 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. So thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. This is our first training on the West Coast. So you guys are in the inaugural class. And as Farhan mentioned, we launched a few years ago, actually in January of 2017, right before President Trump's inauguration. It was, polygon was something that I had in my mind way before that, but it was really nice that folks really wanted to get engaged at that moment because they were like, oh, we need to do something about what just happened in the elections. And so this is a really great way to get engaged. And so our kind of main focus area is on Congress. This training can be applied to Congress, but also other elected officials, so whether it's like folks in your state house, state senate, local city council, it's very applicable the skills that you will learn today to other forms of government. But if you sign up for our mailing list and things like that, you'll see a lot of our resources. For instance, we have a weekly newsletter that goes out tracking what's going on on Capitol Hill. Very easy to digest. So that's a really great way to get engaged and start learning about that area, but just know that you can apply this to other forms of government. So before we get started, I'm gonna give you a pop quiz. I know I did not ask you to prepare for this. That's why it's a pop quiz. So let's talk about how many people, how many Muslims do you think, what percentage of Muslims in America reached out to their member of Congress in the last year? Throughout a percentage, yeah. 17. You read our, you cheated, you read this. No. Are you really just throwing that out randomly? Okay. You blew it for everyone. Okay, what was everybody else's guesses? 20, 12, what was it? Five, one, yeah. Okay, this is a very more optimistic crowd than I've had in the past. Some people are like three, zero. Yeah, it's 17%, which is actually the lowest of all faith groups. The next highest percentage is actually like double that amount at about, I wanna say it was like 28, 30%. So the bar is low, the bar is on the floor. 17%. Yeah, and that's for the number of Muslims who, yeah, the percentage of Muslims in the last year. So we got this data because we partnered with the ISPU, the Islamic Institute of Social Policy and Understanding. And we did this in partnership with some of the other organizations, Muslim Civic Engagement Organizations because we wanted to understand where exactly our community was at. Are we reaching out? Are we not? And if you look at the report, we can link that or send it to you later. You can see that within that 17%, there is a difference between different ethnic groups of how often they actually reach out. So I think the majority of that, maybe 25% was like Caucasian or white Americans. And then I think after that came Asian Americans. I can't remember exactly, but it breaks it down further if you're interested in that. Okay, here's another question for your pop quiz. How many Muslims do you think in the last year reached out to their local representative, like a local elected official, like city council, mayor? How many do you think of that? 30, three, you want to stick to that three? Okay, 30, 25, 10. Okay, so you guys are kind of all over, you're close, it's 20%. So it's slightly higher than the congressional one. So we have a bit of work to do, right? So that's why it's really great for you guys to come out to this training because the skills that you learn are going to be able to transfer to both of those areas. And also you can encourage other folks to get engaged as well. So let's get right into it. So we kind of talked about this already about polygon and what we're trying to do. A lot of the issues that we focus on are shaped by an ISPU study. So the main issues that we're focusing on are issues related to social racial economic justice, civil rights and Islamophobia, of course. And because these are just issues of importance to the community, a lot of people don't think that Muslims care about domestic issues, but we do study shows that we do. And so we really try to focus on that. We don't focus on any foreign policy yet. I don't know if we will in the future, but right now we're focusing on domestic issues. And we're guided by Islamic values, as was mentioned on the previous slide. And this is like one of my favorite hadith that I think really motivates me to get involved in social justice work. Does anybody wanna read this out loud who can see it on the screen? That is the biggest update. Thank you so much. Yeah, so what we try to do at Polygon is we're helping you change things with your hand, with your tongue. We wanna move beyond just making the law for things to get better. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there's a lot more we can do. And as we talked about in the percentages, there's definitely a lot of room for improvement. So this is just an example of some of the trainings that we've given. The bottom right picture is actually one that we gave in DC. That was our first training that we did with Muppies DC. And yeah, we've done these kind of all over the country, but as I mentioned, this one is our first one on the West Coast. This is an example of some of the policy guides and brief that we give. So in addition to doing trainings, so we focus on three areas, training, education and advocacy. The acronym is T, everybody likes T. So this is the educational portion where we offer policy guides that tell folks like, okay, Muslim ban 3.0 just came out. Who does that affect? Who is impacted? And so we kind of break these things down for you. When the 2017 GOP tax plan came out, we came out with this policy guide that showed what percentage of Muslims are gonna be impacted, which was actually a very large percent, what income brackets are impacted, what can you do about it? Same thing when, for instance, there was a nomination, I think it was for Gorsuch to go into, I'm probably saying his name wrong, to the Supreme Court. We talk about kind of, what is the congressional approval process for a nominee? So we share resources like that. And then of course, all of you should have that handout. Oh, can we get her a handout actually? Of the town hall meetings and the office visit guides that are just like a great resource you can download from our website under the resources tab. And then finally, if you're on our mailing list, every Friday we send out a newsletter called Hill Happenings. And this tells you kind of the top couple of things that happen on Capitol Hill that we just break down into very easily digestible pieces. We talk a little bit about what members have said on the Hill, and then if there were any notable events that we attended or that occurred on the Hill. And then also action alerts. If there's like a really pertinent time to call your member of Congress, we'll send these out. This one went out after a Muslim ban, 2.0 came out, and we include a really easy script that you can read from and basically just insert your name which hopefully you all are able to do and call your rep and do it that way. And we'll walk through this during the simulation as well so you all can practice. And then finally, the last piece in T is advocacy. So we do some direct advocacy on the Hill. We're a 501 C3 nonprofit, so we can do limited lobbying but the limited amount we do, and this was, we actually led a Muslims Against Hunger Hill Day with ISNA, that's the right hand picture, and on the left hand side was us speaking at a press conference on SNAP, which is a Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program. All right, so let's get into the training. Any questions before we get started based on all that background? And then originally, yes, we wanted to do a C4. My idea was to have a C3 and a C4, but unfortunately one thing that I quickly realized was that Muslims don't know how to lobby. And so what's the point of a C4 if you don't have anybody like using it and lobbying it? So I think we would love to in the near future. I've seen other organizations wait some time, for instance, like NIAC, which is the National Iranian American Council. I think they waited about eight years before launching their C4 to lobby. Similarly with, I think it was not American, most of Palestine, there's I think US Conference on Palestinian Rights. They also waited a little bit of time. So that is hopefully in the work sooner, but it just depends on how quickly our community can learn and get ready to mobilize. Can you maybe for folks who aren't as familiar, talk about what a C3 is, level versus a C4 and what strategy is. Yeah, sure. Why you would go for a C3 first? Yeah, so a 501 C3 is a non-profit organization that focuses usually on just education. And that's the majority of our work, which we just saw before that we do. You can do some limited direct lobbying. I think about 20% of your budget can be used towards that. With a 501 C4, it's not a tax-deductible non-profit. So the donations that you would give there are not tax-deductible, but you can use it on direct lobbying, however much time that you want. And so the idea for Polygon was to have a C3 and a C4 at the same time. So we would be doing education and lobbying. But as I mentioned, a lot of the community, we're just very, we don't know how to lobby yet. We don't know about engagement, congressional engagement or even local engagement. So there's still a little bit of a ways to go. But the sooner we can get through that, I think then we can focus on building out advocacy teams in different cities and states. We call them the grassroots advocacy teams and start lobbying from there. And Chala, yes. So for as far as lobbying to get on that platform, does one have to have a law education, like a law degree or any of that? So are any of that backgrounds? So you mean for somebody like you to go and lobby? Correct. Yeah, no. You don't need any special education. You need any special background. You basically just need to know a little bit of how the visit works or how a phone call would work or a town hall meeting would work, which is what we are teaching you today. But it's actually really great if you're just a regular person from the community who has a passion or a background and maybe that specific area or has a reason for being there. Those stories make the most impact. So don't ever think that you need to be a lawyer or anything to do this. Thank you. I think somebody else had a question or they had raised their hand. Nope. Okay, cool. All right, so why do we focus on Congress? So Congress is the lawmaking body of the United States. It's one of three of the government bodies. Do you know what the other two are? Senate, Congress is part of, or Senate is part of Congress. Executive and judicial, correct. What is the executive branch? The president and the administration, right? And what about the judicial branch? The Supreme Court is the highest court, yes, but all of the courts, yeah, the whole legislative, the court system is a judicial. The president and administration is the executive and then Congress is the branch that's supposed to represent the people, right? So this is the one we focus on because this is where you can make your voice heard. Everybody here has a representative and we'll get into that in a bit. And the whole point of Congress is to represent the people. So we want our people to be represented. All right, I'm not gonna show you that slide right now. So how many, so we've got two branches within Congress. It's a, that's what's called bicameral. So what makes up those branches? You said one of them, the Senate and House. Okay, very good. Now, what is the difference? How many people are in the Senate? 200, what? Two from each state, which would equal 100. Okay, how many are in the House? 342, 500, 700, seven. Okay, four, yeah, you're close. It's 435. So the difference between those two houses is the senators, they stay longer. So they have six year terms. However, in the House of Representatives, you only have a two years terms. So the reason why it's important to know that is because that depends on how, when people are thinking about their reelection, which they do a lot in the House, that can help shift their priorities. Whereas the senators have like a longer time to do things, to work on things, they're not as at risk for being removed as quickly from office. And maybe you can make a little bit, but it's harder to move things there because of that too. So right now, and also what also depends is who is actually in power. And what we say in power is who is in the majority in these different pieces. So in the Senate, does anybody know which party is in the majority? The Republicans, yes, they have a majority in there. Yeah, you're switching it. So then in the House, who's in the majority there? The Democrats. So that's why you're seeing a lot of progressive bills pass. We saw DACA pass, for instance, which was really exciting. And in the Senate, they're having a lot of trouble passing things, at least if you're looking from a progressive lens, because they are in the minority there. It passed in the House. It did not pass in the Senate, I don't believe yet. And sometimes though, you have things like, for instance, the bill on Yemen, if you pay attention to foreign policy at all, that passed in the Senate and the House, and then it was vetoed by the president. So sometimes things can go through Congress and they just get vetoed. And Congress can override that, but they don't have enough votes to. Yes, grab the mic. Even with the bill in Yemen, was that recent? Because I might be. Yes, it was pretty recent, like the last month or two. And I'm guessing this has a lot to do with, of course, like Trump and Saudi Arabia at this point, where he is on the go when everybody else is like, no, don't do it. Yeah, yeah, so this was basically to end US support of the war in Yemen. So we are providing, for instance, fueling assistance there. Saudi Arabia selling weapons. He's going to continue selling the weapons because he vetoed it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's probably what's going on. OK, thank you. Any other questions on this? Can we learn today how to ban the veto? How to override the veto? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Well, that's basically what I mean. You have to have a 2-thirds majority vote in Congress, basically. Actually, I need to look that up if it's both houses or if it's together. But it's a 2-thirds majority vote in order to override it. And I think it was just too close to be able to get those numbers, I think. But I mean, people are going to keep pushing on it, obviously. And it was still really historic to think about that actually happened because the war's been going on for, what, like three, four years right now, and this is the first time the entire Congress wanted to invoke the War Powers Act to get us out of a war. So it's still something to be celebrated. And they're going to continue working on it. Good. Other questions on this? Yes. No. Get some tea. We don't have time for yawns. We got a lot to learn. These new ladies, Congresswoman, one Muslim, one or two Muslims, all these. They are really presenting something to the White House to correct themselves from all this, what happened. All the Muslims were kicked out, these kicked out, these kicked out. After that, nothing is happening. So your question is, you're not seeing enough things happening from the Muslim women in Congress? Or what are they supposed to do there? Well, I think first and foremost, any representative is representing their constituents. So like the people in their district that voted them there. So that's obviously going to be their number one priority. After that, members are put on different committees in the various chambers. So for instance, Ilhan Omar is on the Foreign House Foreign Affairs Committee. So she focuses a lot on that. I think what she does, for instance, on this, yeah. So it really just depends on what their constituents want. That's going to be their priority because they want to be reelected if they're going to be running again. And otherwise, other than that, they're going to try to do things that they think are going to get support or that they're personally interested in. Does that answer your question? Oh, do they want to establish Islam? No. They've been very clear on that. And we're actually doing a panel on this at ISNA. So if any of you are coming, it's called What's Good and Bad About Muslims Being Elected to Office. And whether it does it align with our religious values? Do our religious values matter when Muslims are in office? So it'll be an interesting conversation on that so we can dig in deeper on that. But yeah, I think the short answer is no. It's at the ISNA conference in Houston, which is a Labor Day weekend. So it's coming up. So yeah, you should come. And we're doing a training there too. So the same congressional item because you want to one. But it'll be a lot quicker because we don't have as much time. Is that what we want? All right. OK, sounds good. All right. So when we talking about Congress, what does Congress exactly do? So the very basic thing that they do is they introduce bills, they debate on legislation, and they pass them into laws or into resolutions. Does anybody know the difference between a bill and a resolution? All right. So a bill is a law. So the regular things that you're thinking about, let's say you have a bill on the economy or something like that, that would go through as a bill. And it has a different number than a resolution. A resolution is more of a statement of support or disapproval. So for instance, you saw recently with the comments that President Trump made against the four Congresswomen of color, the House passed a resolution condemning those comments. The resolution doesn't have any like binding law, binding legal punishment or anything like that. It's just a way for Congress to express is disapproval officially. We polygon in our early days, we worked on a anti-hate resolution that passed unanimously in the House as well. And that was kind of condemning how the community and other faith communities were facing hate crimes and things like that. So it was opposing that. But bills are more like the legal kind of, they have more enforcement power. So they also approve political appointments. So you will probably remember, for instance, the Kavanaugh hearings or other times when the Senate is listening to folks that Trump wanted to approve into his cabinet or into the Supreme Court. They're the ones that have to approve that. They also determine the budget and appropriations Yes. It depends on the political appointment. I believe usually it's the Senate from what I remember. But I can go back and check and get back to you more clearly on that. From what I have seen, it's the Senate, but I think the House can also call people and do hearings and things like that. Just because the Senate is now mostly Republicans, right? Yeah, exactly. So that's why a lot of the nominations have been going through. All right, thank you. Yeah. Sorry, just before your question. And so I think what are the, when you're referring to nominations, you could spell that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, that's basically people that President Trump wants to appoint to certain positions. So as I mentioned, the Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh, that was a nomination process that the country got involved in. And so that would be an example of their approval or disapproval. Yeah, so depending on what position they are for, those specific committees are the ones that are listening to them. But I believe the entire chamber votes on it. I don't think it's just a committee. Yeah, yeah. Correct. And the appointments can be to things like the Supreme Court. It can also be for the heads of the different branches of the administration. So EPA or anything. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, Department of Labor, what have you. So all of the bureaucracy which is running. Yeah, so it's basically to create a system of checks and balances that the president can't just put any old person on the hot seat or in the position of power. Yeah, well, when his party is in control of that chamber, then yeah, it's very, it can go through. Congress passed a bill. It has to be approved by the Senate, right? When the Congress passes a bill, yes. When a bill goes through, it is passed by the House and Senate. Yeah. Congress refers to both of them together. Yeah, no, like Congress passed a bill. And if the Senate doesn't agree, then the bill does pass. Yes, I think what you mean is if the House approves the bill and the Senate does not agree. Yeah, then it will not go through to the president to sign. Yeah, correct. And finally, we've got folks serving on committees and subcommittees, which you referred to earlier. There are different committees in the House. There's different committees in the Senate. Sometimes there's something called joint committees, which are in both the House and the Senate. And they're really broken down by subject area, oversight committee, environmental technology, things like that. And usually the members go to whatever they have a background in or interested in, and the various leadership assigns them to those committees. So that's why it's important to know committees because when you are talking about specific issues, it's important to know, like, does your member sit on any of those committees or who is the person that you need to talk to about that because they usually have a little bit more power than just a representative who doesn't happen to sit on that committee. Okay, and then one final thing of importance to know about Congress is when they are in session. Does anybody know what that means of when Congress is in session? When they're working, yeah, correct. So basically the House and the Senate are usually in session around the same times, but if you look on this chart, I don't know if you can see it from where you're sitting. The yellow is showing where both chambers are in session. The blue is where only the Senate is in session and the green is when the House is only in session. So you can see sometimes there's days, there's only one day here that I'm seeing where only the House is in session, but the Senate is not. Can anybody point out a huge chunk of time you see where neither is in session? August, do you know what that's called? It's called August recess, because they're basically out into their districts at the time, they're not sitting on Capitol Hill. Does that mean that you cannot reach out to remember or meet with them? No, that's actually a great opportunity to reach out to them. We're actually gonna have a toolkit in Charlotte that'll come out. We had one last year on our website on August recess that talks about, it has our how-to's in there and talks about some issues that you can advocate on. In Charlotte in a couple of days we'll have that same thing coming out for August recess. So you guys that are interested in meeting with your members or their staff now is a really great time to make phone calls and try to set up those appointments during that month. That's also a time where they have town halls. You can go to townhallproject, I think it's either .org, townhallproject.org or .com and put in your zip code and then see if there's a town hall that's happening near you. Those are really great ways to get direct FaceTime with the member or their staff. So you definitely wanna use that opportunity. And then there's other recesses around the year. They have like spring recess. I think that's around like Easter. They have one around July 4th, I think. They have one in November, December. So there's always some chunks of time and usually we try to send out an action alert to let you know that now's a good time to reach out. All right, so advocacy, what is advocacy? Sounds like avocado, also good for your health. So what is advocacy? Does anybody know or have a good definition? Yeah, standing up for your rights, standing up. It's basically pushing policy makers to either see your point of view or do some sort of action on something that you care about. So when we're talking about the policy change process, we know that elected officials are one part of that. What else goes into that equation? Lobbyists, voters, what else? Okay, you got it basically. People, which is voters, advocacy, which is like the lobbying and then plus elected officials equals policy change. This is a very simplistic equation. There's many other things that can be thrown into this as you probably have seen with the recent stuff that's happening in Congress. But basically this is how it's supposed to work. And kind of some of the things that kind of can throw that off is sources of influence on politicians. So we've got a variety of things. Usually here about money and votes is what people usually say, but there's other items as well. So let's just walk through these. So the media, what is an example of a media influence on our lawmaking system or our members of Congress? A lot. Yeah, issues that get more media coverage are pushed more. Yeah, or they kind of reach national spotlight. What about, is there a particular network or something that the president watches? Yeah, Fox, it has a lot of influence on him. His tweets are sometimes like direct word for word from their broadcasts. Yeah, exactly. What about party leaders? Who are some party leaders that have some influence? Bernie Sanders on the, so Bernie is actually an independent. Misha McConnell on the Republican side. Lindsey Graham also on the Republican side. Pelosi on the House House speaker. So these people, yes, these people have influence as well. Electoral prospects. So we talked a little bit about this with if you're looking at Congress or sorry, the House, which is getting elected every two years, their electoral prospects are gonna make a huge difference. If they think they're gonna support something and they're not gonna get reelected or they'll put them in jeopardy, they're gonna think longer about that and maybe not support something like that. Whereas if you have a member that's just retiring or something and it doesn't really matter what they do, they're more willing to do that. Our fellow, our legislative fellow, Rua is actually from Atlanta, Georgia and her representative is a Republican and she told us that she started to build a relationship with him through her work with Polygon and he's actually said that he'll sign on to things which normally Republicans won't because he's retiring and so it doesn't really matter for his record. So those are all opportunities that you should be aware of, of trying to get policy passed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so electoral prospects factor a lot into that. Donors, who are some? Yes. Is it not hypocrisy? I mean, it depends on how you look at it, right? Like sometimes people wanna align with their party or whatever it is to make sure that they stay in the game or they stay in the game by doing what they don't believe in. So that's depressing. It is depressing, but that is politics and that's why when I say, if worse comes to worse, you need to vote those people out of office if they're not doing what the people want them to do and that's what happened if you look at, for instance, AOC where she ran, they were represented by somebody who didn't even live in this district and that did not represent the views of many and so they kicked him out, it happened. So that's really something that you still have the power to do even if, especially if your representative is not representing your interests. Donors, who are some big? Pharmaca, yeah. So there's like area of certain industries that don't eat a lot. Pharmaca, fossil fuels, you have some people like the Koch brothers or other people like that that have a lot of influence cushion or through their money. Special interests kind of goes with that too. Who are some special interest areas that you can think of? Yeah, but even within that, there's different breakdowns. APAC, yeah. Yeah, Israel, Saudi Arabia, you can be Russia, but there's also things like AARP which is like for seniors, that's a special influence. You might not think of it as a negative or positive. The Sierra Club, yes. So those are all different areas. It doesn't necessarily need to be a bad thing to be a special interest group. And then finally, there's constituents like you that also are an area of influence. Oh yes, religious groups definitely come. I used to work with the Quakers and I don't know if you're familiar with the Quakers but they're a small Christian group of less than 75,000 people in the US. They had immense lobbying power. I worked with them on the Iran nuclear deal, Middle East policy, dealing with settlements in Israel and Palestine. They have a lot of influence. And so that's actually what motivated me to start this because I was like, why is our community that's maybe three to eight million people nobody really knows? Why are we not out there advocating for our issue areas? So yeah, there's a lot of network lobby as a Catholic lobby. There's lots of Jewish ones like J Street is one, a JVP Jewish voice for peace. So there's a lot of faith-based groups as well. And just to point out that according to the Congressional Management Foundation constituent advocacy work, sometimes we think that our voices aren't being heard but it's actually your personal stories, your direct contact that makes a difference. Even when I've gone into Republican offices during hill days, when people tell really powerful stories I've even been had a staffer like email me afterwards which is very unheard of and saying, we may not agree on everything but I think we're trying to get to the same thing and I appreciate you sharing that powerful story with me. So it makes a difference. It can be frustrating because there's all these other sources of influence at play but I don't think that should dissuade us from getting involved because what other choice do we have really? Yes. How can we have the topics that are of common interest for Muslims and those who support us? Yeah. Because I'm the best one. Yeah. Our faith groups are actually a really great way to lobby. We are part of this group called the Domestic Human Needs Working Group which is within a Washington Interfaith Staffers I guess it's coalition. And we lobby together on things like anti-hunger bills, snap which I mentioned, dealing with poverty, housing, those are all areas that our different faith groups can agree that we wanna work on good policy for. And so those same coalitions come into play when maybe there's like a Muslim issue being attacked. So for instance, I saw one issue recently where Islamic Relief International was at risk of being designated Muslim Brotherhood. A member was trying to put in an amendment that would say that. And of course that's really terrible because that would make them lose a lot of funding. So it was actually the interfaith groups, the other humanitarian groups that came to their rescue. Like I know my organization, Church World Service which was a Christian organization, like they, you know, everybody signed a letter that was sent out and said like, you know, this is really bad. They shouldn't designate this. They're doing really good work. We've worked with them and that amendment didn't go through. So that was really great to see. So the interfaith community is just a really natural way to get engaged because a lot of our values intersect and overline. Right. Yeah, it's really important to show. I know recently with hate crimes, for instance, the folks in DC, like I know I did attend a vigil after the shooting that was in Pennsylvania. Where was that? What was it called? Pittsburgh. Yeah, Tree of Life synagogue. So we went there and then just a few months later they were at Arjumma after the New Zealand shooting happened. So it has to be reciprocal. And I know in DC we're doing it. And I know like for instance in Houston where I'm from, like they've done a lot of interfaith work but yeah, it's just up to the community to build that relationship. Did you have a question in the back? Circle the mosque thing, they did that for us. And so we go to their things. We go to their vigilance and we go to the city. I live in Danville and I work with the racial justice working group. So we do, we work with the bills that come in at the Senate bills and the assembly bills. So I mean, I don't have such a voice but we have a group of six people who work with this and we write up letters to them and we do that. That's really great. It's just very hard to find people. That's the biggest thing. When I go to one of these vigils, there's only me. Yeah, nobody has that. You need to get your friends involved. I know, I know this is about getting people involved. I definitely felt similarly when I would go to Houston I'd go to these interfaith dialogue dinners and I'd be one of a few handful of Muslims that I'd have to bring in my friends. But when people see you being active and doing things they're more likely to join even if it's just like donating to your groups you're shaking your head no, but okay, well let's be optimistic. So chime in here as well. This is one of the things where I think it's helpful to think about how the previous week's training ties in to what we're trying to do here. So previous week's training was on organizing 101. How do you build power, relational power with people in your community? And one thing I think we're going to do is sort of practice of how to speak with your senators but I think we're different Congress people but I think we can also maybe build in a little bit of time to practice how to do a hard act again. So how do you, when you have a cause that you really care about and you want your friends to come there with you or maybe your friends don't have time. How do you relate to them? How do you push them to do that? And yeah, we'll get into that later in the training. Yeah, for sure. And issue areas are really powerful to get around. Sometimes if you know your friend is really into something you can pull them in that way and then they can hopefully be involved. Yes. Somewhere like APEC. I mean, that was the, that is the dream. Yeah. So we aim high. Yeah. So we can influence like what's happening in Muslim countries like Palestine. Yeah. And Kashmir, we keep on staying and we are like. Yes. Yeah. So. I think I would say definitely. I mean, it's gonna, they did a lot of groundwork and you should read their stories of kind of how they built that up as well as other lobbies that are have a lot of influence. It takes time. Yeah. But there's no reason why we can't. Yeah. That's one main reason the frustration on our part. Yeah. Well, because even members will say like, I remember Congressman Keith Ellison, he would say like you Muslims come once a year on your holidays and then everybody else is here 365 days a year. Like who do you think is gonna have the power? I've even had Muslim staffer tell me that like they spend hours every week with APAC people because they come visit their office, they have to. So, you know, I've been part, I've been there. I know like coming from Houston, I would go once a year to the Austin Hill Day or maybe once every two years because it wasn't in session every year. And then I went to the National Hill Day, but the point like what polygon is trying to do is make this part of our community. So yes, we are voting, which is great, but it's not enough to just vote. You have to vote the member, we'll keep the members that you voting in accountable. And the only way you can do that is by consistent advocacy. Yeah, like I'm all for protest and things like that. But we need to make a... Yeah, our title of our training is like from protest to policy change. Policy change and make a big impact. Exactly, yep, yep. Million Muslim walk on Washington DC. Yeah, yep, yep, you're on the right track, yep. Issues are great. We can think about that, but I think what's, where are we gonna make a big difference in where we are? Absolutely. So, Interfaith is a good way of starting and getting to know people because I haven't been involved in there, but we have to look at the local issues. For example, in here, we have 47% increase homelessness in the community in Oakland. So that is just not acceptable. There's no lack of affordable housing. A lot of Muslim communities, most of them, Alhamdulillah, they're doing well financially. Most of them, I can't say everybody, most of them are doing well, but we do not build enough affordable housing and people are getting out and being homeless. For an apartment in San Leandro, excuse me, San Ramon, you have to have between 80 to 100,000 to qualify for one bedroom apartment. So now you have to make that much money. So what happens to teachers? What happens to daycare workers? What happens to you? So we have to work with these issues, with the church community and everybody else, they get their support. I have their support, Alhamdulillah. They ask me, where's the Muslim community? Most of the community say, I have a house. I don't need it, but you don't. You have to work on the issues. This is the issues affecting the community in the Oman. We need help. I mean, and that's why Polygon, we focused on domestic issues and we focus on domestic human needs as a big working group that we're part of to bring attention to those issues because the Muslim voice, well, it's missing from like a lot of issues, but that's one area that our faith tells us, right? Like you're not supposed to sleep hungry if your neighbor is also hungry. So like we use that as a lot of inspiration for getting engaged in that. We present, it has to be only Muslim issues. We are not there as Americans to bring Americans up. So we really have to change our thinking that we are also Americans. We are not only Muslims. So they have to see us as Americans. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, okay, awesome. So yeah, and these are, I think a lot of things that are starting to come out right now are very much like things that, trying to talk about what are the things that we care about as a community. I think let's channel that into next week. Largely, I'm not saying like, certainly it's important to bring- It's good to start thinking about that. Good to start thinking about that, but the town hall is specifically when we will be able to air, like what are the things that we care most about and figure out how do you make an action plan? How do you do, maybe even maybe do a power- We'll go into that too. Yes, yeah. Yeah, that's why we said these are transferable to your local community too. Yes, exactly, exactly. So these are some examples of when we've sent out action alerts. This was like a hot button national issue, a few months ago when we first heard that children were being separated from their parents at the border. Last year there was, you saw the big healthcare lobbying, they were trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act and they were unsuccessful in that and that was largely due to constituent advocacy. You can see a senator here. Does anybody wanna read this? Out loud? You can't see, it's hard to read on orange. The healthcare resistance is working. Just ask a few representative, Republican senators. It does motivate people, including here, you should always be impacted, impacted in my opinion, in your constituents, calling in about an issue, whether you agree with them or not. Senators Scott are- Thanks, South Carolina. Yeah, so like I said earlier, your voices do matter and so don't ever feel like it can't because they were able to do this huge accomplishment with their voices. You all remember the Parkland shootings and where they actually held a public town hall, this was I think aired on CNN, I think it was on CNN, where these students confronted Senator Rubio directly about it and shortly after that, he proposed a bill that would have some restraints. And I think it was folks that had mental health issues or something like that. And this is somebody who receives millions from the NRA, the National Rifle Association. So yeah, so don't ever feel like even those people can't listen. I mean, if there's enough public pressure and this was a national issue crisis that we were dealing with, they were still able to make an impact. With the whole gun lobbying, the school shootings and such, I do see this sort of concept of like the mental health issue clearly. We do have a mental health issue, but I think sort of putting the blame on the mental health community as like, oh, like don't give them guns. I did take a training and there were statistics shared with us that it's very unlikely people who do have mental health are the ones to commit these sort of outrageous crimes, not to say that doesn't happen, but it is very unlikely. I think it's just the access to guns. You just have this sort of copycat over copycat over copycat. And the NRA, I mean, just the way they put out there, like it's your right. I mean, it is an hour of bill of rights to have it, but I don't know if it's just like, it's not like maybe, do you see it as a step to like, okay, well, let's take away from mental health. I don't know what his motivation was for that, because I don't know if that's gonna really do it. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if that's effective or not, but I think he was trying to do something that shows that he was trying to do something about the problem. I can't comment on whether that's effective or not. So then in regard to the Parkland, I understand that now teachers have guns in Florida or that's already been passed. So like I just see it as just not really going anywhere. It's gotten worse, I think. Yeah, I think that's a deeper issue. And you would need to talk to somebody who has expertise in that. Yes, did you have something? Okay, all right. So three names that everybody should know. No, not these. Okay, who are your two US senators? So you're all in California. Feinstein and Harris, good job. Okay, who is your US representative in the house? Oh, Swalwell's from here? Yes. Oh, some powerful people here. And from Orange County, I would say. Nice. And I also marked this on the internet. Yeah. I want a creek area. If you don't know who your rep is, you can go to, I think it's whoismyrep.gov or you can go to like congress.gov and type in your zip code and it'll tell you who your rep is. Sometimes it'll make you put in your street address. Just sometimes there's overlap, but it's really easy to find out. You should all know who your local rep is. Do we also know, since bonus question, what committees is Eric Swalwell on? Oh, good question. These are the things that he has the most influence on. Yeah. Armed services? Yeah. Okay. That's a good one. Shalee. I had to look this up myself. Fairness. But Eric Swalwell is on the house permanent select committee on intelligence and the house judiciary. Permanent, the committee on intelligence and on the judiciary. So that's something to keep in mind that there are a lot of things that we can have as sort of tech causes that we really care about and we should continue working on that. But keep in mind that these are the things that perhaps your congressman has the most influence on. Yeah, he dropped down. So is he still staying in the, okay. Oh, I think I heard that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I heard that. Oh, she's still learning. Okay. I did hear that, yeah. Okay, so let's move on to the actual office visit. So when you're looking at a office with a member of Congress, who, this is kind of what the layout is. So at the bottom, you've got an intern, staff assistant. So anytime you call, like say we send out an actualer or you just want to call and like voice your opinion on something that you know they're going to be voting on, those are usually the people that are going to answer the phone there. So you don't have to go super policy heavy or anything like that when you call. It's very easy to say, I oppose this bill and I want the member to vote no. And that's it. And they just record it. Yes, no, and that's it. It's still important to make your voice heard. And I say this as a Texan who has Ted Cruz and John Cornyn as their senators where I don't agree a lot politically on what they do. It's still important to call if you have somebody like that because they are recording. You don't want them to say, well, like nobody called me an opposition. So it's really important to do that. Same thing with emails and office visits as well. Also note, I don't know whether if you shared this tip, but one thing that I have been told is that when you email many senators or many offices actually have sort of an automatic classification system that they go through, handwritten letters are harder to classify. So people will read those. And they read those sometimes more closely than they will emails. If you really care about something, handwrite the letter. Yeah, postcards, they all work. They're really good. And different people have different ideas on which one works best. And so if you actually go into the office, the folks that you'll probably be meeting with are a legislative assistant or a legislative correspondent. If you're somebody who goes in a lot, maybe you'll meet with a legislative director and sometimes even the senator or representative themselves. I know like for instance, when we were lobbying on Iran, I was working with this group called the Minnesota Peace Project and they would go in very regularly and they had a lot of people behind them in the district that would agree with them. And so they would meet with the senator directly. So that just goes to show like if you're building these relationships with the staff and if you're continuing your engagement very regularly, like you can get FaceTime with a rep because they know you have influence in their district and they care about what you think. No, the colors mean nothing. They're just an easy way to see by changing the colors. Can you get the slides for the winners here? Yes, I think we can work on that. Yeah, I mean, feel free to take pictures too. Oh, everything coming up. Okay, okay, okay, cool. All right, so this is kind of what I mentioned. If you don't know who your rep is, you can go to call your rep.co. There is a capital switchboard if you want to call. If you just dial, you should put this number in your cell phone, in your contacts, 202-224-3121-202-224-3121. If you're ever sitting in traffic, which I'm sure you are a lot here, you can call them and leave a message or talk to a staffer about an issue that you care about. And one really important thing to remember is who you need to contact on specific issues. So if there's a local issue that you're dealing with, for instance, like immigration of somebody in your family or something that's like a local concern, you would need to call the district office. Don't call this national switchboard because that'll take you to the DC office. So you want to do the district office. And if you're dealing with a national concern, like we were talking about gun control or abortion or something that's more on the national scale, then you would call their DC office. And then state representatives, for instance, city council, the other local kind of electives we were talking about, those are more on those specific issues. If you're dealing with potholes, you probably don't want to call your member of Congress, you probably want to call your city council person or something like that. So that aren't mine. And so, and they never ask for proof that you're actually from that area. I've always wondered about that. Can you just pretty much- Yeah, usually when they- Do you guys have an influence and issue? Yeah, usually when you call, they do ask you, some surprise they haven't- I saw like a zip code. But you can pull up a zip code. You know what I'm saying? You could, if you want to be tricky. Yeah, like where's the line like on something really contentious like a little bit. I'm not going to officially endorse that. But I think, yeah, they care the most about what their constituents want, right? So if you go into an office with a big group, let's say you're with an interfaith group or something like that, they will ask who here is a constituent because they want to know who is part of their district and who has influences, who's going to vote for them or donate. It's really great when you go into it and say, oh, I'm a donor. You don't even have to be a donor. It's not going to look it up. You can say that. So those are the people that have priority. Obviously they can listen to other people, but that's why they ask you your zip code and things like that, because they want to know like that you're somebody in their district that they have to listen to because they represent them. Yes. You call your rep. Do they record your name or information? Yes. They do. Yeah. Yeah, they'll ask you for it. So we're going to practice do it. Yeah. Our local offices here, representatives, the assembly member, council members, every assembly member in Northern California told me the same thing and they have really good personal relationship that whenever we go, and there's at least four to five people who call on one issue, that becomes all of a sudden a serious, serious priority. So I'm just trying to go around for the last 25 years telling our community and educating them that the small minimum participation goes a very, very long way. Just last week, we were able to influence the local senator here in the California senator, Senator Hale for San Mateo on multiple issues related to gun violence, to surveillance and we presented a very strong case to their staff manager and they weren't going to vote against it and the next day they actually voted for it. And then we got the message that here, we did what you asked us. So you'll be amazed that the staff always tells me four to five visits or four to five calls is a major big issue. That's great. That's great that it only takes four to five. That shows that you can't have a lot of influence in that particular office. And it is true, the representative does get a list from their staff every day, like who called about what. We had this many calls on this issue. So it's so important to make your voice heard. So speaking of calls, let's go ahead and start practicing. So we're gonna do a phone call or email first. So like I said, we send out action alerts, other organizations send out action alerts or we put like a script there. So let's ask, let's see if you guys are paying attention first. So who answers the phone? Enten or staff assistant, good. Okay, and what are the things that you need to do? You need to identify yourself as a constituent, right? Yeah, your real name is great. Yeah, I mean, yeah, because sometimes if they are really interested in your perspective, they might ask and say like, we can have a staffer follow up with you. Or if you ask for that themselves, say I want somebody to talk to you on this, they can put you in touch and keep it short and sweet. One issue, don't put every issue under the sun that you care about in an email or a phone call. They do not have time for that. Like they probably just won't even read that. So keep it very short and sweet, especially in today's day and age where everybody is doing a zillion things on technology.