 Welcome. My name is Christopher Herring. I'm the chairman of the Texas Association African American Chamber of Commerce and today we are providing you with information regarding Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his economic bill of rights. Most people truly don't know that Dr. King in 1968 had an economic bill rights and some people think that because of those rights that he was asking for our nation to change how we do business that many people just don't know that that there was a threat that he had presented in terms of providing boycotts doing business differently to get the attention of the nation when the nation wasn't really paying attention to the needs of African Americans or black people during that time. So we're going to talk to some very distinguished guests that came from a long way some are here local but I wanted to be able to have this conversation about Dr. King's true dream which was to create in my opinion an economic opportunity for all people to enjoy and in particular black businesses in America and today we see that and as our experts will confirm we have a state of emergency still today with how we do business in America. So before we get too serious I would like to introduce our panelists and then I'm also going to show you a very short clip of Dr. King in his words about why this situation of economic justice is so important. Okay so I'm going to start from my left. We have Mr. Joseph Kinney. Joseph is the chairman of the Employment First SA. Now what is that? Employment First SA is an advocacy group that really champions the rights for those individuals who have disability. When I was the Alamo City Chamber President Joseph asked me to be his guest speaker and I tell you when I met the people in Exanon it was packed and I saw so many different people of different diversity that were impacted. Joseph will tell you that he's a huge fan of Dr. King and Malcolm X and he'll talk to you about how Dr. King's economic rights impacts people with disabilities. So thank you for joining us today. Give me a hand. Next I'll introduce India Woodington. India was an intern with the Alamo City Black Chamber of Commerce when I was president and she came into our organization and was just phenomenal, smart, always just on point. You know any successful leader will tell you that to be successful you have to have great people. Well this was my great person who I really just believed in. She was a senior at UTSA. When she graduated she was a graduate of Magna Cum Law because her academic brilliance but then I also found that she just had this want to help energize her community. You can see she's a millennium and I think that when we talk about Dr. King and the dream and this vision of economic justice I really want to hear her voice as a millennium. It's important to engage this group in our conversation because all too many times we see civil rights as being for old folks but really civil rights has to be for all and we have to know how to incorporate this new mindset into our current movement. So India is currently the president of Future CEO. It's an organization and a business that was designed to help provide economic and financial literacy workforce development and she's doing a great job in her first year as that. So welcome India. I might say she will hopefully soon get her acceptance letters to law school and will be very proud to follow her in returns. Okay so next I have to introduce a man who really I've learned so much from on a very personal level. He's the president of the Texas Association for African American Chambers, Mr. Charles O'Neill. Mr. O'Neill has really spent a lifetime laboring in terms of how do we get and to support Black owned businesses in our state of Texas. Not only that he is on the board of directors for the United States Black Chambers Inc. that's in Washington DC. He truly is a role model. He's phenomenal in what he does. He travels all throughout Texas from El Paso to Houston to San Antonio to Corpus. He's all over the place basically because he really fundamentally believes in the tenets of trying to recreate and provide us with an opportunity to do well in the marketplace. He's a man of sacrifice. He's my fraternity brother, omega sci-fi fraternity incorporated and I just say he's a real brother who is really focused on how does he move this state organization to another level. I mean in the state of Texas we have 200,000 Black owned businesses and Mr. O'Neill will share with us in his words on what we need to do to mobilize the dream and the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King. So welcome Mr. Charles O'Neill. And next I'll introduce an attorney, an esteemed attorney Charlotte Key. Charlotte Key comes from Dallas. She has her law practice. She's been practicing law for a decade in the field of business. And so I asked her the question. I said Charlotte, I said since you focus on business, business formations and she understands the nature of Black owned businesses, can you please come down and impart some knowledge in terms of how do we take what Dr. King left us with and how do we translate it so that more of our businesses can be successful. Charlotte is also the president of the Collin County Black Chamber of Commerce and so she's really doing a lot of great work in Collin County to promote her Black businesses that are there and to make sure that the county enjoys really a very diverse opportunity to do business with all people. So welcome. Thank you for coming in from Dallas. I'm going to now play a very quick video so you can kind of be on the same page of these folks in terms of what did Dr. King say about America and what did he challenge our nation's leaders to do in regards to economic freedom. We don't have to curse and act in bad with our words. We don't need any friction problems. We don't need any monotone cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores and cities in our country and say God sent us by here to say to you that you're not treating your children right and we come by here to ask you to make the folks children are concerned. Now if you're not prepared to do that and I will attend the cross for withdrawing. So as a result of this we are asking you tonight to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca Cola in Memphis. I feel the piss milk. Where does all the bread want to break? Tell them not to buy hot bread. I said that now only the garbage men have been feeling pain. Now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been paying their hiring policies and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying they're going to support the needs and the rights of these men who aren't strapped and then they can move on town, downtown and tell me a lot to do what is right. I call upon you to take your money out of the bank's downtown town and deposit your money in cross state bank. Right in movement in Memphis. Go by the savings and loan association. I'm not asking you something that we don't do ourselves in SCLC. Judge Brooks and others will tell you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian leadership company. We are telling you the fall of what we are doing. Put your money back. Six or seven black insurance companies here in the city of Memphis take out your insurance now. We want to have an insurance game. We begin the process of building a great economy base and at the same time we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow through here. Now let me say as I move to my conclusion that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We got to see it through. You need to be back. It means leaving work. It means leaving school. Be back. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together or we go down together. I ask you to develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. Dangerous unselfishness. I just want to welcome you here today. My name is Jonathan Cuar. I'm the director. How many of you have saw that video before today? Some of you haven't seen the video. The reason why I wanted to show that video is because oftentimes you'll see that I have a dream speech. And you're very familiar with that speech. And that's a speech that's been very widely adopted as being the preferred voice of Dr. King that we've heard. So now I want to sit down and talk to these experts and let them share with you really what was Dr. King talking about. Because to me this is really the central part of his life and the legacy that he left behind that we actually can do some things. I'm going to open it up with Mr. Charles O'Neill. So when you think about that speech, what comes to mind in terms of the sacrifice that Dr. King was talking about, is there still this need and are we sacrificing to stick together as brothers as he had mentioned? The first thing I thought about listening to that clip is that's what got him killed. It was such a departure, a scene to be such a departure from the message that again the comfortable message folks had allowed to arise around Dr. King and what his message was important to be. And so it was almost like it was a departure from him. It was not necessarily but it was something of a departure from what folks had become comfortable knowing about Dr. King and the Southern Residential Conference and their approach to achieving racial justice in America. I just for the first time did some remarks through a group back in November and I stated to them that for the first time I admitted that I was one of the last people to come around to Dr. King's approach to achieving racial justice. I was more drawn to Stokey Carmichael and Rat Brown and of course just Cleveland and Malcolm X because it was again apparently appeared to be a more immediate resolution this seemingly attractive problem of race in America. But I want to just real quickly for those of you who were not familiar, I was not, totally comfortable, but Martin Luther King Jr.'s Bill of Economics and Social says the right of every employable citizen to a decent job, the right of every citizen to a minimum income, the right of a decent house and the free choice of neighborhood, the right to an adequate education, the right to participate in the decision making process and the right to the full benefits of modern science and healthcare, pretty comprehensive. And you could almost say well we've got all those things now. We can get a good education, we can live what we want to do, we can get a job. So why is there still this big, big gap in what we feel is equal access? And so what Mr. White and I and you now, Chris, in your role as chair of our organization we're pretty comfortable saying well clearly we've got lots of work left to do. Texas is, I like to think of Texas as ground zero for how we might wage the battle for a couple reasons. One, primary is this tremendous demographic shift and with in migration of populations to Texas is not just Hispanics and by the next census Texas will have the second largest black population among the 50 states. You've heard Chris talk about the 200,000 plus black owned businesses in the state but a little known fat do it about the Texas economy is black owned businesses have led the nation in the rate of business formation for two decades. Right here in the state of Texas you would not know that unless you were digging down through economic data. At the same time this tremendous growth in the rate of business formation we've seen this stagnation or flat line of earning. So a lot more people busy about the business of business but they're not earning. But they're not earning and the businesses aren't growing and that means that you've got a problem pop out there called owner under employment. If their businesses aren't growing they can't hire people they won't expand their businesses and make big contributions to the economy. And so all of that and I don't want to talk all the time Chris but very clearly, very clearly we have not achieved ultimately what Dr. King said for frightening me now nearly 50 years ago. And so it is important to have our millennial colleague with us and a whole bunch of folks in between my age and hers. So we'll probably get to a good answer here today but I think that one, I thank you all for being here and for sharing this with us. I think that every opportunity that we get to engage with the public we add something to our arsenal and we'll learn to attack this problem in new and expanded ways. And so one, I take every opportunity like this as a dialogue and so I won't hear as well from you about how we might better get to where Dr. King was here. I appreciate you making those points. I also know that when we looked at that economic and social bill of rights that I asked you all to look at I know that there was also a component of that which talked about persons with disabilities which is probably even less or no. So Joseph, tell us a little bit about what you do but also related to what Dr. King was talking about in his bill of rights. Well, what we do with the point of first hand, first it is a national movement with the premise that all individuals regardless of their level of disability are capable of working dependively and finding meaningful employment. The first thing watching the video in some of the very first words that Dr. King's mouth is he said, God's people are coming. And I was raised in the church and one of the very first things that I was taught is God don't like ugly and that folks with disabilities like children and not compare them to children but like children, those are God's people. You do right, like Dr. King said, you do right by God's people and I think that when we look here in America we've overcome a lot of the bisms sexism, ageism, racism and we still got ways to go in those things but there's an invisible population out there of folks that for my time they were just locked away in the institutions. Now these folks are saying hey we're here and we have the same wants and the same needs as everyone else and we're also capable and qualified to participate in society and what I think about Dr. King I think about especially now as black folks and we can be honest about this we see a lot of groups co-op in Dr. King's message because who better to align yourself with than Dr. King? Now, I'm going to be honest like Christopher said I came up in the generation the hip hop generation you know my hero, Chuck D two-part brother Malcolm and we didn't always kind of look at Dr. King but Dr. King is soft and then as you do that research and as you look and as one of my favorite rappers and I said we didn't know how strong he was and then we see the videos like the one that Christopher presented where you look at that and it's like Malcolm was that Dr. King and then you start to realize that those messages weren't so different and basically what I'm trying to say is we have failed folks that are in the disabled community and we have an opportunity now to look at employers and also look at the service providers and say you know what these folks are capable these folks are qualified and we've got to do better in providing real opportunities for these individuals to be a part of society just like everyone else like I said a lot of groups co-op Dr. King and as black folks we kind of sometimes we cringe we cringe I'm not sure I can't go down for this economic rights for folks with disabilities you know the ability to find meaningful and gainful employment and be somebody I think is something that Dr. King would wholeheartedly be behind and if he were alive today I think that this would be one movement that he would actually be on the forefront and actually alignment versus a lot of the other things we see we know as black for a woman she would get behind so I just scare everyone today to just look out and think about all those times where you think there might be a liability issue for your business owner you know I've got stacked numbers right here that I can show you liability issues most folks with disabilities actually the numbers prove that there are less accidents on the job you have less turnover in your workforce so I'm sure folks that are disabled that are coming to work they appreciate the opportunity and they're there to help individuals bottom lines to make that money and they are fully capable it's just give them an opportunity that's what they're looking for so I definitely think they're disloyal That's why I fight it because I know that we talk about the employment rate and the disability it's almost one out of four about one out of four so it's about 25% unemployment actually a little bit more than 34% right and so when I look at black families, Hispanic families all families you start to look at the families unit and you'll see that we have individuals who we're caring for or loving for but yet they need that opportunity to earn some form of meaningful income that will support that family so a lot of times we'll also see that those individuals with disabilities will have to revert and they will have to create their own businesses to be able to to earn an income of some type and we'll get back to that so now that I'm looking at India I'm thinking about for me I noticed that there's a gap between what Dr. King was saying then and what we hear today young people today in my opinion don't necessarily have the same appreciation for Dr. King or for those individuals who you know fought, bled, died and so forth so tell us about where am I wrong in my assumption because I know I'm wrong but where am I wrong can we better structure our organization perhaps so that we actually can be more attuned with the millennials and this generation that maybe we just don't know how to talk in that language Now that's a very interesting statement I wouldn't say you're completely wrong about the notion that millennials don't have the type of respect that other generations have held for as I mentioned to Mr. earlier we growing up we learned things in parts going from school we learned these are the important solar rights leaders we probably know two or three or if you get very lucky you're raised in a family that preaches the same but if you go to a regular public school in Iowa or Texas or California anywhere you learn a couple of them so we don't we don't understand and we were also raised in a time where we got to go to school with people of different races of different beliefs so it's not as bad of a situation we're not as it's not as visible to us so we don't understand the previous struggle but we were also a generation that was raised in the thick of the technological revolution so everything's just moving so fast now we have to learn things that happen today and forecast what's going to happen for the next 50 years that's a responsibility that we have because we're just now learning the boundaries and the powers of technology so it's also our responsibility I believe to go back and learn about this history and really understand the powers of Dr. Ying and Dr. Macs and Dr. Carr all of these wonderful leaders that have been lost to us because again these are three important leaders because do you only have a semester and once it's not happening in our time we don't have marches because if Dr. Ying had Uber and Twitter then it would be a lot better but we're not utilizing the resources in ways that would have been utilized in the past we're using them for things to check a music blog or to check the scores, I know I do but there are other ways for us to utilize these tools and I think it's important that we have people in my generation coming with leaders of other generations what we need, we need leaders like Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Wyatt, everyone here to engage our community and our demographic and let us know these are the short ways that we went through and this is how it's relevant to your future and how it's relevant to you now so we just have to do a better job of engaging in utilizing the tools that we have to do you said a lot there and what I particularly like is that we're here at Cafe Commerce for allowing us to use this beautiful location this was one of the locations in which the city had set aside to enable the city residents to be able to create businesses and to have resources, it's like a one stop shop and so they provided us with DreamWeek this venue I also like to think now cast SA for coming out and actually providing us with video coverage so that other people who weren't able to make it today can hear a little bit about Dr. King and this economic and social Bill of Rights and then also to our interpreters who are from the San Antonio College we just like to thank them also for their ability to tie into today's program again, you know, when I'm thinking about this conversation and we're going to give you the chance to ask your questions as well so start thinking of it but as I'm thinking about this I know that there are many disparities between you know, what white businesses look like and what black businesses look like often times I retired from the United States Air Force and I came out to this chamber of business and the Air Force is known as being pretty much a melting pot right, so my peers would say, man Chris why did you get involved with that black chamber I mean that's separate, that's not what we did when we were on active duty and then I say separate but there's a need and there's a need that maybe the folks on the mainstream would never ever come across because they don't look like me, they don't they don't have the same challenges that I have when I took off my uniform I had, you know, different challenges when I had my uniform on maybe in most part people gave me the benefit of the doubt that I was an American think about that outside of uniform I'm just like any other black male in America so I looked at, you know, coming into business myself, I had a business but then I started looking at the statistics, I started looking at you know, why are black businesses not as strong as white firms so we have attorney Keith to us today about, you know, some of the legal implications of Dr. King's message what would Dr. King say to black chambers and to attorneys in terms of his vision of the insurance and the sit in type of mentality that he had, what would he say to us Cheryl? I think one of the biggest issues that black businesses face today and really many businesses is access to information and access to capital I believe the statistics, 8 out of 10 small businesses fail within 18 months and a big reason for that is because of access to capital right, are we going out there and are we supporting our black businesses as a community as well, we just finished with the Christmas and the holidays, right, we spent all of these monies of big retailers Walmart, Target, Macy's but how many of us actually went out and spent some of those dollars at black businesses, right that's capital, if we think about some of the economic principles in Dr. King's bill of economic and social justice, one of them is to be able to employ everybody that can go out and work, right so if you think about how many black businesses do we have in the U.S. about 200,000 is it? State of Texas 200,000 plus 200,000 plus in the state of Texas right, so imagine if those 200,000 businesses had enough capital to where they could hire 5 people right, that would create a huge amount of jobs just here in Texas so imagine if that spread across the country and so although we've seen great growth in jobs under the current leadership of President Obama there are still a lot of people that are unemployed that are looking for work and so we have to think about where we're spending our dollars right, also getting information out there as well, like a lot of companies, they may not know how to start their business where to go to get funding and that's something that the chambers have to focus on we have to be able to provide that information to the communities because that's the purpose of the chambers the black chambers is to help support our black businesses so it's our job with the chambers to make sure that our communities are informed that they know about crowdfunding and what it is and what the regulations are behind that that they know about other funding sources besides your traditional banks that are out there because there are a lot of other funding sources non-traditional sources that businesses can go to to get capital other than that's going to your big banks to think of America as your cases so as chambers we have to make sure that we're letting the community know about these things that we put on programs that we focus on these things and as citizens in our communities we have to make sure that we support the businesses that are out there right, don't be so quick to go to Walmart, I know I go all the time to have everything you can get everything that you need in one place there are a lot of businesses out there I have a cross school colleague who just recently started an online database of black businesses that's called our power box, right so you can go onto that website and it's a directory of black businesses all across the United States so there are other places out there, there are other places that we can spend our dollars that will not only help black businesses with capital but also give them opportunity to create jobs as well well thank you for that you know when you were talking about the national picture I was actually thinking about when Charles let me acknowledge Mr. Jim Wyatt who is the past chairman of the Texas Association for African American Chambers he has really carried black businesses on back over the years because he has such a passion for really, you know, being committed and I think that was another word that Dr. King used to say, be committed to whatever you do and then I'd like to recognize Mr. Renee Watson Ms. Watson as you may know actually puts on Bear County's small minority women veteran conference every year she packs the house over at the Freeman that's such a great job to make sure that we're all are informed and we have the right tools so I'd like to recognize both of you right now thank you for both being here but to go back to my panel Mr. O'Neill we had a conversation with Governor Abbott when we thought about some of the things that happened in our nation the Ferguson's that had erupted I can recall Governor alluding to the fact that in his heart would never want to see a Ferguson type of an environment be here in the state of Texas what does Governor Abbott need to know about Dr. King's message that would help to enable him to see that when we look at the San Antonio's the Austin's the Dallas's the Houston's and those large black concentrations of people what does the Governor need to know today about the need to support those communities in a different way I was thinking as I listened to everybody's response that one of the most critical shortfalls is critical information critical communications and I think my background of course is in the newspaper business I've published a weekly newspaper for ten years around the folks newspaper for about ten years before that and I've watched as as we have sounds ominous but it really is as we've all become elsewhere to a particular way of talking or illustrating things or describing only two or three values so striving for civil rights rather than this entire phalanx of folk who gave their lives literally and so I can speak particularly from black communities perspective when Texas was one of those really cuckoo states and it's holding fast to its reputation that literally outlawed the presence of the Chicago defender in the state and so pulmon porters used to smuggle black newspapers in from other states and drop them off long view Tyler, San Antonio, Houston so that folk could get the word and so now and I'm playing all this against what I witnessed last night trying my best to stay focused on the reality show that is Republican debate how folks have their opinions about what's really going on in marketplace shaped by folk who present the news to and so Governor Abbott needs to know that Texas is not what he has been told it is Texas is very much a dynamic marketplace that is made up of black folk and brown folk and disabled folk and everybody else that have needs that are being unmet by the government that he is charged responsible for leading he said as you mentioned that one of the things he was most concerned about is not having another person in Texas I thought more telling was a statement he made to us a little bit before that was when we laid out our case for why it was imperative that his government be more responsive to the needs of black owned businesses that he says I really want to be helpful to you but I don't know what your businesses do and it's 2015 at that time the leader of the largest economy among the 50 states doesn't know what 200 plus thousand business owners contribute to his state's economy well that's crazy and so I think until we began to peel back the onion so to speak and reorient ourselves toward what is really happening what is the reality of our existence and not rely on someone else's painting of a picture for you I think each of you sitting here today will know that the life you lead is very much different than the life that is described as being emblematic of living in San Antonio, Texas for instance and so we missed that when we had good reporting about what our lives on and so now we've got this homogenous thing that goes on and on and on costing folk all the time that diversity and diversion have the same root word person and so I studied stupid stuff like that right but you can get thrown off track just by a semantic trick and so we got to be very very careful about what we allowed to get into our consciousness because we began trying to live from a really effective of reality and so that's maybe a little far-fetched from where your question was directed me Chris but I think that good good accurate information allows us to reach the kinds of real answers that we need to get and in the case of our state when folk like yourselves learn that a state can spend 16 billion dollars in goods and services and have 10% of its business infrastructure be black owned businesses yet managed to spend only 1.25% of that 16 billion dollars with black owned businesses you scratch your head and say how is that possible you cannot in my words you can't spend 1% unless you're trying to spend 1% you can accidentally spend more than that until all of us know how our money flies out our pockets and you know how you try to spend money and so and so our state who we have given over charge for how they administer our tax investment in our state and they say well thank you for your money but you're not getting anything back and so in a sense we become irresponsible when we don't raise that issue to our elected officials and say hey man what's up with that and so again you know I don't know if I hit all the buttons but I'm trying to hit them all I'm gonna be like Don Trump we can grab a lot of things we can do a lot of things we can do crazy things that's the latest tip after going along if you have questions just please raise your hands and I'll come by to acknowledge you but I think it's important that yes the information of which we receive sometimes is and the ability to be able to discern the difference between the two is sometimes even just as difficult of a task because we sometimes believe in the people who take the microphone and who really control the airways I think and again I went back to the whole notion of the dream everybody in this room has seen Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech right yes so again the speech that we showed you which happened in 1968 the year of his assassination and that's why you always have to go back to what Mr. O'Neill said you have to pause and really think about why was he assassinated you know was it just his protest of Vietnam no it was more or less it was a protest of the economic system so it was made mention that President Obama has made some cool advances let me go back down to the end to Joseph what are some of the things that you've seen in the President Obama time that you think has helped the cause struggle that you spoke of earlier well just speaking in terms of disability and access to correct training updated is the employment first it's a national with not President Obama I can sign again it's still worth incentives, opportunities we owe one of the things that we owe again was that it's advocated and also it's mandated among the states to have agencies that are working with folks with disabilities go out and make connections in the local communities with local school districts with businesses with other agencies that are providing services for vocational rehabilitation to folks with disabilities through the employment first movement that's where our organization is the first in total action group has the President done a good job are you? I think like everyone here you know speaking as an African American I think that we feel yes but you could you could have done more in what areas do you think that he could have done for this militant that employment piece I think that being more vocal and really they didn't talk about information as the President do you have a platform and to be honest and give good correct information let business owners know let leading institutions know about qualifications of individual disabilities qualifications of disabled veterans let these folks know that you have an entire population of people with incredible purchasing power out there that you are ignoring and not only are you ignoring them when they're asking for assistance so they can become entrepreneurs themselves you're ignoring that aspect of what they bring to the table so you've got a whole group of people with all types of talent that we have just basically set on the shelf and we're not bringing attention to that town pools that's one thing that we need to know I feel like they're in a class and teach us questions and say ooh ooh ooh just real quick I just thought of this if we remove partisanship you know and we remove all other whatever we might think about President Obama and get to a group that said his prior to his inauguration anything he tries to do we're going to block it anything he tries to do we're going to say no further we're going to sit in the halls of our United States Congress and call him a liar in the state of the union address what would the expectation of a population be of his ability to execute his job I would say that in against that backdrop whatever has been accomplished through this administration would put him up on my own version because they were trying to get everything blocked to have achieved anything anything because they said whatever he tries to do we're going to say no so to have achieved waking up tomorrow was an accomplishment that's different from what you hear in the press right because he's incompetent he doesn't know what he's doing and he's probably and I'm biased the smartest man to ever have been the president of the United States and you'll use whatever message man is brilliant again I'm going to be fifth this will be my last one you saw what Martin King said they got him killed President Obama is still alive and he has said the same thing so he's pretty good in my book I'm sorry Charlie in the state of Texas Governor Abbott has basically said that he is getting behind the notion that this is the time for women-owned businesses to leave the nation and so he's actually stated you can go to the website for the governor that he fully backs women-owned businesses what are you seeing from women-owned businesses and black women-owned businesses in particular to that vision that Governor Abbott has placed out there black female-owned businesses the fastest growing and leading in small business creation I believe black female businesses have grown 322% since 1997 currently 14% of all women-owned businesses are owned by black females and I am a black female business owner myself so I see that black women are going out there we're taking advantage of access we're taking advantage of the opportunity to create our own way I had a partner tell me one time that the only way to sustain yourself really is to have your own business to have your own company if you apply that to everyone else because we see layoffs of unemployment we see people that can't find jobs but you can go out there and create your own opportunities and I think black women are really taking advantage of that and I know President Obama his administration recently just created a grant of about 118 million to focus on job training for black women and young children right to get them job training to get them skills programs in place to help with that so black women are taking advantage of the opportunities and we need to see other parts other black women but women in general take advantage of the opportunities that are out there we are seeing a tremendous growth and I think whenever I hear that conversation about black female businesses and our black business community we have a splintered conversation and again I'm a family type of guy I go back to one family and so do you think that in terms of black business and the growth of black business that it's actually moving forward in a positive direction or as a new chamber president what are some of the goals that you have for the black businesses in your community one of the things that I want to promote is support just as we saw in the video Dr. King Wright you have to help us if we all work together then we achieve more and I see a lot where someone will be successful make it in their business is thriving but they don't go back and teach other women who are trying to do the same thing how to be accessible as well I think support is a big issue that we have to work on in our community make sure that we are giving access to everyone that needs it and that's something that I want to promote in the chamber of Wright creating that community filling when Dr. King was here we all work together as a community it was the community that rallied and did the Montgomery Boycott it was the community that did all of these marches so we need to get back to that strong sense of community and support each other so India how do I rally the millennials we really started to kind of segment ourselves and now another thing we have but the issue we have is our leadership we look up to like when you said King yesterday that's kind of what clicks you think King or you think or you think something of that nature we don't have a Dr. King we have a President Obama which is wonderful because it's very important that we have this representation which is why that election was such a big thing and now Hillary Clinton's campaign is important because we have a woman being represented so it is important to have that strong leadership because we look and we have a 44 president we have one black person not one black person, not just one so it's a little difficult for us to look and say oh we want to aspire to be that and how many, I don't know many people who say oh I aspire to be the next Martin Luther King but I do here oh I want to be the next Steph Curry so how do we translate their leadership which is trailblazing in its own way but to do something that's really community cultivating that community that community as you mentioned and really engaging in showing that there are multiple facets to our community which is what's going on which is something we're pretty good at