 So for this panel, we've got an incredibly esteemed group of people, and I'm going to start by introducing the moderator and then our panelists. Our moderator is Dr. Maya Rockimor, who is president and CEO of Global Policy Solutions, which is a social change strategy firm based here in the district. This position is the culmination of Dr. Rockimor's vast experience in working on legislative policy at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, as vice president of research and programs. Prior to that, she was also senior resident scholar of health and income security at the National Urban League, and she spent time on the Hill as chief of staff for Congressman Charlie Rangel, as well as professional staff on the Ways and Means Committee, or as people in my family would like to call Dr. Rockimor a chronic underachiever. We are also joined on the panel with my far left, we have Kika Matos, who is director of immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Community Change, an organization that works to build power in the low income community and to build their capacity for effecting change. Now, Ms. Matos has extensive experience as not only an advocate and her work with CCC, but also as an organizer and as a lawyer. And she also served as deputy mayor of New Haven, where she was able to take a lot of these policy ideas and put them into practical applications in order to serve underserved residents of that community. We also have Angela Glover Blackwell, who is the founder and CEO of PolicyLink, an organization she started in 1999 after serving as vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation. PolicyLink has, as its mission, advancing economic and social equity. And under Angela's leadership, PolicyLink has become a leading voice in the progressive movement to use public policy to improve access and opportunity for not only low income people, but all communities of color, particularly focused on the areas of health and housing, transportation, education, and infrastructure. And then we also have Roger Clay, who is the immediate past president of the Insight Center for Community and Economic Development. Prior to joining Insight, Mr. Clay was general counsel of the California Housing Finance Agency. And in his law work, as a partner with the firm of Goldfarb and Lipman, did a lot of work advising on housing and community economic development, bringing his skill in the law to bear on issues that are all together or all too often neglected by people in the professional and legal class. So we are pleased to have this incredibly exciting panel. I'm now going to turn it over to Minor Rocky. Thank you so much, Christian. Our panel is entitled, The Politics of Race in America, Are We Making Progress? That is a very good question. It is at once heartening and certainly shameful that we are still debating the issue of race in America. 50 years after the march on Washington for jobs and freedom, and 150 years after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Heartening, because enough people still believe so strongly in the promise of America and its progress, that they are willing to tackle the issue of race until equal opportunity and justice becomes a reality for all people of all backgrounds. Disheartening, because we are still dealing with the original sin of racism and its manifestation in the form of racialized stereotypes, coding, treatment, and practices that make it possible for individuals of ill will to, for example, refer to our nation's first African American head of state as the food stamp president, to actively undermine the right of citizens to vote, and yes, to profile law-abiding people as criminals based on the color of their skin, what they are wearing, or the sounds of their name. And ladies and gentlemen, we are here to say that our nation is better than that. We're better than that. And there is a path forward for real equality and opportunity in this country. So here today to talk about the politics and the promise of race in America is a very distinguished panel. And I've got to say, they've already been introduced, but these people are not only speakers on this subject, they are preeminent thinkers on the subject, and most importantly, they are doers on the subject of this issue, and they're committed to racial equality in this nation. So with that, you know, this week we have had a lot of talk about race, and it was really sparked by the Trayvon Martin verdict. The African American community, the emotions are raw. And so the question becomes, why are innocent African American men on trial every day and in every way in this country? Why are black men imperiled? Roger? Well, I've gotten that question before. And my first inclination is always to say I don't know. But I think I do know. Last week I was on an elevator in a big hotel in New York, and I got my suit coat on and the white woman got on and she looked around and saw it was just me and she went over to the corner and she obviously was a little bit afraid and uncomfortable. So I do what I usually do is I spoke to her and commented on the weather, which relaxed her a little bit. And I was a little surprised only in the sense that it doesn't happen to me as often once I got gray hair as I did when I was younger. But it was clear she was afraid. And so the real answer is people are afraid. They're afraid of us. And that's a simple answer and a very complicated answer because the question is, why are they afraid? Generally the fear is not based on experience and it's not based on fact. You don't often hear or I bet most of us don't even know of situations where black people are going around attacking white people. We unfortunately kill ourselves, but we're not going out there doing that to others. They do it more to us, which is one of the things that just happened. But this fear has been long time coming. It goes back hundreds of years. Part of it is sort of conscious. People are conscious of their fear, but they don't know why. But they're often unconscious and it goes back to hundreds of years of us as black men and black boys being compared to gorillas and apes and that sort of thing, which people don't consciously do. But research says today that people subconsciously still think of many black men and black boys that way. And unfortunately even black people have that unconscious feeling about black men and black boys. So I'm hoping that the panel is optimistic, but on this topic I get upset. I'm not that optimistic because I think the fear is so deep-seated that it's really going to be hard to turn that around. Kika, the fear of the black man, the stereotype of the African American male as a menace, as the other, as somebody to be feared in the society, does that mean that there is a racial bias in the system? Does the fear permeate our institutions? Does it permeate? Was it a part of the guilty verdict or the not guilty verdict? Yeah, so I was kind of hoping to be optimistic in this panel, but given the question, I think I'm going to be overwhelmingly pessimistic. Look, all you have to do is look at the numbers. We as a nation incarcerate more people than anybody else in the world. Right now we have 2.3 million people behind bars. They're either in jail or they're in prison. Of those 2.3 million people, 60% of them are people of color. Right now, at any given moment, any given day, so let's take today, for example, one in 10 African American men in their 30s are either in jail or in prison. And then when it comes to young black men in their 20s and their 30s, without a high school diploma, the incarceration rate is so high, it's 40%. And what that means is that they're more likely to be behind bars than to have a job. And that's only the beginning because once you've been incarcerated, once you've been a part of the criminal justice system, you don't escape it when you get out of prison. That is the beginning of a really or the continuation of a really difficult trajectory. Once you have a criminal record, it's really hard to get access or impossible to get access to public housing. It's very difficult to get student loans. Nobody wants to hire you. And so the trajectory just continues. And I think that's part of the pessimistic narrative of race and politics in this country. So I've got to ask you. There's been a lot of narrative about this whole notion of racial bias and the question of white privilege. So if we actually have a criminal justice system in this country that is racially biased, what does it mean for the prospects of people of color who are becoming a majority of the nation? What it basically means is that we're not going to be able to get racial justice until we end disparities in the criminal justice system because the criminal justice system is really touching a disproportionate number of lives of people of color. And until we do away with it, when I talk about racial justice, the first thing I talk about is criminal justice because the criminal justice system so touches the lives of so many people of color and so many communities that we will never get racial justice until we do away with disparities in the criminal justice system. And the Trayvon Martin case to me was part of the example of white privilege in this way. Young white kids walking around with hoodies don't have to worry about getting stopped, about getting frisked, about getting harassed by cops, right? When you think about privilege, I have an eight-year-old boy. I have a son, right? I have to have conversations with him about race. I have to have, at an early age, I have to have conversations with him already about what it means to engage with law enforcement officers. I'm not sure that there are very many white parents who have to have those conversations with their kids at such an early age. So, Angela, it really isn't about just disparities that exist naturally. Aren't these disparities created by policies and institutions? And really the question is how do these racial stereotypes and certainly attitudes shape the policies and institutions and what do we need to do to reshape them so that we can actually have a system that actually works for all? Yes, absolutely. The disparities are there because of individual racism, structural racism, systematic exclusion. And we do need to come up with policies that reverse it, and it won't happen until we fundamentally change. That's why it's hard to be optimistic, and I think I am. I usually am. I think I'll get there by the end of this conversation if you definitely started us in a hard place. Because we are a nation in which many people carry ill will in their hearts. We tried to move beyond that. We thought we could move beyond it. We thought if we got opportunities in place, it didn't matter what people had in their hearts. You know, people say, you don't have to like me. Just let me go to work, have a job. You don't have to come to my home. Just let me have a home. We thought that if we got policies in place, we could leave the hearts alone. I don't know whether that was right or wrong, but I do know that people still carry a lot of ill will in their hearts. And we're at a moment which is a transition. One thing that I'm optimistic about is that we are clearly moving beyond our evil past into a time in which we will be very different. We will get there. It is inevitable. But the grown zone of getting there can be a long and dangerous period. Because the old guard is afraid, losing, and the last gasp can be a dangerous time. And that's exactly where we are right now. So I know we're going to get to a better place, but we've got to go through this. And those people who had ill in their hearts are really acting out. They didn't have to act out a couple of decades ago because they had everything. But now that they're feeling the threat, they're really acting out. And our friends, those people who are liberal and supportive, have not embraced an authentic narrative about how hard it is to be of color in this nation, particularly how hard it is to be black, and particularly how hard it is to be a black man or boy. And so what that means is when something goes down, we can all come together. Because half of us who actually want the same things are thinking, well, I'm sure you were doing something wrong. What's the real story about what happened? I'm sure it didn't happen exactly that way. And as long as half of the people who ought to be together are raising those kind of fundamental questions, it's hard to have the movement forward. We keep talking about having a conversation. I actually don't want to have any more conversation. What we need is an action agenda that we can all get behind and move out on. That is the conversation that we want to put before the American people. What do you think about this agenda? What are you going to contribute to this agenda? How is this agenda going to become American agenda? I don't want to have a conversation about the problem. I don't want to be understood. I want to have an action agenda that actually puts the policies you're talking about front and center. I'm optimistic that that will happen, but it has to happen soon. If it doesn't happen soon, the grown zone is going to become a way of life for a long time. The grown zone. We've just learned a new term. When you're talking about an action agenda and when you're talking about public policy and the design of public policy and eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health, education, income, security, and wealth, it requires a specific approach to policy design. Is that a race-neutral or a race-specific approach? I actually think we have to put on a racial lens and bring it to the policy. And I don't think that we just need to do it because it's the right thing to do. I think it's become an imperative. That is, we think about the shifting demographics, and I heard it talked about on the panel right before, and you probably have mentioned it earlier today. We know that people of color are becoming the majority. We also know that the nation is in peril. It's an economic peril. It's a democratic peril. Our democracy is in peril. So we think about how we're going to be the thing that we have been so proud of for so long. It's clear that the people who are going to be the future have to lead us there. They have to be the innovators. They have to be the leaders. They have to be the workers. They have to be the ones that value democracy and democratic participation. They have to be the middle class. If the people who are going to be the future aren't the middle class, there'll be no middle class. So I think that we have to bring a racial and ethnic lens, not just to make up for past wrongs, but to go in the right direction to make sure that everything we do, take infrastructure, for example. You know the nation needs to fix its crumbling infrastructure. But we also know that if we do that, we allow some communities that are being left behind to come right into the center. That we allow the communities that are often holding people back to be places that place them in the 21st century. Those happen to be a lot of cities in this country that are black and brown. So we fix the infrastructure and we get people who need jobs, jobs. We get communities that aren't ready for the 21st century to be ready for the 21st century. But it doesn't work unless we bring a racial lens to it. Who gets the jobs? Where do we put the infrastructure? Who's going to benefit? And so I'd like to see us bring a racial lens for practical reasons, not for redress of grievance reasons. You get the same result. But I think if we can combine the need to step up in a moral way with the imperative to step up so the nation can be strong, all of a sudden we're on a path to the future that solves all the problems. Roger, we have had a lot of conversations about this. And I think you probably agree with Angela that we have to have a race-specific focus. But how do you actually get broad-based support for that kind of agenda? I do agree with Angela. But I think there are two things, I won't say but, and there are two things. There are a couple of things you have to tackle first. One is we really have to have some vision of what we want this country to look like for the kids that are born today. If we don't know where we're going, you know, I think it's Yogi Berra, the baseball player, you can go anywhere. You can end up anywhere. And I don't think that we've ever done that. The other thing is related to that is who is included. One of the things about black men and black boys, to many people, we shouldn't be here or we can't be seen as productive members of society. And I think the same thing is going on now with some of the immigrant population. They're not us and so we don't have to worry about them. We don't have to worry about them in terms of helping them do well. We do need to worry about them to get them away, right? So I think in order to have any kind of policy that's going to move us forward, we have to have that platform of, and we have to know where we're going and who is included. The other thing that I want to say though is we shouldn't be naive. I'm very excited about the fact that the country is becoming more diverse. I'm very excited about the fact that it will become majority, minority. But what does that mean? That really means that whites are not in the majority. But we shouldn't act like all of our different minority groups have always worked together. I actually think that we are doing better. And I know, I mean with the work with you, we're really working hard at it. But that's not been our history. There are many black people that don't like immigrants, the whole idea. There are many people that don't like gays. I mean, we have to work at this in order to move us all forward. I think though that the change in the graphics gives us an opportunity to very affirmatively and very explicitly work on it. But we've got a ways to go. It's not going to get all better in 2040. Not easy. Yeah. Kika, you know, we've been talking about the changing demographics. But those demographics are actually being really driven by the large growth of the Latino population. And we're certainly in the midst of a debate nationally about immigration reform. And the issue of race and the other is front and center in these conversations about immigration reform. How are advocates like you and the people you work for fighting the issue on the issue and are on the grounds of racial stereotyping? So I would say a couple of things. I do think that the fight for immigration reform ultimately is a racial justice fight. When we think about the way that immigration and the issue has been framed, it has been framed in racial justice ways. I do want to paint a picture of who's behind. And again, when you think about race and you think about immigration, a lot of us don't really know just how racialized immigration is and just who is behind the efforts to oppose immigration reform. So I want to quickly, if you'll indulge me, paint a picture. Most of the organizations that are advocating against immigration reform are funded by a man by the name of John Tanton. I don't know if folks know him. He is a white nationalist and a eugenicist. And he has funded a number of anti-immigrant organizations, including one that is fronted by African-Americans. And the largest anti-immigrant organization is FAIR. And some of the people who are staff members of FAIR are white supremacists. And these are the people who are really driving that ugly debate around immigration reform that we're hearing. And those offensive terms are put out that way to alienate immigrants, right, so that immigrants are seen as somehow inferior. In addition to the anti-immigrant organizations, if you look at who in Congress is opposing immigration reform, again, you have a very small group of legislators who are extreme right-wing Republicans who have never embraced people of color, be they African-Americans or be they Latinos. And they are the ones who are really opposing. They're standing in the way of immigration reform. So right now we have the votes in the House to pass immigration reform. But this small group of people are standing up and opposing immigration reform. And these are people who have absolutely no problem referring to immigrants as illegal aliens who talk about how they are destroying the fabric of this country. Some of the language is racially coded. Some of them is not. And just when you think about the combination of these two groups and how they collude and what it leads to, I just want to quickly mention a rally that took place here last Monday. I'm going to hope that none of you were there. But if you were there, I'm hoping that you were observing for our side. It was put together by fair. And one of the groups that was there was the Black Leadership Alliance, which is funded by John Tanton. And these are a handful of African-Americans who say that they oppose immigration reform. And one of the speakers at this rally was Ken Crow, who as most of you know was one of the founders of the Tea Party. And Mr. Crow gets up on the podium and immediately starts talking about all of the negatives that he perceives around immigration and immigration reform. And then all of a sudden he started going down the path of talking about breeding and well-bred Americans. And I just want to quote directly from his speech. Those incredible bloodlines of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and John Smith and all these great Americans, Martin Luther King, these great Americans who built this country, you came from them. And the unique thing about being from that part of the world, when you learn about breeding, you learn that you cannot breed secretariat toward donkey and expect to win the Kentucky Derby. You guys have incredible DNA and don't forget it. Who was in that crowd? Senator Jeff Sessions, who led the opposition to the immigration bill in the Senate. Congressman Steve King, who's taking up his mantle and has talked about ideas like putting up electronic fences in the border because that's after all what we do with cattle. And Senator Ted Cruz. So that is what we are really dealing with at the end of the day and we're talking about race and immigration and justice. Yeah, everyone I talk to, at least who advocate for immigration reform are optimistic despite all that. Yes. They're optimistic because of the energy of the dreamers. They're optimistic because people are coming together even across race to even support immigration reform. They're developing language to promote inclusion and aspiration for new Americans. There is a certain population of members of Congress and certainly the American public who have been captured by the inspiration that has been driven by the advocates around this. Absolutely. What we have in the immigration reform front is a movement. A movement of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, LGBT, faith-based communities. We have support from the left and we have support from the right. The majority of Americans support immigration reform. And we have this incredible energy from young people who have fearlessly stood out and said, we will give up our rights and we will push the envelope and to a certain extent have certainly sacrificed parts of their lives to advocate for immigration reform. That's the irony about immigration reform. The American people want it. We have a movement that represents a broad spectrum of the community and yet there are a handful of people who want to stand in the way of immigration reform and that's really the challenge that we have. And I should say one last thing because we're playing hardball with the Republicans that are getting in the way and we're reminding them of one thing. Given the changing demographics of this country, if they don't get right with immigrants and they don't get right with immigration reform, they're going to be an extinct party. And we are going to get immigration reform. I mean, I think that is the amazing thing that people with the kind of money you've talked about, the kind of influence they can buy with that money, the place that they're coming from in terms of what they want for the country, they will be defeated. We will get immigration reform. I hope we get it this time, but you know for sure we are going to get it. When you talk about, Roger, the challenge of will we all come together? We will come together. We are coming together. I can't, I never go any place anymore where people are not working to come together. It is the rule among the change agents, the advocates, the social justice advocates and beyond. And so, yes, it's going to be challenging, but we're moving in that direction. What we're not doing is we're not getting behind each other's agendas enough. We're not picking the few things. I was blown away by the fact that the NAACP was able to get over a million signatures on their petition so quickly. All of a sudden, all of us were able to agree on one thing and when we do that we can make a tremendous difference. The work that we need to do is to accept that power has the potential to be on our side. But whether or not we are able to utilize it requires us to come together, to let a few things go and pick a few things that we're actually going to move on to do that systematically. I don't think that we have enough confidence in our ability to be able to overcome, for example. Just getting the president elected a second time, tremendous forces on the other side that did everything they possibly could. Yet young people and women and people of color and people who lived in cities, they all came together and they made that happen. We need to be able to sustain that and that is part of the reason that we are having so much trouble. We can't sustain anything for very long. I did a radio show on KQED Forum. That's the PBS station in California. Maybe it was earlier this week or late last. This is probably pretty early this week, isn't it? It's Monday. So it was last week. We were talking about Trayvon Martin. It was a thoughtful and good conversation, but it was one of those call-in things. The first two callers were, how long are you all going to talk about this? We are so tired of this discussion. While that was outrageous, and we had a lot of comeback, it is the American way. You've given it three days now. Let's move on. We've got to stop that. Let their innocent son walking home with a bag of skittles and a soda get shot and then see if they're okay with a three-day conversation. Roger, Angela just said that we need to pick a few things in order for us to come together. Yet when you look at the breadth of all the challenges that are facing our communities, you're talking about health, you're talking about education, you're talking about income security, you're talking about wealth, you're talking about access to the franchise. You're talking a pretty darn broad agenda. Just picking the issue of wealth disparities. People don't realize that we have a racial wealth gap in this country. Do you think we can come together around that? Tell us about the racial wealth gap, what it is, and what we can do. Well, first of all, let's just define what we mean by wealth. It's real simple. We're talking about people's assets minus their liabilities. A few years ago, meaning five or six before the recession, when you compare blacks to whites, whites had about 10 times the wealth of blacks, and today it's less than 5%. Latinas are a little better, Asians are a little better, but none of us are doing that well, and even though the whites have lost a lot of wealth themselves, it's not decreased, it's increased. So, and wealth is really important because it's really what saves people when things get bad, and that's one of the things that's happened to the black community is we didn't have enough wealth when the recession hit. It helps you put your kids in school. It helps you buy a house, and so you need those things in addition to income. So which ones would I focus on? Well, since this is the form about the march and the various demands, I find it interesting that some recent research that Tom Shapiro did at Brandeis about what drives the wealth gap happens to fit exactly with those demands that we haven't done well on. Like what? Like housing. Housing, yeah, number one. That's number one. The second one is jobs. The third is it's related to jobs, but it's the level of pay. We do not have a minimum wage that makes any sense. Those correspond exactly with what the previous panel talked about. Also, inheritance. What you can get from your family in terms of support or what's left when they pass away. Those are things that we really have to change for people of color if we're going to make a big difference. So you'll give me two questions where I'm not that optimistic in the short term because the gap is so huge that even if we get everybody even in terms of income, it's going to be way, way, way a long time. Oh, and I forgot one, which is education. The importance of education. I don't know how I forget education. The importance of education. That's the other one that we haven't done well on and it's also one that Tom Shapiro mentions as one of the main drivers. But if we're going to focus, I'd focus on those. Those four things. That brings us to other things to support those like transportation or health and those other kinds of things. But you need those to get to the four. I'd focus on those four. Angela, we do a lot of work on health and when you look at the health disparities, you know that black and brown people have been traditionally left out of our healthcare system with regards to having the least access. In fact, the statistic has been that of all the nations year-round uninsured, black and brown people are a majority and people don't know that with Latinos actually leading that number. And so while the Affordable Care Act is definitely a step in the right direction, there is still unfinished business there. Can you talk to us about the challenge of health? I can and I'm going to try to talk about it in a way that makes a larger point that perhaps can pull us together. I said that we need to be able to get on the same page. All of us have, all of us who work for organizations and we do policy work, we have different policies that we're championing. But if we could get on the same narrative page, we could keep tying whatever it is we're working on back to a simple narrative. And I think the simple narrative is people need good jobs, people need capabilities, and we need to remove barriers that keep people from having access to opportunity. Within that context, we need, I think, everything can fit. So take help. I had the honor of being on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation commissioned to build a healthier America. You know, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has spent a lot of time focusing on access. This commission focused not on access, but health and well-being. They concluded that most of poor health does not come from lack of access. It comes from not having enough money, not having enough education and living in a place that is bad for your health. And so getting a job is one of the most important things you can do to improve health. That's right there with good jobs. When we think about the Affordable Care Act, there are a lot of opportunities to create jobs coming out of the Affordable Care Act. We need to make sure that we're bringing a racial and equity lens to that, so that we're pushing those jobs in the right direction. Building capabilities, we have to make sure that we really are investing in community colleges and job training programs and all the things that we need for people to be ready. And we need to make sure that we are paying attention to where people live. You know in America where you live is a proxy for opportunity. It determines everything, including how long you live. You tell me your zip code, I can tell you your expiration date. And if we think about building healthy communities as the way that we help people to live healthy lives, we don't have to say, well, I can't work on your issue because I'm working on health. Your issue could be jobs. It could be building capabilities. It could be building strong communities. It could be transportation. Within a short, crisp frame, we can all keep pushing in the same direction. Right. You know, Roger mentioned earlier that there is a lot of competition between racial and ethnic, quote, unquote, minority groups, people of color, communities of color. And that it doesn't always, they don't always play well in the sandbox together. Yet at the national level, I think that we're seeing a transformation. I think that, you know, certainly the Insight Center policy link, you know, the Center for Community Change, I think all of these organizations and more have been a part of coming together at the national level around many of these issues on housing. Lisa, what was the name of the Coalition on Housing? Absolutely. Cross-racial and people working towards a common goal. So that's been encouraging. Yet Kika, at the local level, I'm smiling because I'm about to get optimistic again. It seems like the notion of coalition building is more elusive. I mean, what can we do at the local level to bring people together so that we can have this collective power building? I'm going to frame my remarks around my experience when I was working in government and I was deputy mayor and I'm going to pick the issue that I've been focused a lot on these last couple of years, which is immigration. And New Haven was the first city in the nation to issue a resident identification card to all city residents irrespective of their immigration status. And part of the reason we did that was to make sure that immigrants were not only welcome to the city of New Haven, but that they could be more civically engaged and they had an identity that they could show to law enforcement officers and other governmental agencies as they were engaging now. At the time that we did this, it was 2007 and the nation was embroiled in this heated debate on immigration reform. And so all of these white supremacists and nativists landed in New Haven. And one of the first things they did was that they went on a Sunday to all of these African American churches and they started flyering people's windshields with all of this information. You know, you black people should be afraid because these immigrants are going to steal your first born and they're going to flood your hospitals and they're going to take over your schools. And we started getting calls from our friends and colleagues and city hall employees who were at church on Sunday and they came back after praying and breaking bread with a brethren to see this hateful flyer. So the first thing we did was we convened a meeting of leaders in the community and we talked about what happened and we decided that New Haven was not going to be a city that was going to be divided that way. And so around the issue of immigration there were very frank and painful discussions. Before we got to progress there were questions raised by leaders in the African American community saying, well, is it true? You know, should we be afraid for our jobs? You know, what's going to happen to my child's education? But out of that dialogue the first thing we did after that was have a press conference of all of these people, community leaders representing a broad segment of the community to say not in our city we don't accept hatred, we don't welcome these folks here and then it's interesting how communities engage because what ended up happening is that people formed coalitions and relations and started talking about issues of common interests. If you think about education when who's at the bottom, it's people of color. If you think about healthcare who's at the bottom, it's people of color. And so now fast forward six years there is an organization that's come together that consists of immigrants and African Americans who get together on a regular basis and talk about issues that mutually affect them and figure out solutions and ways to move forward on that. There's always a spark, there's always an issue around which people can come around but you do need to have leaders in the community you do need to have organizers who will take that spark and create some sense of community and consensus and a way to move forward. Well, we're running short on time but I'd like to ask if there are any burning questions one or two will take one, I was told. Any hands? One, yes. Sir, you. Your name? My name is Mark Gruenberg I'm going to throw a curveball. How do we get this? We are preaching to the choir here. How are we going to get this message through to part of the happy phrase the other four years? We are also preaching to C-SPAN. C-SPAN is in the room and so the choir in this room but C-SPAN outside of this room so the choir is here but we've also got the others. Sir, how do we get it across? We'll talk about theisms that keep it a separate then when they go back to their own VBA to get their brothers and sisters of other to work on theirisms because if racism is driving the car there's sexism in there there's ageism all in the same view. No, that's very true. May I come up? Yes. I agree with you. I do know because I've seen it the dialogue about theisms being able to actually take apart the problem helping people to understand the history the context as the president of the United States did last week that is very helpful. I was being provocative and trying to push us to think about talking about the solutions that's where I think talk could be productive. Many people are ready to move but aren't feeling that we're coming together enough around solutions to have the confidence to put themselves out there. I think that's the conversation we haven't been calling for and I'd like to see it. I'd like to end this panel with just a very brief exercise indulge me. The title of this panel was The Politics of Race in America Are We Making Progress? We started off in 2008 with this question of hope and change and so the question becomes I want to ask you whether people of color are still waiting for progress hope or whether there has been substantive measurable progress change on each of these issues Roger, economic opportunity hope or change? We are changing and hoping to change more. Angela hope or change health? change and your one word justification for why you think that the affordable care act hope or change equal justice change the justification we're not there yet that's why we're here right anybody voting power voting rights political power I'm very optimistic about that I think spring court in a weird sort of way did us a favor because it pissed people off and it's going to get people but I also think that President Obama's apparatus in both of the last elections showed that there is a way to organize and include a lot of people and get people out to vote so I think there are a lot of specific things to be done I think that mostly what we have to do is keep on doing what we were doing in the sense of fighting every time we see a voter suppression action we fight it change for all these reasons and I think that the voting voting the desire to vote is improving the activity is more likely to take place what we need is to have a sharp policy agenda that people can attach their democratic participation to Christian we have an optimistic panel everybody join me