 I'm very excited that we have wonderful guests to talk about civil disobedience and solidarity with my own mar. But before we do that we're going to ask for a few updates. Who wants to go first. Sure. So much of what we've been working on Marci and I has been on two resolutions. I am now a delegate for Assembly District 74 so she and I have coauthored two resolutions one around the sanctions and urging the Biden administration and Congress to lift the sanctions on vulnerable populations like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and some other countries in Africa to be able to provide medical supplies to those countries for people that are in need during COVID and I'll share that link with you all if you are a delegate and if you are a party member as well as a Central Committee member and if you live in the state of California or elsewhere. We would love to have your endorsement and the other is urging for congressional representatives to join Barbara Lee and Marco can to cut the military spending by 10%. And it focuses on climate crises as well as what that reduction of the military budget can do for our own country and how we can benefit us internally in terms of our domestic programming. I'll share those two links with you all and we would love to have your signature if you are an item elected member as well as a party elected member. So be on the lookout for that, and I will pass it on to media. Wonderful. So, I don't know if any of you had a chance to see the CNN piece that came out about the blockade of Yemen, that the Saudis are responsible for but it was an incredible piece and I'll find it and stick it in the link of, or someone else can do that. Important to watch because in addition to the air strikes and the fighting there is this issue that fuel hasn't gotten in to the country since January, and that's caused a huge crisis in terms of getting food and medicine around the country. And it's not only caused by the Saudis but the US is very complicit in this as well. And one thing that was a very grave concern to us is that Biden's new envoy for Yemen, a man called Tim Lender King, when confronted with this by the CNN journalist said it wasn't true that they weren't keeping fuel out that food was coming in and out of the country. And the CNN reporter said that's just a lie, it's just not true. So, we have a petition to the thank you Mary just put up a little snarky lying Lender King is what we call them, but asking him to be honest and recognize the Saudis blockade and the US complicity in that, and to demand that the blockade stop. I do not want to be complicit in the starvation of children in Yemen. And then on the Iran front. This letter came out that was signed by both 70 Democrats and 70 Republicans led by Democrat Anthony Brown from Annapolis, saying that the Iran nuclear deal, as it was, is too narrow and that we need something broader that includes Iran's program. It's malign activities in the region, it's human rights issues. And basically, it's a way of saying, we don't want you to rejoin the deal we want to continue with Trump's terrible maximum pressure campaign. So we went out and I see Max Chesky on the call tonight he was there we had about 30 people going out to his office in Annapolis turned in a letter signed by several thousand people, and did a rally saying that we want him to publicly and all of the other Democrats to say that they support the Iran nuclear deal. That's not just the other 69 Democrats that signed this lousy letter. It's all the Democrats where are they where are their voices we need to hear them. We need to hear them saying to the Biden administration, stop with all the BS, go back into the deal. Don't try to use any other preconditions or any other leverage. It was Trump that pulled out it's the US that must go back in. And I want to also warn you that Senator Menendez with probably all the Republicans he's working with Lindsey Graham, and you can make the boo sign when we say Lindsey Graham boo to put out an even worse letter about the Iran nuclear deal. So we're we're bracing for that and trying to get our senators then to come out and say rejoin the nuclear deal. Thank you. I may just interject for just a moment on something that you just mentioned Jared Kushner came out with a statement applauding the Biden administration for sitting out of the JCPOA. So that should be very alarming to all of us on this call and all Democrats across the aisle. Yes, absolutely. Madea and I were at a press conference and virtual press conference with Barbara Lee and this guy Anthony Brown and a few others McGovern Adam Schiff and they were talking about the importance of repealing the AUMF. There's two bills in Congress and I'll be sharing those again with everybody on the Google group if you're not in the Google group. I urge you to join and marry if you can please post that link. This is where you can get last minute updates and so forth about our zooms and other announcements. But what I wanted to say was we have two bills in the House, one to repeal the AUMF that undergirds all of these multiple wars that was right after 9-11 and the other one that only specifies Iraq. And then we have Tim Keynes in the Senate that also specifies Iraq but the bottom line is that they were talking about well we might go for another AUMF as long as it has a sunset provision. And so I think we have to be very clear as activists that we don't want any AUMFs. Okay, I believe that Rachel Brunke is with us and you want to remind people about a very exciting event that's coming up next Sunday? Yeah, there's a bunch of speakers on here today at it. Medea's going to be speaking. Marcy did a wonderful clip from it. Mary is for it. Mary is helping to run the show. We're putting on the Cold War Truth Commission and we're putting the Cold War on trial on Sunday. We have over 500 people already signed up and so we're just hoping that it's not only this one day event but it's many projects come from it. And so we were just on KPFK today and a lot of an Eric Mann show and show a lot of interest. So we want to really tie so much of the problem is and Marcy, you and I were talking about this the other day. How is it that people care domestically and they don't understand internationally? And so we're trying to say that, you know, domestic is international and there's so much combination. What we do abroad, we are not only doing now, but we will do in the future here at home. So we better pay attention. Thank you. So please put the link in the chat. I will do that. Thank you. Great. And a little bit of feedback. Yeah, okay. I wanted to take a moment before we hear from our speakers to share with you our website. We haven't had an opportunity to do this yet. So, Mary, if you wouldn't mind taking us to the CodePink Congress web portal. And if you Google CodePink Congress, this is what you'll get. And we'll just scroll down. Yes, we want accountability from Congress. Absolutely. And we're mobilizing co-sponsors and votes for peace legislation. And you can urge friends to sign up here. Then as you scroll down. Well, yes, I just want to show them here below the line first. Okay, this is fine. This is our CodePink Congress toolkit. It's also at the top under Act Now. And click on Contact Congress. You'll see a number of links for committee chairs, and Senate staffers, house staffers. Contact the Biden administration. Let's see what we're okay. There we have the switchboard. We have the email and we have Twitter accounts for many of the cabinet members and staffers. Then we go to track legislation. We don't have every piece of legislation, but we have ones that we think might be of interest to you. Many deal with foreign policy, but not all. And you can click on these links and see how many co-sponsors is my representative a co-sponsor and then get on the phone. Okay. And then over here in the Senate, some of these we've already talked about in our previous zooms. And contact the media. Again, these are Twitter handles. A lot of press people seem to prefer being approached that way by a Twitter. So if you're not on Twitter, come join us. And this is a long list. So anyway, the point is that we hope you will use this toolkit as you organize in your own communities. You can repeatedly go back, check legislation and so forth. If you want to look at legislation on a grand, you know, in a grand way, you can go to congress.gov and then look at all the legislation that's been introduced. Thank you. All right now. Thank you, Marcy. I just want to say thank you so much for organizing that and Mary and whoever else worked with you. It's a really wonderful toolkit. And thank you for explaining Code Pink Congress, because I think we have a lot of new people on with us tonight. And I think there's some activists with the Burmese, Myanmar solidarity who don't have never been on here before. And it's really good to go over that. And before we start, I just want to say to you in the Burmese, Myanmar community once you'll tell us which name to use that our hearts go out to you. We love you and we're just so excited that you're here with us and so distraught by what is going on in Myanmar. Thank you. Yes. And thank you, Medea. And before I forget, I also wanted to give a shout out to progressive Democrats of America who help promote these events and remind everybody they also have an event on Sunday. It's a health care for all of them. And you can go to their website and look at that too. Okay, so I thought to frame this conversation, we could look at a short video about recent events in Myanmar in Burma. And then we'll go to Hania to introduce our first speaker. So, Mary, if you can bring up that first video, that will be great. Defiant protesters again marched through the streets of Mandalay on Sunday. In strong voice and in large numbers, they were clearly unbowed by the violence of the day before. That's when the security services shot dead at least six people in a crackdown in Myanmar's second city and injured many more. But with the death toll rising, a call for revolution from the former vice president now leading a civilian administration in hiding. This is the darkest moment of the nation and the moment when the dawn is close. This is the time for our citizens to test their resistance against the dark moments. Speaking of a new federal democracy, the message was clearly aimed at bringing diverse ethnic armed groups together to overcome the army and their coup. When forming our resistance, unity plays a vital role. Despite our differences in the past, this is the time we must grip our hands together to end the dictatorship for good. These diverse ethnic armed groups are scattered across Myanmar's borderlands. Divided, they don't represent a significant threat to the military who've been fighting them for decades. United, they could be a considerable obstacle. But there's long been distrust between these groups and the NLD, or National League for Democracy, bringing them together would be no small task. In peaceful defiance, protesters break the curfew to honour the dead in candlelit vigils across the country. We come out on the street to show that we are against military dictatorship by breaking the curfew order imposed by the junta. We will continue fighting. But as the military continues with its brutal tactics on the streets, calls for a revolution that's not so peaceful may gain increasing support. Tony Chang, Al Jazeera. All right. And with that, Hania, please introduce our group again. Thank you, Marcy. It's an honour and a privilege for me to introduce Sandra Mann, who is a senior research program coordinator with the Center for Public Health and Human Rights. Her research interests focus on the interplay of disease dynamics, human rights, and comparative politics in, but not limited to South Asia. Sandra is currently engaged in research assisting obstacles and innovations to the HIV care continuum for key populations in Myanmar and Thailand. She's also involved in the center's work for public health needs in humanitarian crises. She has extensive experience working in laboratory research, as well as with various NGOs and governmental health organizations in Myanmar. Welcome, Sandra. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Okay, should I just get started? Great. Well, thank you for the platform. I really appreciate, you know, you giving me the time to speak today. And that video is, you know, a perfect sort of encapsulation of what's going on right now. I don't know if some folks would like a refresher or like an intro on Myanmar, but I have a little spiel sort of prepared. And I'll just get started with that. So Myanmar is in Southeast Asia. It's a country approximately the size of Texas, with a population of about 53 million, 70% of which is rural. So we've got a huge rural population. We also have, as the video kind of indicated, over 135 ethnic groups, potentially more, you know, within those ethnic groups as well. But of those, only a handful are officially recognized, which is kind of the cause of a lot of the ethnic tensions in the country. We were previously made up of several kingdoms, where each of these ethnic groups kind of had hegemony over their, their areas, the geographic areas, and just through our sort of kingdoms and dynastic eras, repeated attempts at unification never really succeeded. And then we fell under the British Empire. And that kind of kicked us off on this successive sort of cycle of colonization by the British and the Japanese and then the British came back in. So it's, you know, we've gone through that whole, that whole era. And finally, in 1948, we became an independent republic under the negotiations led by General Aung Sanh, who is Aung San Suu Kyi's father, which, you know, unfortunately this wasn't very long lived, because in 1962, we had our first coup that was led by General Nguyen. And that kind of kicked us off on this unmarried go around, I'd like to say, of one military regime after another and kind of the subsequent downward spiral of the country. Because really, you know, if you look at, in terms of economics, our country Myanmar is so rich in resources and so diverse that whoever has hegemony over the country is going to, you know, flourish and unfortunately, the military kind of caught on to that and they've been in power since in terms of kind of the revolutions that we've undergone as a country. Our, you know, first large one was the 1988 coup, 888, sorry, revolution, which is akin to, you know, 10 of the square led by students really kind of spearheaded by communities that just were sick of military rule and it was followed by a very brutal crackdown, which led to a lot of folks kind of evacuating the country and that led to our first wave of really kind of brain drain right and then in 2007. And this is what I experienced was the south on revolution. So that happened shortly before I left for the US for college. And that was, you know, in response to hiking commodity prices and the people were essentially starving. And the monks kind of took it upon themselves to, you know, lead the cause and protest on behalf of the people. Hence why it's called the saffron revolution because of the color of the roads that they wear. And following that is immediately afterwards in 2008 was this huge natural disaster called Cyclone Nargis. And that, you know, you guys were talking about Yemen earlier that was very similar, very similar situation where there was just widespread humanitarian crises across the country. And the military, who was in power power at the time just refused the entry of aid. And that was kind of when the UN successfully is probably the first time in the history of our country that the UN successfully was able to intervene when the moon came in and really through negotiated aid to be led into the country. I was working for a world vision at the time and I remember just, you know, the frantic coordination that NGOs in the country were trying to do because outside aid wasn't able to come in and everything was cut off. So 2008 was also when the democratic transition got kickstarted. That was when the constitution was drafted. And unfortunately it was led by the military so it's really very focused on, you know, maintaining the power, the military power in the country. But, you know, that was our sort of first light for a sort of channel into leaving, finally leaving this military regime so people kind of backed it. And that developed into the 2015 general elections, which I was able to vote in for the first time in my life. And, you know, that kind of was this huge thing of, you know, hope and the light at the end of the tunnel and we may finally be moving towards federal democracy like the NLD had sort of promised and wanting to, you know, finally bring peace to the country. And to be honest, you know, that since 2015 we've really seen a huge boom in the country in terms of development and our GDP rose up our, you know, people who are living under the poverty line the population percentage rose, or sorry, who are living above the poverty line we had just a huge boom in population rising above that. Our life expectancy went up. And one of the most significant things that I was able to witness was just the huge amount of foreign economic investment, which obviously translates to, you know, more rights for people and like our Gen Zs who are now kind of on the front page of every newspaper, they are, you know, they immediately caught up to the rest of the world like their memes are all on point now I don't even know some of them. You know, things like that so you know those five years since 2015 were very crucial for the, you know, development of our country and for us to catch up to the rest of the region. And obviously, I think a lot of people are aware of the hinder crisis that, you know, was my back. Sorry, I think my internet connection is not great. We can hear you. Yeah, so I was just talking about the Rohingya crisis is that where I left off for you guys. Yes. Okay. Yeah, so you know that was inexcusable and there was a lot of sort of in city is operations by the military to really kind of cause the global disillusionment of the, the NLD party. And it really kind of showed the faults that were in that system that party that we had sort of elected at the time. You know, the, the focus on the Bama ethnic group as the premier ethnic group and kind of sweeping other ethnic strife under the rug things and so, you know, that all kind of snowballed into what we see now which is the food that was initiated by the military and the protests that haven't sued since. So, you know, just reflecting on the days before the coup or the days leading up to the coup. We had been seeing a lot of news about the military fighting with the NLD or a sense of G about voter fraud which I'm sure many of you here can identify with. And wondering where things were going to go because it was very clearly a landslide when yet again. And then on the evening for us in the US here on the evening of January 31 it was just this sort of dread that kind of washed over everybody, you know we're frantically testing each other being like is this real like is she actually detained we, you know, we were seeing the news coming out about a sense of G being detained. And after that it was the what is it the seven stages of stages of grief where we just it was denial and there was a lot of anger and this widespread sort of sense of desperation because we were finally able to catch up to the rest of the world and you know now it's threatening to take us back to the dark ages. So, talking about the protests, the CDM, the civil disobedience movement has really been driving the protests on the ground, which, you know, this has this has been kind of a feature of the 88 Revolution as well but it was quashed so quickly because of the lack of communication between people. And that is what sets these protests this at this particular moment, apart from all other revolutions that we've had in the country. And it's the presence of technology, which I think has been kind of, you know, rehashed over and over in analyses of the the incident so far but the media, you know, telecommunications having foreign telecommunications present in the country to sort of hold the military accountable or, you know, to to say we won't follow your directives we will, we're going to keep providing people with this outlet to communicate with each other that has really revolutionized this revolution in a way. And really, you know, the goal of CDM at this point is to dismantle this military hegemony once and for all, because the people do not want to go back to these, you know, apartheid like states under the military. They want to shred the Constitution really just start afresh and work together towards a very inclusive federal democracy that, you know, promises equal rights for all ethnic groups, whether or not they're legally recognized and make sure that we can move forward together as a country. This is my rundown of the situation right now. And obviously one just one thing to note, the CDM movement was led by medics for the most part, which is very near and dear to my heart, I'm a public health, you know, I'm in public health I'm an epidemiologist and the fact that this is all being done, a midst of a pandemic is both so really goes to show the true will of the people that they're risking so much to, you know, to ask for freedom in the March for freedom. Well thank you so much. Oh, Marcy, did you want to go. Marcy, should I just introduce the next speaker. Yeah, okay. Thanks so much, Sandra. That was a great overview and now we're going to move on to our next speaker. If people have questions you can put them in the chat or comments in the chat. I see we also have Michael beer in the audience who is a very involved in the Myanmar struggle and Solidarity is with non violence international so you might want to say something after as well Michael. Our next speaker is Michael hack Mike hack. He was a former campaign coordinator for the US campaign for Burma, a researcher with on Myanmar's history and politics, and now he's a campaigner with the international campaign for the Rohingya, and a business with genocide. I recently read a great interview that Mike you did in Jacobin and maybe we could put the link up there. And I hope you will talk to us about the very exciting work you're doing with the garment workers but thank you for all your work on this and we look forward to hearing you, Michael. Thank you so much for that introduction idea and for that. What you said Sandra that's really great introduction and that just your I mean just your coverage of this has been really incredible so it's great that you started with that. I'm just going to talk a little bit about tiny bit about Myanmar's history and my own role in the tiny bit of activism I've done, because I think it kind of talks a bit about US policy. Sandra said in the 1980s right there are massive democratic uprisings all around Asia, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, China and Myanmar. In 1988, the result of a massive uprising was an election that the National League for Democracy one. They were never allowed to take power from that election. And at the time, as I'm sure a lot of us remember. It was just coming out of the anti apartheid movement right and the NLD model their external relations after Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress. It was just a little child and that happened but I remember, you know, Mandela being released from prison and how gigantic big deal that was. So, by the time I got to college, the boycott was in full, full swing people were calling for Americans to boycott things that were made in Myanmar that did business with the military. And I read about it in this book that probably a lot of you know, trying to know my audience here. Naomi Klein's No Logo and that's sort of what got me hooked into Myanmar activism. The US put a number of sanctions on Myanmar during the period when it was a dictatorship. But 2010 rolls around I was working at US campaign for Burma and the country begins to sort of democratize and the US repeals its import bans. Europe repeals its import ban and Myanmar reforms its investment laws, which really transforms a lot of things about the country. The garment industry explodes about 10 years ago the garment industry maybe had 20,000 people working for it now it has something between six and 700,000 people working for it. A lot of people who had been displaced by those cyclone that Sandra talked about have gone and started working in the garment industry. And a lot of people from the rural areas and obviously the wages are very low, but people, the garment workers themselves have sort of mixed stories about what it's like to work there. To some extent it's liberating to leave the countryside and go to the cities. And it was interviewing one garment worker really recently who said, you know, in the, in the village we used to have to wear a longie down to our toe. But now we can, you know, where would we want and stuff like that. So, you know, the, the massive garment sector. And I happened to have been interviewing garment workers for Jacobin. Maria mentioned right before the coup happened. And so I got to catch up with them after the coup and I got to have a sort of front row seat to the role that they played in inciting which what I think we can call a legitimate revolution against the military government right now. The first week of the coup, you know, when it happened, I think as Sandra was saying, everybody was sort of sitting on the side of their seats, not sure what was going to happen next. And the garment workers who had been striking, there's a massive strike wave in 2019. They sort of knew what to do right they knew, sorry if I could call out the helicopter I would but I don't know if you guys hear it but there's one flying over my house. You know, they said, we know what to do right we've been on strike for periods of 2019. And so they were one of the first groups the medics as well, the railway workers, a number of groups have been organizing massive strikes that have been part of this, this movement the civil disobedience movement against the, against the military funka. And it is very sad for me that have to use the word funka again because I, that's what we used to always call it so. And yeah so this, this massive protest movement has has really taken off it's really inspired a lot of us. I know a lot of us have been up at night sort of watching what has been happening. And so, for the first month, you know there was this massive uprising and there was some crackdown. But the past two weeks and really this past weekend they've been really horrifying crackdowns, including in the garment sector, where the, the military has declared a martial law, and basically it has a free fired zone 100,000 people have left the garment area all the factories are shut down and 10s probably around the number of 50 people have been just like shot in cold blood in the street. During this past weekend and in particular in the garment sector which has been centered to this whole struggle so that's why the second action we're going to be telling you to take is about the garment sector. The first action is supporting HR 134, which was introduced by Representative Levin. And again, to the audience has a number of progressive members on it already Ilhan Omar, Ro Khanna, and environmentally are already co signers. But I'd love to get the rest of the squad and whoever else happens to represent everybody on the call has 62 co sponsors right now. And what it does is it condemns the coup. It, it pushes the Biden administration to freeze assets of the people who perpetrated the coup right before a few days after I don't know why they did this a few days after it would have been smart to do it a few days after the coup. The, the generals tried to pull a billion dollars out of US banks and back into Myanmar and the Biden administration block that. But there's a lot of other authority that they have that they can use to, you know, deny the people who perpetrated the coup access the international financial system and this. This just sort of encourages that. And so that's, that's the first action. The second action is to the brands. As I said, there's a, the garment workers have paid played a massive role in this civil disobedience movement and I would say like they, they are a massive part of the new face of the new Myanmar. As this is happening right if people are missing work due to participating in the civil disobedience movement. Orders have been canceled because the port has been shut down. So it's really important and I think would help the workers organize for, and I've heard this directly from garment workers for brands to say, hey when you come back to work like your job will still be here we're not going to. cancel orders we're not going to. You know, we're going to give extensions etc and we're going to pressure our factories to not fire people for missing work because they're participating in this very important revolution that Sandra was saying things correctly saying has a potential to transform. I know a lot of us are concerned about the Rohingya issue, myself included of course and the. Though I've seeing people in the Rohingya camps doing the sort of revolution sign and then on the streets of Yangon and seen the Gen Z the younger generation, sort of embracing the Rohingya. For the first time really like I worked on this for about 20 years now. So in 2002 and in the early days like there's a dirty secret in the democratic movement where it was like, yeah, the every ethnic group is participating except for the Rohingya they don't invite them to and it was tragic. But that's changing and it's changing through this revolution so this is a. Import that can't like underestimate the importance of this. This moment for Myanmar and I think for all of the different ethnic groups. And I think they really deserve our support and I think these are a few simple actions we can do to pull them in. Yeah, Sandra I don't know if you have anything to add to that. Yeah, I think, you know, with regards to the Rohingya it's, I personally through work have been have conducted violence and mortality assessments, particularly from the August 2017 Exodus among Rohingya who are right now in Bangladesh. And it's just, you know, it's, there's no excuse for the violence that was committed against them and the gross violations of the rights. And so to see people who were so not just oppressed but you know, persecuted on the basis of their religious and ethnic identity to come out and say we, we will join you in this fight is phenomenally inspiring and, you know, the, the sad thing and I don't know I say silver lining in a very sort of morose way, the silver lining about this coup or this the protests and the crackdowns that have ensued is really, you know, it's shown a lot of people who are of this Bama or Bama passing identity that the ethnic are ethnic brothers and sisters have been facing this for centuries. And it's really kind of open their eyes to the violence that the military is willing to commit against its own people. At this point, you know, it's indiscriminate right so I think it's a very powerful sort of statement from the Rohingya to side with the Myanmar people. They are Myanmar people too, by the way. So it's the only thing we can do is really push for a federal democracy that will, you know, guarantee them citizenship that will recognize all ethnic groups equally and really make sure that their health and well I say health but because I'm in health but their rights are protected. Thank you. I wanted to give media a moment to introduce another participant who's been working on this issue for a long time and really appreciate what you have to say Sandra and Mike, and we will be following up with that action that you talked about. Yeah, would you like to introduce Michael. Yes, I see that Michael is in the room and I'd love to call him up to say something he's been working on issues of nonviolent revolutions around the world for I think his whole lifetime and very involved around this one so Michael can you join us from nonviolent national media. Thank you code pink for for hosting this Tuesday night. Action webinar. It's fabulous. I love it. I love coming every week. I try to make it. Thanks everybody for coming tonight to listen about the online Burma and thank you Sandra and Mike for talking. There are some other good people, people with more expertise than than I some other Burmese on this call. I want to give a shout out to Sandra Kong who started up a young generation movement that's really mobilizing a lot of young people here in the United States in the Myanmar Burmese community. It's just very exciting to see the the diaspora movement here really mobilize and unify both the ethnic minorities and the ethnic minority, majority Berman to to unify and there have been some successes here in the United States, the administration has been quite receptive have done some good initial steps by and large the United States on Burma, compared to a lot of countries in the world is been relatively good over the last number of decades. This is primarily because the US doesn't have major geo strategic kind of investments in in the country. And so our policies have been generally pretty good, frankly, and this fairly bipartisan support for good efforts on Burma. The things to watch there are two things I'd like to mention one is that this is a sexist coup. Military cabal were enormously envious and jealous that the predominant leader of the country is a woman who won 83% of the seats in the last election, and their, their political party got destroyed. So, these military guys are enormously envious, and in part acted because of their envy and hatred for Dong San Suu Kyi. I just want to also point out that some of the very early protesters that really got hit the streets, where women and women have been playing a very, very huge role in this in this in all facets of this revolution. So I think seeing it through a gender lens is useful and an important. The other thing I'd say is that, in terms of US policy. By and large, I think it's been pretty good and motivated pretty well. There is what I call the 20% factor, which is that there are people who are into the business of wanting to start up a cold war against China. And frame this as a China kind of containment kind of action. I don't think they're leading the way yet in the administration in US policy. But there's this, there's this group out there that's pushing the group that wants to sell weapons and make money from a cold war on China. By and large, China has been fairly tepid. Historically, there's been big supporters of the military. They've been basically fairly hands off in this in this conflict. And the last thing we want is for Burma to become a geopolitical pawn in a big power game between India. China in the United States and others. Unfortunately, the neighbors of Burma, including India, China, Thailand and the ASEAN countries have not called this a coup. They have not spoken up really for democracy. It's really very sad. And one of the things we can have the US do is try to really pressure these countries, particularly India, which of course pretends to be a democracy and of course increasingly is going towards authoritarian right wing populism. It's very, very disturbing. So we don't want this to become a geopolitical pawn and have a civil war as we're seeing with proxies in Yemen and Libya and Syria. And if we just need the United States to operate in a way that really does put human rights first and doesn't put our business interests first, but operate in a way that also doesn't antagonize China or pretend that this is some sort of China maneuver and and and get this sent off in the wrong direction. I hope that's helpful framing. Thank you and appreciate the time. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. And you mentioned there, a woman named Sandra, another Sandra, who's on the call you said was involved. Sandra called her new important leader of the young generation. We'd love to hear a few words from her if Saunders with us now. Yeah, hi everyone. Thank you, Michael. I didn't know you saw me in the participants. My name is Sandra. I am a second generation Chinese Burmese American. I'm currently a senior in college. And yeah, over the past four weeks have been wrapped up in this whirlwind. I'm really focusing on US level with coalition building mobilizing to get their voice heard and the Congress, also on a global level, I'm leading an organization called global movement for me and my democracy or GM for MD. We're on a global scale trying to find this passion individuals trying to make a difference and connecting them with the large ethnic advocacy organizations around the globe and ultimately rebuilding this horizontal global network to coordinate international action. So some exciting things that we have done already spearhead a UN campaign that's gone 10,000 signatures on a petition that's in support of an open letter by progressive voice Myanmar and hundreds of ethnic civil society organizations on the ground. We're also making small advocacy networks in Germany, UK, Ireland and spearheading some letters and petitions. What's very exciting is on March 27 we're helping coordinate a global protest, just to show support to those on the ground that they have a solidarity and support of the international community. So, yeah, a lot of work on coordination and then in the US, trying to make sure that our voices are heard in Congress. So, yeah, thank you for letting us feel yeah. And I encourage you as well as Mike and the other standard to put your contact information email however you want to be contacted if people have other questions they want to ask and we really appreciate all the work that you're doing, all of you. Medea maybe we can take a few questions and then maybe five minutes of questions and then head into our action item. What do you think. Yeah, I think you have some questions. Ready. Sure. Absolutely. So, I, there's a number of amazing questions that have come in the chat, and one of them is which banks are financing the military. If one of you can can address that question that'd be great. Which banks financing military. Yeah. Well, there are a few, but there are some key banks in Singapore that are holding a lot of the foreign reserves, the money that the military has kind of put away. That's really that really belongs to the state but you know the continued access to these foreign reserves is really what's giving the military the impunity that we're seeing right now. So, I don't, I don't know the banks off of the top of my head they are, as far as I'm aware, a few of them are private banks, private Singaporean banks and so in targeting the freezing of foreign assets, those banks should also be targeted. I know OCB is one of them. Yeah, I'm not going to pretend like I'm an expert, but I'm also happy to look into that and share the information with you on it at a later time. Great, thank you Sandra there's another question here is there a way to support garment workers beyond negotiating with exploitative powerful multinational corporations like Adidas. So try and brainstorm beyond simply getting them back to jobs that pay less than our minimum wage in the United States. I'm happy to answer that. And yeah, I would say about the just the banks like as Sandra saying there aren't really American banks Americans have frozen assets but because of the US's role in the international financial system that we have a lot of influence over American banks because the dollar market etc etc so there's a lot that can be done from here regarding banks elsewhere. As I'm sure you all know but I feel like everyone should know this that 88% of international exchanges have a dollar on one side of them right so the dollar market is very important for all banks that do international work so garment workers. If you really want to help the garment workers, I think you can just directly send the money. Like there's their strike funds. There are there's been massive displacement from the garment sector right now. A little bit of money go a very long way. As you said they make a lot less than US minimum wage. So, you know, even sending them the US minimum wage like would make a really big difference. And there are ways you can you can Google these different solidarity funds that are going on. I could share a few. Go ahead and put them in the chat. We're going to ask raise one more question then we want to go to our calling party so we make sure that people stay for that and are engaged thank you. Maria last question. Well, and yes, thank you to way kind. I'm for putting who are the banks in there in the chat so we go look there. Well, it's a two questions. One is, what are the people in the street think about and since to cheese she's been so discredited internationally because the massacre of the Rohingya. What are the people in the movement now think about her we saw lots of them carrying her pictures, but it seems to many of us that there must be people who understand how what a horrific role she played during that massacre. And then the other is who are your champions in Congress and the administration. Next question first. So I'm so G continues to be a symbol of freedom for many people in spite of, you know, her her actions or inactions rather against the Rohingya. And that comes at a fault because of the ethnic sort of dynamics in the country where a lot of these ethnic strife are sort of under the rug not really addressed and the Bama populace has been easily sort of manipulated by the military in their propaganda to establish Bama supremacy and superiority over other ethnic groups. So, you know, they maintain this idea that the leader leadership is, is correct. And as soon as the G the way people perceive her in the country is that she's kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. She's operating within the Constitution, the military draft. So, you know, her hands are tied. So people don't necessarily associate her directly with the Rohingya crisis. If anything, the excuse, there's a lot of excuse or apologistic sort of notions to her inactions because of the nature of the Constitution Parliament. Okay, and with regard to Congress. I think from my work lobbying and advocating to Congress. I, I'm coming from a very health and human rights perspective so a lot of folks I've spoken to are very invested in global health and global security. I'm coming in from sort of the angle that this is happening in a pandemic and COVID-19 which everybody, you know, is very much familiar with at this point. And the military, for example, has seized a lot of the vaccines that have come into the country, which is concerning in itself but even more concerning in the middle of, you know, a mass nationwide protest. And one of the biggest sort of security concerns there is that inadequate vaccination could lead to vaccine escape or, you know, disruptions to the surveillance system, the disease surveillance system in Myanmar from this nationwide protest will lead to, you know, an earlier to detect any sort of variants that arise. And we're seeing that, you know, in England in Brazil in South Africa where variants have COVID-19 have shown up and it's spread rapidly throughout the population. So appealing, I'm kind of going in and appealing from that angle where the security of disease control in Myanmar is not just, you know, regional or national security issue, it's also a US national security issue. Thank you so much to our speakers, Sandra Mon and Mike Hack and Mike Beer and Sandra Kong. Great to hear from all of you tonight. And now we're going to follow up. Yes, let's open the mics. Let's unmute and thank everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Great job everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Before we go to call to action, did you want to make an announcement about our next call? Yeah, our next call next Tuesday, we're going to be looking at Haiti, solidarity with Haiti. We have two guests, a professor, a radio host, and we will then look at closing Guantanamo and the steps that we need to take to do that and we'll do. All right, so now we're going to go to our calling party. Mary, if you can be so kind and Mary Miller, we thank you. Gratitude to you for navigating the tech here. We have a script that we're going to look at for reaching out to our members of Congress. So you can. Yeah, here we go. Share the screen, asking them to co-sponsor a bill that denounces this coup and calls for the release of those detained. And also we'll send an email to the CEO of Adidas and ask that the company not penalize workers that participate in the civil disobedience. So this is pretty blurry. I'm wondering, maybe we could just put it in the chat if this is an issue. I can try again to share it but of course it is in the chat. It's in there. All right, so let's take a look. And it's also, I think it is, isn't it Mary up on the CodePin Congress website. Yes, it is. Yeah, so you can always check there. But can everybody see the chat. Oh, here we go. Here we go. Yay. Sorry, I had to optimize for video. Perfect. So now I just ask that you have your phone in hand or get to work on your computer, send an email and phone call. Let's do this. So does everybody understand. Because we have some new people. You have the phone numbers there you can find your senator at that on the switchboard. And then you can write to Adidas you can't copy in what Mary said, but you can copy if you go to the chat. And take that link you can copy from there. Can we call our Congress person. Yeah. Yes, that's over there for the switchboard. Okay, I've got his number. No. Is this message in the chat. Yes. I don't see it. If you click on the link. For the, the, the script says H res 134. And so my question is, what do we tell the senator, do we tell him H rest, even though it's a house resolution. Just calling Congress members now unless you want to say to your senator to introduce something equivalent. Okay, thank you. Yeah, if you if you do want to call your senator there is an equivalent in the Senate. Okay. But it's still in committee. So, but they still might co-sponsor. Thank you. And Sandra is still here with us but Sandra Kong if you can please share your organization with us. That way we can support you. It would be wonderful. Sure, I'll drop in the link in my email again one more time. Is this script going to be on your website. I can. Okay. And also, we have a Google group that you can join we have about 800 people on the group, and we send out the blasts, the links, and the scripts to the group as well so it's an easy way to access it. Just let me or Mary now, Mary at code pink.org.