 Now, it's my privilege to introduce our very special guest tonight. Darren Walker is the president of the Ford Foundation, an international social justice philanthropy with a $13 billion endowment and $6 million in annual grant making. He chaired the philanthropy committee that brought a resolution to the city of Detroit's historic bankruptcy and is the co-founder and chair of the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance. Before joining Ford, Darren was the vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation overseeing global and domestic programs, including the rebuild New Orleans initiative after the devastating hurricane Katrina hit the city. Darren has deep roots in the state of Texas and on this campus. He grew up in Baytown near Houston and I know President Johnson would swell with pride in knowing that Darren was in the first class of Head Start in 1965 and would go on in 1982 to graduate from the University of Texas and in 1986 from UT Law School. In 2009, UT recognized Darren with its highest honor, the Distinguished Alumni Award. So in many ways, Darren is coming home tonight. Moderating tonight's conversation will be my friend Dr. Victoria Soto, who was recently named the assistant dean for civic engagement at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. If you watch cable news, you can't miss Vicki, who's a contributor to MSNBC and has, as you can imagine, had a pretty busy time lately. Please welcome to the stage Dr. Victoria Soto and Mr. Darren Walker. Welcome home, Darren. I've heard that you have very deep connections to the Johnson family that run very deeply, very personal. And I wanted to start, I promise we will dig into the book and to your work, but I wanted to start with the connection to the Johnson family and part of the reason that you are here tonight with us. Well, thank you. And thank you for coming. I'm so enormously grateful that you would take time out of your busy schedules to come here. And I'm always happy to come home. Good. And I'm always happy to be in Austin because Austin for me has always been this magical place. And every time I come, I'm reminded of the magic and I'm reminded because more and more New Yorkers seem to be moving here. More and more people I see from New York. The Brooklyn Hipster vibe, I can assure you of that. It's very present. So I really do have a connection and it is manifested many ways. And of course, it really began in 1965 because until I was about nine, we lived in a little town in East Liberty County and a little town called Ames, Texas, which was population 1,200. And in 1965, my mother and I, my sister, we lived in this little shotgun shack on a dirt road off of FM something, one of those FM things. We don't have those in New York, but it was a something FM something. And this woman approached the porch and she said she introduced herself to my mother and she said that she was there to talk about a new program that President Johnson was initiating that summer called Head Start. And would I enroll in Head Start? And of course, my mother didn't really know what Head Start was, but admit that I would actually be out of her hair for a big part of the day. And she promptly enrolled me. And so I have the great honor of being in the first class of Head Start. And when I was here in Austin, Lady Bird was very kind because I was Abbott of the Friar Society and she would have lunches for us. And when I told her that I was in the first class, she started to cry. And she said if my husband was still alive and she started to talk about why Head Start mattered so much to her and her husband and their vision for it and their vision for it was that boys and girls like me would have an opportunity to get on the great mobility escalator in this country, which it indeed provided and continues to provide. It shaped our society. Oh, indeed. Yes. Well, it's so interesting when now for the 50th anniversary, President Obama organized a Rose Garden event. And it was really interesting that the people who were featured, I mean, there was Sylvia Matthews, who was the Secretary of HHS. And I mean, just a number of remarkable people who were all invited. And it was, it didn't happen because there was a crisis at the last moment. And we all had something sidebar because I think something happened in the Middle East or something that got made the program get canceled, unfortunately. And it's just so beautiful. It's the living legacy of President Johnson of what we're surrounded by. We go and we can see the pictures, but this is this is the legacy of President Johnson's presidency. And I would extend out to that the your life's work is a direct legacy of that. And in preparing for this conversation there, and I sat down, I thought philanthropy. Okay, we're gonna talk philanthropy. I'm gonna read the book. What is philanthropy? It's giving, it's charity, usually by wealthy people. But I said, let me go check, let me go read my dictionary, make sure this comports. And it did. But then I start reading your book. And it's a much deeper and a much nuanced understanding of philanthropy. And starting with the Latin and the Greek word, roots. I didn't take Latin or Greek. So I didn't know until I was reading that, you know, the Philo, the love and that and through the love of mankind. And that what you do so beautifully in your book and in your life's work is that you highlight that this love isn't just giving. Giving is very superficial. It may be a first start, but it's actually a much deeper love that is embedded in justice, which you develop throughout the book. And that we will be getting to. But I wanted to start at the beginning, which is understanding the title. So the title is from generosity to justice colon, the gospel of new wealth, a new gospel, a new gospel of wealth. Which was the original one? Help us understand where were the original consumption of philanthropy came from? Well, we've had charity and giving throughout time. But in 1889, Andrew Carnegie wrote a seminal essay called the gospel of wealth. And in the gospel of wealth, he articulated a set of principles that really became foundational for what we think of today as American philanthropy, which is really global philanthropy, because all around the world, they're really copying what we do in this respect. And the idea that Carnegie had was that men like him who had achieved enormous wealth had an obligation to give back, that they had an obligation to be charitable, to be generous, and to think about how they could ameliorate some of the conditions of their fellow men. And Carnegie really, in many ways, provided the foundation that Rockefeller and Ford and so many others use as the basis of their philanthropy. And so that work, which has been just tremendously influential, and that essay has reverberated around the world. I mean, when you're in India with a group of Indian billionaires or a group of Nigerian billionaires, they all know the Carnegie essay. But what Dr. King did in 1968 was to talk about philanthropy in a different way, which has inspired me. And there had been very little scholarship or research on his writings about philanthropy. And so what he said about philanthropy in 1968 was the following. Philanthropy is commendable, but it should not allow the philanthropist to overlook the injustice which makes philanthropy necessary. And so what Dr. King was saying was, actually, there is something fundamentally wrong in a society when there is so much dependence on the alms of a few to help ameliorate the conditions of the masses. And what he was doing was challenging philanthropists. Carnegie didn't challenge, Carnegie actually said we should feel good about ourselves, that there's nothing really wrong with inequality. Carnegie had no problem. His, he said that inequality was simply a function of the superior skills and intellect and intelligence of men like him and Rockefeller, and that it was natural that in American society men like him and Rockefeller would have an inordinate amount of wealth. I mean, this was at a time when he and Rockefeller had literally 2% of the entire GDP of the United States was vested in these two men. And in their view, they saw nothing wrong with that. Dr. King actually saw something fundamentally wrong. And so what he said was to challenge the idea that generosity is enough. And he talked about philanthropy through a lens of justice. And through a lens of justice requires the philanthropist to actually get uncomfortable. And it requires you to not have an analysis when you see something, when you see a homeless person in front of Grand Central Station as I do too often, many. It is not to say, oh, what a shame or oh, what bad luck has been visited upon these men and women. It's to say, what injustice? How unjust it is that we can be here in New York City, one of the wealthiest cities in the world with $150 million apartments. And there are people literally on the streets in the winter above the grates so they can have heating on the street. And that there is something fundamentally unjust in the society when you have that kind of extremity of both privilege and deprivation. So one of your chapters gets at the issue of the fundamental attribution error, which as a political psychologist, that warmed my heart in hearing that. So the fundamental attribution error is basically saying that good things that happen to you is because you're good, you work hard, you're smart, and not because of larger environmental or institutional factors. And bad things that happen to other people is because they're lazy, they didn't work hard. So you do a very, very nice job of linking together the fundamental attribution bias, which we're talking about, the barons of yesteryear had, and privilege. And how privilege is a lens that distorts how we see philanthropy. So if you could walk us through understanding privilege and not just racial privilege or gender privilege, but a diversity of privilege. Well, I think the question of how we see ourselves in this country, particularly those of us who are successful. And I think I am, I mean, I think I've been, I am one of those people who do you know, the economists love to study you, you're born in the bottom desile that you are in the top 1%. There's a lot of interest in how that happens in a society and in our society that's happening less. But the point is what we successful people aren't often willing to do is to engage in the ways in which our success was facilitated by institutions, by others. And particularly because we in this country have a narrative that deifies the individual, and that reinforces this notion of individual hard work ethic, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, etc. That narrative is so deeply enmeshed in our collective psyche as a country. And for individuals, and I experienced this a lot because living in a place like New York, you do live among enormously wealthy people. And often when you engage in the question of their success, they are very uncomfortable and unwilling to engage in this conversation of the bias, to engage in the conversation of their own privilege and how certain institutions, whether it's government and often it's government, but those other institutions and just look. And that actually paved the way for their success. And that is, I think, a barrier to having the kind of justice that we need to have in this country. Because until we are able, until we privileged people are able to own our privilege and our advantage, and the challenge for America today is that question of, are we going to be a society that continues to be a society where hope and opportunity are the, sort of, in our DNA. That's been what has sustained me. I always felt that my country was cheering me on. And I worry that little boys and girls who come from places like Ames, Texas, or the South Bronx today don't feel like their country is cheering them on. And I believe that the question of hope is the fundamental question. Because this is a country that rests on that idea of optimism and hopefulness. And so I believe that actually the greatest threat to the American democracy is not a pandemic, it's hopelessness. Because a hopeless society, a hopeless people will do desperate things. And I think we have to really recognize how inequality, the growing inequality that we have in our society, how that really exfixiates hope. Because it makes more remote the idea that one can get on that mobility escalator. I always knew I was going to get on that escalator. Yes, there were times in my life, and there were certainly experiences or contexts that were difficult and challenging. But I knew. But I also knew how privileged I was. Even I knew that when my mother took me and my sister away from that little racist town in Louisiana where I was born, I knew that I would have a better life than my cousins who remained there. Most of whom the boys ended up in the Pinnah Tintry system in Louisiana. So I know how privileged I was because I came to Texas and they didn't. And so I ended up at the University of Texas and they ended up in Angola. And I know that my life was transformed by that experience, but I too could have ended up in Angola had my mother not taken me away from there. So you had a privilege of geography because your mother decided to move, which opened the door to other privileges. You talk about a very conscious self-reflection of your privilege as being a man. You're a male in a patriarchal society for the most part. And even being a gay man in a patriarchal society. There we go. I mean let's just be very specific and understanding what real privilege is. I mean I have lived without privilege and I have lived with privilege. And privilege is pretty good. I mean there is there is something really good and you know it when it happens. When I was when I left Austin and went to New York and my first summer at the law firm it was you know and anyone who was a goes to work at a law firm, a big law firm you know you you sort of get turned over your life, gets turned over to the billable hours. But that that summer this the woman who took care of the the new associate said oh take this package and walk over to 55 Wall Street to the what was then First City National Bank. And when you go take this and open your checking account and they'll take care of you and whatever. And now the only checking account I'd ever had was the you know the student federal credit union checking account at the you know here at Austin. And so I go and I'm standing in line it was a hot day and I'm standing in line and this woman is walking through the line as we're all and and I said oh ma'am this is I'm just here to open an account and she looks at it and she says oh sir you're in the wrong line and I said oh okay and she said please you must come with me and so she takes me away from this line and then she takes me up these stairs into this thing and it said private bank and I thought I thought a bank was a bank I didn't know there was a private bank and so and so you know I mean she takes me and I sit down with this lady and she starts to tell me all of the things the benefits of the private bank your checks don't bounce you get to have I mean she just started and all of these things I mean you know growing up the way I did I mean my mother every I mean believe me every week every dollar every penny was to keep a check from bouncing and so the notion they just bid a bank and doesn't they don't bounce because you've got money coming in and off so it was really remarkable and it was it was such an eye-opening experience and it is when you live with privilege the way those of us who do live with privilege we should be asking ourselves what are we doing with this privilege and one of the real challenges for privileged people is that privilege buys us insulation from the experience that most people in this country have right and one of the people one of the reasons parents say to their kid I worked hard so that you wouldn't have to have so you'd have privilege right so I worked hard so that you wouldn't have to experience what I had to experience so you would be insulated so you would not have to worry about these things well that's what privilege buys you but the question that we have in our society today is that those of us who have privilege use too much of that privilege to compound our own privilege and that is why the there are fewer and fewer kids low-income kids getting into elite schools it's one of the reasons I so admire what's happened here on this campus and the effort to ensure that tuition and the basic costs for low-income moderate-income kids who are accepted to not have that be a barrier to come to UT but it's a huge barrier for a lot of deserving young people and it's partly why there is so much anxiety and so much anger among a lot of young people today well currently as we see the political context we can feel that anxiety bubbling up what I want to bring into the conversation selfishly is is the idea of public policy because in in your thinking about philanthropy you take a non-traditional stance on it where there is the charitable giving so you know yes we can feed the the homeless give them jackets they're cold but how do we deal with the root cause not the consequence that they're out there on the cold but how do we deal with the root cause which inevitably brings in policy it's macro institutional structures that we're dealing with which isn't easy but that in your view of going from generosity to justice that this is an institutional question and ultimately a policy one so I I'd love for you to talk to us about how you see these different pieces coming together I think one of the real concerns I have and that I write about in the book is that many philanthropists have propagated this idea that philanthropy can solve social challenges philanthropy can test can model can seed but only through public policy can you scale and one of the great frustrations of mine with many philanthropists is their hostility to government and policy and their belief that their own private ingenuity will solve the problem and there is a I believe a amongst some not all amongst some there is an arrogance that because I've been successful I know how to solve this problem right and the streets of philanthropy is littered with the bodies of men and women who were successful who thought if these school teachers would just listen to what I say we'll fix public schools or if these environmentalists will just do what I say we'll figure out climate change I mean this is not going to happen without a robust and vibrant government that does not mean that I am advocating for an enormous bureaucracy necessarily but I am advocating for the idea that government plays a critical role and I worry I mean I was on I was at Stanford a few months ago on a panel with a well-known billionaire and he and I were being interviewed and it was it was actually a very civil it was a lovely conversation and and it was going along fine and the interviewer said something about about how we would scale this and he said well we government can't do it and like well actually government can do it I mean government is probably the only way it can actually be scaled it's a really great pilot but and he said well but government's incompetent and I said well but government is us you know and he said government isn't me I just like lost it I said what who was your civics teacher what do you mean government no I mean like literally no he literally said government isn't me and and I was I was flummoxed I was I was completely enraged I mean I couldn't believe that that this person who's you know I just couldn't believe it and I had a hard time and we kind of went off the rails the conversation because I just didn't want to let him believe or get off that stage without admitting that all of the infrastructure for his technology company was like based on government all of the early experimentation that made it possible to provide the platforms for his technology were all early investments by the Department of Defense and I mean whatever but the point is none of that seemed to be acknowledged he just sort of turned up one day after Stanford and like it was just made a technology and by himself you know the mental attribution error yeah there you are at its best I mean but the point is I guess I'm saying government has a role in public policy and we know this I mean the very best our country has been in fulfilling its ideals of justice and opportunity were made possible because of public policy every every step this country has made for more inclusion for more social and economic opportunity has been facilitated because of good public policy and we will not make progress if we do not have a public sector that is filled with smart people who go to schools like the lbj school and believe that to work in the public sector is an honorable calling as president johnson did and as john f kennedy did how is it that we have allowed the public to be so degraded and anything that is public a public park a public school public housing I mean public transportation you these are things that can't possibly be good or excellent or serve the people well how is it I mean I don't believe that that's our future until I have I sometimes clash with some people because I I believe that it's not enough for a philanthropist I live just a block away from Central Park it's a wonderful park and it's wonderful that for those of us who live around Central Park and who are willing to pay for the Central Park Conservancy privately to keep Central Park beautiful that is great but if you go to parks in the Bronx and Staten Island there are parks that look like third world countries and so we have got to have a public park system that is robust and that serves those citizens because if it's just those of us who can afford to pay for the park for our kids and ourselves while others who depend on the public system are relegated to developing world conditions we do not have America I mean that is the antithesis of America that's the antithesis of our ideals so going to the polar opposite of this gentleman that you're talking about going to a happier note you write about a millionaire billionaire one of the two in Seattle who sees public policy readily working together with philanthropy to get at the root causes of of justice so if you could talk to us Darren about what happened in Seattle the raising of the minimum wage and how you see this as a model going forward well I highlight my friend Nick and our because he's he's very unusual I mean he's a really interesting guy he was an early investor in Amazon and he is absolutely one of those billionaires who has done very well but Nick fully owns his privilege and he fully owns how lucky he is to have stumbled upon Jeff Bezos you know when he was 26 or whatever and as all these guys do I mean it's I mean you spend time with them and you know when you sort of hear about sort of just how people were just were potluck roommates or they lived down the hall from each other in the dorm or whatever these things that then translate years later into billionaire status you do begin to understand how much luck plays in this but in the case of Nick I think he's really taken on the the issue of of inequality and in Seattle where it's pretty severe and where the business community organized against a living wage campaign that that workers and others were organizing there Nick was very much a financier of the campaign that ultimately was successful but it was really interesting for him to go up against a lot of it some of his friends and some people who thought he was sort of a showboater and you know when in fact he truly he understands that for people like him the the question of giving back is not enough and this is what Carnegie and Rockefeller said was our job is to give back Nick asked the question what are guys like me willing to give up and that's a different that's the difference between Carnegie and King what King was saying is that some of this privilege that we privilege people have in order for America to be America we are going to need to give up and it's very hard it is very hard I try I do all sorts of little things I was you know a couple of summers ago in Southampton out in Long Island I was at a dinner party and everyone there except for me and this happens a lot in New York had gone to you know private schools or Ivy schools because again this is one of the reasons I'm so proud I went to this school and and from this region because in the northeast you know everyone it's so interesting because no no I mean because because it's it's it's um this is this is why um places like Texas are so appealing to many people from places like New York because in a place like New York you can go socially and in certain institutions like mine and others and everyone you meet was educated at private schools it's one of the reasons I have written in to every panel that I'm on when they reprint the little brochures about all the panelists that I am a product of public education only exclusively because everybody else when you're flipping the pages I went to y'all however press I mean you could just name the schools and um I was with a group of these people who are all good progressives I mean they consider themselves good progressives and I we were talking about inequality and I said well to a couple of them well who so this person I was addressing went to Harvard and you know and this is the other thing I mean he was I think fourth or fifth generation but it's not unusual to meet people who are fifth sixth seventh generation um in New York and I said I think if we really want to get at inequality we should end the affirmative action legacy programs legacy program is a the fact that your great-grandfather went to Yale should in no way give you any benefit and literally everyone at the table everyone at the table were like almost violently responding to to that do you know and I thought well but how are we going to and it's really hard and I tried the same thought experiment with the group with the group of African-American friends who and again in a place like New York you've got a group of set of friends who are you know generation ago were like we were all you know poor low income whatever you wanted to categorize who are now you know doing well have big apartments on Central Park West I mean all sorts of right and and they were like against it and now what was interesting was was I I sort of could understand like this one person said to me so let me just understand this we finally get in like we black people right we finally get to be legacies and you want to end the program and and you know I mean it's it's like my mother my mother once said to me when she'd always had this dream of like buying a big ranch house because she used to clean big ranch houses but and so when she you know when I could about her big right and so I said oh but we were looking at houses and I look at this house and she said I like this house and I said oh but it's like not energy efficient this mother this house is not energy efficient you need to find a house that's going to be more energy efficient and she said you know in my something my mother could um you know I just think this is great when it's time for me to buy the house I want I get a lecture on field efficiency and why you know a generation ago white people were buying these houses and nobody lectured them about it nobody told them that they had to worry why did that now when I get a chance to own the house that I want you you know invite me to the party and then close the bar I mean so you know but anyway but that's that's sort of what what this person said I mean they said did not but I said to him this friend of mine you know I'm actually not worried about your kids I mean your kids who isn't going to accept a legacy African-American at chote or groton where the I mean who isn't going to accept I mean you know with good I mean very qualified and doesn't need financial aid really do you really think like let's think about who you used to be who you used to be is who I'm worried about getting into schools now not your kids and and that's the challenge for us so the discomfort well that's the discomfort and that's where for philanthropy when you talk about privilege and how we use that privilege as philanthropists to either compound our privilege to give to the things that matter to us it's one of the good pieces of research on philanthropy of large gifts large gifts primarily go to the things that matter personally to the donors it's why we have literally I think there's something like 70 some number of individual breast cancer foundations many of them funding the exact same thing but and you understand why because it's deeply personal someone lost a wife a daughter and they want to honor them but there's no foundation medical research foundation privately working on sickle cell because there aren't any philanthropists who can establish private charity private foundations to work on one of the biggest killers of African Americans well and and on this topic of racial justice broadly defined you spend quite a bit of time on it especially with the turning point of charlotte's phil and then also turning to i'm going to tie an el paso here because i think it's it's in the same vein is that how do you see american philanthropy intersecting with advancing racial justice are are we going in the right direction or are we still too far behind it in terms of of our privilege and not being able to see past that well i really do believe that we have made i mean what's what's amazing to me is how far we have come in this country and how how much of a commitment this country has made and yet how far we have to go and and so i am deeply grateful to live in this country and be an american and every day i am able to hold both of the narratives of this country the narrative of its nobility and its greatness and the aspiration the ideal to be a country that has never existed before a country that truly provides for a place where it does not matter who you are where there are not barriers to your fulfilling your dreams other than your own ability and determination that's our aspiration but we know that we have a history and that we have designed a country that produces results that are antithetical to those noble aspirations and so we if we are to make progress further progress we have to be willing to engage in deconstructing some of that construction and across all of our society we are a function of systems and structures culture and history and if we look at every facet of our life through a systems analysis which is what we do in philanthropy you understand why we are in the situation we're in whether it's our economic system which is now designed to generate more benefit to people like me right so people like me who have assets have been winners for the last 20 or 30 years we have one at a rate that is much greater and we have accumulated wealth at a much more accelerated pace than we ever did in the past right so it's great but it's actually not great for far too many so that system the system of mass incarceration it surprises people when they delve into the data but it actually shouldn't surprise anyone that we have a system of over incarceration of black and brown men primarily but increasingly women and poor whites and we have that system because that's the system we designed when you design a system with cash bail private prisons I mean when you design a system you are going to generate a systems response that reflects those inputs and so when we look across every facet of our lives in this country those systems are producing the bad outcomes that we get and so in order to actually address the racial challenge we have to look at how the systems and structures have to be deconstructed and in some cases destroyed because they are so harmful and they have to be rebuilt and that's really hard work and it's particularly hard work during a time of inequality because the times in which we have made our greatest progress in this country has been when people have felt as a society as a nation most hopeful or had leadership who provided vision and hope even during difficult times we weren't a rich nation at the height of the depression but our leader provided us with a vision of how we as a country would endure and emerge from that time during the 1960s we were a nation that was economically very secure it made it possible quite frankly for middle class white people to be to be open to talking about sharing it is very hard today because middle class and working class white people are hurting in this country and they are not interested in a conversation about racial justice and equity because for many of them they feel the pressure because they know what many economists have documented quite extensively that for the first time in American history we have a generation of downwardly mobile white people and the implications for that for this nation is profound it makes it really difficult to engage in conversations about fairness and justice and equity I had the experience and I learned this first hand because I was in I was in LA a few years ago and like is sometimes the case if you go to a city and you're going to make five stops and you've got to you'll just have a driver and you'll and that on this occasion I had a driver who was a white man late fifties and I'm the sort of talking to a person who talks to people and so we started talking and and because we were going to be together all day and he said he told me what his life story was which was that he'd had a really good job but that the the company had offshored many of the jobs and he was laid off and he ended up in debt and he was literally driving a carry car to make ends meet but it was really clear that he was in a downward spiral economically and we just talked about what that felt like for him and part of it and we really I think bonded but but I certainly he was comfortable telling me how he felt about all the immigrants in LA County he was comfortable telling me how he how angry he was about what was happening in this country to people like him and it it really hit home for me uh on a at a at a visceral level what is happening to people like him and while I of course have a sensibility about the racial injustice historic injustice in this country things feel pretty unjust to people like him and the sort of empathetic part of my brain understand why he's angry and I actually don't blame him for being angry because he's done what he was supposed to do he is played by the rules and yet this country has let him down so we can't have this country let too many people down have too many of us feel left out and left behind because people will do desperate things yes regrettably we've seen too much of that in terms of the acts of of recent years of recent weeks I would even say you talk about philanthropy being for everyone so as as we come to an end here I I want you to tell us how all of us that who aren't the billionaires and the millionaires but how we can work toward that social justice from the generosity to the social justice well I think that you know one of the things about philanthropy that is very true is that it's not about big wealth I mean I think people think about philanthropy with names you know Rockefeller the law like Rockefeller or moody or whatever it may be in in your place but actually everyone in this room is a philanthropist most giving in this country is not done by institutions like Rockefeller and Ford it's done by everyday Americans who give to their religious organization give to schools give to their local boy scouts or whatever it may be that is philanthropy and even though I just made the case for scale and working to impact the largest numbers of people the most important thing you as an individual philanthropist can do is touch another individual it is not about scale it is about asking what am I doing to help another human being in my community that's philanthropy and one of the reasons I feel lucky every day is when you're in philanthropy you are in the business of hope you are in the business of making things possible for people in the business of helping dreams to be realized and there is something enormously gratifying and satisfying about that and so I would just leave you with this idea that in spite of the challenges that we face I'm reminded of what Dr. King said in 1968 just a few weeks before he was murdered he was in a very bad place because he had been abandoned by many of the establishment he had been because he had come out against the Vietnam War he had the black radicals criticizing him and he was worried about what was happening in the cities that were starting to burn and the seeming disintegration of American society and he said to his friend Harry Belafonte America's house is on fire where are her firemen and I am reminded of that today and when I come to events like this I look out into the room and all the firemen and women are here they're all in the house and this is what in every community there are the people who are the firefighters for justice who believe through their fundamental adherents to their faith to some calling that they can make a difference and the good news is there's good news from that beautiful point I'd like to thank Darren Walker one more time thank you