 Hello everyone, my name is Sarms Jabra or Sadamed Yasser Jabra, Ibrahim Jabra, depends on who you ask and who I'm talking to. I work for the city of Detroit. I live in the city of Detroit. I did a fellowship in the city of Detroit, big fan of the city, second best city in the world, first best city of being Baghdad, where I was born in the late 80s. We came here in the early 90s. You know, my dad was in the army, my mom didn't know where he was, and he came back one day on leave and they were just like, we're getting out of here. And they left and we were able to leave to Amman because Amman was the only city that was really accepting Iraqis at the time. So as refugees, we went over there. I was getting to be school age, and my parents said, okay, we need, we want our sons, I have a little brother, to start school where they finish it. So are we going to go to America or are we going to go back home? And they weren't really sure my grandma, my dad's mom showed my mom this propaganda video about how America is this place with like topless car washes and drug addicts and stuff. And she's like, look, your husband is going to be seduced by one of these hussies I have yet to find a topless car wash. So I've been here for 20 years. I'm sure they're here somewhere. In any case, so we left Amman, we came to America, we're able to come to America pretty easily as far as, you know, leaving everything behind can be for two reasons. One, my mom was actually born in Colorado. The second part of that is in addition to being born in America, my mom used to and still kind of works for the United Nations. She was doing data analysis for them. When the war happened, Iraqi currency went from three times the American dollar to 33 cents. So your currency, even if you're wealthy, depreciates by 900%. Thankfully, her pension was in American dollars. So she was able to cash that out. We came here. We came to Midland, Michigan, which is in the middle of Michigan, rural city. And one thing I would like to point out, my brother is 26. He was born February 1990. The war, the Gulf storm started, I think, in May 1990. So effectively for my brother's entire life, in his mid-20s, America has had, has either been at war, sanctioning, or occupying Iraq. In any case, yeah, things began to change drastically after 9-11 suddenly became being brown as a thing. And I, you know, I mentioned that kind of go by two different names. Well, I started, I started going by SARMs at that point, because people just became very curious about, oh, Sarmad, where are you from? Oh, you're from Iraq. What do you think about the war? What do you think about Saddam? I'm thinking, you know, what do you think I feel about that? And, you know, they might have good intentions like, God bless you for being curious, but it's a painful experience for someone who has had their entire life kind of drastically shifted to go over those wounds. But what I'm really concerned about is my family, my younger cousins, you know, I have an older cousin. She is phenomenal. She was the first attorney in like our extended family. She's got this beautiful family. She lives in Georgia. She's got a son and I think he's in third grade or something. And I just heard about this just the other day. One of his classmates, you know, in his third grade class called him a terrorist. And that's heartbreaking. That's, you know, for his one classmates to say that he must have gotten in from somewhere, right? And kids just kind of repeat back what they hear. They reflect the world that is presented to them. And this is the world that's presented to my cousin's classmates. And now this is the world that's being reflected onto my cousin. And that is not a world that I want anyone to live in because it's a dark, mean, horrible world. And as this product of war and as a refugee and as a son of refugees, I know what darkness can look like. You know, I begin to think myself, you know, with this election, like what is going to happen. And on a local level, you know, I'm trying to have these conversations with people in Detroit, just to come together to know each other to build a network. And then from there be able to respond strategically to, you know, what may come.