 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now many of us recognize these words. They were written by Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner. And yet our nation's history has not put these words into action. It took over a hundred years for women to get the right to vote, and many decades after that for black people to get the legal right to vote. And it was not until 1968 that housing segregation was made illegal, and is in law, if not today in practice. So the differences that divide white people and people of color in this country's history and present-day experience are important to understand and appreciate if we are going to build a world of justice and equal opportunity. So what is our responsibility now to deal with that history? That is some of what we're going to be discussing tonight. We will hold a conversation across race and across generations. And my name is Michael Jacoby Brown. I live here in Arlington, where I've lived for many years with my wife and my daughter. And here is Alensa Michelle, and she can introduce herself. Thank you, Michael. Thank you for having me. My name is Alensa Michelle, and I am a community organizer, and I live in Boston. My name again is Michael Jacoby Brown. I live here in Arlington, and I'm also a community organizer. And I was born in 1947. And in 1950, my dad, a World War II vet, was able to buy a little tract house in Long Island, just outside New York City, where he had grown up. And at that time, Alensa's family, being dark-skinned, was not able, would not have been able, because they were black, to buy that same house. Now, I was only three years old, so I didn't really know that. But I did know that all my neighbors were white. The elementary school I went to was all white. The high school I went to was all white. It was actually divided into white folks. But the white folks were either Jewish, like me, or Catholic and Italian. And there were some Irish people. There were no Protestants. So that was a lot of my experience growing up. And it wasn't until I came to Boston about 40 years ago that I started learning about race and meeting on a regular basis and working with people of color. And so I'd like to contrast that with Alensa's experience growing up. She was born a lot later than 1947. Thanks for that. So I was born in the 80s. And my family, like many immigrants, particularly of Caribbean background, they had came to Boston as part of a wave of Caribbean immigrants that were coming in between the late 60s through the mid-80s, where there was a big influx at the time. And it was hard for them when they first got here because both of my parents are highly educated individuals. My father was a chemist. My mother was a school teacher. And they both had difficulty finding jobs in their background, simply because they were from a foreign country. Their degrees and their credits were not being recognized by the United States government. And so my mother ended up working as a store clerk. And my father worked at a shelter as the stocking shelves. And so I was born soon after they arrived. And so it was myself, my older sister, and my parents. And we were struggling to get by living in Matapan, which has a lot of negative stigma to it. But in my experience as a child growing up in the community, we felt very protected and very supported by our neighbors in ways that I haven't experienced into my adulthood, in places I've lived in since. But we also didn't have a lot of means. We grew up with little income. And Matapan was basically the only place in Boston that we could afford. And so that's really how the influx of Haitian, Jamaican, Trinidadian immigrants that clustered in that place gathered, mostly out of necessity as opposed to out of a particular desire to be there. And I think that's an important distinction to be made when we talk about immigrant migrations. Folks who emigrate into the United States don't come solely because they want to start these ethnic enclaves. They're forced into it because resources are limited and they end up being forced together and rely on each other in ways that they could not rely on existing government systems to support them. I mean and just across generations there's a huge difference. I mean one, my parents were both born in about 1920, my dad in 1920, in Budapest, Hungary, my mom in 1921 in New York City. And being white we're able to buy that little house in 1950 for about $16,000. And being of my generation I was able to go to college. I went to Columbia College in the city of New York starting in 1965 the tuition was $1,800. And my dad was working as a commercial artist. I don't think he made a lot of money, maybe he made $10,000. So the annual tuition and I took out a loan and got a job was about one-fifth of his income. Now that tuition today my guess is probably closer to $60,000. So to have that, you can check me on the math, you'd have to make about $300,000 a year for the tuition to be one-fifth of your income. So I came out of college with about I think it was something like $5,000 in loans which I was able to pay off fairly quickly. I worked as a high school teacher for a couple years, they knocked off 10% for those two years and the rest I paid off pretty quickly. Now people of your generation have a very different experience. When I was coming up we really didn't worry about getting a job and I didn't think about it and I didn't realize how lucky I was. And the experience of people born in 1980 or after is really different. I don't know if you could tell me a little bit more about that and what your experience was like. Yeah that's a really good point. I think particularly when it comes to education attainment and the difficulty of being able to afford college nowadays it really is a lot of crippling debt and it adds to a whole series of other areas of debt that I think young people are forced with today that isn't really talked about and I think that also fuels a lot of the behaviors and I think a lot of the division across the generations because I'm not a millennial, I consider myself more of a generation X which is sort of folks born in late 70s to early 80s but those who were born shortly after me they're really struggling. And I'd say I struggle too but I definitely think it's gotten even worse for those who were born after me largely because inflation rates are much higher now. Everything is based on a credit system far more than it was before. I mean even if we were to think in the past there were programs like the Works Progress Administration program which was established after the Great Depression. There were a lot of incentives and ways that helped Americans get back on their feet and get back into the workforce. We just had a recession in 2008 and there were none of those kinds of programs that were made available to folks who were losing their homes to foreclosure, people who were losing their jobs, who were being laid off. I know tons of nonprofit organizations for example that were closed around that period of time because a lot of the private investor funding that they were getting that was sort of being translated into donor funds, they lost that ability. And there was no kind of institutional support for folks going through that and so now folks are coming out of it with a broader sense of fear and anxiety and I would even argue a little bit of resentment that young people just aren't being supported the way. The promise of America, sort of the sense of prosperity seems to be only limited to a certain group and that's only exacerbated by race and class challenges. I mean I didn't know this of course in 1950 that your family couldn't move to the suburbs but that was federal policy. I show this video part of a three-part series called Race, the Power of Anillusion to a lot of white people. The second part is called The House We Live In and it shows that it was federal policy in writing that black folks would not be given mortgages or even white folks weren't or no one was able to get a mortgage from the federal government, from the federal housing authority if there are any black people living in the neighborhood. So white folks like my family were able to build up some assets because those homes in the suburbs in the 50s and 60s appreciated in value but black folks were stuck in the cities not being able to move into the huge suburbs that were being built all around those cities in the 50s and 60s. So the rents were higher, they weren't able to build any assets so that history is still with us today. Absolutely. So the average asset I think of an African-American family in Boston is something like $8, according to the Federal Reserve report. Yeah, the average assets of the average white family is something like $150,000 or $250,000. That's a huge difference and that is basically based on the racist covenants that was set up 50 and 60 years ago. And I think I showed this video to my Jewish congregation, 35 very well educated white people and I said how many of you know this? Raise your hand. I don't think a hand went up. We don't teach this in school so a lot of white people just don't understand the history and assume that everybody could make it if they try hard and it's your own fault if you are not middle class that you didn't try hard. But what I've learned, I mean just coming to Boston, the differences certainly in the schools where most black folks are forced to live and have been for 50, 60 years in the cities in Boston like you, those schools are so different from the schools in the suburbs. I tell this story and you've heard this more times than I can to repeat and I tell this to every white person I know. I was checking for a friend of mine who was running for city council in Boston at the Higginson Lewis Middle School in Boston. I hadn't been there before. It was in November, it was a cold day and the kids were all, first of all running around in the gym where I was sitting down with their coats on because the heat was controlled by downtown Boston. The room was freezing and then I tell everyone I know, well I had to go to the bathroom to urinate and I walked into the bathroom and there's the toilet sitting on a piece of wood or a couple pieces of wood with huge gaps in between the wood so I could see the dirt, the ground, the earth right beneath that. Now what does that say to our children about their worth, what we care about them and that kind of, those bathrooms have been like that for over 40 years, I've been in a lot of those and unfortunately most white folks experience what my teacher and mentor Valerie Batz who founded, one of the founders of visioning calls the avoidance of contact because most white people, not that they wake up in the morning and say, hmm, how am I going to avoid meeting any folks of color? It's just the way the world is set up. They live in Wayland, they live in Brookline or Newton and they work on 128 or they work downtown and their world doesn't include people that look like you by and large and they have never been to any of those Boston public schools. It's not on their running route and because of that avoidance of contact, those conditions I think are easier to perpetuate. Absolutely, absolutely. And I would even say they definitely perpetuate even today. I mean when I was in high school, I attended a Boston public school and we used to joke, my peers and I would joke that it was, we would call it the welfare school because we had no doors on our bathroom stalls and so we would have to basically maneuver with one another whenever we had to use the restroom and it went on like this for a few years before they finally had the stalls, the doors reinstated so to speak. And even going back to your point about housing, on the housing front while there isn't an overt form of redlining and segregation anymore, banks still continue to do practices where they don't give out mortgages to certain people of color from certain communities or they give out mortgages at much higher premium rates. We've also seen a lot of examples of people who want to start a small business are forced to show an extensive amount of years of work as to prove that they have the capacity to pay off their loans and then they're being denied loans to even start small businesses. And this is a huge impact on communities of color, particularly communities that have been historically marginalized. And it is an interesting thing when we think about this idea of avoidance of contact because the avoidance of contact means the inability to learn and grow and change. I recently went to a dinner party in Cambridge and I was invited by a really wonderful family, folks who identify themselves as progressives. And one of the women that was there was sharing a story about how she works in Boston but every time she's having to go into Boston she feels a sense of nervousness and she just feels so much better once she gets across the river and it gets back into Cambridge. And so it was one of those things where everyone else around the table chuckled like, oh yeah, it almost as if they could relate to that experience. And I had to pause for a minute and say, hmm, one because it's actually not the first time that I've heard that comment. I've heard that comment a couple times before. But two, you know, what is the symbolism that one assumes because they're crossing the trawls into another city and moving out of Boston that suddenly they're safer? You know, one really has to challenge their perceptions about Boston. And, you know, let's face it, there is racial and prejudicial, like, you know, underpinnings to a comment like that. And why so? And so it was one of those opportunities, I think, to really spark a conversation. But I knew that there are folks around the table who would not be comfortable even having a conversation. So beyond just avoidance of contact, there's also just the avoidance of discussion, and that we really need to create spaces like we're doing right now to have these discussions. Yeah, and I think that it's not easy to do, and I think it's really up to the white folks to move into black territory. I mean, Boston is still very, very segregated. I mean, you go out to the suburbs, you go out to Newton, Wayland, where I'm familiar, Sudbury. You don't see any black folks. I mean, and you come into Boston, and it's very segregated in Dorchester, Roxbury, although it's changing because some of those neighborhoods are getting real expensive. Yeah, they're gentrifying. Yeah, but the avoidance of contact is part of what Valerie Batts calls modern racism. It's different than the old-fashioned racism of segregated water fountains and, you know, legally segregated schools. Now things are not legally segregated, but in fact, the modern racism of the example of avoidance of contact is part of that. And it makes me sad. I mean, I led this course at my congregation in Sudbury called Facing Race and talked about the avoidance of contact, and I was trying to say, okay, so how can we change that? So a few people who live in Wayland and Newton said they'd like to go to Dorchester, and so I said, fine. You know, they didn't know where to go, so I said, I'll drive you. You know, it'll be safe, you know, and I'll introduce you to some people who I know. And I was driving down Blue Hill Ave, and these folks live in Newton and Wayland, I think, and it's maybe, what, 20 miles, 15 miles? They've lived there 30, 40 years. They had never been there. And I was driving down the street and I'm thinking like, oh, my God, I was like, wow, they had never been there. And I just felt this sadness about how people's lives can be so separate and segregated, and, you know, it was actually fairly cool. I feel like we went to this smoothie shop on Washington Street that had just opened up. I know you're talking about it. Yeah, it was the best smoothies I've ever had, and I introduced them to some people I've worked with at the Codman Square, N.D.C., and a woman that was running the Campfield Tenants Association, and they were real open. And this is like, wow, it was, but I guess I felt kind of sad that for all these years this had never happened. And I'm not sure exactly how to make it happen. I mean, I can pick these people up and say, I'll meet you and I'll drive you and you'll be safe and I know people and it's okay, but that's not the way things normally work. And it shouldn't be up to the black folks like you to make that happen. That's like, and to expect you to go to Newton or expect you to go to, I mean, I held this, you and I organized this intergenerational conversation and I specifically held it at MAMLEO, the Mass Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers at 61 Columbia Road. Thank you, Larry Ellison, the former president for giving us the place for free and it was warm. And I particularly held it there because I know having worked in Boston in a fair amount in the black community that we're very turf-oriented here in Boston and I don't know if you want to talk about that but it's so obvious to me as a white person how segregated things are and how white folks will feel comfortable in some places and black folks will feel comfortable in other places and it shouldn't be up to the, for me, you know, the people who've been on top for so long, people like me, the white folks to ask the black folks who've been on the bottom for so long to come to them. It should be the opposite because no one's going to stop me for driving while white in Dorchester, I don't think. I mean, it hasn't happened, I've driven there a lot but I know my black friends will get stopped for driving while black in Brookline or Newton or in Dorchester too. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I know that's happening. I don't know if you have any other thoughts about the intergenerational stuff because I know people of my generation are often... I don't know what are we disappointed about. I think sometimes the stuff about the super-reliance on social media and the lack of face-to-face contact often makes me sad. I mean, I ride the subway almost every day, I was riding it today and almost everyone now as opposed to 20 years ago is on their cell phone and no one's talking to anyone. I mean, I'm the exception. I'll try to strike up a conversation with someone assuming they're not on their cell phone but occasionally I find someone. But I don't know if you have any thoughts about how that has influenced our ability just to communicate across generations. Yeah, I think the... So there's a couple thoughts. I think the technology has offered a wealth of new opportunities. We can communicate with folks in different parts of the world now by holding our handheld cell phones. And yet at the same time, it's made us very complacent connecting with people who are closer to us. And I've seen... I mean, even in my own family, one time my sister called me from upstairs on her cell phone and I said, I said, you better come downstairs right now. I am not going to answer this question to you over the phone. I know my kid does that. She'll text me when she's upstairs. We have a small house still. You've been there. And that just drives me crazy. But it's easy for younger people to not have to facilitate conversation with each other nowadays. And to me, that also I think is tragic because it means that we're learning to connect with each other less and we're relying on external environmental influences more. And if we're still living in a racial society, like there's no such thing. I would argue with anyone who claims that the United States is post-racial society. We're not post-racial society. But it makes it even harder to have these types of courageous conversations that we need to have by avoiding contact. And now it's so much easier now to avoid contact as Valerie Rath talks about because of this influence of technology. And I also think there also is some structural things too. Because the culture has shifted so much, it also makes it harder for people to communicate across the generations. I hear a lot from elders that I talk to who say things like, that's not how we used to do things. Things are so different now. There are new rules. And I don't know what those rules are and how does anyone explain these new rules to me. And I think for a lot of young people it's equally the same way. They're like, well, the way you used to do things is not the way it was anymore. There are new ways of things getting done. So how do we sort of meet each other in the middle? What are you talking about? What kind of new rules? I think just new methods of communication. There's just sort of new ideologies. There are a lot of new terms that are part of the millennial lexicon that's not part of… Oh, like I'm canceling her. Yeah, like cancel culture. I was like, what is that? But there's also some new things that also have been very progressive as well. There's terms that are non-binary. Like that's not a term that we used 10 years ago. Right? There is a whole set of new… Even the word social equity, we never really used social equity the way we use it now. We used to say things like equality. But equity is a much better term to define what's needed because it's not so much about giving everybody equal share. If we all started off at different places, then we need to actually have the appropriate amount to then get to equality. So in some ways, these new sort of ways of connecting and communicating have been very helpful. But not everybody's having the same conversation. So how do we have that broader conversation together as I think what we have to figure out? Yeah. I think sometimes it can be helpful. I mean, I was watching this Robin D'Angelo video today, the woman that wrote. And it's short and it's good. And I think that's great that people can see that. And I think it's more helpful to have the face-to-face conversations and people really getting to know each other. And that is not something that can happen on a YouTube video. On a tech store, yeah. And it can happen in a, you know, once a year, Martin Luther King breakfast. Let's all hold hands and sing We Shall Overcome. I mean, a lot of my friends hate singing that song. It's like, we're done with We Shall. Yes, exactly. And I've only learned that by over years and years and years by listening. Yes. You know, and to me, it's interesting. One of the first people, Roger Newell may as memory be a blessing who died, a black man who I worked with in the late 80s as an organizer. And he was very patient. He would like explain things like, it was sort of like anthropology. This is a different culture. He would explain, I can't remember what selling wolf tickets was. That was like an expression. And then it was, he gave me this book by a guy named Copeman, I think, K-O-C-H-M-A-N called Conflict in Black and White. And it was just like an anthropological study. Roger was a very patient teacher. He had gone to Columbia a few years after me. Grew up working class in Washington, D.C. Really smart guy. And he was very patient. He would just explain things to me. And I remember, he gave me this book to read. And one of the things in the book I'll never forget was, he said, or the author, Copeman, I think it was, said two black folks could be talking to each other and yelling and screaming. And they could be like this far away from each other's face. But that didn't mean they were going to hit each other. It just meant that was their culture. And in white culture it meant they maybe were going to hit each other. And where it made a real difference was around policing. Like if a police, a white police officer saw two black people talking and yelling and screaming and getting at each other, he might have go over and hit them. And he said, because he assumed the next thing was going to be someone throwing a punch. And I've been actually witness to incidences where I've seen police officers pull their revolvers on people of color because they were talking loudly, assuming that they're arguing that they're going to get into a fight. And everyone would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like you're totally misinterpreting the situation here. And that has real consequences. And to me it was like, wow, that's really interesting. It's like going to Borneo and seeing this other culture. And they do things different or in France. They do things different. They have little kids that drink and wine. And it's not that bad. That's what it is. Or it's a different culture. So I was kind of like, wow, that's great. And he would just explain stuff to me. And I didn't know that. And it was interesting and learning. And Raju was real patient. And I'll never forget one of the things that was really interesting. The leader was this very wealthy waspy woman. And in the office, Raju was very quiet. And then one day we went for lunch. And all of a sudden we're in Boston. And he goes out and he's like really noisy. And I'm like, whew. It was so funny. He was like a different person because he wasn't constrained by the office culture. And I just learned a lot. He was the same person. But he was just so different. And then I went to stay in his house in Washington DC. And he was really different there. And it was just so interesting to observe that. Because he was so affected by the environment he was in. And I was just an observer. And I stayed in his house. We were doing this project in Washington. And I stayed there for a few days. And it was just very different to see how he operated. And meet his family and his wife and stuff like that. And so I just learned. And it's not like I'm so smart, although I'm not stupid. But if you stick around, you learn. And some people, like Roger of Blessed Memory, were good teachers. And we just patiently explained things. Oh, this is what this expression is. And this is here. And that's part of how I've learned a little bit about race and what's different. And just having friends who are black who get stopped by the police. I mean, one of them has a degree from Oxford. His aunt is the dean of a graduate school. And they were driving on the New York State throughway. He tells me this story. Observing the speed limit. They get out. They get taken out. Spread eagle. His aunt, who's the dean of a graduate school, doesn't matter. And I'm like, I know that's not happening to me when I'm driving down the New York State throughway. So I just learned. And when I know people, it's undeniable. And so those kinds of conversations I think are important, but won't happen just over the internet. Won't happen just by YouTube. I mean, maybe that can be one way it can start. And I hope this video can be a little part of it. But I really encourage white folks, like me, to start hanging out in other places and making friends with people that don't look like me. And I would just add that that engagement needs to be ongoing. It can't be like we're going to come into this community and observe and learn and take notes and then leave and never come back. Because that just makes, you know, that turns people into specimen and tokenizes them. No, that's disgusting. I mean, I would feel that way if anyone did that to me. But it happens to communities of color all the time. All the time. And I think that's a learning that, you know, I've been involved in academia a lot more over the last recent years. And too often I hear stories of, you know, researchers who want to do projects. And a lot of times they'll approach me and hope that I will sort of, you know, make introductions for them in a community. And I always have to say, no, I'm not comfortable with that. And then they get upset and frustrated because in their eyes they're like, well, we're trying to do something good for you. And I'm like, that's a very progressive approach to a stance to take on it. But at the end of the day, you're getting resources to come in and study us and treat us like we're guinea pigs. For no money. But you're asking the community to step out and teach you constantly, but we're not getting any return from that. You know, our communities are not being uplifted. We're not, you know, getting out of poverty. We're not getting new access into even the universities or the academic institutions that you represent. So there's not even a quid pro quo of sorts. You know, so there's no equal benefit. It's basically you just, this is another form of them harvesting, you know, information or harvesting resources from a community that's already resource-strapped. And so I think there needs to be like a big deeper conversation about that. And my hope is going into the future that we really shift the way communities of color, people of color are engaged at that level. And I completely agree with you. It needs to start off genuine. It needs to be more of a hi, my name is so-and-so. Let's get to know each other. Let's build, you know, a rapport as opposed to, you know, I'm coming into, you know, extract information and, because that's not a genuine place to start from, you know. And one thing I really appreciate about our relationship is, you know, you're an older white Jewish man. I'm a younger, younger of sorts. You're a lot younger. You're younger than my daughter by 10 years. Yes, you know, I'm a younger, you know, black woman, you know, Haitian immigrant background, you know, raised Catholic, and yet we and I can still connect with each other on an interpersonal level. We can still be great friends despite our differences because at the end of the day, we find synergy in our shared humanity and our shared values. And that's what it's about. Yeah, I mean, and there's some things, I mean, I think being a Jew has influenced me because we, as Jews, my family were treated as other than white people. Right. Not so much during my life, but just before I was born. I mean, my father was born in Hungary. My wife's father was born in Austria on how to escape as a refugee. So we were definitely treated as less than. I mean, you know, putting cattle cars and trucks and sent to be killed. Definitely kind of being treated as less than. Definitely. So I definitely got that. And I also understood growing up that there were lots of differences among us white folks. Like the biggest, where I grew up in New York, the biggest differences weren't, there were huge differences between like the Jewish families and the Italian Catholic families. That was mostly who was there. I didn't meet a Protestant, I would say, until I went to college. Everybody's grandparents talked with an accent, either Yiddish or Italian. And there were a few Irish people there. Yeah, absolutely. But there were huge battles, not so much among us kids in high school, but the parents. Yeah. Oh my God, the parents didn't want, you know, I had this Catholic girlfriend for a little while and her father hated me because I wasn't Catholic and wouldn't let me see his daughter. So I was very aware of the differences among white people. And as I've gotten older, I see a lot of white people that don't see their culture or don't think they have a culture. I remember I was doing this workshop at the service employees union with my friend Ron, who was black, and he was asking, you know, tell us something about your culture. And this one white guy said, well, I don't have any culture. And Ron was very nice. He let everyone else go when he came back to him. And finally he realized, oh, he was from Syracuse and had this basketball culture, and it was around the Syracuse University basketball team. There was a culture, yes. He was very proud of it, but that was a whole culture. It wasn't my culture. I came from a very different culture, but he definitely had a culture. And a lot of white people don't see that. They don't even think they're white. They don't think there's any difference. I was doing this workshop at my temple, as I mentioned earlier, in one of the guys' classic thing. He said, I don't see color. And luckily... That statement makes me cringe all the time. Luckily, I was very happy. An Asian woman who was the former president of our congregation, a woman who's an immigrant from China, right across the room, who knows, pretty well, said, well, then you don't see me. Right. And he was like, ooh. But I'm so glad he heard it from her. Yes. But if she hadn't been there and hadn't challenged that statement, he wouldn't have learned anything. He wouldn't know. And wouldn't have learned that when I say, I don't see color means he doesn't see her. Right. That it's an erasure of identity. It's important. When she said, you don't see me. And they were in the same room and known each other for, you know, a couple decades probably. But never talked about that. And so that was, I hope, I hope, a real learning opportunity for him. Absolutely. And I think that's a... I think it's really important because it's an erasure of identity. And there have been so many different ways in which different populations have had their identity erased over time, you know. I did a talk a couple years ago and I talked about sort of the history of the Jewish, the Irish and the Italian sort of transition into whiteness. Because a lot of people sort of think that's like a blanket thing. And I'm like, no. There was a time where, you know, Italians were not considered white. The Irish were not considered white. And the Jews were not considered white. And it was an easy assimilation over time. I mean, it wasn't easy in terms of practice, but it was an assimilation that was possible over time simply because of skin tone, you know. And as more African-Americans began to move, particularly during the migration into the north, it was a lot easier to sort of claim, you know, the Irish and the Jews and the Italians and say, okay, well, you're one of us now. You know, we don't want to connect with them. And that actually helped to fuel a lot of the segregation and redlining practices that, you know, still affect us today. Yeah, so I'm not sure exactly where we go with this. It's an ongoing conversation. And across generations, I think it's more difficult. I mean, one of the things I'm trying to do as an elder now, I'm past 70, is work with young people because, and part of the reason I'm doing that is one of the things I wanted when I was in my 20s was people who were in their 40s and 50s to kind of guide me. And I think it's true, I mean, I and people who've worked as community organizers for 40 or 50 years, and at this point I have, have learned a few things. And I think it's important that we convey that to people. You know, what's happened in the past, what's worked, what hasn't worked. There's this quite a bit that we do know. And not that we're not interested in continuing to learn, I think we are, but having that conversation across generations is real important. And also, I think for young people to realize, hopefully they'll be older sometime. I mean, I don't know anyone who says, oh, you know, I want to die when I'm 40 or whatever the age of being older is. But there is, for myself, there is age discrimination. I mean, I think I was coming here earlier. I was just, I've literally been told you're too old for this job. And I probably know more and I'm more competent now and more able to do training and organizing than I was, you know, 20, 25 years ago. So that makes me both sad and angry because it's sort of stupid. I mean, I'm pushy enough that I can find places to practice what I do. But that does exist. And for younger people, if they allow that to happen, they're going to be in my place in 20 or 30 years. You know, God willing, you'll live that long or longer. I think we can agree that any kind of ism, ageism, adultism, racism, sexism is work that we need to do to eradicate from this country, from this collective social mentality that makes up this country. And I think you're right when we go, what you mentioned earlier about education is the way to go. I think we need to start building these conversations as part of our learning earlier on, starting as children and throughout our lives because these systemic issues and the barriers and the way they play out and how we interact or don't interact with each other, it's all learned, it's all taught. And so we can unlearn those things too. And I hope that I think the key to do it is for the older generation and the younger generation to come together and do it together because there's no other way. It can't be either or. I feel really privileged. I mean, I was lucky. I grew up with my grandmother, Minnie Jacoby, who was born in the 1890s on the Lower East Side. And I learned a lot about her life, mostly because her husband died when I was 10 and she moved into my room. I mean, my dad fixed up another room so I didn't have to listen to her snore in the attic. But she lived with us all those years. I was growing up and I heard about her life. She was eight when her mother died and her father was too poor to support her and her brother went into the Hebrew orphanage and she went to work at eight working with a janitor cleaning out toilets in the Lower East Side in tenement buildings and didn't get to go to school. She was smart, but she was so poor there was no social security. This was like 1906, no unemployment. So her father couldn't, if he wasn't, he was too poor to get a job. No social security when her mother died so she had nothing. And that was common for lots of people. And it was helpful for me just to learn about that. And I learned about it personally across generations because she was there when my parents were at work and I came home from school, there she was and she would tell lots of stories and I heard lots of stories about what her life was like so I feel pretty lucky that I got that information about what life was like for lots of people way before I was even born. I think a lot of people don't... I think I was lucky to get that but a lot of people don't have that information. I think I was lucky. Especially starting out as an organizer I sought out a lot of feedback and input and also to learn about the history of organizing particularly from the elders in my community and that was really helpful to me and part of my organizing journey. And so I agree, I think we all need to learn from each other but I think we're out of time. So I just appreciate this conversation to be continued. As you said and I think both of us agree this is not a one-shot thing. It's an ongoing conversation and I hope this will continue and other people hopefully it will inspire others to have other conversations across generations and across race. Well thank you Michael. Thanks for having me. Thank you. All right. That was great. Yeah, it was okay. That was fantastic.