you matter, you do not accept a certain situation, treatment, certain whatever, that it comes from, comes from inside. And we've seen that in many, we're seeing that now. We're seeing that now with the with the movement for Black Lives and we're seeing that. We've seen it in the 60s. We saw it in South Africa. We've seen say, no, I'm worthy of more than this because I know my value. So my work as an artist, I believe starts in that space where I help to untangle those things so we can, we each can know our value and know that we matter. In terms of 100 years, 100 women, the call to me from National Black Theater was to make a piece. I think I was told it's the anniversary of the 19th Amendment where the man got the right to vote, make a piece. So first of all, I'm on quarantine. A performing artist where I'm quarantined away from anybody I would perform with, including my husband. I wasn't even with him and he plays piano, but I wasn't even with him. And so I thought, how am I going to make a piece? How am I going to, you know, make a piece? So I started really asking myself not so much what I was going to make, but again, why I was going to make it. And what was I stumbling over? What was I choking on that was making this feel so difficult? And it took me weeks of asking that question over and over and over again and looking at it and untangling it as I just described. And what I realized was that I don't have a big connection to the 19th Amendment. Interesting. And it was this feeling of, yes, I'm supposed to make this this piece about, you know, and I thought, no, I don't, I don't feel that. And then I said, well, why don't I feel that? I started doing that research, both personally asking myself those questions. Why don't I feel connected to the 19th Amendment? And then actual academic research. And then I was like, Oh, right. Because that's the one for me. And so it was these questions of intersectionality, these questions of what it is to live on the crossroads of race and gender and all of these things. And so I made a piece that was just asking that, that was just exploring that. It didn't answer it. It didn't come up with any kind of decision about, should the 19th Amendment mean something to me? Should it not? You know, am I black first? Am I female first? It just ignored all of those feelings, all of the feelings of all those questions. And just on a more logistic personal note, I created, like I said, it was on my mind, on my mind, I created a piece. I had to do a video piece. And that was unfamiliar to me, because like I said, I'm a performing artist. And so, but I created a piece. And I was thrilled with it. I used Abby Lincoln, who is one of my mentors as my inspiration. And I used Abby Lincoln. And I had, you know, black activists all thrown in there. And they were photos and video that I didn't own the rights to. And three days before it was due, I said myself, yeah, yeah, I'm not kidding. Like two days before it was due. I was like, you know what, I don't have the rights to this stuff. I don't think I can use it. So I literally revamped the entire project about two days before it was due. And because I had to use things that I had the rights to, I had taken all these selfies throughout the quarantine. And so I used these selfies. And then I said, well, if I'm using these selfies, this is like a self portrait. Well, that makes sense, because I'm talking about the intersectionality that I'm exploring being, you know, between race and gender. And so I made it a self portrait. I changed the whole thing about 48 hours before. And I was really pleased with what came out, but it wouldn't have come out had I not had all those iterations of it. And the untangling and the untangling that you went through personally for your process to make that. And I feel specifically engaged with what you're bringing up about the centennial of the 19th Amendment. I mean, 100 years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment and black women. And as I learned through, there was an entire commission that was created to like really celebrate this and get people informed about it. But there were so many women of color who were so active in getting women the right to vote. And then, you know, not being able to enjoy that right for many. Is that is that is that so during during my work for that piece, I started just gravitating, grabbing all of this information. And yes, she came up. She came up so strongly for me. And I, you know, I had, I had the knowledge of her, but I just I became insatiable. And, and, you know, I googled and YouTube and all that. But then I grabbed this book. This is excellent, by the way. Passion, passionate for justice. Excellent. Excellent book. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got really, you know, engaged. Yeah. You know what I mean? Turned on to these things. And then you're like, well, how can I separate to like, how can I after, you know, really studying South Africa, I'm like, well, how can I ever really divorce my art from my social justice advocacy? How can I ever really, how can I ever really say that those two things are not linked and are not so meaningful to me? And why and my why, my why, you know, so intimately linked to that. Okay, let's let's let's shift. That's really rich, though. I have, I have so many quotes, I'm writing down stuff. Everybody's saying. So any you today's topic, we're talking about Stacy, Yvonne Abrams, who ran for the governorship of Georgia in 2018. And came up against a lot of pushback from the from the she was running against somebody who was also officiating the election. Right. And there was lots of legal battles around, you know, just getting getting getting the vote count right and making sure that everyone's vote was being counted and everybody's will, the will is being represented of the people. And so I remember following this case and thinking, wow, it's 2000 at the time, 2018. And this is like voter suppression, like 60s level. And at the time, I didn't even realize there have been other eras, you know, where voter suppression was like, huge, huge, hugely a part of the culture, usually steeped in what we were doing. So, so this experience of Stacy Abrams made me think when NBT was like, we want to talk about black women and politics and we want to we want to highlight the contemporary and the historical, I thought, this would be a really great time to talk about her struggle and how she used that struggle in Georgia to open up a much bigger conversation about the history of voter suppression in America and what we can do today to actively engage with that and to actively make sure that we are asserting our citizenship, you know, she has a wonderful story. This is a quick sidebar about getting the message implicitly from her interaction with the security guard somewhere that she doesn't belong here, you know, and there's a lot of, I think, messaging that we get around not belonging around not, you don't, you shouldn't feel comfortable having the access to the power that your vote gives you and you don't need to use that power, you know what I mean? And so her story is something that really, really made me start to think about how can we see ourselves as active change agents? How can we see ourselves as people who are co-collaborating and building a new world? So here's a quote from Stacy that I think will start us off in the next half of our conversation. Stacy just did an interview with NPR about a documentary that was just released called All In. I might be getting the rest of the title. No, that's right. That's her. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. It's just tracking how voter suppression has been a part of the history of this country and this is these tactics and the desire to suppress the vote is not new. It's just kind of changing tactics. And so in an interview with NPR, Abram says, we should not live in a nation where your access to democracy depends on your celebrity, your wealth, or your zip code. And I think this is, this is a quote that is just in the vein of a Shirley Chisholm. Stacy is stating very clearly this is what you're dealing with, you know, when your democracy comes down to zip code, wealth, celebrity, you know, what's going on? How are we really going to engage with this? So to Stephanie, the first, oh, yeah, yeah, great, great, great pulling that up. Mia, Mia is always behind the scenes doing the banner magic. Okay, keep the banners. Audience question. Let us know in the chat. What is voter suppression? How do you define it? Where are you seeing it? And Stephanie, could you talk to us a bit about what are, what are some tactics we're seeing around voter suppression this election season specifically? Yeah, I do think it's important just to give a little bit of historical context in the documentary that you mentioned that Stacy did, and she was a producer of it really was about her story. We'll also give you that. So I encourage everybody listening to watch a documentary also make sure you watch Slay the Dragon on Hulu. It is excellent. It talks about voter suppression, but it also talks about gerrymandering, which I know people probably here and they, they might pretend like they know, but they probably don't really know. This is an opportunity for everybody to get more informed about how critical and important that issue is, especially I think today is the last day around the census and the census and gerrymandering and voter suppression are all, yes, you have not done the census, please make sure you do the census. But you mentioned that, you know, voting was not for anybody in this country, but white landowning men. And in about, I think it was around 1787 when white landowners in the South were outnumbered by enslaved people, a color black people. They were on par with their northern counterparts. And that's when they said, well, look, we need some more numbers on our side to help us out. So what do they do? They made African-Americans three-fifths of human beings. Said that we put a couple of them together, then there'll be a whole human and I'll have more people that I'm representing. So therefore, you know, I'll have more power, more numbers, a bigger kind of electoral kind of college opportunity in Congress. And that's, that was the birth of the electoral college. That's, that's why the system is old, just antiquated, it needs to probably be done with. But that is for another conversation. So you're right, nothing that we're seeing, nothing that we're experiencing is new at all, nothing. And what's so critically important is to remember that there right now is nothing new under the sun and that we have to make sure that we are knowledgeable to what voter suppression actually looks like. And that we know are right. So that we're not intimidated. And I think that, you know, especially for us Black women, we should just talk to our parents, talk to our grandparents if they're still in our lives, talk to them about their voting experiences. And we've only had a very short life of a strong and equal right access to the ballot box. It hasn't been that long. So the Voting Rights Act, which John Lewis helped to push an author was gutted in 2013, during President Obama's second term. And what that did was take away certain provisions and protections really for people in states that had a history of voter suppression. So states like Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Texas, North Carolina. And then the moment that those protections were taken away, these state legislatures that were all stacked in a different type of political direction decided to put in all of these draconian and really crazy rules and laws from strict voter ID laws to strict laws around voting by mail to the way that you actually get registered to vote. There are 13 states in 2020 that will not allow you to register to vote online. That makes absolutely no sense. So right there, you're already taking young people, right? And many, many other people out of the process. So what is the question? It doesn't look different, but every state I think has its own little form. Unfortunately, there's some amazing states that work super hard to ensure that voters have equal access to the ballot box like California, like Oregon, even Utah and other places like that have done a really exceptional job with making sure that there's not as many barriers to the polls. What we know right now is that there's been really big voter purges of the list to vote. So let's just say you haven't voted in two or three years or maybe even four years and they may say, okay, well, this person hasn't voted for this long. So we'll take them out of the, we'll take them off of the rolls. And then when they go to vote, okay, because I think they can, then they won't be able to and they would have missed a deadline. All of this is on purpose. There is nothing here that is by mistake. It has been orchestrated and it hasn't happened overnight. And that's why it's going to take everybody fighting to ensure that the Voting Rights Act is restored. They've just named this legislation after John Lewis, which is, you know, I don't know if it's an honor because the honor is actually passing it. The House of Representatives has passed it, but the Senate is just sitting on the desk of the Senate Majority Leader right now. So there are things that can absolutely be done. And what the Voting Rights Act being gutted did is just ensure that, you know, folks could discriminate against people to ensure that everybody doesn't vote. And you have to ask yourself, right, if voting wasn't important, would people be going through these great links to stop you? And that's what, that is what's so hurtful to me when I hear people say, oh, my vote doesn't count. It actually doesn't matter. They're all the same. All of that crap, that is a voter suppression handbook. Spiew all of that information. Discard as many people as possible. And let's see if people actually come out. So confusion is voter suppression, telling you whether or not you can actually vote by mail or saying vote twice, or telling you that, you know, the Postal Service won't be able to handle it, or making sure that you have an exact match signature on your mail and ballot. That's a voter suppression. I don't know about you guys, but I don't ever write my signature the same. Ever. Ever. Like who writes signatures anymore anyway, when you're doing most of that stuff electronically. So these little tactics from making sure that like I'm, I'm home in Georgia now. And I thought, well, if I don't go back to Atlanta, go back to New York, perhaps I'm going to stay here, I might, you know, get a Georgia ID and potentially, you know, be a resident here for a while. But I won't be able to get registered or vote in Georgia if I don't have a Georgia license, all of these things. And I can't be staying here. So today, there's so, there's so many tactics. I don't want to focus on all of those things, but rather I want everybody to make sure that they know their rights. One thing that you can do is you can go to whenweallvote.org, click on our resources. We have a new your rights page. We talk about what voter suppression looks like. Those long lines that you all see polling places being open due to a shortage on poll workers. We've all worked all of the coalition of voting organizations have worked really hard to recruit hundreds of thousands of new poll workers, but there's still some places where we need more. So folks can go to power to the polls to see some of those cities to potentially sign up. I know most of you guys are in New York, so that might not work for you, but you can reach out to friends that you have in other places to encourage them to potentially become poll workers. Another way we try to fight voter suppression is making your plan to vote. It speaks up on you. Early voting starts really soon in some places. If it hasn't already started and if you don't make that plan to vote and make that plan to vote early, then you could fall susceptible to all the tricks of the trade by either not turning your ballot in on time or you're rushing on your ballot so you misread and you write with the blue ink and not black ink. There's little things like that you have to pay attention to. So that's why it's so critically important for everybody to take the time to make the plan and when they make the plan to actually go through it step by step to ensure that they're following all the rules because we don't want anybody tripped up by it. And an informed voter cannot be suppressed. One of our partners, the Lawyers Committee, has an amazing, amazing helpline. Seven days a week, lawyers, okay, over 20,000 lawyers around this country are volunteering their time to talk to you. So if you have a question, it doesn't even have to be, I mean you could have a question for your mom that lives in another city or state. It doesn't matter. Call that number, 1-866-OUR-VOTE and they will help you. They will answer any and every question you may have. And if you are at a polling place and somebody tells you, well, you're not in the rolls, don't leave. You stay there. You say you want a provisional ballot. And if you have any trouble, you stay right there. Do not leave and call that hotline immediately and tell them what's happening. And if you see anything suspicious, I know that they're having roll call calls. They're calling seniors, mostly black seniors, telling them there'll be debt collectors at polling places, telling them that election day is a different day. There are things that are happening to the most vulnerable around us. So that's why it's so critically important for all of us to work not only just together, but to really pull our family, our friends, our coworkers, everybody together and give them as much information as we can and share all the resources that we can with them so that we're not leaving anybody behind. This week we launched our voting squad challenge. Ms. Obama launched that with her co-chairs, including your sister Rada, one of our co-chairs. And the whole premise of being a voting squad in a voting squad, rather, is making sure that you're able to help quell all of this noise and nonsense by giving people the resources that you have through when we all vote to make sure that they're making their plan to vote early. So what we like to say as we're kind of looking forward to early voting and we've just partnered with more than a vote LeBron James's organization is that when we all vote together, we become more than a vote. And that really means that we are becoming a movement and we have to be in this together. And once we know better, once we're better informed, once we have more awareness around what things look like, around what voter suppression looks like, then we can combat it. And we have to then tell the people in our lives to do the same thing. Awesome. I just feel empowered just like listening. Yes. So good, Stephanie. I want to jump on a couple things. I love that you said informed voter can't be seen. I love that. I love that. And I just want to say to people listening exactly what you just said that that each state is different. What what is needed, blue ink, black ink, signing outside, all that stuff, all that is different. And so the earlier you do it, you have more time to get informed, right? And then we've been reading in the news about how how there's a chance that one of the strategies on the other side is to to choose electors to to just to to vote for 445, no matter what the popular vote is, all of that kind of stuff. If the numbers are close enough. And so that's why I think the fact that we all vote, I love that more than a vote, more than a vote, more than one vote, because when we all come together and overwhelm the system with our votes, that's to me, because I excuse me, I've also been reading this, right? Oh, right. So, so that to me is how you the suppression is in so many areas that you almost can't keep up with all of them. That's right. You get past them, you overwhelm it with votes, right? You over overwhelm it with our presence, where then those tricks don't work anymore. Yeah. And you know, I do want to let people know because I think that we're in we've been probably down in the dumps for a while. But I want people at least a little bit inspired and excited to know that over 6 million people, almost 7 million people have passed their ballots early in this country, compared to 2016, it was only about 400,000 people. So we have surpassed that number by far. I don't know if you guys saw the lines in Georgia this weekend, when early voting started, it was wrapped around, of course, but they worked it out. But I mean, people are excited to go vote. And I'm inspired to see that people do realize there is power. The only thing is, I want people to realize that you cannot just do it now. You have to continue to stay in the game. Stay in the game. Don't leave out because that's what happens. We pile on during a presidential election, and then we all like go to sleep during midterms, and during other really important critical elections in your city and in your state. And that's another way that voter suppression can creep in because all these state legislatures who are working day in and day out to figure out, well, how do we make it more complicated to vote in what is supposed to be a leading democracy in the world? And when we aren't paying attention to what those people are doing in our state houses, that's where we fall victim. And by the time we look up, it's too late. So that's why voting for each and every office is so critically important. We have something called ballot ready in our voter resources hub that you actually can see who's on your ballot ahead of time. Do your own research. We have links that will link out to who those people are. But that's why it's so important for us to vote in each and every election and to make sure that we vote for every office. People usually say down the ballot, I've come to discover a lot of people don't know what down the ballot means. That literally means every office. And it's incredibly important to do that so that we can help to prevent and put people in place. I believe voting is, it should be for everybody and not for the select few. And then if you driver, I always, I think about this a lot too, because people want to tap in and then tap out, but nobody goes to school for one day and goes, thank you, I have all the knowledge I need. I'm done, done with college. My first day, I'm good. Right? That's what we do when we vote for it in one election and we tap out. You're not graduated. You haven't gained anything. You haven't seen progress. It is a process that you have to be a part of. Nobody goes to church or a synagogue or the mosque and says, thank you. Thank you, God, I have all I need from you. I'm done. So you go every Sunday or Saturday or whenever you're supposed to go, right? It is a process. So civic engagement and voting is that same type of process. You have to put into it to get out of it. And the moment we don't put into it, especially on the local level, we end up where we are right now, where we have a lot of mountains that we have to climb. But I want to, I want people to still be encouraged to know that we've already climbed these mountains many times. And the blessing, I think, of where we are right now, with what we've continued to see in our streets from police violence, to civic civil unrest, also a deadly virus that has ravished our land. Literally, it should show and tell us how every office actually really does matter, how every government official matters in our lives, how they have an impact on our lives, whether we're healthy or whether we are not. It is real. We can all see that. So I hope this is a great awakening that I think that we have needed to really come to the back to the plate and say, how are we all going to be a part of this team sport, which is democracy? And it is a team sport is not one-sided. And with 47% of Americans voting in 2016, that's only one side determining your future. And that's Yeah. And I love what you said about college and church. And I was thinking about it in terms of like budgeting, right? So you skipping all the important little budgeting things throughout your months, your weeks and your months, you know, you're not paying attention to how much you're spending on, I don't know, your lattes are going out to dinner. You're not paying attention, none of that, right? And then you turn around and you're about to get evicted. And so now you're about to get evicted. So you take all your little money and you pay your rent. And that to me is the presidential election, right? You go in, you pay your rent, do what you got to do. Okay. But then the next day, you need to start putting your stuff together so that you don't just keep coming up to every four years, you're about to get evicted. You know, every four years, you've got this huge problem on your hands. You go deal with, you know? And so, yeah, so it's the same kind of, you know, it's maintenance, right? It's daily, weekly, monthly, you've got to be thinking, you know, who, who are making these choices for me? And like you said, what we saw during this pandemic is that there are offices and people in those offices making critical, critical choices that we don't agree with because we didn't take the time to vote them in. Yeah. The ones that agree with where we are, you know, what we want. And share your values. Yeah, my values. Exactly. I really do. Hello. How are you? Thanks for joining me, Chelsea. I'm good. I'm good. You know, we are down to the fence. Y'all were just talking about it. We are the home stretch. I will tell you, I've been a little nervous. I've been on, I've been on like the internet. I didn't believe that Black men were repeating some of these talking points until my friends started doing it. And I'm up here. I can't type fast enough. I'm like, he is lying to you. He is lying, lying. But they're like, you know, but you know, the Democrats are, I'm like, no, not this time, not the, you know, you know, vote. So it's been interesting as we come into the final weeks. But happy to be here. Oh, I'm so, you know, your timing was just excellent. We're moving into a different part of the conversation. So it's great to have you here, Duret. And am I pronouncing it right, Duret? Fantastic. Sometimes I like say people's names wrong. And I'm like saying it like that confidently. So I do want, I do want you to do a little bit of our check-in, which is what we did earlier, just so that folks who are unfamiliar with your work can get a little bit acclimated with who's on the line now. We have a new voice in the room. So could you get us here? Let me, let me, let me actually just paste it into this, into the chat here. If you could tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, I have here your art form. If you'd like to talk about your creative endeavors as well. When, how, why, through what way did the political come personal for you? The last question is, thinking a lot about Shirley Chisholm's iconic campaign slogan for her run for presidency, unbought and unbossed. What does that mean to you politically or personally or both? Yeah. Those are checking questions. Won't take up a lot of time because I'm excited to have this four, this, this conversation with all of us, but I'm Joram, an activist, help lead a group called Camping Zero focused. We spend a lot of time on police violence, like that's our thing, because we understand that the police are not ancillary to the issue of mass incarceration, but the police are key to it, that you can name three ways you get to prison or jail that don't include a police officer. So that is like what we do. When we think about, so when I think about like how I became political, it was early when I was a youth organizer as a teenager, but teaching was one of the most powerful things I've ever done. I used to teach sixth grade math and then I opened up an afterschool center for a fifth or eighth graders. And they are every single night, every day, I saw the way the systems impacted my kids, their families, that was a big deal for me. And it's a reason why I went in the street in Ferguson in the first place was because at the time, the kids I taught would have been around the same age as Mike Brown, and that was, that was big for me. So that was, that was a life changer. And then I'm bought and embossed. You know, I think that so much of this moment has been an awakening for people about controlling their own destiny about saying like, I can actually usher in the future I deserve, I can like imagine something and fight for it. And all of those things are real. So I'm, so I'm always excited about being in conversation with incredible people like this, who are willing to put a stake in the ground about what we know we deserve. Yeah. And that's awesome segue into the next question that I had, which is, and Rhonda, you were just talking before DeRay came on a little bit about, you were giving an analogy about addiction. But I actually would like to talk about what are the pressing issues that you think people need to be aware of as they are going into vote as we're thinking about this election season, as we're thinking about civic engagement, you know, this is the season to be thinking about that, even though we just discussed the season is all year round, all the time to be engaged in these topics. So what do you all think is something that we need to be focusing on? And I can start us off and then maybe we go myself and then we'll go Rhonda, Stephanie, and then DeRay. But something I think that I would like for us to be really talking about is these rent moratoriums. How are we helping folks who are trying to make these rent payments during the pandemic? You know, how are we protecting people from becoming houseless? And the numbers of evictions are continuing to rise, which is like so there's a lot of grief, which I think we'll talk about in a second, but there's a lot of grief from me around that. Rhonda, what do you think? What's on the ballot for you? What's your... I don't want to be vague, but literally, I think all of it, they all affect me. They all affect black women. They all affect us as black people. I mean, they do talk about intersectionality. They all do. You know, how healthcare, I don't know, maybe healthcare, I don't know, wage gap, you know, like police brutality, like, you know, like the prison industrial complex, like climate change. I mean, literally, they're all, they're all, you know, they are all on that. When I think about Roe vs. Wade, when I mean, when I think about, like, one after the other of, it's really hard for me. It's hard for me to say this one is more important than this one. They all intersect and they all do that. You know, if you're gonna twist my arm and make me say, I would say probably, probably healthcare and wage gap. Okay, I'm not holding you to it. And, yeah, they're all there. They're all there. I'm the mother of a son. They're all there. Yeah. They're all there. Stephanie, what's looming large for you? Yeah, so speaking on my behalf, just for me, Steph, by myself, as when we all vote as nonpartisan organization, you know, I think all Rhonda said it perfectly. It's all of it. We do have some really urgent needs when it comes to ensuring that people in this country have access to adequate and equal healthcare, considering that we're in a global pandemic. So that's a little urgent. But yeah, it's everything. What I would like to say, though, is that I do think, and it's not always us. When I say us, I'm speaking about us as Black people and Black women. But when we do go into the voting booth, thinking about people other than yourself, just because you have access to something or if you have, you know, opportunity in ways that other people have, you can just vote for yourself. Because if I don't do well, you don't do well. So when you do go into that voting booth, when you think about issues, you have to think about issues that impact people more than you. You have to think about issues that are going to impact your children if you don't have them, your future children or your nieces or nephews, somebody's child. Okay. And I think that we've become such a selfish country. And I think it's so important to stop thinking about yourself and think about other people and other neighborhoods who may not have the access and opportunity that you had, and who are those elected officials that will go into office and think about more than just you. And it's so incredibly important that we that we start to take not all of us, right, that many Americans start to take that philosophy forward. And they're thinking about other people when they go into that ballot box, because it is about that booth, because it's so incredibly important. And everybody is impacted by the way in which you vote. So it's thinking about folks other than yourself, I would be remiss to if you know, didn't mention climate change, considering all of the devastation with the fires that we've seen in California. And then you have the continual ramping up of hurricane after hurricane after hurricane. It's just it's really just not a joke. And it's not about do you believe in climate change, we need to completely get rid of that phrase. And that question from our vote from our vocabulary, like that doesn't make any sense. Do you believe you believe in light, do you believe in dark, do you believe in day and come on, like climate change is real. So I think that we all have to make sure that that is top on our list as well as we're thinking about thinking about these things, because we are literally seeing the world change right in front of us. I don't know how hot it is in California, but Rhonda started out outside. And I know that it's been very, very hot in so it's not it's not a joke. And of course, criminal justice reform, I got the privilege to meet Dorei because of all the work that he did. And it's still doing on criminal justice reform. When I work at the White House, I still remember the first time meeting him, I can't believe you don't have your best I was expecting. Yeah, so I mean, but I think about all of those people, I think about my cousins who are incarcerated right now, I think about the people in all of our lives that we know so many people have been have been touched by the criminal justice system, we all have in some way shape or form. And the more time people spend away from society, the worse it is for all of us in a multitude of different ways, and the more lives were ruining the more communities were ruining the more city cities were ruining. I just there's so many urgent needs. People shouldn't get overwhelmed. But those are those are things that come to me first. Yeah, wow. Thank you. Thank you, Dorei. What's with Lumen Large for you? Yeah, so I spend most of my time trying to help people understand the impact that the system's already having on them. So, you know, I'm in a lot of places now where people are like, well, I don't do politics. I'm like politics is doing you, right? So when we do a system, it is a reminder that there are people that we chose who are making the decision. So when you think about that 20 years since that person got for drugs, it was a judge who was probably elected who like started that path, right? Who you think about your kid's classroom that doesn't have textbooks? It was probably like a school board that didn't have enough money because the legislature is making that connection with people. Like that's actually what I think that's where I see a lot of disconnect is that the system is like this abstract thing to people and then elections are sort of like another abstract thing to people. And then people don't get that it's like people made these decisions. People did it. People incarcerated your cousin. People underfunded your school system. People didn't fix the potholes in your neighborhood. Like people that you have the power to choose, they did that. And so when you say like you're not in politics, it's like, no, no, politics is all up through all your stuff. It's like so much time. And then obviously the police, you know, the police, it's weird. I think this moment is sort of oddly celebratory. The police have actually killed more people this year than last year. No dip, no decrease. The police are sort of unchanged. And I don't know if you know that if you looked at all the magazine covers and all these sort of celebratory thing, I'm like, oh, the police are, police are winning. So the issue is like really big to me because almost all of it is local mass incarceration, you know, 2.2 million people incarcerated, only 200,000 of those 2.2 million are incarcerated in federal prison. So two million of them are actually incarcerated in state and local. And that is like all that is they're your people. Those are like your city council people, your mayor is like, this is your people, you know, people locking people up, even when we think about private prisons, less than 8% of prisons are private. The vast majority of prisons are public. It is your governor and your mayor allowing exploitation to happen in all these places. It's not some random company as people would like you to believe. So that's where I spent a lot of time like helping people realize that like this terror is actually really close and the decision making is actually really close. And if there's anything to take away from this administration, which is like, I know Stephanie is nonpartisan. When I think about it, it is like what we did learn over four years is how fast the government can move if it wants to. Who thought you could like rip up mailboxes out of the street? I didn't even know that was a thing. That to me like would have to take forever. But it was like apparently not. You could just throw the sorting machines in the trash can. You could ban countries on Twitter. Like I didn't even know the government, like it's such a big apparatus and I thought it just like moved a little slower. Apparently it doesn't, right? So part of that is also reminding people that you can put people in office to demand the big things. And if we can do all that horrific stuff, then we can definitely use the power and speed and might of the government for good. We can guarantee housing. We can guarantee healthcare. Like we can actually do all this stuff and we can do it in our lifetime. Like I don't ever think that I'm fighting for like a 200 year thing. I think I'm going to be 90 and be like, who's Steph? You remember that meeting in White House? I believe you're killing people. God, it was hard. You know, like I feel really hopeful about. Yeah. And that's such a beautiful transition into what I wanted to talk about next is like, what are y'all learning about resilience watching all of this happen? What do you learn? What is what is giving you hope? We talked earlier about 2020 being the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment and how long of a fight. I mean, there were there were suffragists who were campaigning their whole lifetime and didn't see the vote by the time that they that they passed. And so I'm constantly asking folks who come out on MBT at home because I'm so personally wanting to know, you know, where are you finding hope and where are you? What is what is keeping your spirit fueled at this moment? Rhonda, do you mind if we start with you? I'm like, I'll see. Summer of 2020. Want to get the blues? It started with a lockdown, then from top down, everything got confused. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. You killed George Floyd. You tear down me on the news. And then in the midst of a pandemic raging, you're trying to put my kid in school. It'd be so funny if it wasn't true. Got it. Thank you. Resilience is so amazing. You bring that word up because I talk about that a lot in in the public speaking. I do. I talk about resilience. I think it goes back to what we talked about in the beginning of this talk, which has to do with healing, self-love, self-care, and knowing, I love what Derej just said, you know, being optimistic, even when you don't necessarily see all the proof of it. I think optimism and peace and joy come from something bigger than proof. And it comes from keeping your eye on the lies, right? It comes from something else. And for me, one of the things that I've done during this time, I got really clear about what my work is as an artist, as an artist activist. I call myself also a social artist that I need to be making work. I need to be telling the stories. I need to be writing my songs. I need to be doing that because that is my way. That's my version of self-care. And that's my version of keeping myself healed and well and focused and unafraid and optimistic. And so that's one of the, that was a piece of one of something I wrote during this time, just because it helps me kind of hold it together. And so that's what I do to stay resilient. I talk a lot about, and also how I parent, to allow the bumps in the roads to be the bumps in the road, but know that something inside of me has a shock absorber that I can, I can, the bumps don't need to, the bumps will change, but the bumps don't need to change right this second. I'm going to, I'm going to shock absorb so I can keep driving where I need to go. You know, and so that's, I think it's about self-care, self-love and, and staying, staying healed and staying focused. Yeah. What are some things that you do to the practice self-care? I say, like, I do daily walks. I have, I have to take a walk once a day. What are you, what are you doing? Outside is huge for me, huge. I saw how I started to get outside and I had a technical issue. I came inside, but, but yeah, being outside is huge for me. I get my rest at night. I go to sleep. I get my hours. I eat well. I drink a lot of water, but, but, but separate from that, um, I'm a Medicare. I'm a journaler. I get up early. My son gets up about eight, nine o'clock. I'm up at five so that I can have those out every morning so I can have those hours that are mine. I journal. I write my songs. I, I, I meditate. I listen to a lot of, um, a spiritual self-help type of personal growth stuff. I listen to it. I write it. So I do that and I get outside every day and I drink my water and I go to sleep. Thank you. I mean, and, and I ask about the specifics of what are your practices because something that I'm very much interested in is how are we sharing ways of sustainability? How are we sharing ways of survival with each other? Um, Stephanie, do you want to speak to? Oh yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just want to, and I, and I don't watch a lot of television. I watch very little television, uh, because it's, it's too, they're throwing too much at me. Yeah. Yeah. They're throwing too much at me and, and too, I can't, I can't decipher it quickly enough and I get overwhelmed by it. Um, that, that's the television news. I also don't watch a lot of other television mostly because I got too much to do, but, um, but, but staying informed cools me out. So I read a lot, um, and, uh, and I research a lot. Um, and so I, so I'm always learning, learning, learning, learning, uh, that in the midst of everything else I just said, that helps a lot, but not having, uh, something talking at me all the time that I can't control. Stephanie, what are you doing to keep fame? Yeah. Well, um, uh, I'm working. Uh-huh. I'm right now. I kind of feel like, um, I did when I worked on the Obama campaign in 2012 and I remember for 17 weeks straight we worked seven days a week towards the end. Uh, and I remember I put my hair in the same ponytail every single day and, um, so that, that is, that might be a form of my resilience actually. I'm now, now I'm kind of thinking about a little bit more. Um, it's hard for me because I, when I left the Obama administration at the end, uh, January of 2017, I went and worked in corporate America for a couple of years, literally just like two or a year and a half. Um, and I was unfulfilled. Um, and what I was doing during corporate communications, uh, worked at two major television networks and just decided this is not something I really wanted to do, especially when Ms. Obama started this organization in 2018 and I, I did get called over. Um, I was not running necessarily, but I knew that I wasn't fulfilled by what I was doing and I needed to do something more. And for me, what gets me through all of the moments, um, is knowing that I'm doing the work. Um, and is knowing that I am through my work, through my personal sacrifice of not, I mean, nobody's really hanging out, but I legitimately don't have a real life right now. Um, but being able to sacrifice those things, um, and knowing that I'm in the game in a way, if that makes sense, um, it's important for me to feel like I'm doing the work. Now obviously I'm a human and we're all human and we all have to, to have balance in our lives. So with, you know, similar to Rhonda, um, I love the, um, and I always mess up the name, but it's a meditation app, um, on Apple. What's it called? Headspace? No, no, no. That's, that's therapy. No, not com app. The com app. Yeah. All of them. We be all apps. I don't do, I don't do headspace. I have a real therapist that I do talk to that I like completely forget. Like, oops, my therapy time. But yeah, therapy is also, um, uh, something that's been super helpful for me, um, during this period and at the top of 2019 in January, I lost my father. So like, there's like, this is the last two years have just been terrible. Um, so I, you know, I've had to do everything that I can to make sure that I'm in a good, good space. Uh, and since I'm home, I have a, I have my nephews are 10 minutes down the road. One of them is four year old, the four year old anytime that you kids don't care about anything going. I mean, he knows that coronavirus trust me, but they are able to be resilient in a way that a lot of us, aren't able to, but escape with them and to be in the moment with, with children. I think it's so incredibly important, especially if you don't have your own yet. Um, so those are, those are some of the things I'll say some, I do want to touch on what has given me hope though. Um, what I, what I've loved about campaigns in my life is that you are working so hard 24 hours all the time, just completely focused on work, immersed in work, right? And then you know, you sometimes get disillusioned, like, am I making a difference? This is really working. Then you go to a rally and then you see like, I mean, I use, you see President Obama speak and everybody is like flipping out and I'm flipping out too. And like, it kind of gives you that energy, but COVID has taken that away. So you can't have that moment where you're really touching real people and you see how they're impacted by the work that you're doing. But we have these amazing volunteers called voting squad captains. We have almost 50,000 all around this country have signed up to really engage in their community and get their communities organized and to see them virtually on calls, telling us where they're from, all the things that they're doing, how excited they are to see all of that energy that they're bringing. I just feel like I really do feel like things are shifting. And I feel a sense of people trying now to take more responsibility for their lives and for the future of this country by stepping up just all of the rainbow of people that we saw in the streets all over this country gave me hope seeing people dance in the streets during this moment has given me hope. And I, regardless of what's happening right now today, there's a disaster every day, but I can, I can literally feel that energy from the people, which gives me gives me more hope and a better sense of, and then to see the synergy from people all over this world standing up in a way that we've just never ever seen before. People are standing in solidarity with us and every corner of the earth. That is, that is magnificent. And we shouldn't shy away from, from feeling some good energy from that as well. So there's a lot of things that we can all be grateful for. And it's not all lost. And what Doray said, you know, true, it doesn't take a lot of time to unravel things. It does take a lot of time to pull things together. And it can't, it's like a, it's like a cruise ship. You don't, you can't completely turn around, but you can sink it pretty fast. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah. But that, that is, I mean, you can set it on watch it, you know, explode. But it is hard to, it is hard to do, I think, you know, some of the things that we do, you know, want to see. And we would sit in rooms for hours talking about police violence with police in the room, right? With the Department of Justice, with, with the folks that can and, and could make a difference, right? Bringing everybody to the table. And that takes, that takes leadership and that takes work. Thank you. Thank you for that, Stephanie. Doray, what's your- The only thing I'd add is that, you know, I was recently, I was wondering, I was like, why aren't the white people mad about what's going on with some of the police stuff? And like, I just say, I don't get it. I'm like, y'all are dying too. This guy, I don't care about, like, you know, you should be, and I realize that some of what I was doing was actually projecting that, like, there's something really interesting about the way that Black people have always understood community as like expansive and as, like, y'all are my sisters. And that's like a real, we sort of embody it because we've had to that, like, we knew that family can never be rooted in legal relationships because we were denied those. We knew that family couldn't be rooted in place because those were ripped up from us. We knew that family couldn't be rooted in, like, the nuclear space because we were, that, that, like, style was actually stripped from us so long ago. So our sense of family has always been expansive. Like, our sense of community has always been an expansive thing where like my cousins and my like, you know, I feel like they, my brothers and sisters and other like that language is not just language, but it is actually how we like live and build because we have always understood that power comes from relationships. It doesn't come from hierarchy, right? When I think about like, sort of the magic of Blackness like that. So when you call a resilience, when I think about like this magic, it is, it is because we always know that we are standing with a community much bigger than the people directly around us. We are always in solidarity with them. We are fighting forth. So when Stephanie talks about you're going into the voting booth, voting for more than you, I'm like, you know, I am always thinking about like, God, my great-grandmother is not here anymore. But like, she would have like, it would have been crazy for her to see a world like this. And like, she did not pick 10 cents, 10 cents a pound of cotton for me not to like exercise this thing that she didn't have the right to do. You know, like I am, that is like, that is heavy on me. That is like a real thing. And in sort of Black communities, our sense of our responsibility to the community is actually just a source of power. I think it's why our music is so rich and why our culture is so rich and why our art is so rich and why our sort of analysis around sort of what works and doesn't is because we always are like a part of something magical that extends far beyond our physical reach. So when I think about how I stay whole in moments like this, I play in the how we win. Like that is sort of where I play. So in the way that Stephanie is like, I'm busy all the time and don't work. It's like, I'm not sitting in the problem. I'm not like repeating the problem back to you every day. I'm a week of every day. You know, it's called Camping Zero because we can live without where the police don't kill people. So every day, I'm waking up trying to like, what's the new way to get to zero? Like no one strategy will get us there. So we know there's no silver bullet in this question of how do you know if it answer one bite at a time, right? But there's a version that this is one bite after another, which is incrementalism. We don't believe that there's another version that says everybody's biting at the same time that this is actually like a full core press. And the only way we'll win is a full core press that the institutions were up against. They'll always when if we do like one thing, one thing in January, another thing in July, like institutions will just like pop back. That's what they do. But when you're like, we're going to take this down and this and replace it with this and then like all at one time, the full core press is what we have to do. So every day when I wake up, I'm like, what's the next bite? Like how can we have all these people biting at the same time so we get it? And the same thing was voting, right? It's like, how do we, we're trying to build a big house. One tool won't do it. So it's like, how do we make sure that people like are quick to use every, they have the tools, they got, everybody got the toolkit, but some of them don't know how to use the wrench. So how do we help you like figure out how to run for office? Some of them don't know how to use a hammer. How do we help you testify before the council? Right? Like, so I play in the how the how is what keeps me sane. I mean, this, this has just been such a beautiful conversation. I mean, so, so rich with like strategies and tactics and getting down into like the real structures of what we can do. And I'm, you know, I feel very hopeful. I feel, I feel like I came into the conversation like, oh, this is a, this is a heavy, heavy, heavy conversation today. Like, I don't really know. But now I feel like I'm very much some, some of the Ronda, as you say, some of these feelings have been untangled. And I'm able to see them in their wholeness. And I'm able to feel activated and empowered because I feel so informed by the guests that I had on this, this evening. I mean, it's really, really, really a gift. It's really a pleasure. I want to thank everybody. Stephanie, thank you for coming with the knowledge. Thank you for coming with a strategy. I mean, really just make, really infuse me with this like almost chism energy of like, we're going to go and we're going to do this. And we are on the path. We are on the trail to go do this. So thank you for joining us, Stephanie, Ronda. Oh my God, thank you. Ronda, thank you for just bringing all of the magic up for the song that you sung. I mean, you just have brought such a light and the creativity and artistry to this conversation. DeRay, thank you for joining us for our, for our, for our last little bit of this segment, but that bringing such, such a knowledge and a wealth of insight and wisdom around resilience and the mechanisms of resilience and how we are going to make it through this moment because we are our own salvation. That is, that's what it comes down to. There's an artist who is actually one of our commission artists, Lady Dane Figaro at UDB. She wrote a piece that was actually one of the first pieces that we released. And that is one of the statements that she makes is we are, we are our own salvation. That's, that's it. So I want to thank you all for joining me this evening. I'm going to sign off right now. Don't forget your voter to do today, vote early. As Stephanie said, make that voting plan. Know what you're, what you're going to go do, where, and there's a, there was a lot of resources that we mentioned in this episode about who to call. There's a whole hotline of who to call should anything arise at the polls for you. So do that, search for citizenship, and we will see you on October 29th for the final installment of this conversation series.