 My operation from yesterday contributed to a couple of words. A way of a sort of summary is in terms of what people felt about it. Some words come to mind like a lot of good information, overwhelming, somewhat depressing. What the hell are we going to do now? And all of that is pretty understandable. Again, I understand this is a working symposium. I don't know until that time we have been at a working symposium as opposed to the traditional conference which had bad news. But here you're in a room and you want to face each other. You've got different perspectives, different ideas. Where do we go from here? It's a little bit more challenging. But to get it started, I want to ask the couple of folks in the room that know history really well about the perspective. And I want to ask about it. And I'd like to ask Mario to just briefly say what was that? Let me ask you a question first. Did you say earlier that there was a lot of coming from the Tamarwha? Yes, sir. The Tamarwha? Last time. The Tamarwha was just a general manifesto for the staff. We are the Chicano people and we're going to do whatever is to stay alive. We also lead politicians in calling for transformation of the U.S. society. And the other? The Tamarwha is a blueprint for change in the academic setting. It is the basis, the rules of how it is now at the University of Chicano studies program and then later in the study. I guess way back in 68 in Santa Barbara the activists, students, professors did that and then we're on to become the lead blueprint and there was a call to action and the blueprint as the day we married several universities across the nation. Chicano and Latino studies program. Thank you. The reason I kind of wanted to ask that question is because I'm going to be totally honest with you that for most of a year and a half and having discussions with a lot of people across the state and predominantly Latino. And then I would say, where is our plan for Texas Latinos? Do you know where it exists? Whether you call it a platform, a white paper, et cetera. What's our agenda? And I have to be honest, and maybe it's just the way I ask the question so I own up to that, but it's like, you see it? Why do we need a plan? Or I'm already doing stuff within this. It's like, what's the, is there a fear here that I'm missing? So I don't pick it up in this group because I got from yesterday, I think I got and that's how I was reading it as a whole. There's a sense we need to have a strategy for that. And that strategy, you know, whatever it may look like in terms of its components, it doesn't mean it's going to happen tomorrow or not because I would challenge ourselves as organizations whether they be here or not here. Like, where is the plan that all data, LULAC, CODE, all the organizations that's a state-wide plan and not just those organizations, but here in the West Side of San Antonio West End that has signed on to or, you know, the folks out in the valley in terms of, what was the name of the group in the valley? The group of multiple, Lupe and there's a whole bunch of others. You know, where is it where, you know, we have to build, not only build the plan, then we have to build alliances on the plan. And if you call yesterday, I mentioned this is a working document. If we produce a document here, whatever we produce from the content of our work, it's a working document to build from LULAC and to create more alliances. So it's a, it's a process. And I was, I think everybody enjoyed it. Did that go last night? Yeah. And did you pick up that little part last night from above? I forgot how they put it. I certainly can't do the job that they did above. It took 40 years for the far right to get the power it has now. That's controlling our lives, so to speak. And they had a bigger starting point. They had a lot more failures than us even 40 years ago. Okay. And I realize that. But again, I'm just trying to highlight, you know, the work that's invested. But I think we said at the very beginning together that because we're working in this area, I would say, because I'm doing voter registration and the only thing we need to do is get more Latinos elected. Like that's the only thing. That's a crucial first thing. We need to get that to happen. But, you know, that's all. But what is happening in a lot of what we talked about is basically in some ways been implied more in terms of state government policies. But there's a lot of things that can go on at the local level that where the power really is, which really affects people more directly. And it can be argued that that's what we need to start from, you know. You know, if they're doing some creative things in the Bayer or in San Antonio, let's say around housing and passing creative policies around bonds for affordable housing, can we take that to the other cities? And that's just one area. And in San Antonio, perhaps PK, you know, we want PK statewide for all Latino children, for all children, as in Latinos. But yet we have to do it only at the local level, but Lubbock doesn't have it, Houston doesn't have it, and Bayer doesn't have it. So what do we need to do to take the local organizing and try to model that? So there's just a lot of moving parts around that. So I just want to highlight that if your question is what's going to come out of it, it's what we put into it, okay. And it's also the question of yes, are intended to generate a document that will be fed back to you as a draft. They're not for the content of your work. And let's see what we can take it. And some of us pay a handful of us, they grab a piece of it, or all of us may grab another piece of it, et cetera. It just depends on how we're going to work together and work forward to the extent that we can keep some momentum going. Someone already said, we're going to take this on the road. This kind of conversations are up. And I already got, in my possession, somebody already gave me a draft of the policy development and strategy for social change in Texas. Policy proposal, proposal for Latino-centered policy studies there, okay. So, and that's going to come up probably in one of the sessions of the person who gave you this in terms of when we get into the fact that yesterday we just warmed up just barely in the conversation that the panel got. It was just get it as good, get it as good. And then what are some of the issues, okay. But this morning with this morning panel, I wanted to kind of try to exemplify that in building that plan, at least, you know, I'm saying it candidly, at least from my perspective, a few others, but maybe not yours. Three critical components of that is how to build capacity to move that plan. Because we could right now talk about a thousand issues and then talk about policies that might respond better to those issues but then we ask the question, what capacity do we have to get it done? Because in the room people were saying, well, why do anything because in effect, because all the power that, you know, that people have right now, they're not letting the room agenda. And I don't think, and part of that is true, but again, the other part is what we can still be doing. And so those three areas again is organizing. What is our current level as Latinos locally and statewide in our organizing capacity that in and of itself, you know, are we talking about organizing to get voter turnout, to get Latinos elected, you know, to just address a secondary issue, et cetera, et cetera. What is the quality of that capacity coming from different groups that do exist or groups that we still need? The second is policy development. You know, regardless, we still need data. Okay? And we still need information, and I'll just pick one out of the blue. You know, you've heard about the problems with CPS and kids dying, et cetera, and the budget is totally always underfunded for the last two decades of CPS, et cetera, and the issue with foster care. Has anybody asked, how many of those kids that are dying are Latino? I haven't seen anybody ask that. What proportion of those kids are ours? What is our information and our advocacy there? So I'm just trying to pick up on one thing so we can think about policy development. Where is the information that supports grassroots advocacy? And I'm not talking about research, and here's where sometimes we need it in ENA. I'm not talking about an academic paper. Hopefully we're clear about that. I'm glad we got Latinos and others in academia doing good research, even around Latino-based research, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a policy research paper, whether it's five pages long or 10 pages, or then you can massage for the media to create allies to get support behind what we want. So there's a whole level of issues around developing the policy development capability. Where is our think tank for that? Is there a Latino think tank in Texas? No. We don't have it, okay? And I know we have allies, like CPP, great organizations, and a few others, but they're not always on the same land, and we may agree on some things, but not agree on others. So where is our own capability for policy development that supports our issues? And the third one, again, is organized communication. The whole issue, the story I just said last night, did you imagine setting that story last night from the theater in some way as well as into the internet? You see? That's an aspect of the message here. How do we carry our stories so that someone doesn't change the narrative? Okay. I know I stepped into yesterday with the word vulnerable and poverty, but I listed from the standpoint of caution about how that's interpreted by the other side. The narrative from the far right about what that means and who it's for, right? Or by bureaucrats who translate something and implement it in the program. That's not necessarily our narrative about even what that is and what that represents. So how do we tell our story and do our own messaging and what people do we need in terms of media communication, you know, and none of this in each of these areas says that we don't have anything, okay? We do have some things some stronger in some areas than others. So that's it. I'd like to start with a conversation first about what the big label is political obstacles for us to take in power. And I'd like to introduce Jose. That's a junior, a junior senior. I'm sorry. Jose, that's a senior defense for quite a number of years to say the least has been engaged in this whole issue of gerrymandering and others in terms of civil rights. And he's actively engaged right now in the case that you all were probably already aware of. But I'd like to share from this perspective his experience. Thank you very much, by the way. It takes about 10 minutes and then we can do a little Q&A but I'd like to start with Jose. My name and my father's name is I'm not... I'm Joe. Right, Joe. So I guess I've been at this for since I'm not junior. I'm really, really senior. Excuse me. So I've been at this for a very, very long time. And I think... And one of the things that I've noticed is how little things have actually changed. I mean, just that line about it took 40 years to gain power out in Texas. I mean, I was there in 1977, right? Yes, they were all Democrats but so what? We were on the sidelines and Jerry Mandarin was going on the process. We had cities that were underrepresented all over the state. We're doing a lot better in that regard but it's still not anywhere close to carrot. And those things are happening now. So yes, the courts have found that the new obstacles that they're presenting were done with intent to deny Latinos and other people the equal opportunity to participate in the election process. The efforts that have gone into things like voter ID, the resources that went into establishing that and defending that when they look at it we're really talking about a very small part of our community. The lengths they go to suppress the vote of a very small segment of our community but that's what they were aiming to do and they spent millions of dollars defending that very little income of keeping those people from the ballot box. What they're doing on redistricting the courts have found that the plan for the Congress and the plan for the State House representatives were intentionally drawn to minimize the opportunity primarily of Latinos but also of African Americans participating in the electoral process. In District 23, the congressional district that runs from San Antonio to Basel along the border of Texas along the Rio Grande the lengths they went to identifying Latino voting precincts that had very little turnout and putting those into the district and identifying voting precincts that had a high level of turnout and pulling those out of the district so that when you look at the total population it looks like the district is a strong district but they went to this level of searching I mean one of the drawbacks of having technology that we do is you can identify these precincts with a click of a mouse you can find those voting precincts and what they did and there's e-nails going back and forth about how to measure the effectiveness of the district the Attorney General developed a matrix specifically for this purpose where they identified 10 races involving Latino candidates and they identified it that way they did not identify Democratic candidates they were all Latino candidates and these were the preferred choice of the Latino community statewide and that's how they measured the strength of the district so when they looked at District 23 over that 10 election cycle races the district has... I mean as we all know District 23 is a flip-flop it's one year, one election that will vote for the Latino for the candidate the next time you hang with the flip-flop district and when they measured the way it was before redistricting started Latinos had elected 3 of those 10 or had voted for 3 of those 10 candidates that they identified and the messaging back and forth was let's reduce that to 1 and they did they reduced it to 0 they said we've gone too far bring it up to 1 out of 10 we can control it to 1 out of 10 I don't know if it's so bad and they did that in San Antonio to the State House of Representatives so all over the map you can find instances of in 2011 and 2013 of the people in power in Austria looking to be exactly that and they defend themselves by saying we were only going after Democrats we were trying to bolster up Republicans but that's not what the internal data shows they were looking at specifically identifying where Latinos had voting power and where they didn't and then manipulating the lines in order to achieve that so you have the redistricting order that came out on March 10 and then our recent one very recently on the State House of Representatives both the Congress and the State House of Representatives in which the court found potential discrimination there's a congressional district in Fort Worth we called it during the trial the lightning bolt district because it starts out as a square district and it runs through Fort Worth with all these jagged edges going through Fort Worth looking like a lightning bolt coming in from Collin County into Fort Worth when you go down to the block level that they were doing picking up every Mexican box they could find and putting it into Collin County so it wouldn't affect any congressional districts in Fort Worth that's where the power would have been that's where the stroke in Latino populations there in Dallas so these were specific redistricting techniques that they were using but as I said this is really not anything new that's the kind of policies that when the Democrats were in control back in the 70s that's what they would do during the redistricting in 1970 in 1980 1990 then the power started shifting to the Republican controlled state but you know I don't know from my point of view I think all that's shifted is that the Dixie Grads who controlled the Democratic Party in the 70s moved over to the Republican Party so it's the same sentiment it's the same bigoted sentiment I mean everybody wants to be careful about the quality we had during the trial we had the hardest time getting friendly, Latino Democratic representatives to get on the stand and say these actions were intended to be racist their columns were racist and they moved it again in the current session in which they are targeting the immigrant community attacking people that they just don't like they're bigots about those sorts of things and I think that Rafael Anacilla made a speech the other day in which he had been reluctant to do exactly that to challenge his colleagues but he said you know so the options in the current session the leadership the moderate Joe Strauss House of Representatives and even worse in the Senate the options they give legislative towards is here's a bad bill why don't you come up with some amendments they look at the amendments and they say no, none of those are good, we're going to reject all of them here's a worse bill line up or we go with the worse bill I mean what is that the bigotry but what else is that so anyway I guess there have been there has been a lot of progress there are a lot more rich Mexicanos I guess there's a lot more of us in the middle class in the upper middle class but I think those things are eroding for us thank you Rob Santos is with the Urban Institute out of D.C. but he's at the high notes like from the residence of Austin and I was going to tell you I think it's in Austin correct and his background is extensive in terms of particularly engaging and working in what we would call a think tank that's the Urban Institute I'm not going to speak to that but the whole point here is for Rob that thing if you could talk a little bit about the Urban Institute in the context of the roles it plays relative to policy making policy development and engagement if you will and as far as the time reflect on having something like that if you will so I just want to let Rob go with you morning everyone first I wanted to say that I'm probably one of the last one of the last kiddos that was able to be from back in the 70's when the it was coming in and I was fortunate enough to after going to Seattle to transfer to Trinity and I wanted to be a math professor but there was this gentleman in the Institute of Instructional Research and he was doing a national survey of people that was in the 70's back in the 70's and he was using that as a vehicle to bring in all the graduates who could find the mission to help train them in research and taking them back to the city and in a one hour meeting and he convinced me not to be a math professor in the Institute of Instructional Research and so it's because of that that I've spent my life as a statistician working we are hearing you might be important I've spent my life working in academic as well as policy research in schools all over the country and I migrated what I wanted to say in the context of policy research in tanks is that I've found in my migration that there's a really important of of of journal articles scholarly research policy research and you really need to work together in order to have an evidence base that you can take to the public and try to make changes in terms of policy so at Urban Institute we basically we plan to be non-partisan but most of the folks say we need to cover it was actually started by Lyndon Johnson back in the 60's about macro memorize and such to examine the episode it's been so it's been in existence a long time and the idea is to put it to the public to policy makers to legislators etc the results of research with statistics and data that can allow them to have a better discussion a more cogent discussion about whatever social issues are at the forefront of a bill or whatever type of policies being set forth be it issues on housing on tax on health whatever at Urban we found that in order to make this best to look holistic rather than and I'll give an example with yesterday's discussion in our small group I was in the employment group and the first thing we did was we said okay let's take a look at the demographics of employment and the shrinkage of middle-aged jobs well that required a democracy that required manipulation of federal and state students we then started talking about well look at how many Latinos have EAs in the state of Texas compare that to the nation in the state of Texas that invokes the whole issue of education and its role in EDA with a good job well we didn't talk about it and there's health issues and health conditions that prevent them from being able to be gainfully important there are other issues that you can't afford I was actually looking at the Urban Institute map of affordable housing in the state of Texas there actually isn't very much affordable housing in the state of Texas especially in places like Austin and San Antonio the big metro areas if you can't hold on to your house and you have to be moving how does that impact your ability to get a job so holistically one needs to look at the interactions between systems of policies like education, health labor, economic development and so forth we need to take from now in terms of the type of research that's doing the type of reports visualizations nowadays an important component of that is visualization and so we answer now it's not a matter of putting out this big report by hundred pages you need to tell the story and so there's been a huge investment in our communications department to to create visualized data and tell stories add to that short blocks take large reports and streamline them pull out little pieces or briefs and then send out sort of essentially sound bugs that are very effective in terms of getting media pickup in terms of legislatures talking about bills and so in the bigger picture we need the scholarly research because that's what creates intersexual frameworks and the evidence base and then a lot of us do the policy research recommendations for policy that legislatures can take you need to communication piece because without that you're not going to be very effective in terms of enhancing the policy so I guess that's right and I wanted to talk about the need for all the three elements in the scholarly research and the policy research thank you it's not a piece of justice in the media in California it's not a piece of justice because I can't seem to know about it but I know that they have combined experience of not only what they do but also in terms of their activism in terms of organizing at the local level for issues of which themselves are important and I thought I wanted to exemplify at least at a local level some of that organizing and just have it again because that's an asset to get into the discussion of how you know the levels of organizing we need to do some local and saying why but that's the cheapest way to do that yes yes and I also wanted to acknowledge that almost my boss wants to plan a time and I also worked with a set and I was thinking of being a lawyer and then deciding not to but I think they also wanted to I want to honor you all for teaching me just a few years over than you usually I want to honor women so I want to acknowledge some of the but I guess my role is to talk about the organizing piece and I want to say very clearly that to be a capable agent of the global economic environment of our age at the core of our work is to maintain a strong and broad support of our community so be with community be of community and I think we've lost that concept, lost that idea if we look historically the 1800s the early 20th century we didn't have anything we were out there organizing we were knocking on doors we were pulling our hair we were being strong and out there to die and we could see it and we could react because it was that racism was that much more evident and so we were reacting and responding and the Alonso Pedales the few educated guys that were our attorneys who were out there we start winning and then we have the creation of Maldives and Southwest Voter and they're coming out of here San Antonio so there's amazing stuff happening and if you look at women's issues Roe v. Wade he also comes into reality just the housing is an issue and there's money put in there affirmative action I'm also going to the last ones there and I get to get funding and get into really good schools but but then all of a sudden we're creating social we're creating other institutions that become more of the bureaucracy but we need to have we're going to talk about health care we do need to create clinics but then we get part of it running the clinics and we stop doing work at the community level we start getting single member districts created we get the districts we elect our Latinos and then they don't even support our work but we got them in there 40 years later they're in there but are they really representing community or are they representing someone else and so same thing with women and women's clinics and affirmative action we're in those schools but 40 years later people how many Latinos and black people and women have said I hate affirmative action I have nothing to do with affirmative action because we've been attacked so much that we don't want to say that something really did help us to be in that to have gotten that education to have not left the university with $50,000 debt that our young people are not having to deal with but we didn't get that I mean I had $10,000 of debt but it's nothing like $100,000 so I think we forgot that piece and again because I worked at Maldon because I worked at Southwest Road registration project I was able to take all the learning there but also say once missing and I think part of our work is to constantly be connected to community and I also want to honor the fact that that Spinanza was listening to the voices of Mupedis that were doing a lot of thinking at that time in the 70s and 80s that were women like Glorianza, Lula and Sheri Muraga, Audrey Ward African American and Latina women who were doing this intersectional analysis that I can't just stand here today and talk to you as a working class Chicana from the west side of San Antonio but I'm also Mupedina, I'm also a lesbian and I'm also X, Y and Z there are many identities that we all, everyone here take on and on all the issues that we deal with affect us and we have to think holistically and that's that intersectional vision and idea it's a holistic way because you can't you can't do it with just parts of me it's not just my arm that's being affected it's not just my heart that's being affected it's not I'm losing hair or getting white it's, there are reasons that, you know, have to think holistically and I think that was part of the vision that we found people just working on separate issues so, as Spinanza has always been about bringing all the issues that be it that yes, we may want jobs and so therefore, fracking is a big deal in South Texas because it's going to create jobs or putting intention centers in South Texas are good because they're jobs but even those are messed up jobs and messed up policy and again, who's pushing that? Lots of our you know, elected officials at the local, state, national level and and what we do you know, we have created research and that you know, and part of it is our own research that, you know, we taught people how do you, how do you do your own research? We've also taken research done by people, I mean, right now there's a whole reach of water pipeline that we had professors at Trinity put together all this analysis and we went before council members and they're like we don't believe you, we don't agree with you it doesn't matter and it was just about we need water because a million people are going to come in and then we look at numbers and say wait a minute, how are those million people coming in are we just annexing people that's one way to get more people and I mean we did research and we were like these numbers are really just messed up but it becomes there quick and easy way to say this is why we need that but without that holistic vision how does it, what does it mean to go into debt 3.4 billion dollars and who is it going to affect the most when people are fairly making enough money in this town to pay their utility bills water, electricity and now you're going to just increase it, you know, the first year another 20%, another 40% but when it was a $20 water bill it becomes a $70 water bill and becomes a $150 water bill it were middle class we can pay it, it were upper class we can pay it, I mean there are so many people in the north side who have lavish bonds and in the newspaper it's in there it's like the top 20 water users and they get charged a little bit more but they can do that on the other hand in the south side in the west side in the near east side people's water is being cut you cannot live otherwise be that so again we have a holistic analysis and the information okay so we will look pipeline that is going to allow us not to live with restrictions you know so we can waste all the water we want as long as you can pay for it so some people waste it and other people have their water shut off but it's all about the million people coming in and those million people are not necessarily we're not taking care of the ones who have been here 100 years, 150 years and that's what we find over and over whatever the issues may be sometimes again we're fighting ourselves, I mean we can get hundreds of people into city council office, I mean all the meeting right so once upon a time as this individual speaker I've had 10 minutes that I could speak and then a few years later as this individual I was a lot of 5 minutes to speak and then they see 100 or 200 and it's like you all have a minute and that happened because you know a harbor girl said you know I have to go home at 7 o'clock right so he gets to go home at 7 o'clock or go to functions whatever but I maybe remember meetings that went on to 2, 3 and 4 in the morning and now it's like well it's too much so and of course as you know folks have meetings right during the day when are all these policies being enacted if you're going to deal with zoning whatever the issue is the meetings you have to go to are during the day Monday through Friday from 8 o'clock to 5 o'clock they don't think about weekend meetings or after 6 o'clock meetings after 300 years of existence and they call me as they finally have a bilingual translator in the city why did it take 300 years? so three years ago there were 300 people that lived in the mission trails they were displaced because of economic development because we want to beautify the mission trails area but those folks had lived there 35 40 years but there's something better I don't know who it's better for it wasn't better for those people but we had a council majority Latinos those 300 people and there is a report that just came out this past Tuesday that gives major analysis but that analysis we didn't even have to create because we know other moments and other places where people have been displaced and we know the consequences of that displaced they know that they didn't care because again where's the money coming from what is the future of that election official? so that's why people don't vote so again we can register people to vote they're not going to vote if our politicians are just as bad as what we had before the Dixiecrafts or the Republicans and people aren't that pathetic it's just given up so we have to change that model and for doing the work you all are doing all of us here are doing that work just have to be honest with yours so guys our next speaker is Laura and she has the business of Viva Politics and it's pretty much tells you what it is in one sense it's a campaign but a thread of Adam Shure's message has three or three kinds of books in the broader context of the city or a campaign but I think in terms of trying to apply it in the red why we need good communication good message it tells us this better thank you that's when I start by saying it's been a rough couple of six months it's been hard so it's nice to be here with you guys because I feel like re-indigrated because I was one of those persons who woke up every day after doing lunch and fried for two weeks that was me and then I stopped and then I get fried and then now as we go into this session in Texas, the Texas legislature it's painful it's hard for me to come here and see all of you because it's like I need that esperanza I need that energy to get back to work because there's a lot of work to do and I wanted to tell Juan that during our session yesterday we had a lot of conversations we were talking about putting our policy agenda together and it was especially about whether or not we should do some work whether or not hmm it's one of those it's the Russians or the Russians or the Russians so there are a lot of things that we achieved anyway, so it's especially about whether or not we should use the word union in our policy decision makers so yeah, this is especially about whether or not we should use the word union in our policy agenda whether or not we should use the word union in our policy discussion and we kind of set it for a little bit and I thought uh oh wait a minute let's back up this session is really the reboot because we've had these conversations before all of us have we've sat in these rooms and we've talked about you know the disparities the poverty we've had these discussions it really is what folks have right, so for me this conference is the reboot let's reboot and when we reboot, let's go back to the basics let's ask ourselves who is our audience is it the Texas Legislature when we come up with this is it the Texas Legislature who am I- is it the union is it organizing policy elites like ourselves I'm starting I'm just saying I'm not insisting is it the policy elites is it folks like ourselves who is the audience that's a critical question we need to ask ourselves because that's going to determine how we message ourselves how we talk about it whether or not we use the word union or not whether or not we use the word poverty because whether it's matter right audience for America is this about getting investment into our community do we change the language do we change the language to target sponsors is that what we're about and the next basic question I want to ask is what do we want of each other what for what purpose do we want them to think the certain way do we want them to act a certain way do we want them to reject something altogether well we know from experience that we can produce these little white papers research papers without to local communities types of legislature is that really going to change the way they think are we changing the way they think by showing them a piece of paper or not we're reaching we're hitting obstacles the basic thing I want to go back to is what for liberty systems are we using to give them this information is it a right paper is it a report is it a meme will we write a white paper and how many people will read a meme right but the question all comes down to who is our audience and what we want them to do how many people have started this session to hear one talk about going back to local communities because I feel like what we need to do we don't have control over this legislature we don't but we have control over some local government we have control over some local school boards some water boards so important government bodies that we can take this policy paper this agenda and have them push it and when they push it, when they have success just as you said take free paper essay and take that and put it in these other cities put it in cities and then use that as a model to build capacity and create communication around that and I'll close because I don't want to get to the question and answer part but what's key in all of this obviously you know going on about the local media but I do, I think what's important and I don't want to not talk about is political theater political theater is a must I have a friend you know probably know him he's an activist and he bought us a a political theater he understands it and what it means and when I talk about political theater it's about creating a media attention remember, media are not and I wanted to talk to young kids about this thing what's the purpose of media what's the purpose of media is to form, to educate and I'm like oh the purpose of media is to sell these papers is to sell ads in their business and that's what they do so what we have to do as activists is create material that's salacious, that's exciting that sells ads that gets eyeballs on the newspaper, that gets eyeballs on the TV so a perfect example of this is a wonderful share of our pile so share of our pile we're going after him in Arizona I wish I could come up with this idea these young kids did it, they were amazing what they did is outside of his office during election time when they were trying to get him out of office they threw a retirement party they threw tables, a vignette, a mariachi a van they even brought a moving truck a moving truck, they say we're going out and I was like that's amazing that is what creates media attention and then you build on that then you create the means then you keep the social media then you go viral I'm going to stop there because I don't want it on but I'm excited to be here and thank you for your questions the threads of each one are just as we go into the discussion these are threads we'll pick up in terms of what these questions and also what you bring to the table but I'm going to stop there to see if anyone just has any questions any one of the folks out here follow up I'm going to talk to someone who takes his vote and starts organizing and we're a very new organization we just got chartered but we got chartered for the purpose of being connected to all of that on the three different media so congratulations for today and I was attentive on that anyway my thing to all four of you is I believe and I've always thought that our communication is not strong enough our communication is the same thing and let me give you an example role versus weight when a person says that they support pro-choice automatically the arts on the other side say you're for a portion that's not true that's not true so our communication I don't believe your organization needs to be communicating the same rhetoric that the republicans communicate and that's how do we get there how do we communicate the same message against them that they have been so successful in communicating against us that's my question I'm not going to ask and I know they perfectly but I think it comes down to what we call issue framing they frame the issue so suddenly we're discussing the issue within the frame that they've created rather than creating our own frame and discussing it within that context you know I think a good example to talk about this in real terms would be take for instance the SP5 of the anti-sanctuary film so where you're showing show your papers thing can I get the phone number right 4 okay so 4 so when we think about this and we think about Latino working class that are citizens do you think they really care about this issue? probably not they'll care about it though when the police start pulling them over or profiling them when it starts to affect them they'll care about it so let's rather than waiting until this happens let's be proactive let's create messaging around what we know is going to happen we know American citizens are going to get pulled over and asked to show this we know this so let's do a second hashtag one round one white for every crowd you pull over you've got to pull over a white person then it's not profiling let's get ahead of the game let's think creatively about what we can do to frame that messaging so that it benefits us any other questions? yes I was actually one point that allowed me that I thought was excellent which is who's your audience and depending on who your audience is you will frame the problem differently and use a different approach to communicate your message so for example issues of entitlements helping people in poverty vulnerable populations or Democrats or left-leaning folks you talk about the need and the values of helping people who are the Republican conservative people you don't say here are people in need and we need to help them because they don't buy it they think oh that's their own responsibility instead you frame it as we need to provide these people an opportunity to lift themselves up so you switch it around and use different essentially different approaches that are tailored to different audiences and sometimes that can be effective and sometimes they just ignore it and I wanted to use the example of the Esperanza versus the city of San Antonio in 1997 20 years ago Esperanza gets defunded by the city even though we had ranked first in our division of public disciplinary and even though it was the second year so they had already funded us one year but they defunded us because they used the wedge issue we don't want to support gay people but they really didn't want to support an organization that was an activist based arts organization we were talking about immigration we were talking about pro-choice we were talking about all the issues and we did that through our cultural programming and diagruent films and whatever so we spent the whole year talking to the community to see if we should file a lawsuit but we said lawsuits again they can get caught up in court and how are we having conversation so after a year of having conversations with the community twice a month they said yes so we moved forward and the first thing we'll talk about censorship because as in latinos as people in color, as poor people we've always been censored the tag was that was their first frame we should respect each other as we talked and we knew we were going to lose in court so the strategy was that the court case was going to let us do the community organizing and what that meant was we were going to be going back to house parties going back and talking to people about what the issues were and we came up with another tag which was todos somos esperanzas so it was like wow we're all hope and then the conversations ultimately ended up being about discrimination or at that moment english holy we were coming down in california and to get a bumper sticker or a yard sign to put up at your house you had to go to those meetings and you had to agree that you were supporting an organization that did all these things and maybe you weren't pro gay or you weren't pro choice but all of a sudden you saw that connection we were talking to rotary club members i was scared about that we were talking to folks that liked religious we want the signs and then again how did we reach the people so pistale had just come to san antonio and she went to one of the meetings and people wanted to do street theater so she worked with 30 people and we set up 3 different teatros and then one of them just went to the top and that one had 12 new people come out after that and they had to perform so we were messaging to different communities and then at the end we had those banners just before we go to court and then you go throughout the city and you see those somo signs i thought that was something the judge would encourage if he saw all those signs then maybe people actually liked the sign and the other one was at this because they said poor working class people don't support the arts and culture that they're more interested in other things and we had ranked 40th with the city and after this campaign we ended up to rank 9th and then they haven't cut the arts in the same way so it does take a lot but it is about talking to different communities because we're all leading to reach the information that we like thank you also it's real quick there's no hashtag 1 go ahead LPS 2017 were you tweeters out there? what i'm doing is LPS 2017 we need to be hashtagging this and if you're not on twitter shame on you, everyone should be on twitter can you switch again we'll do a session on the we'll be taking it thank you first I'd like to say thank you thank you can you revisit a little bit about the transfer of the group and what the product is I'll do that as I mentioned yesterday I think generally speaking I can't speak the detail for each of the groups but what I picked up was that partners' discussions this into a discussion of the sort of deviating the different kinds of issues within those areas at the same time just beginning to touch on policies but not these other kinds of things we need to do to get the influence to get those policies done so that's kind of a snapshot of each group coming up with a summary report again of those major policy areas whether the kinds of organizing we need to do the kinds of ideas even if we're doing them or not the things that are on communications the things of what kind of policy initially so anything that sort of comes out but that's kind of the basic idea for each of the groups to come out with that and the intent is to work in combination with some of the content from the different presentations and discussion papers and the content because remember we're taking those conversations as well as the summaries that are described as taking all of that is going to combine into some kind of draft in terms of some type of blueprint and I can't tell you what that's going to look like but that's that's the product that we want to do that John John very good symposium very good start to this symposium very impressive based on the very short hour hour and 50 minutes of uninvited respect that I think what we want to do is great but I think it's going to be a time consuming process which is going to go well beyond this symposium and perhaps we can talk about it later on what we're talking about communication is who is our target in my opinion the target is people that don't look like us to convince them it's going to have to be a very professional document and it's going to speak to what drives their motivation to me it's business it's economics and it's money and we should not focus our strategy on getting in to do something because it's the right thing to do we should focus on the strategy of being getting to do something because it's in their best interests so having said that I'm going to do my best this morning this afternoon to contribute but I think it's going to take a while to get together with the human vision one which I think is an excellent vision and much needed I don't disagree with that and I think that's part of the conversation that you have that's why I said it's a working document it's not a finished product and I think there's also elements even in discussions where folks may say well who is our audience and I think that still has to be answered because I don't know that folks would agree with that perspective and they may or maybe it's multiple audiences because I think we're still trying to build coalitions among ourselves and because I would I would provide a perspective that a lot of times we enter into alliances with other folks who don't look like us and we're not prepared and there might be a subset because for example education if you ask me where are we most organized have a little bit more data have a little bit more communications and have something on paper that looks like something of a strategy we have a little bit of that in education I haven't seen anything in housing and nothing nothing I haven't seen as much in health care so education may be a little bit more advanced as a subset of this broader plan but I want to come back that this is more of a strategic effort going looking at it from our perspective in our lands over the next 5, 10, 15 years but that doesn't mean there's some short-term efforts for that I don't know that so I do agree with what you're saying and so part of the question at the end is what's next with us how do we build on this and make whatever document certainly to be again a quality document if you will what audiences do you want to get that out to I think the first part of an audience for any document is to build alliances with different organizations across the state and it starts with us and then yes we go out beyond that it's not usually inclusive for folks that don't look like us and other partners private sector and so on and so forth but I think we have to be ready for that and not be because I think the examples from our panel this morning unless I picked up some faces that you did is that sometimes we have even our own folks pulling agendas that are counterproductive right with that so it's like we're not really ready yet so we need to be at least reasonably on the same sometimes same page but again I hope I answered the question about generally what we hope to produce as best we can the output of the next two two hours or so when folks are in the discussions so we could break and move to those the different moves and then we'll see you back here on the agenda around 12.45 thank you