 As I mentioned earlier, we have a packed schedule today. Our next panel will be moderated by Beth McConnell. Beth serves as the Executive Director of the Media and Democracy Coalition, of which the ACM is a member. Beth joined the coalition staff in May of 2007 at works to link together local, state, and national organizations around media policy initiatives and provides strategic backup support to those efforts. Beth was the Director of the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group from 2002 through 2007, where she led the organization to victories, including winning the release of patient safety data from hospitals that can save lives, giving consumers tools to protect their personal information from would-be identity thieves, defeating a plan by the IRS that would have allowed the sale of consumers' tax returns, and expanding health care access to tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians. Beth began her public interest career in 1993 as a citizen outreach director with the Fund for Public Interest Research and has extensive experience working with the media, developing strategic campaign plans, training emerging leaders, policy development analysis, fundraising, crafting effective messages, and coalition buildings. She's perfect for this next panel. Welcome, Beth. Thank you, Sylvia. Well, I'd like to invite the rest of our panelists to join us. And while they're coming up to the panel here, just another quick thing about my background. When I was at Penn Perg before I came to the Media and Democracy Coalition, I also worked, actually was one of two public interest lobbyists, only two, working to defeat state-level franchising legislation that you're all very familiar with. And we did, we killed that sucker, which was a great victory in Pennsylvania. And I also serve on the board of Philly Cam, which is the Philly Community Access Media, one of our newest public access stations that we fought for more than 27 years to bring to Philadelphia. And I'm thrilled to announce that Philly Cam is moving into our brand new studios tomorrow. It took us 27 years to build it, to get it and build it. So if any of you happen to be in the region over the course of this weekend and want to stop by, Philly Cam is part of an open studio tour, so Saturday and Sunday from noon to six, if you want to hop on the train and come up to Philly and check out our new studios, we'd love to see you there. And you can find out more about that on our website, phillycam.org. So on this panel, we're going to talk a little bit more or a lot more into kind of the brass tacks in your communities. What does it actually take to influence a member of Congress? Who are the players and the people within your community that can, that you can help bring to the table to help influence that member and some resources that you already have as a community media center that you can bring to bear. So we are going to hear, we're going to start with Chance Williams. And Chance is the government affairs, external and government affairs manager, right, am I getting that right, at Free Press. Prior to that, he actually worked with us at the Median Democracy Coalition. And before that has experience in community radio. And Chance is going to talk a little bit about how you reach out to members of Congress locally, what matters to them. Then we're going to hear from Rachel Collier. Rachel is the organizing and communications manager at the Median Democracy Coalition. And Rachel has a lot of experience doing on the ground organizing and her background has been doing organizing with a lot of labor unions over the last few years. So we'll talk a little bit about how you can get other organizations and activists in your community engaged. And then we will hear from Jasmine, Jasmine White, who is a training manager at DCTV here in DC. And Jasmine is going to talk about the tools that you already have as a community media center that you can bring to bear. And then we'll hear from Zenita, am I pronouncing your name correctly? Zenita. Menda. Zenita from Manhattan Neighborhood Networks, we'll talk about some of the successful work that she did and M&N did around state level legislation on broadband and how that helped to strengthen the public access center and their franchise negotiations. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Chance. Thanks, Beth. And it's good to see everyone here today. So I work for Free Press, and we are a national organization that works on media and telecom policy. I spend most of my time working here in DC, working with members of Congress on educating them about issues and talking to their staff quite a bit. The other part of what we do is working with our activists outside of the Beltway, some 500,000 plus strong. And really, I think the thing that we've recognized is that to move federal policy, you need people and you need champions in Congress. And one of the ways that we've gone about trying to develop that is really working in district. So taking it outside of the Beltway and really contacting members where they live and working to organize constituents to be there, to communicate directly with them. So I just want to share some experience that we had over this past August to let you know what a powerful thing it can be to work with members of Congress. Folks in the room, just to get a sense of where you all are at, how many of you have met with a congressional office or met with a member of Congress in the past? Okay, so a fair number of you, I'd say about half. And I think with Peg Stations, you all are in a really good position advocating for, you know, the CAP Act, et cetera, because members of Congress and elected officials, I think first and foremost really understand what the local media landscape looks like and it really impacts their ability to communicate with folks to talk about the issues that they're working on and frankly to get elected. The amount of money that it costs to run the ads that it seems to be necessary to get elected is huge and they know that they're being squeezed out of local coverage with broadcast stations and often a Peg Station is the only place that they can go to communicate directly with folks. And so what we did over this past August was we organized around 20 plus meetings around the country to talk about a number of issues, many of the ones that were covered on the panel today, net neutrality, media ownership, public media and we also did some work on the AT&T and T-Mobile merger. And I think the first thing to keep in mind with these meetings is that the congressional calendar is your friend. You want to be sure if you're organizing something in district that the member of Congress has the possibility of being there and even if you're communicating directly with the staff as well, you want to be sure that you're talking with the right person to make sure that your concern is going to be elevated. And the other thing you want to do is make sure that you organize a group of folks to be there that can sort of speak to the issue in a variety of different ways and I think Rachel is going to talk about that a little bit more. But what we found is that with our approach to these meetings that we had some sort of unexpected consequences and I think in a positive way. And something that Brandi said really resonated with me and with the way that I approached this work is that having everything you do being and organizing opportunity and that's certainly the way that we approach these meetings so it's not just about the policy fight at hand, it's not just about communicating that particular interest or that particular policy position, it's really about what can you build and what can you make from having a meeting of folks in your community. And I think what we found is on the activist side, folks were very excited to be engaged in this way and they were looking for more, they were looking for the next thing to do. And so one of the things that grew out of this that we certainly didn't expect at the outset was folks getting op-eds placed, people getting letters to the editor placed in their newspapers, other levers to really influence their members of Congress on these issues. And the other thing that happened is that we were able to get some meetings directly with members of Congress and it's amazing what you can accomplish when you sort of cut out the middle man as it were and begin communicating directly with them. And I think what happens is often they're disarmed and they see the truth of the issue in a really unvarnished way when they're hearing it from their constituents, from their local community. So one of the things we had happen is our sort of concrete ask at the end of the meeting, the member of Congress said that's not good enough, that she wanted to do more than that and really stepped forward in a way to try to become a champion for us on this issue and really start to strategize about how we can move things forward in a more powerful way in Congress, which is something we frankly didn't expect. And another thing that happened was, you know, we met with a member who publicly maybe put some opposition out there to the AT&T T-Mobile merger who after the meeting that we had with her had a complete change of heart and really has come out against it. So, you know, I think you can only get what you ask for and to go in there and to have the conversation, really some amazing things can grow from that. And I think what the seeds are planted in sort of planning and organizing these meetings and executing them is really a launching pad for deeper organizing work in your communities, which I think some of the other panelists are going to talk about now. Great. Thanks, Chance. Rachel? Great. So I just wanted to sort of get a sense of some of the activities that you all have taken part in from folks that are in the room. So how many of you have ever had a local politician use your station? Yeah, it's a pretty common form of talking to the community and getting issues out there. How many of you have someone dedicated to outreach within your station to new organizations or nonprofits? Does anyone do outreach? Okay, so a few folks. And how many of you have regular nonprofits or organizations that use your station regularly? Pretty common. And how many of you have regular producers that work with you? No, you need, you love you, right? And how many of you have... Could be, of course. And how many of you have ever participated in something like a fundraising drive or whether it's for your station or in another capacity, fundraising? Okay, so from what I see as an organizer is that within your community, I get a sense that there are a lot of you that are already doing the work that needs to be done. And it may just be thinking about it in a different light or in a different way. So taking a lot of the skills that you already know, a lot of the connections that you already have, and using them to better suit your needs and sort of push your agenda forward. So one thing I would like to say about organizing is that it can be done and done well, even if you don't have a pile of additional resources. Many of the stations that you all run have the advantage of name recognition, access to the airwaves, and local connections. And so the best place to start organizing is within your own networks. Think of the folks that use your station that need you, that love you, that can speak to the value of why we need more community media and develop them, turn them into spokespeople. Develop them with a specific goal in mind. You know, Brandy used an example of the constituent calling and getting information and then feeding it back. That's really valuable. Having somebody that can speak on your behalf and ask the politicians to do things, coming from that neighborhood, shows them one that it's not just about special interest. That it's about community interest, and makes it very real. Now there are some politicians in offices that have to be contacted on multiple occasions before they even care to listen to an issue or think that it's real to the community. So the more people that you have that you can think about tapping and utilizing as chance said, bringing them to meetings or utilizing their voice, the stronger you look as a community. I like what Chance said about have everything you do be about an opportunity to organize. Ask people to make introductions and speak on your behalf and utilize those networks very effectively. So for example, when you talk with nonprofits, politicians, producers, staff, organizations you already work with, ask them to be an advocate and support your station, ask them to write your local elected officials or go to meetings with you, or organize them with what you do best, make video. You know, utilize the producers, the folks who have access to the radio and actually use those as organizing platforms. One of the things also that Chance sort of mentioned is making the ask. I think sometimes the most difficult thing in organizing, grassroots organizing, is really just making that ask and asking people to do what you need them to do. So many times we miss these opportunities, just we'll never get what we don't ask for. So be specific with people. If you think that they can help you make an introduction to or go to an office, you've got to ask. You'll never get what you don't ask for. Let's see. Think about the different audience that you have as stations. Who do you have access to? You've got viewers, donors, producers, communities, organizations. Think about the value that they get from you. Capture that story and take it with you to talk to your elected officials. And I think that there are a lot of different ways that you can do that. One of the other really important things to think about when grassroots organizing is go to where people are and give them ways to engage. So what does that mean? Sometimes people are in your studio, right? And so you can start with them. This is already an audience that you can talk to. Sometimes people are out in the community and I'm sure that most of you have folks that go out into the community and talk to people. So think about how to capture those stories and utilize them as a way to advocate for community media and in your interest. A couple examples. There was an organizing drive we were doing in Tennessee. And we realized that one of the areas that we were organizing in, most of the population was not able to read or write. And this was a letter writing campaign. So as you can imagine, that was an unforeseen barrier pretty quickly. And what we had to do while in the field was think about a way to tell these stories without asking people to do something that they couldn't do. And so what we quickly decided to do was start asking for video blogs. People were willing to speak on video or even for folks who were like, oh, I don't want my face. We could then record audio at least. And so it was a way to share stories that was not necessarily planned. So think about different ways to share the stories. Or think about when organizing really fun opportunities or creative opportunities to organize around your issues. So taking advantage of Valentine's Day as an opportunity to tell your politicians to have a heart and pass the cap act. Or one year we did a wish list for President Obama as he was coming into office and had folks video blog about what they wanted the country to be like the following year. So I mean, I think that there are really interesting ways that you can use the medium and the skills and the talents that you already have available and use it to talk about the issues that are most important to you. So identifying your targets and what motivates or influences them. So sometimes it's about bringing 50 people into a meeting or it's about staging a huge protest or sometimes it's about getting one or two key influencers to help your cause, help champion your cause and influence the decision makers. So think about who your target is. You know, if you're trying to move a congressional representative who say their most important thing, their staunch advocate of child's rights. Say that's what they care about, that's their pet cause, that's what they came to Washington to run on. Well, how do you make a connection to them on their issue? Maybe you think about who uses your network. Maybe there are some organizations that do a lot of children's education or children's rights work. And so thinking about how you can tap into these networks and utilize one or two small asks of people that may be key influencers of your target and decision maker. So think about something like that, what motivates them and how you can do that. Because sometimes it's not about the largest voice but the most important voice. And I guess just to sort of wrap up and add just a few more things. I mean, I would say that this isn't about adding a bunch of extra work into what you're doing because it does sound like a lot of what you're doing is all of the skills and talents are transferable. So now it's just coming up with a longer term plan and thinking about how to sort of, how to utilize what you have available to you and turn it into a campaign that could be beneficial to help pass, pass the cap act in your communities or give your communities a voice. So that's sort of I think where I will stop and let you all talk. Great, Jess. Good morning, morning. Good morning. I do not have a lovely placard in front of me but I promise you all that I am, in fact, Jasmine White. Sylvia asked me to speak briefly today about best. Exactly, so I needed to make that announcement so everybody knows who I am. Sylvia asked me to speak briefly about best practices for grassroots organizing and community access centers. And this comes at a really interesting time because the station where I work, which is DCTV or the Public Access Corporation of DC, our franchising agreement with Comcast actually expires in 2012. So we're actually working at this moment with the Office of Cable Television on our community input meetings and doing our needs assessment and a lot of the work that we're doing with our members in the organizations and the people in DC. I think some of the lessons that we've learned in organizing for this process and also the strategies that we've used could be applied to CAP Act as well. So that's basically the premise for the points that I want to make today. So I think that it's really important for community media centers to realize what our individual strengths are and within that we have to acknowledge is what our weaknesses are also. So for the most part, we're not a group of lawyers or not a group of politicians but what we do have to focus on is playing to our strengths. So I think that one of our strengths are our skills. We are media experts. We're media experts and we're trainers and we really have to take that information and use it a little bit better to our advantage. Another one of our strengths are our reach. Obviously television distribution is major but I don't think that we all use it to our advantage. How many of us have information on our channels right now about the CAP Act? Show of hands? Anybody? Exactly. So we really need to use the resources that we have. We have TV stations and TV distributions even not just about the CAP Act but about educating people on harms that face PEG altogether. So a lot of our stations are using social networking sites at the moment. We definitely have a person at DCTV that's dedicated to updating our Facebook page, updating our Twitter page, our professional networks and partnerships. We have a partnership with the Washington Informer as well as the Center for Nonprofit Advancement and you better be sure that those organizations are very clear on what our fights are. So they produce shows on our channel. Washington Informer produces a show every other week. They have a large reach with our partnership with them. We're able to put information in their newspaper that has a huge distribution in DC as well as the Center for Nonprofit Advancement. So we really need to better utilize our own partnerships and the relationships we've already built and really connect those partners to our story and our fight. Lastly, I think one of our greatest strengths are our members. Definitely not least, our members. Our members come from all walks of life. We have students, we have advocates, we have artists, we have professionals from different areas. All of these people who we have trained to cultivate their own audiences. They have a direct connection with people in the community that we don't necessarily have. As managers and people that sit on our board of directors, there is a disconnect between the work that we do in the actual audience. But what we have is a group of people who are consistently producing content, reaching a certain group of people in the community on a weekly basis and we're not really tapping into those relationships with our audiences. I think that because of the skill that we have, because of our members and because of our partnerships, we have a very unique vantage point. We're storytellers, right? So we definitely don't want the lawyers to craft all of our information. We're storytellers. We know how to connect these visual images that are gonna tap into something emotional in the viewer and we really have to use that to our advantage. I think that we also need to do more if we are creating any content around the CAP Act or around PEG channels in general, we have to distribute them better amongst each other. I think there are a couple of things that are floating around. There's definitely some stuff on the ACM website. That's my plug, Sylvia. That people can get more information on how to download that information and play on their channels, but we really have to utilize what it is that we have. Even if we don't have anything on our channels, we should definitely have information, at least on our websites, with a link that goes to the Alliance's website about the CAP Act to give people more information. When we are creating content around the CAP Act, we need to draw the viewer in and not just draw them in, but give them next steps. So I think that a couple of pieces that I've seen that people have done around the CAP Act or PEG in general have been really compelling, but then what does the viewer do next? Do we want them to go to a website? Do we want them to contact Congress? Do we want them to write a letter? So when we are creating this information, we have to be sure to give people the do something. And I think that there's definitely a link on ACM's website. What is it? The Grassroots Action Center. That's my second ACM plug. The Grassroots Action Center. So we need to direct people to those types of places so they say, okay, I see this, this is important. The local content is being created for my community is important to me. What can I do? We have to direct them to someplace to do something. So I think that once we do create a content, having another place for a member and organization to go to is really important as well. So I think in moving the CAP Act forward, something that's really important for us as community media centers is understanding that education and advocacy is not lobbying and that we have the right to educate our members on these issues. We have the right to be advocates for these issues and we have to be very clear on the difference between advocacy and lobbying. So I think that a lot of community media sensors, when we start talking about CAP acts and legislation, they think, well, this is a nonprofit organization. This is work that we're not supposed to do. We all have different franchising agreements and different rules, but education and advocacy is our right. We have the right to educate our members on our mission. We have the right to protect that mission and we have the right to act on that mission as well. So I think that that's important to remember when we're connecting with our viewers. Also, to continue to create multimedia strategies that include coalition building and community engagement. If we're creating these strategies and they have no media, so we're not telling our stories and they're not very effective. And only do we have to tell our stories. We have to connect them with other organizations and that's where we can get the word out a little bit more about what it is that we're trying to do and what it is that we're trying to protect. I think the last point that I want to make is that it's really important for us all to stay connected to the message. I mentioned that we all have different franchising agreements, but I think that when we have specific bullet points that we do have about the CAP Act that we want people to speak about and we want people to acknowledge that these are the important things that we're trying to communicate that it's important to stick to the message and understand the bigger picture. So even if your specific access center is not really in danger of losing its funding, it's really important to keep our eyes on the prize, so to speak and understand that if one access center is in danger, then that puts us all in danger as well. Great, thanks Jasmine. Good morning everyone. Good morning. Someone said that power comes from two things, organize money or organize people. We don't have much money, therefore we need to organize people and build coalition. And just like my two predecessor three have mentioned, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, we are very blessed to be in New York City, to be in Manhattan. And I want to give you a little idea of what I believe each of us in our center, the sources that we have and the power that we have. Manhattan Neighborhood Network, we are broadcast in 17 languages. We have 560 hours a week of programming, 59 live shows a month, 1200 producers. We work with over 200 community-based organizations. We have some national show, social gay USA, Democracy Now, and we believe we are the largest cable casting or regional programming. Therefore, we take advantage of those opportunities. Since 2006, we've been organizing constantly because of our franchising agreement. It's taking us over four years to reach our agreement with Tanguana Cable. We did two years ago with Verizon and we still have one more to do. In the mix of all this, what we do with our producers and our community groups, we have regular mixed mingles, which means that we make sure that we have meetings with them, we keep in abreast what's going on. When there are hearings on the city council, they pretend to cable or anything like that, we already have people ready to mobilize and to go downtown. The same thing in Albany, the same thing here. We also have a new facility in the Upper East Side in El Barrio in East Harlem. Last week, we had a meet and greet at the facility. Congressman Charango was there, our State Senator Charango was there, our local councilwoman Melissa Mabibarito was there. Why? Because every time they go out somewhere, people say, I just saw you last night on television. They say, you saw me on television? Where? Where? Oh, I'm in there. Because the network don't cover them. Even we have a New York one, which is supposed to be local programming, very seldom have our local elected official. We were very close also with good government groups, a common cause, and the League of Women Borders organizing and making sure that they have a voice. So therefore, it is critical for us to continue to use what we have. And what we have is, in our case, we have four television channels. We have thousands of producers. And we make sure that they know also what are the legislations and the policies that are affecting and will continue to affect us and what will be important for us to continue to be on the air. And we are here also to make sure that, even though Manhattan-Evo Network and the New York City Public Asset Center might not be in danger, we are here because we understand that when one is in danger, we are all in danger. Therefore, we are here supporting everything that ACM does and we will do that because we understand that this is a must. That through media is in danger and we can see, but at the same time, if you are being following what's going on in New York, we, MNN and Public Asset were the first ones to occupy Wall Street since the very beginning, way before it went to mainstream media. Without us, many people would not have known that this is going on. And we can name so many numerous things that are going on. We were very close with our community boards, which is New York City is divided by community boards so each of our community boards have programs in our cable channel. Almost all the Manhattan delegation have programs in our station, which is important because we provide the voices. We make sure that the residents of Manhattan know what their representatives are doing everywhere and we make sure that they happen. Therefore, this is critical for us to continue to work together and to organize locally in order to continue to work nationally and globally. Thank you. Excellent, thank you. So I just want to kind of summarize a couple of key points that I heard and then we'll open it up to questions. One, I think if it wasn't clear, you weren't paying attention, use the resources that you already have at your station, your channel, your members, the stories, your relationships with community groups, you already have it, it's just a matter of mobilizing it. Two, is be really specific, make an ask. And that's not only making an ask of your members to get involved with making a very specific ask of the member of Congress that you're meeting with. Three, I heard make it fun, Valentine's Day, Mix and Mingle, give people a reason to want to do this because they're enjoying it, they're doing something for the station they care about and they're also having a good time. Four, build champs. It's not necessarily trying to convince members who are against us to switch, but it's about getting members who are either on the fence or undecided or have never heard of it before to become leaders, not just vote the right way but co-sponsor the bill and be actively out there pushing it. And use it as an opportunity, use all this as an opportunity to build your channel so that when you face your next franchising negotiation, you have more members, you have better relationships, you have more active and engaged people that you can bring to bear on that. And I'll just add two last quick things. I know we heard, particularly from Yuza and Ida, about how many local politicians of the city council use the station. It's an important member, those folks have influence with members of Congress. They know each other, they're probably friends, they probably hang out, they go golfing, they go to lobbyist fundraisers. And so if they're already committed to your station and using it, help them get to the member of Congress and they're often willing to do it. And then the last thing I know, I also think I heard from Yuza and Ida talking about local organizations that are chapters of national groups like Common Cause and I think it said League of Women Voters. And I think it's important to remember that if you're able to get these local chapters of national organizations active, it's much easier then for us in the Beltway to get that national organization active on the CAP Act. So that's very helpful and I think something that we can all do a little bit better. So let's thank our panelists and then we'll have questions. What questions do we have out there? Yes. And can you tell us who you are and everybody introduce yourself? Well, I don't want to give you a legal definition because I'm not a lawyer. But the difference is I think that with the nonprofit organization, you cannot use more than a certain amount of your resources towards lobbying efforts. So you'd have to look into the law, whatever the IRS code or standard is to determine what percentage of your resources you can actually use towards those efforts. But you can't use 80% of your staff's time and money from other places for lobbying efforts because that is illegal. But since I'm talking, I just really wanted to reiterate a point that Zanada made about having people ready to mobilize and people ready to move is really important. And part of the education and advocacy piece is that that is an ongoing process. So educating your people on what the issues are is an ongoing process so that when something happens, people are ready to move and they're ready to go. So when they receive an e-blast from you or a phone call or they see something on Facebook or you send them a text message or they see something on Twitter, it's not the first time that they've heard of it. So that the education piece is constant. You have palm cards in your station. You have small messages on the community bulletin board so that people are seeing and hearing these bullet points on a regular basis. And then when it comes time for them to move, then you can give them more specifics. So I think having people ready to go is really important so that when the time comes where we need people to do work, we can't really spend that time to start the education process. We just need them to move and to be at a specific place and to do something. And just a really quick thing on the distinction between advocacy and lobbying. Anytime you say support House Bill 1234 or tell congressman so-and-so or email congressman so-and-so, that's lobbying and so it counts under some sort of percentage of your budget. But anytime you say support public access, protect public access, save public access for all these reasons and you're not talking about specific legislation, you can do that as much as you want. It's really when there's a specific bill that you're asking people to do something on, whether those are members in your community or the member itself. And if you want some extra resources to learn a little bit more about the nitty gritty of IRS law and lobbying and advocacy, the Alliance for Justice, you can go to their website and they have some really helpful handouts and two-pagers that will help you stay within the law and maximize your advocacy and lobbying resources. Right. Sure. I'm Jerry Letter with the Alliance for Community, Media and Beth's given great advice, but I want everybody to understand what she says so you don't violate the law. The law we're talking about is your tax status. Exactly. All right, there's not a law about lobbying. The law is that if you exceed a certain percentage, then you place your tax status in jeopardy. One of the things that the industry will do often is they will oversimplify or simply lie about what the law is. And we'll say to you, you can't do that. That violates your charter. That violates your 501C3 status. And that's just not true. And Beth's, I think, again, gave you a source of terrific information. If you want to go to someone that's seen as not necessarily being so allied with us, you could even go to the nonprofit organization as an association for nonprofits. And that also talks about the numbers. Actually, at every one of the Alliance's meetings, we actually go through what those standards are. And we've yet to find even our most politically active group comes anywhere near the number. So don't let it retard your efforts. Great, thanks. Rachel, do you have a point and then Mitzi? Yeah, I was just going to say, and there are a lot of tools that you can use that can help you with that without doing a lot of work. Plugging the ACM website, going there, linking to that to a lobby on behalf of the CAP Act. That's not a lot of extra time or resource. I mean, that's somebody who updates your website, linking something that takes them five minutes. If you want to do more specific local advocacy, there are a lot of tools online that you can get. Actly is an online petition site. Care2 is an online petition site. Change.org is an online petition site. And what you can do is go there and in five or 10 minutes, set up a little automated petition that would say, support MNN's drive to do this or something like that. And it's very specific to your station. You can customize it. And then it's already in a community of people who care about this and you can link it to your website. And so I mean, there are some really simple tools that you don't have to be a web designer. You don't have to actually put in a lot of time or effort and you can then allow your online community to take action and give you support as well. So just say that's how you can put it in practice easily. Mitzi? Hi, Mitzi Herrera of Montgomery County, Maryland. The question I have for you is in Maryland because of the way the House came out, we don't have any members who sit in either committee in the House or the Senate on the right committees. And if you look at the subcommittees, it's an even smaller number of states and some of those states have gone to state franchising. So my question for you is sort of an inside baseball, Washington broker game. We need those people, those individuals, to move forward on the bill. What is it that we can do as members from states that don't have people on the right committees to support our colleagues who do have people who sit on the right communities? And how are we communicating those efforts as to who's a dead end and who has life? So I think at the heart of your question is really, I think the answer is, and that's providing support to those stations that actually have that member that is on the relevant committee. And I think some of that is letting them know that somebody actually really important that plays a key role on the issue is someone that they have a direct line to and that they could influence. And the other thing is really providing them with so many of the things that we talked about in terms of making sure they have the talking points necessary, helping them do the research that it takes to really, you want to craft your message anytime you're talking to one of those members to the issues that really speak to them, the ones that are their core issues. So helping them craft that and do the research on what the member's all about, I think, and really just supporting each other, I think is the best way to go about that. One thing I'll also add is that, just like your local officials, no members of Congress, members of Congress, no members of Congress. And so even though we might not have the key champ on the committee, we have a key champ someplace else that might be good friends with those that are on the committee. And they trade all kinds of favors all the time, probably stuff that would make our hair go gray if it's not already, the kinds of stuff that they trade back and forth. So to the extent that we can get a member that's not on the committee to put pressure on those that are, that helps build more champs, even in places where we don't, we maybe don't have a station that's active or a station that has the capacity to engage. That that's one other way to think about it. The national partners that, you know, of course the Alliance for Community Media is keeping track of what's going on nationally. But then organizations like the Media and Democracy Coalition, the Open Technology Initiative, you know, Free Press, we're all in communication with a number of members, and I think it's been a lot of time focusing on those committee folks. So I think we can be a big resource, and I would certainly encourage you to call on all of those organizations to sort of figure out your way through some of that. I just wanted to add, don't be afraid to ask your representative to reach out to whoever you need to reach out to. They talk to each other, they're negotiating constantly. And many different issues that, like you said, we might not want to know about. Therefore, ask for them to reach out to the person that you need to. So have you asked him to reach out to towns who's from New York or Pologne who's from New Jersey? Definitely. We constantly talk to Serrano and every other member and to make sure that they know we need more information. And with it, even though Serrano, just as Serrano is in the Bronx, Townies in Brooklyn, we talk to all of them because we go to also, locally we also go to many phone racers and many activities that our representative have. So they're always there. So we take the opportunity to make sure that we mention whatever it is that we are working on. One thing I did want to just add about the importance of being in direct contact with your member no matter if they're on the committee or not, is a lot of times it's the people that aren't on the committee that end up causing us problems in a lot of the issues that we work on. So it's those people that might not be as closely connected to the issue that aren't really keeping it top of mind that often end up on letters that can be very, very damaging. And at that point, it just matters that it's a member of Congress. It doesn't matter what committee that they're sitting on for the press cycle to sort of take hold of it and really do a lot of damage to your issues. So I think it's no matter what, it's important to be in contact with them so they recognize it's an issue that's truly important to their constituents. Yeah, I mean proactive outreach, proactive education of your members of Congress or really any important key decision maker is much, it's much easier, it's much more beneficial than having to do a reeducation campaign or sort of change their mind on something. So if there's a way that you can get out with any decision maker or actor, a member of Congress, large funder, big organization, nonprofit locally that sort of runs things. If you can do a proactive education or outreach campaign with any of these large actors, you're gonna be in a better position if you need them in the future than to have to do some reeducation campaign after Verizon comes in and gives them a fact sheet full of stuff that is somewhat based on something in truth maybe somewhere. So think about how to do that, I think in all of your practices. Any other questions? Well, I'd like to ask one. Chance, you talked about and it came up a couple times throughout the panel about building champions. And so obviously we have to go sit down and talk to them and explain the importance of the station. But can you give any other examples of things that you've done or if repress has done kind of outside that one-on-one meeting to help build a champion? Yeah, sure, I think, you know, constant contact with the offices, really being a resource to the member of staff there. I think as we've all talked about, they're often really bombarded by information from the companies. They have a number of lobbyists out there on the hill. So if you're really trying to develop a champion, you know, I think for all of us, we really have to have to focus in and use the resources that we have wisely. So really picking those key offices where you're gonna really develop a relationship with the member of staff and become that resource. And then the other part of it is really showing them love when they do something that's great. You know, I think members of Congress really appreciate that, helping to elevate their profile on an issue that maybe they didn't realize there was anybody out there who cared about, which I think is sometimes how they perceive some of these issues. You know, those are a couple of things that we're doing. And then, you know, certainly op-eds and really getting people motivated in their district and having folks come in and talk to them, I think is helpful as well. Anything to add? Just a quick anecdote. I once wrote a letter to the editor to a member of Congress in my state who wasn't my member of Congress, but thanking them for something they did. And I got a phone call from their office thanking me for the letter to the editor. So they read the papers, they see that stuff, they notice it, and it helps build that relationship. Any other questions? Your thoughts? Sylvia? Sylvia Stroll, the A.C.M. I know some of A.C.M.'s members are more comfortable with grassroots organizing than others. For those that aren't as comfortable, can each of you just kind of give a quick story of an effort that you were personally involved in that was successful? Why, what made it successful? What key ingredient made it work? I think that an example that I can think of, I'm a district resident, I live in Washington, D.C. Most of our members at DCTV live in Washington, D.C. also, which means that we do not have representation in Congress. So it's really hard to get people to understand that they can also be effective in some way because I think that there's a feeling with some D.C. residents that if I don't have representation, then I'm just not gonna participate in any of this. So although most of our residents live in D.C., a lot of them, I'm sorry, they live in D.C. and they use our channels, a lot of them also bicycle their programs to different stations in the area. Montgomery County, Fairfax, Arlington, and a lot of them are doing that either through relatives within those counties or if they live there as well. So there is a woman who's a member at our station, she's been producing something for many, many, many years, way before I began working at DCTV and we were having this conversation about the Cat-Back that she lives in D.C. and you know, why should I do this and it doesn't really involve me and if DCTV is safe, why do I need to do anything to move this forward? And so it was just a basic conversation about the harms that face other channels and I think that because her programming is important to her and she believes that it's important to the other communities where she's sending her programming, then she felt like it was important enough for her, at least to her daughter who she sends her program through Montgomery County to at least sit with her. We went on the Alliance website and she was able to fill out the form letters to send to representation in Montgomery County and in Maryland. So I think that just having that conversation and then she felt like she did something important which only took, well, it took about 30 minutes of talking but the actual filling out, the form letters on the ACM website only took about five minutes. So I think that she felt like she had done something that was important for other people even though it wasn't directly a connection for her in D.C. I think one example that I can point to is actually something that I think a lot of folks in this room have more experience with than I do but using a multimedia component, my colleague Corey Wright mentioned the covert consolidation issue as it relates to media ownership and that's something that we've been working on and we developed a 90 second to two minute video that really explains the issue in a very compelling way and also cut together some video of sort of side-by-side examples of covert consolidation going on in particular communities. And we did have an industry meeting directly with a member of Congress where we showed some of that just through some technical expertise we're able to show side-by-side what that looked like and got a really compelling reaction from them recognizing how chilling that really is and what the impact is on the community. So I think using tools like that that really bring the issue to life which I think is something that folks in this room are well equipped to do is also a really amazing tool that I think can elevate your organizing and bring something different to the table. Jerry? Sure. Hi, again, Jerry, earlier with the alliance. I've heard two of you make a statement today and I've heard others make it in alliance meetings and the statement is even though my station is safe I want to help because if one is in peril all are in peril and my question is what makes you think that your station is safe? Okay, maybe you have a franchise in place that has funding that's been earmarked maybe but there were lots of cities around the there were lots of access centers around the country before the state law went through that had the exact same protections that disappeared overnight when the state law took place. There were stations across the country that had a full channel distribution network one day and didn't have it the next day and there may not have been a change of state law in the interim and so I guess I'm happy that people feel confident in their technological outlet and I'm happy that people feel confident in their funding source or funding base but I really worry when I hear these statements that we're safe because I don't know that you are and I fear sometimes look, our Massachusetts members in ACM are probably the most active that we have and they all feel secure should they? I think California and Michigan are extraordinarily active members and yet if you looked at their state law even it says that the AT&T Channel 99 should never exist but it does so again I'm really intrigued by what makes you think that you're so safe. You are absolutely correct. A couple of years ago Assemblyman Braske and Albany decided that he wanted to move the franchising agreement to Albany. Right now the old negotiation is done in New York City through the city council and one of the reasons we sort of feel safe because through legislation the city council every 10 years every time they're going to do an agreement with the cable company they mandate that they also negotiate with the public asset center otherwise they will not get their agreement approved and that's why we are constantly working with our elected officials with the local elected officials so they know what we're doing and keeping them at best but nothing is safe and that's why we're here because we know that we're fragile but when we say we're safe because we are doing what we need to do to make sure that we keep everyone abreast of what's going on and when that legislation or that proposed legislation from Braske came about we were able to mobilize not only in New York City but statewide and all the city the members of the city council in New York say wait a minute you're not taking this to Albany and our constituents or the residents of Manhattan in particular they say now we have to go to Albany we just had a hearing in the city council and we brought 500 people to speak it was a hearing that was supposed to be from 10 to 2 we were down to 7 o'clock and people were not able not everyone got to speak therefore they know that we are a force and that's what we're talking about we had to constantly organize constantly bring how people like ACM and people in Albany were going to tell us what's going on and anyone trying to sneak any legislation or policy or regulation they're going to harm grassroots media that we are ready to move on I think that the term safe is relative and I think that it's all about perception so for our members if we're not closing tomorrow or next month they think that's safe so we live in a town where there's a lot of activism activities going on on a regular basis schools are closing there are lots of housing issues and it's just a different level of urgency between what we're facing in those issues so if a school is closing tomorrow then they feel like this is an urgent issue we need to move on this today but DCTV are you going to be open tomorrow are you going to be open next month so those things we're certain of that at least we'll be here for that period of time so it's not safe forever but when they're comparing when they're thinking about things that's on their agenda that they're advocating for and that they're fighting for and that they're working for they're thinking of those more urgent issues that they're facing in their communities housing food parking issues not whether or not this station will be open because we will at least for the next month and if I can just impart some wisdom that I got from I think some of the most keen and astute observers of politics in the city is a DC cab driver the other day but you know as I was heading to a meeting on the hill and he you know we're talking about politics and a number of things and he said in politics you never take anything for granted and I think that's a really important lesson that we can all take you know certainly those of us that are working on national policy I think you know it's really easy to get swept up in an idea or a feeling I think there were a lot of folks that assumed that the fight around the issues that a number of us work on might be a little different a little bit easier with you know when when different people came into office and you know I think what we found is that our opposition you know the folks at the corporations are incredibly skilled and very resourced and the ground will shift beneath your feet if you're not watching it so I I would say I mean ever vigilant is is the only way that you're ever going to be anything close to safe recognizing that folks have different situations different you know franchise agreements different ways that you operate you know different constituencies like all of these differences can can put us in different silos and make us feel like we're all alone or that we're special or unique but when it comes down to it we're all fighting the same fight against the same common enemies and those enemies are bigger more powerful stronger than we're ever going to be unless we all stand together so I mean it's you know whether it's this issue or others it's about supporting each other and giving United Front even if it's not directly going to affect you today or tomorrow or in two years because this fight can come to you anytime Verizon decides to come to that state or Time Warner decides to introduce a bill or you know we've seen it with the municipal broadband fight you know they they're relentless they will try for 13 years in North Carolina to introduce the same bill and and you know eventually they'll win so we all have to recognize that we're all in this together so I just want to pick up on something that Jasmine and Rachel both said I mean Jasmine you talked about the important issues that people are facing every single day their schools their public health Rachel you talked about the silos that we can sometimes get in and I think some people will be motivated by protect public access for public access sake but I think most people will be motivated by protect public access for the sake of our schools that are about to close for the sake of our public health that's being threatened by the local power plant and so I think the better we do a job the better job we do of making about public access about the issues that are facing our community the more people are going to be engaged in them throughout the year just not when it matters so to speak not when there's a crisis I should say because it always matters any other questions there's always a crisis so then always they will always be engaged I don't know if this is right but I mean I would be interested to know about successful campaigns opportunities and challenges that that folks have had in the audience I mean I guess that's a backwards question for you all okay okay Haposh from Public Media Network Kalamazoo, Michigan again that's a real difficult question to answer because many of us are coming out of the state franchising process what I call phase one which it got ruled out adopted in 22-23 states Jerry will know better than I what we're entering is phase two which is what Eric just alluded to which is phase two is elimination of cable television franchise fees and or taxes and we to be honest and brutally honest in this room having been in this this situation for 10-15 years with this organization is we didn't win on a lot of those issues now we had we had some examples where we thought we got we got really good solid ground Illinois California to some extent Michigan Jerry alluded to that but we really didn't win so as much as maybe someone else in the room has that success story I know from the context I'm coming from I don't feel like I have anything to share with you that I could say we did this right because it doesn't feel that way can I just react to that a little bit because I do think that's something that all of us of us face and I know that it was brought up on the previous panel that the sort of fatigue that can set in and the disappointment when you really put your heart and soul into something and you feel like the outcome isn't exactly what you wanted it to be and I think you know those of us that have been working on net neutrality for a long time we experienced that you know when we we saw the rules come out and they weren't exactly what we wanted them to be but really grabbing your bearings and getting it together to fight for another day is an important part of that but I think beyond that is the learning opportunity that exists you know whether you win or lose and I think the thing that we found through the net neutrality fight and maybe Beth or Rachel agree with me on this is we saw the way that that one of the biggest players in the industry really really works on the hill and at the FCC and that was AT&T you know we saw what they were all about we knew their playbook and I think most recently we've been when we've been doing some work opposing the AT&T T-Mobile merger a lot of what we learned in that that fight that ended up in a loss for us we've been able to use as we've done advocacy on the merger when we were putting together our target list for the meetings that we were going to have in district we knew who to go to we knew the places where they had influence because we had seen it play out before and so I think that's sort of what I always try to keep in mind is you know at the end of a bruiser like that what do you know that that makes you smarter for the next round just one of the things that we learned when I was at Penn Park and we were fighting the Pennsylvania State Franchising Bill was the best defense was a good offense we were trying to kill a Verizon bill and the members were signing on to it left and right because Verizon's coming in talking about lower prices I mean you know the story and what we decided to do was kind of risky but we decided well okay they want a state franchising bill we'll give them a state franchising bill and we found a champ and they drafted the strongest possible state franchising bill you can imagine all the money for peg all the protections that we wanted and shrine it in a state law that's what you really want and care about and you're saying this is about consumer competition then you shouldn't really be too concerned about this peg stuff right so you should want to protect it and of course they said of course we love peg this isn't about public access it's about you know consumer choice and that gave enough members who didn't really want to be caught you know they didn't really want to deal with this but it gave them something to be for that is that was billed as pro consumer and pro competition that wasn't the industry bill we had no expectations that bill would pass we didn't really want it to pass but what we did want to do is keep members off the rise in bill and give them something else to say that they were doing that was in the interest of consumer price and competition it helped that we also had Comcast you know fighting the the bill at the time they were not friend they were not going to be friends for us with us forever I mean they were looking to cut a deal pretty quickly and we knew that that was going to happen but it made it a lot harder for them to cut that deal because this other bill was out there with you know all these co-sponsors and and you know with a leadership the the lead sponsor of it was leadership so that helped kill the whole thing and made them members not really want to go back they just didn't want to deal with it again so they walked away from it when the session died so I mean just in closing I think it's about strategy too it's you know we can do the hardest work that we can do day in and day out but we also have to do it smart and that's hard that felt good still does any other questions before we wrap up great well thank you everybody and thank our panelists