 I'm joined this afternoon by my esteemed colleague. I have Aiden, who's sitting right here, wave at him, Aiden. Also have Amina, Amina's there, and also have Jamie. Jamie's right there. So just so you don't think it's like a sneak attack later, they're gonna be coming up and joining us in a conversation. Here's what you can expect, is I'm gonna provide you an informational slide deck. We just have a little conversation. I'm gonna talk at you for a few minutes. It's gonna be like mad, cool. You're gonna be like, wow, this guy's really super cool. He's nice, he's really cool, he's attractive. And at the end, but when it's all over and all the smoke clears, you're gonna have learned a little bit about, you know, what our take on, a little bit about media justice and some of the work that we're aspirational about, and some of the work that we've began to endeavor as the Alliance. So what I'll do first is I will, you know, and this is the fun part because this is one of those things where I will struggle for a minute, but I got, there's plenty of people in here who wish me well. You can, you can, you can help. See, I was just gonna say, there's people in here who mean well for me and they, folks want to see me successful. So what I'm gonna do is I am going to go, is it HDMI? You got it? Yeah, what do you need to do? Let's go. User groups, security, software, Bluetooth. Displays. Displays. It's so little. Arrangement. And then we're gonna, I'm just gonna mirror. You want me to mirror? Because mirror is a lot more fun. Hey, looky there, looky there. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna, I'm not gonna give you death by PowerPoint this afternoon. Everybody give it up. No death by PowerPoint. I know you have eaten because I ate you. That chicken was good. Yeah, so I know you've eaten. And so, and what was that dessert? Was it like a donut? No, seriously. It was like, and it had like applesauce on it or something like that. Is that what it was? Everybody's like, I don't know. I ate it, bro. So yeah, so we're gonna get this slide show. It's kinda, did it work? Did it work this slide? Oh snap, look at that. Beautiful, look what I did. I did that all by myself. So yeah, you can clap for me whenever you want to. I noticed that the room is sparsely populated. Media justice is not a very exciting topic for most folks. It doesn't surprise me. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I'm an Iowa native. Don't look at me like that. I'm an Iowa native. And I'm also a United States Army retiree. And I've lived in about 17 states and four countries and I've been in Vermont for the last 14 and a half years. I'm a recovering Republican. Was I supposed to say that? Okay, I am. Voted for Reagan in 84. And I'm also a ordained minister in the National Baptist Convention and that's ordained of 24 years. I am a recovering cybersecurity professional and also a certified information systems auditor as well. So don't try to figure me out this afternoon, okay? Cause I'll come at you from other directions. Currently, as I said earlier, I am the executive director of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. I'll tell you more about that organization in a minute but you can check the mission out. It is pointed and it is intentional because that's how we do our work here in the state of 640,000 people in Vermont wherein which 1.5% are black. So the other thing that I'll tell you about the work that I'm doing that we've been doing is is that it has a lot to do with outreach and education, a lot to do with community engagement and support, a lot to do with platforms and initiatives which is a fancy way of saying policy and stuff and cultural empowerment. In cultural empowerment, we can talk more about that later but you can probably imagine. In fact, we started, as we've driven this work, not only have we successfully implemented multiple statewide policies, not the least of which is over the last six months, eight months or so, we amended the constitution to abolish slavery. Why? Because our constitution permitted slavery. And it goes all the way through the gamut of other things that we've done. Cultural empowerment, really we're playing off of a lot of, Nicole Hanna Jones, she happens to be from our hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, but that 1619 project and that work there, we're playing off a lot of that and we actually spun up something called First African Landing Day which we do on an annual basis and that's our flagship of cultural empowerment. Now, media justice, I put this up on the screen because this is what some of you read before you came to this session. Now if there are those of you in the room who are as old as me, you may not remember why you came into this session. You may not remember what you read. I don't remember what I ate for breakfast this morning but that's a whole nother story. So I just thought we would go back to that and have a conversation about it. Now, here's one of the things that I wanted you to think about today as we were going through media justice and Megan, we have a session, we have a plan to read on media justice tomorrow too, right? Which is gonna be awesome, so don't oversleep tomorrow. It's gonna be amazing because I met the vast majority of the panel members for tomorrow and let me tell you how this is gonna go down. I'm gonna tell you all about it, right? Now everything you need to know about I'm just joking. So tomorrow morning just show up and we'll talk more about it with maybe a little bit more of a slant. Now, when you think about, when I think about media, first of all, I want you to know that ACM is really, really new to me and it's her fault because our folks, our partners, our friends, our brothers and sisters at CCTV here at Channel 17, the relationship that we have with them, it kind of predates, actually it predates some of the work that I've been doing. I think I've known about Orca Media and CCTV and the folks over on Flynn, Media Factory and other, way before, even before we started this work. However, it's my wife's, her father, his name is Richard Kemp, who sat on the board of directors there for years and years and years ago. Oddly, he did a lot of the things that I'm doing. He was talking about things like abolishing slavery in the Constitution, legalizing marijuana and, I don't know, just all kinds of stuff like reparations, for example. So a lot of work was already being done, laid the foundation. He had a program called Near and Far, is that right, Near and Far? And the man is a legacy. In fact, we named our Cultural Empowerment Center, which was on the list. Some people came by and visited us last night to answer your question. If you came by and visited us last night, raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand, yeah, I need you to put you on the spot. Lisa, right? Lisa, it's good to see you again. So what I'm really getting after here is, is that there are some connections that we have with public media, community media, I should say, or PEG, if you will. I'm still learning a language that are pretty exciting. In fact, one of the things that recently we did was, is that they were writing a grant and they were like, hey, you guys want some stuff? So they called us, we said, yeah, because we were looking for technology to kind of bolster some of the things that we're doing that wrote us into the grant. So I mean, we're just, we're grateful and I don't blow smoke very much, but I do wanna at least acknowledge that we do have a, not just viable, but a really embracing partner and we're gonna be building more off of that. When we talk about media, when we talk about media justice, I just wanna frame the conversation though and I'm gonna come back to that, but I wanna talk a little bit about systemic racism. Ah, gotcha. Okay, so what, the reason why I wanna do that is because I wanna frame where we're coming from because there are many, many media apparatuses that are looking for voices and there are some voices that are looking for media apparatuses. So we're not, we're not just a media factory or a media outlet that's looking for something to say. Is everybody following what I'm saying? So I guess what I'm saying is is we showed up already with something to say, we got plenty to say, we have plenty of accomplishments. In fact, what I said to Sarah Copeland-Hanses, our state secretary this morning is, is yo, we didn't hear from you. We're the preeminent racial justice organization in the state we should have heard from you and that wasn't blowing smoke because we are because that's the level that we're working at across the state. For those who are from honors, raise your hand. Get outta here. You guys are all from honors? Love ya. So for those of you who are from honors, you already know, you already know what the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance is doing and if you don't shame. But take a look at this slide and this right here, I left the book, I brought this book with me and I left it in the car. So this is Racist America, Joe Fagan and Kimberly Ducey. There's a lot of people talking now about, especially since George Floyd and Floyd and the pandemic. And I speak gingerly about the pandemic because it's still here. Everybody tries to tell me it's over, but I'm smarter than that. So at that intersection laid bare for us, for everybody to see for the first time, it was right in our face and if you missed it, if you missed it, then sorry about that. But if it was right in our face, it was all laid bare and it became clearer than ever that there is clearly racially adverse and disparate outcomes that we are seeing across all systems. So we're talking about an insidious nature and we're also talking about something that is consistent at all times. Now a current mental health crisis exacerbating that is not helpful. But all I'm really getting at here is this is the, a lot of people call it a concept. Some people call it a theory. In fact, some people even talk about it like it's critical. It has to do with race and it's a theory. But if we understand this, then we don't have to worry about a conversation on that because that conversation suggests that this doesn't exist. Process that for a minute. Because this is insidious and it's on all levels and it is a legacy of slavery. Now I would have brought some other slides on this and I think I could have but I thought it would be good for me to hit this and keep it moving but I can't stop here. The reason is that at the end of the day of sabotage, I call sabotage. So at the end of the day really what it results in is is that the median wealth of a white family is 13 times that of the median wealth of a black family in America. Hard stop. That's what it results in. Now we can talk about racially disparate outcomes across housing, education, employment, health services, economic development, transportation, the so-called criminal justice system. We can talk about all of that and I can show you all the numbers. Go to vtracialjusticealliance.org and look at the numbers yourself. We've got data folks too. We can talk about that and we can just say, well, you know, the black folks are just unfortunate. It is unlucky. Mimini snickets. They're not very clever. They're not good with their money. Or with all the other nonsense that we can talk about at the end of the day, after we get finished having these dumb conversations, what we're gonna come back to is the fact that systemic racism is alive and well and it's impacting us. And this is a fact. This is not one of those things that you are required to pivot around in your objectivity in reporting or covering. Because objectivity on this level actually doesn't a disservice. Jimmy Hoffa is dead. Well, some reporters say that Jimmy Hoffa has died. Come on, he's dead. There's no objectivity about systemic racism at all. It doesn't mean you don't have to believe it. It doesn't mean you need to believe it, but I'm telling you, it ain't going nowhere. It's right here and it's hard to do something about. I wanted to share with you, yeah, I'm gonna get after it. So I wanted to share with you about the United Nations, just something to comment that the United Nations made. This is the racism and racial discriminations, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance follow up to the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action. This is the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations. It's a statement that they made back in 2016. Again, I like the United Nations. I mean, it's an outside entity, kind of like a world referee, if you will, or something like that. I think they're helpful in the Middle East right now. Don't get me started. But this is what they're saying about us. And every now and then, I think we as arrogant Americans need to stop for a minute and listen to what others are saying about us. How many people have lived outside of the United States? How long? Five years? 10 years? I got 10 years, okay? 13. You trumped me. No pun intended. So here's the thing. We look stupid from the outside, don't we? You can see an American coming. All you gotta do is sit down for dinner. And don't get me wrong, I'm a United States Army retired flag waving, God bless America, potato eating, so on and so forth. But still, it's important for us to listen to what's happening outside of the United States. They call it a crime against humanity. A crime against humanity. And they say that we must take reparative actions here in the United States for the Middle Passage. Why are you saying it? Well, you want me to talk about justice? I'm here to talk about justice. We might be talking about media justice, but we could eat justice easily, be talking about housing justice, education justice. We could be talking about health services justice. We could be talking about transportation justice. We just so happen to be at a media conference. And this is yet another one of those intersections. And I think it's important for us to be able to start the conversation in a place with a common understanding of when somebody that looks like me that's doing the work that I'm doing talks about justice, I'm talking about something else. Cause really what we have to understand is we start on an uneven playing field. That's where we start. So as we're doing the work, as we're talking about media, I've heard somebody talking about funding and because of the, I told you I was new to this, because of the right of ways or because folks are not paying as much as blah, blah, blah. I mean, we're so far, no pun intended on the back of the bus. Those of us who are like, we're coming over, and there's money, who owns this thing? Who's the operator? Where are all the black people at? So the challenge is with the legacy of slavery is, is the wealth disparities, the cultural disempowerment, the adverse and racial disparities in the gamut, and essentially the cultural erasure and appropriation. Now that's just something to process for a minute, cultural erasure and appropriation. Cause if we're gonna talk about media, then we're gonna talk about justice, then let's talk about the challenge that we're trying to address. Because at the end of the day, the reason why I'm interested in ACM and the reason why I'm interested in media is because I need a mouthpiece, because I need a megaphone, because I need an amplification, because I need access to something, to the technology, the people, the processes, the programs and the services that's gonna lift this voice up because I know it's right. No objectivity. So we see the appropriation, we see the erasure, we see that systemic racism, see there's something in it, this is a lovely thing, my mother used to say this all the time, honey, there's something in it for all of us. See, give something to your brother. They were all older, I could not stand them guys. Yeah, give something to your brother. Here's enough to go around. So there's something in this for all of us, okay? Because at the end of the day, systemic racism directly impacts economic development. All economic development. At the end of the day. And I'm not gonna get too deep into that, talk to me offline if that's not clicking for you right now. And the other thing is is where injustice exists, where economic depravity exists, also comes instability. And where instability exists, there is no safety, there is no security. You see it in cities, you see it in towns, you see it in neighborhoods, you see it in states, you see it in countries. If there's no economic investment, you're not safe. That's what systemic racism does. So that's why it's so important that in media, that justice intersects with the work that we're doing. That's media justice. Because we gotta be using it as a tool. We gotta be using media. We need to be providing access to media, to folks who ordinarily wouldn't have access, providing technology to folks who typically wouldn't have access to technology, providing training and technical assistance to folks who normally would not, who otherwise would not have that, providing support to folks who ordinarily wouldn't have that, to providing, and for those of you who are journalists in the room, to pivot off of your objectivity and do your analysis and report boldly. So there's a lot to be said about even democracy itself and what we see here as a nation that as a result of racism in this nation today, our very democracy is at risk today because of racism in our nation. And media is tied directly into that. So we are complicit in media with what's happening in our democracy today. Oh no, not me. Yeah, that's the problem, bro. Yeah, media justice, media justice. Media justice jeopardizes everybody, everybody. So a lot of people that keep talking about systemic racism and where is it? Show me some systemic racism. I ain't never seen those systemic racism. I get up and I go to work every day and I ain't seen no, and it's hard because, especially those of you who are privileged, yeah, I said it, so those of you who are privileged, of course you don't see no systemic racism. You ain't looking for it, it doesn't pay you to find it. It might cost you to lose your privilege and really you're too busy benefiting. So yeah, I said that, you can beat me up after this. I'll stick around, I got a good right too. And here's the thing, is that if you think about it, it's embedded in everything we do. I'm not gonna go over this list, just take a look at it yourself. Some of it is obvious. One of the things that I thought about one day and I said it briefly this morning when Sarah was here, I said a woke black man, I said something like James Baldwin said that a conscious black man lives in a constant state of rage. And the reason why I said don't get afraid, don't be afraid, I'm not gonna go off today. I'm not, it's okay, everything's all right. But what I meant by that is that the more you peel the onion on this thing, if you're honest with yourself, the more clearly you see it and the more evident it is in all things because it's the very fabric of who we are. And I remember one day I was sitting up and I was thinking about a city console meeting. And these guys are like, yeah, you got, here's the public comment period, you got two minutes to tell us what you want and we're just gonna sit here and look at you and we don't have to respond, but you only have two minutes. And if we don't wanna talk to you, we'll go into executive session. I said, what the hell is this? I start thinking about Robert's rules and I know Robert's rules. I start, and I start, but again, I'm gonna recover, never mind, but the point is, is just that there is so much in the fabric of who we are. So I just want you to stop and think about that. I mean, don't get me started on the electoral college in the filibuster and gerrymandering and all that other nonsense. I wanna talk just a little bit about journalistic objectivity and then I'm gonna ask my guests to come up in just a second. And I'm stuck on this because I got, what happened was, as I started to do the research on who we are, and we're gonna have some time for questions and comments too. I think we're going until four, 45, five, five? Three, 30, four, 30. Five, 15. Four, 45. Four, 45? Double check. She said six. Five, four, three, four, three, four, three, five, five. Five, 15. It's five, five, 15. So I'll slow down. So here's the thing. I started thinking about the whole idea of media justice and Megan and I were talking and then we got the group in that was gonna be on the panel tomorrow. And I was kind of suspect of that because I'm thinking, oh, I see these folks, the folks who are privileged with the power, the folks who are running this conference, they wanna bring us onto a call and kind of like plant some stuff, plant some seeds with us and hear what we're thinking so they can kind of like figure out how to navigate. I mean, I'm a conspiracy theorist too and I'm probably half of it's right, but that's not the point. The point I'm making is that there is a lot to unpack and I got a lot out of that call and it got me thinking. And I started to think about how many people heard of as seen on radio? As, put it in your phone. Just put it as a, mark it as a podcast. There are four seasons. It's as, S-C-E-N-E, as seen on radio. And there's one about being white, I think it's like season one or season two. And then this one is the America that never will be or never has been or something like that, that we're in season four and there's a section on media. And I just heard it this morning and it confirmed what it is that I'm talking about here and they're talking about journalistic objectivity and just what a farce it is, especially in topics like this when we start talking about justice. But I got a chance to process a few things and there was a quote that I heard somewhere and they said that journalistic objectivity is the ideology of the status quo. Journalism objectivity is the ideology of the status quo. Who decides what's normal? Who decides what's acceptable? Who decides? I mean, when your editor or whoever editor, when somebody is reviewing something that's been broadcast or that's being broadcast, who makes the decision to say, you know, that's a little bit too much opinion? What you just said, you just made a leap of logic and what you're doing is you're forcing your opinion on somebody else. Who has that power? Who? I'll bet you they don't look like me. I'll bet you they don't look like me because what we have is those folks whose stories that are believed, those folks, I can sit here and talk to you for two hours and some white guy with political and economic power can come in here and talk to you for two minutes and you will leave out of here believing every word he said even if he told you I was a liar. And I'm telling the truth. Who has the power? So who's making those decisions? I assert that as a journalist, that journalists are activists. I assert that with my knowledge, with the knowledge that a journalist has, say for example, I just gave you a crash course in systemic racism, do you believe it? Whatever, for those of you who do, that should inform anything you learn, anything you know to be true, should inform your analysis in whatever it is you're evaluating to report in journalism. There is an analysis that journalism deserves. And when we report on anything and we do so totally objectively and we ignore what we know to be true, then what we're doing is we're perpetuating that system of oppression yourself. I'm gonna say you are racist. When you know something to be true and you're hiding behind objectivity, which I think was the name of the program, that we actually won the award on in Brooklyn, it was called Hiding Behind Objectivity. That was the program that we were giving the award for when we were down at brick in the summer. When you do that, when you do that, all what you're doing, first of all, you're doing journalism a disservice. Secondly, as an activist, you're doing activism a disservice. Thirdly, the folks who are oppressed, you're doing them a disservice. Lastly, you're making yourself look stupid. To sit here and look at me and say, oh, you know, let me think about this objectively. Sit down, you're no journalist. Journalism is activism and we must be informed by the things that we know to be true. And if you know something is true and you're reporting around it, you're pivoting around it as if it's not, then you're saying that truth is not true. And we wonder how there can be an alternative, an alternate reality or an alternate truth. It's because we're doing that because as journalists, that's what's going on. Objectivity, when we start talking about media justice, objectivity is a myth. So says I. So says I. Consider it. I'm not gonna beat you over the head with it, but consider that. Objectivity is a myth because for those of you who don't, who are still looking at me crazy, it's because you are privileged because you are a white person in a white dominated country where all the laws are in favor of whiteness and you have the audacity to sit here and look at me and think that I'm crazy telling you about this. Objectivity is a myth. It's a myth. Yeah, this is media justice. This is media justice. So this is something, this is where it all comes together, at least in my mind. We can talk about access all day long. We can talk about other aspects of it in terms of how do we bring, how do we pipeline a cadre of activists who have interest in media? I didn't say media folks who have interest in activism. And how do we train them? How do we equip them? And we were talking about generally from marginalized communities, how do we provide them the access to the technology, to the resources that they need and position them to support organizations and activists or organizations like ours and folks who are doing other stuff in the LGBTQIA community and the disabilities community and so on and so forth. How do we equip them? How do we make that happen? And I think I'm glad you asked because what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tell you a little bit about some of the stuff that we are envisioning and also some of the things that we've already started. But before we do that and as they come up, I wanna just start a conversation. Y'all can just go ahead and come up with, I know you kinda shy, it's okay. It's okay, y'all just as cute as ever. What up, bro? What up, sis? How you doing? These my people. Before we get started, I wanted to, I'm gonna introduce y'all in a minute again because you guys look so good. You guys are, I love teenagers. Don't y'all love teenagers? I love me some young folks, they can't stand me. So the thing is, is that instead of being talked at, it's good because I laid some heavy stuff on you just now, I laid some heavy stuff on you. So before we get into this case study, my thing is, is this is, I wanna hear from around the room and this is, what I know is, is that there are some people in the room who never gonna say a word. And one of my activist buddies tells me, he says there's always one. I don't worry about the person who speaks up. I don't worry about anything. But what I do pray more about is that there's people who you just never know where they are. You never know where they are. And we can't fix that, but I do wanna say if that's you, if I'm talking to you, if you stare right through me right now or crossing your arms or something like that, just know that there's gonna be space, there's gonna be a place for y'all offline. Like for after this session, when this is over with, I'm gonna stick around so we can talk. I'm gonna give you my card, my email address. We're gonna cultivate a relationship. We're gonna talk, talk a thread. And there's 20% of the people in the room. You're untouchable anyway. There's nothing I can say to you. There's 20% of the people in the room still trying to figure out why I'm telling you this again. And then the rest of you, you guys are really interested and that's great. But I do wanna have a conversation and just kind of disarm everybody in the room. Because look, at the end of the day, first of all, we're not going to do this in our lifetimes. This is very difficult work. I'm talking about activism. I'm talking about eradicating systemic racism. It's not gonna happen in our lifetimes. Everybody in this room who's white either has been or has a racist in your family. Get over it, okay? Welcome to America, okay? This is how it is, okay? There's no white person in this room that hasn't silently witnessed black oppression. Forget about it. Stop talking about it. Stop trying to convince me that you're not a racist. So erase all of that. And let's just get down to business about what we do in journalism and what we do in media and how we provide access and how we lift marginalized communities up or what we envision that looking like and how we can be productive collectively and making that happen. What are some of the experiences that you've had that you've seen? What would you like to see? What makes you feel good about what we're talking about? Understanding that in order to get this done, listen. In order to get this done as far as the work that we have to do, we're only, listen, we're only talking about media. We're just talking about, we're not talking about housing or education or employment or health services access or economic development or transportation or the so-called criminal justice system. We're just talking about. So I mean, we should be able to have a conversation as professionals about some of our thoughts and ideas, about some of our desires and aspirations and understanding that the work that we do, it's gonna be almost meaningless unless we comport it to a lifestyle and not manage it like a project. That we come to understand that if what we're looking at here is really true, I think it is. And we're committed to doing something about it with media, through media, by media, and we are media professionals, then we have to understand that there must be a transition, a transformation in how we do things from this day on. If we wanna make a difference, we choose to live our lives differently. That's what we do. We choose to live our lives and understand that this is not a destination. This is a journey. So we're gonna go together. So what are your thoughts on, and can anybody give me an example, any thoughts about media justice in general, but examples of where you've seen it implemented or how you'd like to see it implemented in the work that you are doing? Oh, I got three hands at one time. Oh, I'm out of here, that's it. You guys wait if you're here. No, I'm gonna go to you first. Can we get a mic to... Okay, so I'll just repeat you. So media representation, media representation. So unpack that a little bit. We got time. Yeah. What is your name? Danny. It's a pleasure to meet you. Oh yeah, I remember you, I'm so sorry. Lots of barriers in the way. There might be workarounds. Trying to get around. There are workarounds. Trying to get people in the door that look like me. Who else, who's else's hands? You look so much like Peter. Doesn't he look kind of like Peter Hershville? He does. I'm sorry, what's your name? Do I know Peter Hershville? He's an awesome person. He's an amazing person. Is there a reporter on public, on my public? Oh gosh, I'm Bert. I just, I'm a genet TV over in Southern Vermont. Nice. I just had a question about it. You know, I grew up as a, you know, upper middle class white American looking the way I do. Boom, boom, yes, yes, yes. Watching, watching, you know, James Bond being superior comic books and thinking to myself, I'm gonna be an action hero one day. I'm gonna be somebody that gets on TV and does stuff and does all this stuff. So my question is, and I just walked into the door and did it. Because I had that history. How do we empower marginalized communities to have that same kind of confidence going into a media, a media thing? Well, same, because I don't see very many people volunteering to jump on board. I see mostly white men, to be honest, that are volunteering to be on TV or volunteering to be in these things because that's what we've seen for the majority of our life. That's what I grew up watching. So how do we encourage a community to jump on and be on it? How can we do that? So is it, it's Bert, right? Yeah. Is the question more like, how do we encourage the black and brown community to engage in media? Yeah, yeah. Given the fact that we don't really see a lot of representation there. Yeah. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the answer to that is but I'm gonna just cut around the edges just a little bit. And then I wanna turn it to the room. So if there's something that you have that you'd like to come back with, it's gonna be open. There are a lot of social challenges in the black community. You will see children being born out of wedlock. You'll see incarceration rate as far as disproportionate contact with law enforcement officers, economics. Yeah, and there's expulsion rates, suspension rates in schools and the list goes on and on. And I think it is really easy to get cause and effect mixed up to understand what came first. First of all, we are a nation who's only been, who's only had true freedom for black people in all of our history. For 50 years, 50, that everything allegedly ended with the Housing Act of 1968. Right around the time MLK was assassinated, many cities were burning, some of you were there. The Kerner report was shelved. How many people know what the Kerner report is? The Kerner report was shelved and we elected Nixon and we started a war on drugs. So 50 years is all black people have had in this nation of freedom and that has been taken off the table. Thank you, Supermajority, United States Supreme Court, Reverse Discrimination, 14th Amendment, Equal Protection. So we are riddled with challenges as a nation and what we see often, the reason that we don't see, like say for example, folks knocking the doors down, I had seven interns and I invited all of them for the summer. Two white young men, five black young women, okay? Of those, this is the only guy that showed up, okay? Because he was able and I'm grateful. But the point I'm making though is that I'm gonna turn it to the room, is that part of the reason why we're not seeing folks lined up, did I mention that my data team was white? I've got a robust set of data out there. I've got a trans woman who's right here in Burlington, who's been with me for two and a half years and I've got a cis male retired white guy that lives down in Quiche. And then I've got, well, there's more of it. I'm just saying, we don't have black data people. And you start asking, is it just because they don't have a desire? What's the room think? Raise your hand if you've got some thoughts. They don't know. They don't know where to go? They don't know where to go? That's the thought? All the way in the back. The opportunities not out there. The opportunities not out there, okay? I thought I was looking at you. Well, all right, I just say access to education. Access to education, what else? System of racism says that black people don't commit. Systemic racism says that black people don't do rap. Man, you also have a system where, if you take, I was sitting down with Sparks from the Burlington School District. How many people know Sparks from the Burlington School District? Okay. He's the DEI guy, he's been around for like 30 years. Again, we do work across the entire spectrum. The racial disparities in the criminal, juvenile justice system advisory panel, we developed, we created that, we architected that. So I spend a lot of time talking to folks from DCF, talking to, and what we see is that the numbers, the numbers, you look at race traffic stop data, the numbers, the numbers, the numbers, when you look at the, as youth are going into the juvenile justice system and crossing over into the criminal justice system, they're doing so in much larger numbers. Black, young men are doing so in much larger numbers. Aiden, you probably would agree when you look at folks getting kicked out of school in Burlington, much larger numbers. So I think there are, it's complicated. It's on a lot of different levels. When we, you talk about, we talk about what the pandemic laid bare for us or last a few years ago. School shuts down, no problem. Go home and do your homework. You got a computer? Nope. Who doesn't have a computer? Well, the median wealth of a white family is 13 times that of a black family. Who do you think doesn't have a computer? Oh, here's a computer. Well, how am I gonna get on the internet? We don't have any internet access. So this, this, this manifest, this plays, this plays out on a lot of different levels. Sometimes it just has everything to do with just, and if you can trans, if you can comport this to how it is you do your job and what it is you see and how it is that you're currently engaging media justice on your front, then I think you might get some gold. We are, it's not just to you, but we all might get some golden nuggets out of what we're saying. Well, how are we gonna announce it? You heard Sarah say something this morning. I had no freaking clue what she was talking about. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. Are you kidding me, Sarah? Oh, well, Mark, that's arrogant. So the thing is, is that you can't just put that thing on social media or you can't just say, oh, it's on front porch form. Who looks at front porch form? So you're an anomaly. So there's, so I wanna introduce this group and then we can move on, because we've got, we're running, you know what, before we introduce y'all, oh, I got a cash app notification. Before we go on, I'm gonna give you all an opportunity to introduce yourselves. I didn't tell you, I didn't tell them I was gonna put them on the spot. But all you gotta do is just say your name and whatever anything else you wanna say, if anything at all, okay? And we'll start with Aiden. Hi, I'm Aiden. I'm Jamie. That's it! I'm really proud to have these folks on. Oh, I'm sorry, Jamie, go ahead. You can say whatever you want to say. Tell us what you wanna say. You wanna prompt? Yeah. Okay. So this is good, because I've been thinking a lot about having y'all on and I'm really excited that y'all are here and you've just, all of you just began to learn and you just learned some things just sitting here and we've also been doing some talking amongst ourselves and you've had some exposure to some of the things that we're doing technologically as well. So generally speaking, what are the biggest in y'all's opinions, I'm trying to figure out, what's the biggest thing that you believe is holding you back to have access to media? Was it that you need in order to be impactful, to be able to get your voice out there? Remember, we talked about how the term, the whole idea of voice is what you have to say. In fact, it goes all the way back to the whole idea of the word vote when you think about voice. So your voices, all y'all's voices are incredibly important and media is the key. Historically you haven't really had an equitable opportunity to have access to media. We're gonna talk about social media in a minute so I know you guys are itching to talk about that but I just want to hear more about what you think might be holding y'all back or what you think could be, I guess, what do you believe would be helpful if somebody was standing there saying, okay, just tell us what you need and we'll give it to ya. Well, how would you answer that? We can start with A and just go down the line and you guys can just interrupt each other and argue like you always do. I don't really have any social media. No, it's not just social media, just media capabilities in general. Everything from recording to production, to broadcasting and all of that. Yeah, I can't think of any actual resource I have that would go and accept production. Just have access to that. At least growing up in New York, I've never had access to that really. I mean, not that I know of if there's something. I've also never had an interest in it until now so that's also... So you grew up, Amina, you grew up here in Burlington? I grew up, he's my grandmother. Like they didn't know you grew up in Burlington. I grew up in Burlington, yeah. I was born, yeah. I'm your grandfather. You were asking me like you didn't know. No, I was just, I wanted you to tell them though. Oh yeah, I grew up, I was born here and lived my whole life. She treats me badly. Did you want to say something? Yeah, I'd say public access to media sources. Media sources? Okay, what does that mean? Kind of like CCTV. Yeah, Tony, you're going to talk about that too. More? Did you have more to add to that? Okay. Jamie, what are you thinking? Actually, just the other day with my school I went on a field trip to Media Factory. What? A really good place to kind of get into, because it's hard to like, those equipment is very expensive so you can't just cultivate that. So having places like that is very important and good. I appreciate that and I think there's, I think there's much to learn about some of this stuff. I remember I told you guys that I was just learning a lot about this. I think there is a, tell me, there's the public piece, there's an education piece, there's a government piece. Is that right? How am I doing? That's the way the federal government defines it. It's community. But it's all community. That's what we call it. One of the things that I was trying to do was kind of fit a square pig in a round hole because I was thinking where do we, where do we come out at now? Of course, the public side, wait a minute, let me see if I can get this right. The government side is you, right? Is that correct? We call ourselves a small G, now we're in excess. So we are getting... Can you tell everybody in the room, I mean, does everybody know that she's CCTV? Everybody does, okay, we're sorry, go ahead. We call ourselves, we're from more of the tradition that Randy's talking about, about our access centers since the TV existed before we had the community media center. So we were a community media center in the tradition of using media to connect people and to make our communities better whole places. So it's not media for the sake of media, it's media for the use of, you know, making our world a better place, really. And it just came out the other day when somebody was in... I think it was you, Richard, who was in pointing out how our studio was built, and I don't know if you want to talk about that. Be a little bit in the studio concept and why. Let's do this, let's come back to that. I want to hear a little bit more about your trip over to Media Factory first, and then I'm going to go to the case study, and then we can get to that and more when we open it up out here. Okay, so we went to Media Factory, we're at my school. I go to Horizons through BHS, it's an alternative program, and we went, we're doing podcasting things at my school, and we just got equipment, so we went there to kind of learn more about podcasting and how that works, and learned about, like, mics and stuff, and saw all the equipment they have there. I personally am a singer, I like to sing, and so that kind of interests me, because they have, like, the boo. Did you record anything? No, but I got to go in and, like, test it out and stuff. So, yeah. You want to sing something for us right now? I'm okay. I want to tell y'all a little bit about what we were able to do over the summer with the, and this is the case study that I brought you. There was some conversation, and these folks, I said it was five young black women and two young white dudes, but they all went through the Racial Justice Academy as instructors, is that right, together. So I brought them all in and interviewed them at the same time to find out, you know, who I was going to actually hire, so I just hired all of them, because I couldn't not hire one of them, and I said, come on. So it was probably, like, seven or eight weeks over the summer, and it was some great work that they were doing. Again, we're operating through this lens that we're here to address systemic racism. What are the biggest issues? You know what they said the biggest one was? Mental health. Mental health. There's a lot of work that needs to be lifted up, that needs to be amplified, that needs to be in the ether out there. That's so important. Again, we have, we already have a vision and a mission. We already have an objective. You just need a voice. You need to lift it up. So that's why, you know, we rely on CCTV. That's why we also are expanding on our own infrastructure as well. We also, I also personally believe, and this is going to be true across all, you know, all social determinants of health, because at the end of the day, there will be instances where we identify, for example, like housing. We see that there's a housing, is there a housing shortage in Vermont? Duh, right? Well, guess who's at the epicenter of it? We're hit first and worst and it lasts longer. That's in everything. That's by definition of systemic racism. So what we know is, hey, Mike Monty, so we're having conversations and we're at CHT and we're trying to nudge certain programs and services that they're offering to tweak them to be able to make them more accessible to black and brown folks, for folks who are poor economically, trying to make them more visible because maybe you're just announcing them in their own places, or maybe you haven't really focused on the real needs of the black community so they don't find those programs as interesting or useful. So we're helping there, but at the same time, we're creating our own programs and services within our own community, within the Richard Kemp Center. Some of them that are housing-related. So that's by black people, for black people. It's got a ring to it, right? It's really important that at some point or another, we got to figure out how to, as you just said, how do we empower ourselves? So that's what the Kerner Report said, is that there needs to be an investment in our communities, an investment. And I say that like that because at the end of the day, everybody wants to talk about everything, explore everything, kick the can down the road, but when it comes down to talking about putting money in black communities, that's where the bus stops. Whiplash. Because at the end of the day, we shouldn't have to depend on the schools to create programs to visit Flynn at the media factory just so our kids can get exposure to this technology. We shouldn't have to go over to CCTV just so our kids can be exposed to this technology. I have a vision. We deployed this technology at the Richard Kipson. And it doesn't mean we don't go to the media factory or CCTV, but we first have our own. We have our own. And we can go on down the list with every single social determinant of health where we're going to be most effective is when we invest in black communities. We stand up black because there are talented black folks in our community who do have the aptitude to do this work and are interested in doing it and will do it if they were empowered to do so. But they're not necessarily going to show up at CCTV or the media factory to do it. Why? They may not want to work with you. So again, how do we get after this? One of the ways we get after this, is to invest, invest, invest, invest in black communities. So we definitely went over, this is great. We went over to CCTV a couple of times. We took seven youth over there and they tore the place apart. No, not really, but it was a blast. And Aiden, you're the only one on the panel who's there. I wonder if you might want to speak to the two trips that y'all took over there. We worked on a podcast called... Actually, it was a show. We made a couple of episodes called Life at VHS and we talked about what it was like at VHS. The school being an old mall. And one of the things that we said was it's challenging not having windows. Is that all you said? Yeah, we also said that walls don't reach the ceiling. So it's kind of like all the teachers are yelling at the same time. What else? Okay, well I went to the original VHS and it was different because it was an actualized wall. It was an actual building. We had all the buildings and we had our cafeteria and we had our gym and we had all that stuff. And then obviously we switched to online and then we went to this right over there. And yeah, it's a lot. Okay, why? Oh, there was like chemicals in the... He fast. Giving kids nosebleeds and migraine. It's kind of scary to think about because my grandma went there so it's like generations and generations of people that were in that building breathing in those harmful chemicals. So it's kind of like... it makes you think a little bit. But yeah, it was because there was a bunch of chemicals in the foundation. I think that one of the things that I saw when I was... because I was in the studio when they were over there is that there... How many people have been in CCTV? Okay, so you say you know. You go in there and you see the set and then you also see the control room back there. And so just imagine there's seven youths in there. First we sit down, we have a conversation about the origins of community media. And we start talking about why it's so important why this project, if you will, is so important and how on some level it kind of could potentially level the playing field in some ways. And we just got into this huge conversation about voice and about how not only this is just an opportunity but a responsibility for us to leverage to the best of our ability. What is going on up there? And so then some of them ran over to... I got it. Some of them ran over to the control room and they put the headsets on. I'm sitting at this desk and some of them got behind the cameras and they went after it. And it did like two or three rotations but they were chatting it up the whole time. Okay, what are we going to do with it? It was just amazing to see them because before we went down there, to me, they were kind of lukewarm. Yeah, you guys were pretty lukewarm. Yeah, you know. But just to see everybody light up down there and just to go after it and to do something together. And you guys were really nice to each other and it was just a lot of fun watching you. So I just wanted to bring that out. One thing that we were able to do was I mentioned some equipment that we do have at the Richard Kim Center for some of you who were there yesterday. You saw that we were set up and we were actually shooting something down there yesterday. But again, just took the group of them and just crossed my arms and said, we need to set up for a hybrid. Let's go, right? So started talking everybody through how to set the equipment up and I explained to them what was what and what did what and why it was important. And then we got towards the end and we also had a technical problem. We had a bad cable. So we even had the opportunity to do some troubleshooting and it was a blast to see the youth do that. And what that did for me, this whole process, what it did for me, because of course, the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance and the Richard Kim Center, it's very important that we have an apparatus that an effective an incredibly powerful and seamless apparatus that will allow us to be able to pivot at any given time and to be able to provide broadcast capabilities, recording capabilities, studio capabilities. We need to be able to, we need, you know, one of the things that I learned in this business that at least it seems is as if it's pretty, it's good. Same thing in the military. Drill sergeant walks in, everything looks pretty, they leave you alone. It looks like it's not so pretty, start ripping things apart. So I think one of the things that I'm excited about is is that we've got this opportunity. I see opportunity for us to get resources. I see opportunities for us to get funded. You know, I think I could probably sneeze and raise $50,000 for something like this. And I'm not just blowing my horn. Who says that, right? You know, nobody says that. Usually it's like, please give me one. No, we can do this. And I know that even some, there's probably even some folks in the room, and I know that there's folks in the room who are going to have an eye on what we're doing at the Richard Kim Center. You too can be a part of that as well. But this case study definitely to the extent that I reached out to Champlain College. How many people know about Champlain College's programs? Okay, so I reached out to them and that's still pending. So for those of you who know people at Champlain College, just circle back around with me. I just barely got my first foot in the door. But I do know that there is something that's going on over there that will be useful to this type of programming. Again, we just want to train folks. And then we want to move to a point to train the trainer to be able to move to a point where we get youth coming in and they're excited and they're actually training other youth. Of course that will fuel some of our capacity organically. There's no shame in that game because that's kind of what we're here for. I'm excited that these folks that are sitting next to me are not just a few youth in Burlington, but at the end of the day on some level are actually my colleagues and I think that's exciting what is going on here. So I'm going to conclude with just a brief conversation on what the training program looks like because it was defined by my interns over the summer. And so some of the language that you see here I think we tweaked it up a little bit is most of it is pretty intentional when you start talking about grassroots and you start thinking about things like community and youth and marginalized communities. These are words that we really kicked around and then checked and double checked and said, you know, does this sound right? And we're still tweaking it and then there's a sign up form that we've also created and we saw that CCTV had already did something similar so we were appropriating I like it when black people appropriate white people things but we were appropriating from CCTV to some extent just but not really though because we love CCTV and Travis and all of the work that he's doing over there and they know what we're doing and they're helpful in the work and supportive so I know that this this is going to work I think now it's just a matter of tweaking it out and getting the time because mind you we're doing a lot of stuff we stood up two affinity spaces one of them was because the youth asked for one this year one is an adult affinity space we're working on a farm justice program wonder what that's all about wonder what the backstory is there so there's that one on we have youth movie nights at the Richard Kim Center every like the second and fourth Friday as well so there's a bunch of stuff that's coming out the after school program credible messengers and there's more we can talk more about that so we're going to take it to a wrap now but I want to just get you know get a little chatter in the room and maybe you might have some questions for some of the youth I've got some backup slides just in case you fail me but there's some I think there's a robust discussion that we've had up until now I really believe that I've seen a few people's eyes light up I can read the room pretty good I told you I have four older brothers you gotta be able to see the punch coming but yeah I'm totally totally down with having to you know answering any questions but you know before you ask any if you don't mind if I could ask you one just putting a question to the room and yes I haven't forgotten the conversation that we're going to have about what CCTV looks like when we walk in the door we can also revisit that and the question to you is more around kind of what if there's anything that you've that you've heard that could be useful in what it is that you're doing did you learn anything particularly on the systemic racism side and then you know these are just you don't have to answer all of these but I'm just throwing out some you know you can choose A B or C and then the other thing is you know where do you see this you know how do you how do you see yourself or your organization or folks that you know applying some of the things that we've talked about and of course you can just redirect and just ask us any questions if you choose to across the from Quincy Access Television in Massachusetts we have the City of Quincy recently hired a quality and diversity position in the administration in the mayor's office there was is a a larger population of Asians in our city and unfortunately they had to come under some items in the past and prior to this position being a position that was sought after was actually the community meetings where a community wanted help and needed support I guess my question after listening to your presentation is somehow talking to this this position this person with the quality and diversity title has been in our studio for an interview but that's an interview so my as far as action my thought is how can we work with him and bring more folks into Quincy Access Television to produce programming whatever any group was what's your name again you're Mark you must be a great guy I love Mark's I work with seniors and juniors from the local high schools too I think I try to give them meaningful projects to work on as interns I've done with Juneteenth I haven't put together Juneteenth Bumper or PSA but I'm wondering how I can work with this I'm thinking of ways to work with this let's go to that the question is really how does Mark how does Mark work with this newly created position on as far as this because there's this position that's new and the idea is they brought him in the studio already but how do they go about bringing him in and maybe leveraging if that's okay to say that relationship to bring in other folks is that right I'm going to go to you hi what's your name Amy Parnell in the house I am from I live in Springfield Vermont and it sounds like why a lot of people asked us that when we moved there so I wanted to make a suggestion for your question one of the programs that we have at our station is through a town political party and they host interviews called Springfield Voices and they interview different people around the community so if there's an entity in your community that might want to host interviews then getting people in to your station for something like that might be a good invitation not putting the pressure on them to create their own show create the show for them yeah just if there's somebody in your community that would like to do a talk show or interview show have them in maybe suggest some different guests another thing that's happening in Springfield that's really amazing our town library hosts a series called community conversations they invite in the town manager the the police chief the fire chief just different folks from the community and it's open to people to come in to the library and be there live and ask questions but we also record it and then we post it on social media for people to comment so those are a couple of ways to engage people there you go Mark you guys are collaborating I like this man we're getting stuff done in here and while I'm talking no we can't talk about that no I'm just joking and then what you said about this isn't going to be accomplished in our lifetime correct I come from an education background an early childhood education in the last 5-7 years yep so a show that we're another show we're doing is I have a friend who's a speech therapist and it's word time with Ms. Markey there goes Randy we lost Randy it's over now each week she focuses on a different letter sound and she reads a book and we make it a point to choose books that have diverse people in them because in Springfield Vermont on the main street that you drive into right across from the rec center there's a house that's still flying a confederate flag it's not surprising I feel like in our community even though our station is welcoming maybe the community does not feel safe for somebody to expose themselves by coming in and making a show so we can be kind of the proxy for that by having diversity represented in other ways even if people aren't feeling safe about it thank you for that I appreciate that I would repeat some of it but I think hopefully you might have got most of it and try to lift that up I tried to use my teacher voice you did use your teacher voice I really appreciate that what are some of the other takeaways and thoughts I wanted to just direct your attention to the slide that's up right now this is the Richard Kim Center some of the work that we've been doing with the Alliance converged with our culture converged with our youth and also our their broad terms I mean even to the extent that we're not really doing well until we begin to see progress in the eradication of systemic racism across housing education employment health services access to media and so on and so forth mental health is really at the center of that we've got some programming we're talking about the implementation of a pod for some clinical services clinical services to be provided there also group and peer to peer networking we've planned some services and activities around that as well as mental health first aid to our staff and to some of our community members everything is is I guess surrounded by a group of community members that come in and support to work the reason why I'm sharing this with you is is to kind of give you a sense of the idea that there's much much much more going on than just a pure play media per se and this the work that we're doing as the Alliance and through the Richard Kim Center all of it must be amplified with media so it's more of a yes media is an apparatus a tool a multiplier but it's also a program remember I told you about farm justice it's also a program we're going to be routing our youth through that very apparatus we'll be able to leverage some of the capacity to augment our own capabilities but meanwhile back at the ranch there's a ton of stuff that's going on we host the health equity advisory commission where I'm the co-chair statewide so we do some of that programming in the Richard Kim Center and one of the things that we're also doing is supporting and assisting at-risk and juvenile and justice impact of youth and young adults in this program that's a movement a national movement called credible messengers it's a standardized program and it has a lot of moving parts but really it starts with self-actualization and it comes out with a life plan and God knows with all of the stuff that we're dealing with as a community here in the state we need this kind of help but all of this stuff has to be lifted up has to be lifted up with our media capability as well so this is again more of the work that we're doing I'm going to conclude with just somebody asked me one day they said who's your favorite president and I didn't say Thomas Jefferson but I was in the context of the conversation it was an elderly white woman and two refugee resettlement community folks one of them was not even from here he was here for a program or something and they were talking about she was talking about why she was talking about her desire for the refugee resettlement community in the indigenous African American community to come together which was kind of offensive to me anyway because that's my job right I don't need a white savior to tell me what we need to do as a community and if you don't think that I don't see that then we got bigger problems but I digress we'll come back to that and she was trying to tell me what great a man Abraham Lincoln was and at some point I just got so frustrated with the conversation that I said I said you know I like Eisenhower so all of them were just flipping out after I said Eisenhower actually I did it strategically as well because Eisenhower was the one who warned us about the military industrial complex as I was thinking through the end of this and I was listening to some programming somewhere else and I was listening to Becca Ballant this morning I wrote this after she said something very similar when ever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice they may be relied on to set them to rights and on the surface it sounds reasonable but this was Thomas Jefferson who owned slaves the question was who is people because black people wasn't people when Thomas Jefferson was president we didn't become people until the 14th amendment still in that struggle still in that struggle amen brother so I leave you with this because I want to take you back to those thoughts on those thoughts on journalistic objectivity and I think this is kind of the next level the whole conversational journalistic objectivity I didn't want to miss an opportunity here but this is deep this statement right here the context the person in how we have a united states representative that represents Vermont today who threw these same words at you this morning I'm not mad at Becca but I know Becca pretty well but I'm just saying again this is media this is how media is wielded this is how language is used and when we start thinking about who has power we start thinking about who has privilege who is who is it that's making the decisions on who is important who is people who gets to make the decision on trust whose government are we talking about in the context where Thomas Jefferson was saying our own government he was talking about their government not our government so it's like one of those things where if we're not careful and if we're not intentional in the work that we're doing if we're not decisive in the work that we're doing on media justice then what we'll be doing is we'll be exacerbating a pre-existing condition because we'll just be signing on to something and we'll just be going along to get along and just lifting up whatever is being said hiding behind objectivity and not making an intentional impact to turn this thing around so we're going to take the last we're going to close it there I want to thank first of all Aiden for showing up and Amina and Jamie if y'all can just give it up for them along. I also want to thank Megan for the hard work that you put in to putting this together and I mean just the whole you was working like a well from what I saw you made it look hard so I do want to thank you who else in the room was responsible for this conference putting this just the work involved who is that oh okay thank you so give it up that's all we have can you guys just stick around one or two more minutes though because let people go well hold on for a minute you asked a question and I wanted to get an answer from you she mentioned something about you came over to the studio and I had forgotten about it in the last five minutes you know racism which in part mm-hmm and so when there's intentional design to try and deconstruct that mm-hmm I take notes and one of those is whether or not there is a rectangular space that's enclosed rather than open and so when you walk into a space that's specifically designed to keep you out it's cut from the door that's locked it's secure it's all people that are holding loud and so when we want to try and create a list of spaces if we replicate something that is designed to keep people out we wonder why there is friction why we don't have people embracing it and feeling that right and that space over there is an amazing space so I know part of the intent of the origin story how to design that space was how to create these spaces to be more open, that conversation can happen in a way that's open, that allows organic discussion to happen rather than a controlled, power-based discussion, which is a talk show. So I often suggest to people that they think very critically about a talk show under which there is a given person who remains in power to control the microphone or being the host and what that reinforces for anybody else who's that guest. I'm gonna take that with me, I needed to hear that. Thank you for allowing us to have that last comment. Is that, I also have a show over there, it's called Just the Position. So I think it's every second Wednesday. And I just, I'm a microphone hog. I'm like a pig. Can I hear you tomorrow? Tomorrow? Tomorrow? We're done, we've been done. You guys, nobody's, nobody's twisting your arm. Get out of here. Nobody's making you stay here.