 Hello, good evening everyone. Welcome to the Brooklyn Museum. I know. Thank you all for braving the snowstorm, the slush, whatever you braved to get here tonight for this very critical and urgent conversation on immigrant rights. My name is Sue Hayley Bautista Carolina. I work at the Brooklyn Museum as the Community Relations Manager. We're very, very excited to have you. If this is your first time at the Brooklyn Museum, welcome. I hope that you'll return for a lineup of public programs that is always incredible and exciting and relevant. If this is not your first time at the Brooklyn Museum, then welcome back. I hope that this is one of your many homes for arts and culture. I would like to, again, thank you for being here for Defending Immigrant Rights, a Brooklyn Call to Action, which is a program that we're putting together hosted by the Brooklyn Museum, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, which celebrates its 10-year anniversary this year, and also the Brooklyn Community Foundation. I would like to, with no further ado, introduce the Executive Director of the Brooklyn Community Foundation, Mrs. Celia Clark. I think we have to do an extra thank you for all of you here because you came through this incredible weather. A real clap for the audience. Thank you. For the second time, interestingly, maybe this is going to be my consistent role for me. I am really honored to channel Elizabeth. I've been emailing with Elizabeth all day, and she couldn't make it. I think intra-borrow travel is especially tricky. She extends her apologies for not being here, and she sent some remarks, some brief remarks I'm just going to read. The Sackler Center has been hosting programs on social issues for 10 years. We've laid a good groundwork for this day, and I'm proud of the museum, our thousands of communities in the audience, and the hundreds of participants for consistent engagement. In addition to equal pay, equal wall space, the Sackler Center has stood, since it opened, as a beacon for equality, equity, and justice. Warm regards to all on a very cold day and solidarity in the months ahead. Thank you, Elizabeth. Of course, I really want to extend my thanks to Elizabeth, who I just channeled, and Anne. Anne Pasternick, where are you? I love reaching out to two women at about 11 in the morning, and by about 1 in the afternoon, these three women together have planned this event. This all in response to the appalling current events that we were feeling really horrified by, but also really called to action, which is why this is, of course, a call to conversation. So thank you very much, Anne, and the museum for hosting us tonight, and it's an honor to partner with you. So the Brooklyn Community Foundation is proud to partner with Brooklyn nonprofits, generous donors, and inspiring Brooklyn leaders as we work towards a mission to spark lasting social change for a fair in just Brooklyn. Since 2009, we've awarded more than 33 million in grants to Brooklyn nonprofits. Taking on challenges is varying as criminal justice, school discipline reform, increasing access to the arts, and building the leadership pipeline for young people of color, and to responding to the immediate crisis and long-term rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy. Brooklyn Community Foundation brings people who care deeply, brings together people who care deeply about our communities to lift up local expertise and fuel community-led solutions to the greatest challenges of our day. That's why, just a few weeks after the November election, we created the Immigrant Rights Fund. I need to call out my board member, Gabe Schwartz, because it really was his urging that we did it. He called me two days after the election, and it was made possible thanks to his incredible generosity along with a few other members of our board, some of whom are here tonight, who helped seed fund and put us well on our way to a million-dollar commitment over the next four years to supporting nonprofits fighting for immigrant rights across Brooklyn. This week, we issued nearly 100,000 in immediate response grants to eight nonprofits through the Immigrant Rights Fund. This is our first phase. And we also announced the creation of an action fund to support civil resistance and organizing. We want as many Brooklynites to stand up and be strong. You can learn more about the Immigrant Rights Fund on our website, BrooklynCommunityFoundation.org, including how nonprofits and community groups can apply for grants. And of course, you can donate too, please. You may not realize it, but Brooklyn is home to over 990, we can call it a million, foreign-born residents. Nearly 40% of this borough is foreign-born. And I also believe that over 50% of the borough does not speak English at home. So when that executive order came down, you can imagine that half the population of this borough heard that loud and clear. And until this past month, you may also not have realized that Brooklyn is home to the nation's leading immigrant rights organizations and advocates from whom you're going to hear tonight. Our foundation is privileged to be a long-time funder and partner to so many of them. And it is at times like these that demonstrate why it's so important that we support their advocacy and organizing efforts. At Brooklyn Community Foundation, we truly believe that those who are closest to the challenge are closest to the solution, which is why we have gathered these outstanding leaders and organizers here today. We want to listen and to follow their lead in the coming days, weeks, months, and years. It's going to be a long fight. We have a great evening ahead, but before we turn to the panel, I'd like to introduce Bita Mostafi, Assistant Commissioner at the Mayor's Office on Immigrant Affairs. Bita, thank you. Good evening. Thank you all so much for coming out in this weather. Thank you to the Brooklyn Community Foundation and, of course, the Brooklyn Museum and the panelists that are about to join us to have a wonderful conversation. To get us started, I actually just want to say, does everybody just know the news that came down? Yes! So for those who are unaware, the Ninth Circuit just upheld the temporary restraining order on the executive order, the travel and refugee. We'll take every victory big and small and celebrate it. We have to. So as Cecilia said, I'm Bita Mostafi. I'm the Assistant Commissioner at the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs. For those who are unfamiliar with our office, truly at its core, the work that we do is immigrant inclusion. We work to ensure that all immigrant New Yorkers are part of the city, that they have access to justice, and we advocate for continued immigration reforms at all levels of government in order to eliminate inequities that impact New York immigrant communities every day. We stand with our communities, with immigrant communities. Our mission now is more important than ever. And recently, the President's Executive Orders, we responded, the Mayor, by saying that our resolve remains the same, to be a safe and welcoming city for all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status. Nothing about values announcements, changes who we are here in New York City. A pen in D.C. doesn't change our values or what we stand for. We will use all the tools at our disposal as a city to fight and protect immigrant communities. So what are we doing? What is the call to action? What have we already done? We want people to know that, irregardless of what the news has been, immigrant families can still, in the city, access health care services, education, emergency food and shelter, and a range of other services. You can get ID regardless of your status through IDNYC. All New Yorkers have the right to be free from unlawful discrimination and retaliation and harassment in the workplace, housing and public places. So you can connect to our Human Rights Commission and report any bias that you might experience. We have one of the strongest human rights local laws in the country, and we want to make sure people know that and our reporting incidents so that we can follow up accordingly. We have launched Thrive NYC well, making sure that people in this moment where there is real fear and uncertainty have access to mental health services in the language that they speak, and in the communities that they live. Also, as I said, one of the core principles of our office is access to justice. We have Action NYC. It's one of the programs we're most proud of working with community partners so that people can receive free and safe immigration legal help in the communities that they live and in the languages that they speak. Recently Mayor de Blasio and Speaker Mark Bavarito released a one page resource guide that outlines these among other resources that are available to immigrant communities. It's available online on our website and in many different languages. And so we encourage you as a quick and easy resource to get information out so people know what their rights are to share it. And if you want any more information on how to get it, I'm happy to provide that. We're also doing an increased number of Know Your Rights forums, making sure that we're out in the community with our sister agencies, sharing information, making sure that people know that nothing has changed in this moment in terms of the city's policies and programs and that they can access this information and rights. But where do we need to go and what needs to happen now? From our purview, we think cities need to come together, that this is really a time for local municipalities to fight together. We are part of a national coalition called Cities for Action, working collectively around the country to fight for immigration reform, to fight to protect our immigrant communities. And as I said, the values that we hold dear here in New York City. We've done this before. We've fought against attempts by Congress to cut off federal funding to cities that are immigrant-inclusive. And we've successfully fought against it, and we'll continue to do that. We've weighed in in the past on legal fights, on executive action, and we'll continue to do that as well. We've also been thinking about how we can be innovative locally. And one example of that is we just launched, or we will be launching, a legal and outreach capacity-building fellowship for small immigrant-serving organizations, because now is the time that we all have to get organized, and we all have to get ready. And we've continued to do convenings with our partners. We don't do any of this alone. We do this with sister agencies. We do this with some of the incredible organizations that are represented here tonight. One example of that is just, I believe yesterday, every day feels like a year. We did a day of action with our Department of Consumer Affairs and our Human Rights Commission, along with the Arab American Association of New York, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the New York Immigration Coalition, and others to do concerted information sharing in the communities where individuals were the most impacted by the executive orders that came down in the last few weeks. We can't do that work alone. We rely on the leadership of the community organizations and the advocates that we work with, as I said, and all of you to make sure that each and every one of us are holding each other accountable and are continuing to get good information out, connecting people to the right resources, and organizing and fighting together. So where does that leave us? I think from our perspective, as I said, we as a city, we're ready to stand firmly committed to working with cities across the country, advocates locally, individuals in making sure that none of these policies, but as I said, do not reflect our values or who we are impact our neighbors, our family members, our friends, our colleagues, our New Yorkers. None of the policies that get implemented will we allow to threaten our communities and we will fight back and we will use whatever tools we have at our disposal. And I want to thank, again, the Brooklyn Community Foundation for setting up a forum like this to give us an opportunity to have some of these hard conversations and to really think about how can we be coordinated and responsive to the moment that we're in? How can we stand together and how can we live by example in New York City and fighting to protect all of our communities? Thank you so much. Just listening to Bita made me realize that there are so many opportunities in the city to get involved and I know a lot of people have been calling our office and I'm sure this is similar around the city about, you know, what can I do? Because as Bita said, you know, every day there's another thing. I saw a great sign on Instagram, of course, saying protest is the new brunch. So certainly I certainly do think continue to protest, but I just want to reemphasize that the foundation is very serious about its Immigrant Rights Fund. So if you know even really small immigrant led groups, even community leaders who need money to organize protests, please come to us. That's our action fund. We also have a sustained response fund. Those are larger grants really trying to build the capacity of immigrant led organizations in Brooklyn. So I just want to be clear that that's what we're doing. And I'm sure all of you are also doing really amazing work. So I'm so honored to introduce tonight's panelists because this is really a group of people who, as I say, are on the front lines and I think will really give some insight into what's happening in our city and in our country. So delighted to, I'm going to call all of you up. That's a warning to you, Linda. Yeah. Also for those sitting on the floor, there are seats just unless you want to be on the floor and then that's fine. Linda Sarsour, executive director of our American Association of New York and chief organizer of the Women's March. Thank you. I'm sorry, Victoria Karl Marat and Naeem. So Victoria Starrett, immigration attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services. I want to say something about Brooklyn Defender Services. They had, I don't know, you certainly had 15 lawyers on the ground at JFK the day after the, yeah, so thank you. Karl Lipscomb, program manager at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. I want to say something, this is really important. Three out of the seven banned countries are African countries. And I think that we need to think about the intersection of racial injustice with immigrant injustice. And remember that there are all kinds of immigrants. And you can think about the injustices that everyone faces. And you can certainly double it up probably for our brothers and sisters from Somalia and Sudan and Libya. So thank you, Karl Karl. Marad Awade, director of political engagement of the New York Immigration Coalition, one of our first emergency response grants. They've been organizing protests around the city and really carrying the weight of this movement building. Thank you so much, Marad. Last but not least, Naeem Islam, who's the Brooklyn community organizer for DRUM, Desi's Rising Up and Moving. DRUM has been on the forefront of immigrant organizing for many, many years. And we really have a big round of applause for Naeem. Softball question, especially for Linda and Karl Naeem, because you really are in the communities, you're really working directly with communities. How are people doing right now? What's the sense? Sure. Yeah, okay, cool. So I think after the election, I think like many people here, folks in my community were caught off guard, right? There was a lot of anxiety, like what are we going to do? So the day after the election, I woke up with a bunch of calls and messages of folks asking, what are we going to do? I didn't really have an answer for them because as an undocumented person, I didn't know what I was going to do. So for DRUM, we really just like turned to our members in our community to figure out, okay, what do we need to do right now to protect everyone to keep people safe? One of the things is like we were expecting an increase in individual hate crimes and there was an increase in individual hate crimes but there was also going to be hateful policies that were going to be aimed at our communities. Instead of trying to combat the fear, the first thing we wanted to do is really create space for people to address some of those emotions that they were having to really be able to feel scared, right? Because that's real. But then from there really figure out, okay, like how do we create local community networks of defense? For us, that became what we're working on now, which is the hate-free zones and that's an initiative of really like, okay, how do we create those infrastructures of defense? If we're not able to rely on the administration to protect our rights and we can only rely on local politicians to be able to do a certain amount, how do we really protect people? So we are I guess creating kind of this like toolkit. So as drum we're willing to do this work in the communities where we have a base like in Queens, in Brooklyn, but really creating this toolkit for people to use everywhere that shares resources on trainings for people to get, whether it's know-your-rights or actual skill-based trainings for bystander engagement, de-escalation, self-defense, as well as really like building community relationships with local businesses or institutions that are willing to leverage their power to protect communities and uphold the rights of, let's say, businesses, the immigrant workers that they employ or the immigrants that they have as well as like faith-based institutions to come out and really like support the community and really build cross-community relationships to protect people. I think Naeem really summed it up but people are horrified and people are afraid and people are being separated from their families. There are people, we forget that one of the countries in particular Yemen has been going through a war for the past few years and there has really not been much of a fight from the Saudi-led U.S.-funded war against the Yemeni people. So these people have already been stranded in places like Dijabuti. There already was an American consulate that was working in a place like Yemen and my organization, about 40% of our clientele are from Yemen. So just imagine people who are waiting in countries where they do not speak the language for their visa applications and being told that their appointments are canceled and not knowing if they are provided with your children or with your spouse or with your parents. I think the anxiety comes from a place of understanding our history as a country. We've done really horrible things to people before. I don't want to take you through four and a half centuries of pretty horrific things and I think our community doesn't have the reassurance that something really horrible wouldn't happen to them and I mean Muslims of all backgrounds and I think what this improved to all and I think Cecilia said this is that Muslims don't all look the same. They don't all look like me. They don't all look like Naim. They don't all look like Carl. We literally represent every racial and ethnic national origin that you can imagine possible. So this idea of banning Muslims is really ludicrous number one but really more ludicrous that Muslims have been here before this country was called the United States of America moment but I think what's the saddest to me is as someone who has we have about 25 Syrian refugee families in Brooklyn and when you hear stories of people who left torture and massacres and watched family members chopped up and brought to their doorsteps people who are displaced and are living in horrific conditions in refugee camps across the world and we live in a country that says we don't want Syrian refugees. We've only taken 7,000 when other countries have taken in the millions and then they actually come to you and say before the ban even started when Donald Trump became president they asked this really like can we go back and I said go back where to the refugee camps. What? You just left the refugee camp but they're so afraid of what could happen to them here that they're willing to take their families back to a refugee camp because you know what at least they were together in the refugee camp at least they were with community at least they felt that they could be physically protected in a refugee camp and for me as a Brooklynite in particular to to live in Brooklyn and to have people who live with me in Brooklyn who don't believe that we as Brooklynites can protect them that we can't that we won't stand for them and that we won't make sure that nothing happens to them and their children really is something that has physically and emotionally impacted me personally so I think what I want you to know is that your immigrant neighbors your Muslim neighbors are horrified and afraid and it comes from understanding that there were times in this country where the silent majority sat back and allowed us to exclude the Chinese they allowed us to intern Japanese they allowed for segregation and that there were really racist things that happened in our country and we called it law so let's remember this that our government says certain things that happen are law and I want to remind you in this room that just because something is law doesn't make it moral and doesn't make it just so I don't want anyone telling me about what the law says or if the Supreme Court comes back because you know Donald Trump is going to appeal he's not going to take this line down and if this goes up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court agrees with Donald Trump what they're going to tell you is this is the law the question are you as Americans are you going to stand for it because it's a law are you going to stand for it because it's a law and finally get to a moment in our country where we do say never again and when we say never again we mean never again thanks and you know I agree with everything that was said our communities and I think you know we organize and advocate on behalf of black immigrants and many of you probably have never heard the term black immigrants but we consider them immigrants from Africa the Caribbean and elsewhere that black and one of the reasons we exist is because when immigration is covered as an issue when Islamophobia is covered the it's rarely the face that we think of the face that the media portrays is rarely a black face and this is a community that's invisibilized both within the general narrative around immigration in our minds but also within social movements that support immigrants and Muslims and even black people in the U.S. and so our communities also you know our members have called us many of them are afraid but for different reasons they're afraid that they're the refugee ban has definitely affected many of them they're afraid that additional countries will be added to the list of those banned but they're also afraid of the other executive orders that were signed the refugee ban has received a lot of coverage as it should have because it was put in place immediately the sanctuary cities executive action has received a lot of coverage the border wall but what hasn't received a lot of coverage is the dramatic expansion of programs and practices that criminalize immigrants one of the executive orders called for ICE immigration and customs enforcement to prioritize deporting immigrants that are charged with an offense before they're even convicted and you know never mind that many of the offenses were already minor offenses that we're leaning toward decriminalizing such as possession of small amounts of marijuana or turn style hops or bootlegging CDs or DVDs minor offenses that many of us don't believe should be criminal offenses and to be frank if many of us in the room committed those acts we wouldn't end up arrested a police officer wouldn't stop us for purchasing or selling a DVD on the street so we represent black immigrants who tend to live in overpoliced communities and are victims of practices such as broken windows policing and stop and frisk which results in them experiencing the criminal justice system more often than other communities and thus ending up being deportable more so than other immigrant populations one thing I point out black immigrants are representing only 7% of the immigrant population in the US but 20% of those in deportation proceedings because of criminal contact so our members have called us you know asking one you know expressing fears but also asking who's going to advocate on behalf of us hundreds of thousands of people showed up to rallies and actions at airports over the weekend but those same people wouldn't turn out if someone was facing deportation because they had a $5 bag of marijuana so that's you know that's what our communities are experiencing and they're just afraid that resources aren't going to protecting immigrants immigrants like them thank you so Victoria and Marad this is just a little bit about how JFK the response of JFK came together I guess Victoria I'll start with you can you provide a little bit of overview around Trump's EO around the Muslim ban like the legal standpoint of course the wonderful news today changes that but I think we'd still really like to hear what really is this about how does it really impact immigrants and then in Marad what I would say after Victoria is how did that come together at JFK and really what was New York City immigration coalitions role Victoria? Sure so I think I feel like the executive orders have been covered I feel like in my life nonstop so I can imagine in your life as well but really have targeted seven countries who happen to not have business ties to someone and you know we have had as other judges have pointed out there are zero deaths related terrorism related deaths to anyone from those countries there is very little talk about the refugee process you know there's a talk about refugees are dangerous but there's just a lack of knowledge about how long the process takes how many state agencies do background checks I mean we're talking it takes years and every government agency security agency they're doing background checks and if there are any ties whatsoever people are just not permitted to come into the United States because we are that strict so the idea that refugees are dangerous is just not not backed up by any facts Alternative facts? Alternative facts right so I mean what we saw was was the immediate enforcement of an executive order that immediately people were in side planes coming with valid visas and suddenly the visas they're green cards the permission to come into this country was suddenly revoked without any hearing without any ability for a neutral magistrate to look at the case and decide are you a danger to the United States should your visa which you have gone years and years and throw all these background checks should it be suddenly be revoked based on this blanket executive order and so what we saw at JFK were attorneys I mean people turned out I think at 6 a.m. attorneys from my office started and other offices I think there were over a hundred attorneys law students advocates who were at JFK writing habeas petitions advocating with CBP standing with families and just saying we're here with you and we're gonna be here with you for the next hopefully no more than four years can I just a quick question I'm so sorry are there still Brooklyn Defender attorneys at JFK are there still attorneys at JFK is this kind of an ongoing thing yes so I personally know that some have been continuing to go I think there is a little less to do because now with all of these stays it seems yeah exactly thank you for the courts checks and balances actually working at this point and stopping these executive orders so that people are able to get through there was at a certain point applications being you know taken away from people who were in the country people who have been here 10, 20, 30 years applying for naturalization whose applications suddenly have gone into a different pile to not be considered again without any any neutral magistrate taking a look and seeing if this is actually fair but so yes there are still attorneys going out Maron you want to talk a little about the organizing side I know you were behind the JFK behind Battery Park I'm sure there are many more so thank you for having this event first of all thank you to the Brooklyn Community Foundation who's been a pillar within this great borough how's everyone feeling tonight because I feel really excited about this court decision and I'm just feeling like we need to get our energies up so the organizing actually didn't start when it wasn't like something spontaneous happened and we were like oh my god no we before the election even happened the New York immigration coalition is like really intentional in the way that we plan out our advocacy so prior to the election not saying that we were favoring one over the other but whatever we created an action plan if let's just say Hillary Clinton had one or Donald Trump had one based on what they were saying would be their policy agenda moving forward and everyone was like you shouldn't do one for Donald Trump and I was like we have to do it this is what we need to do we need to do it we need to do it well so everyone was super hyped thinking that you know that night wouldn't have turned out the way it did and then I think it was like two o'clock in the morning everyone was just like let's dust off our DJT plan and move it forward so we spruced it up and what we had envisioned to do moving forward and we continuously went back and forth internally as an organization is how do we our usual organizing isn't going to work anymore and we had to amp up and the way that we were going to amp it up wasn't through usual just like we're going to plan a protest tomorrow in two weeks please come out and join us we realized that things had to have happened it needs to happen quickly and it needed to be very tactful so prior to January 27th when the executive order was signed we already knew it was coming down the pike on January 14th we launched this is our New York campaign which is pretty much how do we defend our New York as a New York state and ensure that whatever he does nationally won't impact our folks in New York and that campaign launched and we had an action in DC we had actions across the state in New York and then we started to build up because we started getting the rumors that the EO was coming down the pike and there were two EOs that we were generally concerned of and I don't want to weigh one over the other but the first one that he signed was for the border wall which he didn't say how it was going to get paid for as well as doubling customs and border patrol enforcement agents and then also there's a couple other things which are concerning depending on what you're doing or however you inhibit an ICE investigation you can be charged with the crime for doing that as well so we were very perplexed about that but then we were like okay let's build up the momentum because we know a lot more is coming down we did a press conference and it happened and then we continuously were building up towards having an event we realized that the event that we were planning happened to be on the same day that Care in New York was having an event and we were like let's take a step back let's give them the day and we'll just partner with them which is what we did and we held you know in partnership well Care was leading it but in partnership with them we held the 10,000 plus person rally at Washington Square Park getting word that the EO is coming down on Thursday we had our federal reps our state reps, our local reps come down we had this huge press conference denouncing it and saying that no matter what he's going to do we're going to challenge it whichever way we can and then on Friday the 27th we had a Juma prayer and for folks who don't know what a Juma prayer is it's pretty much what Sunday church is for Christians and Catholics for Muslims on Friday you come together as a community and you pray together so we decided that in partnership with Majes al-Shura the Islamic Leadership Council of Greater New York that we were going to start doing these in public and where was the best place to do it right outside of 26 Federal Plaza but there wasn't really space to do it on Broadway so we did it on the backside at Foley Square we had an enormous amount of people coming out just to support the event and we were really excited about that because on Saturday the Muslim Band was signed and automatically we had anticipated sending some folks from our legal team to JFK assess the situation and go from there someone went on Friday and CBP was like super confused about everything we were like we're going to come back on Saturday our director of legal initiatives Camille Mackler and some of our other legal folks ended up going that morning and they indeed confirmed what we had anticipated was going to happen and then all of our staff headed out to JFK that morning and what happened was we had already touched some of our members and our partners like hey if this does happen we don't know what we are planning to do there per se because we're going to get thrown out of the airport but if we have enough people they can't really push us out that far so protests started inside the terminal and like we had anticipated we got thrown out but what had happened during this period of time was that every single press outlet was setting up shop in the parking lot so a couple of us went up and did media availability and pretty much I did a call to action and we had already prepped this so that when it went live on TV that our Facebook posts, Twitter posts were all like telling people come out to JFK right now and then it went viral the second we did the call to action CNN, MSNBC, Fox News New York One NBC, everyone had carried it and originally there was about 25 of us strong there it turned out to be 100 strong then 500 strong then 2000 strong and then the numbers went over 10,000 and we were just like this is kind of getting really crazy but this is amazing right now but yeah that's how the culmination happened before we got to JFK and that night was really beautiful for some of us we were there until 2, 3 o'clock in the morning because we also had issues with CBP because they still didn't want to let people out even with the order to the point where it's like what the hell is happening here do we need to get federal marshals and that's a whole different story thank you so speaking of things getting crazy but in a good way Linda I'm going to turn it to you because in fact you were one of the chief organizers of the women's march can you share what that was like for you and what's coming next so some I'm going to do heavy.com 5 things we need to know first I want to say the four national co-chairs of the women's march on Washington are all New Yorkers let's just get that straight that's important I was repping Brooklyn but I'm also a New Yorker too so when the you know the idea of the women's march on Washington really quickly and it just shows you the potential of everyday people people that were part of the national coordinating committee the women's march on Washington are like bakers, yoga teachers artists I'm not even exaggerating people that work at tech firms normal everyday people bank tellers what is remarkable about it is probably of the 30 people that were the original national coordinating committee four of us were organizers that professional paid organizers that's what we do for a living everybody else everyday normal people that you probably are standing behind in a deli getting a cup of coffee with and when the night of the elections retired grandmother in Hawaii named Teresa Shook wrote on Facebook, I think we should march that's it that's all that happened and then the Facebook page she woke up poor old lady woke up in the morning and her Facebook was like already on the other side of the country that was really what happened and she was like that's what happened they were like oh thanks for telling us and then by Friday to give these fabulous white ladies some credit is that by Friday which was Veteran's Day they were like they were like they were like they were like they were like they were like Veteran's Day they had already decided that it was probably a good idea to find some women of color to organize with how did I get involved really quickly is all I did was go on the Facebook page and I was like oh let me read the description this looks really interesting and I said wow what a great effort hope you can include some Muslims in Muslim communities that's all I wrote then my status goes across the country and then I get a call being like the national co-chair of the Women's March on Washington so beware when you comment on other people's stuff just letting you know that's what happened so I became the co-chair of the Women's March on Washington and you know I just want people to understand this is where the organizing kicks in and this is why we're in a different moment than we have ever been before and I want to just give you insight onto how we are going to win together and the Women's March on Washington organizing where people of color had to be centered that we had to center the most marginalized communities that this could not be about women's reproductive rights because if you're a woman about to be deported to Columbia or to Mexico your ovaries are probably not your first priority right now if you're a Muslim you're worried about getting interned like the Japanese you're probably not worrying about your reproductive rights at that moment not to say that reproductive rights are not important they're very important but we could and my condition is to talk about reproductive rights and racial justice and economic justice and immigrant rights and LGBTQI rights all at the same time because I have a big enough mind and a big enough heart that I can talk about all those things together right so we decided to then for the Women's March to become an intersectional that we could give platform to climate justice and to racial justice and to all these issues and that it could be led by women and that was the idea of the Women's March and the Women's March also gave me the opportunity to say wait a minute we have all these things we want to be against right now we're in this like reactionary mode everybody wants to fight it's either fight or flee right that's the kind of moments that we were in and the Women's March was an opportunity for us to say hold up a second I'm not letting evil monsters in the White House blind me and blind us as Americans from what we truly believe in and what we believe our true values are as human beings and individuals I'm actually going to be part of something that talks about what I'm for and not just what I'm against and that's what happened and it's why we were able to bring out people who swore to God they never marched the day in their lives literally and you saw it here in New York City you saw it in Washington DC when I went to when we were in Washington DC and at four o'clock in the morning we were already on the side of the march and it was dark outside it was literally like night and I walked and I saw these people and I was literally talking to random people I was like what are you doing here it's four o'clock in the morning they were like what are you doing here we're doing what you're doing here and it was a remarkable feeling of how you can bring 1.2 million people in Washington DC about 3.4 million nationally and close to 6 million internationally to stand up and say we are going to be united and we're going to center the most marginalized communities and we're going to be able to talk about all the progressive issues on one platform together and what I will say is what you saw from the branding of the women's march from a lot of people said wow this you guys got a lot of resources behind this I was the head of fundraising that was my job and you know I started just to give you the power of people and individuals when we started organizing they said oh Linda here's corporation A I said hold up you all don't know no corporation put in the name on this let me just let you all know that they said what do you mean we can't put something this huge together without support from corporations I said you all weren't following one of those political campaigns that I was on in 2016 yes you can and the women's march on Washington was powered by the people it was I would say 70% of the funding that we got was crowdsourced it was like the $27 donations it was from every corner of this country from rural Nebraska to our friends in LA to the mom in Brooklyn so we raised about close to four and a half million dollars and I'm going to be honest with you because this was public information we used merchandise stores for people to buy t-shirts and be able to support the march and come and wear our branding but also have their proceeds go to the march so the reason why I tell you that is because when you got to the women's march on Washington there was no Coca-Cola there was no Walmart there was no brands that owned the message and we were we were able to put up whoever we wanted on that stage we were able to talk about whatever we wanted on that stage we were we put the undocumented we put black women we put native people we talked about climate justice we were able to talk in such a free way and organize in such a free way that I think that's what we've been missing for a long time even foundations like it's funny because the right wing has been attacking me they've been attacking me for like 15 years but recently they got really creative about it and the question they're always asking me they're always like dun dun dun George Soros I was like George Soros is a nice guy he gives us you know he supports a lot of the organizations but guess what ain't not a dollar from George Soros went on the women's march on Washington just so you all know so I think what's important is that the women's march proved to me the potential of ordinary people the mom I don't know if you saw Bob Land who's one of the national co-chairs is the CEO and president of Georgia New York which does ethical manufacturing she was one of the co-chairs Chloe who you see who's what we call our march baby was born during the planning of the march so literally this lady was delivering in the hospital and we were like okay do we do chase been had in bank or do we want to do a credit union while the ladies delivering her baby in a hospital and she kept her baby with her everywhere she carried her baby around she breastfed her baby and I know it was like too much information but it proved to me that anybody any Brooklynite any New Yorker that there should be no impediment for anyone to say I don't have a role to play or I can't play because if a woman that just delivered a baby could breastfeed her baby and organize the largest protest in US history then Darne you could do something so and I just and I want to be clear that the women's march on Washington is not here to replace any institutions we were a group of women that came together from across the country and the idea was that after this administration and people said why the first day after why the first day why not two weeks later why not wait and see what other bad things are about to happen no that has to happen on the brothers first day in office that he needed to see at least 3.4 million people nationally and I heard I don't know if somebody wants but I heard if you can turn out 3.4 million people that's what almost 1% of the US population it's a lot of power right there I won't say what it says online that means because then it will get into a newspaper somewhere but it's pretty powerful and I think that set the impetus for the rest of what you're seeing now this consistent mobilizing at airport around the country the direct actions that it really gave and inspired people and gave a spirit of organizing in this consistent way the women's march on Washington by the way is alive and breathing and there's a lot more work coming including a day without a woman there will be an international strike that will be led by women March 8th they're also it's going to be March 8th because that would make sense wouldn't it the other piece just so people know because people are saying what happened and what are we doing it's a moral strategy for 2018 and it's going to include state legislators specifically as well as on the federal level and we know for a fact and you say that you were at the Brooklyn Community Foundation event at the Brooklyn Museum that in 2018 Linda Sarsour said on this stage that we will win back one branch of government and it's going to happen and it's going to be led by women in this country and it's a guarantee because the strategy is so universal we're organizing with women in rural towns to city girls like me from Brooklyn the remarkable unity that is bringing people across this country together in a way that I haven't seen at least in my 16 years of organizing and women who are older than us that are organizing with us have told us they've never seen anything like it I was on MSNBC with Gloria Steinem and Chris Hayes said you've been here before and she's been doing this for decades and she literally interrupts him she's like hold on she's like I've never seen anything like this so if Gloria Steinem says she's never seen anything like this we're probably doing something right I'm going to hold you to that in 2018 Linda I'm going to call you up after elections Victoria Sanctuary Cities so we hear that term all the time I don't even know how many Sanctuary Cities I know that New York City is one but I don't even know how many there are around the country so what does it mean to be a Sanctuary City and I think particularly for New York what is the relationship between NYPD and ICE and city policy versus law enforcement and of course local policy versus federal policy can you speak to that? Sure so we generally don't like the word Sanctuary City because it has been very politicized and I think essentially what it boils down to is we're holding the federal government to honor our constitutional rights so what ICE wants to do is they want to give a piece of paper to jails and say hold this person hold this person for 48 hours for 72 hours based on nothing than an allegation that they are a non-citizen and they might be deportable a number of those detainers have been against US citizens a number of times the same person has gotten detained in jail a couple of times because ICE doesn't correct their own computers so what that means and all that cost is borne by taxpayers because it's all the jails all have to pay the cost of feeding and housing those individuals so it's a local cost for this federal policy to hold people for ICE correct who then they might I've definitely had clients who go to ICE and then they get released so now the local jail has held someone for five days and then ICE decides to release them anyway the other thing is that they're requesting that people hold them sometimes when there's no conviction and I think this is one of the dangerous things that is in one of the executive orders unfortunately President Obama deported a lot of people he created this idea of felons not families as if felons don't have families as if they're not part of our communities he expanded this idea of criminal aliens created and really reinforced this idea of a good immigrant, bad immigrant and that we need to get rid of bad immigrants at Brooklyn Defenders obviously we are representing those bad immigrants these are people who are being accused of things and ICE wants to now they are priorities that means that immigration is using its resources to locate, to arrest, to detain and potentially to deport individuals not only who have been charged so again presumed innocent not convicted of anything but simply charged with something or I love this piece I don't even know how it's going to get enforced but they have committed an act that is a chargeable offence so they have not been charged with anything but an immigration officer is going to determine that they have committed a crime under state law so that's one of the most dangerous things I think under the executive order that essentially being a non-citizen is a criminal act and I think it's something that we all need to to fight back against I think one of the things the Brooklyn Defenders has been doing and will continue to do is to work against this broken windows policing which the acting DA of Brooklyn has said doesn't work we are arresting people the number one charge in Brooklyn turnstile jumping also a deportable offence I have a client who was detained for 8 months in immigration detention he had an immigration order against him almost got deported luckily an attorney was able to do a motion to reopen I ordered the minutes years later so this has gone on years later ordered the minutes he was not even convicted of turnstile jumping so he was in jail almost deported for turnstile jumping when actually he wasn't even convicted of that and that's the system that has been set up and this is the system that these immigration officers that's why it's so important that we have neutral magistrates that we need someone to be a check on immigration officers who are willing to just arrest, detain and quickly deport people and I think the other point that I want to make that I think is really important is every time someone gets arrested they give their fingerprints over everyone knows this you get a mugshot, you get fingerprints those fingerprints get sent to a system that ICE then has access to so now ICE has their address and they potentially know that they are in jail and they find out different information from them and what are they doing with that information they're showing up at people's houses they're showing up at homeless shelters and arresting and detaining people including people who are so sick that they cannot sit down people who are having consistent heart attacks every single time they go to court because of the stress that they're under and ICE is fighting any requests to release those people and Carl I think is a good segue to your work particularly what you said in terms of percentages and the particular victimization of black immigrants but I just want to be very clear so technically with a sanctuary city does NYPD is NYPD taking its orders from this sanctuary city you know is it saying no we will not detain this person for ICE or not meaning is the NYPD obligated to hold that person for ICE in New York City no they're not obligated but they do have policies where they are holding people and they are turning people over to ICE we have stronger policies with the courts which do require a judge to review evidence that the person actually is a non-citizen that the person actually is deportable meaning that the government can deport them in order to turn them over to transfer custody but for NYPD it's different but it is not mandatory because the federal government cannot I just want to be clear the federal government cannot mandate that because that is a federal duty and the local government is not required to act for the federal government Carl do you want to comment on all of this in terms of your work with black immigrants? Yeah I mean the first thing I'd say is that NYPD is a sanctuary city but NYPD listen to this carefully NYPD is not a sanctuary city it's not a sanctuary city when I think of the word sanctuary I think of a place where people are able to live freely where they are able to live in dignity where they are able to pursue economic opportunities and educational opportunities and have access to healthcare of state violence of state sanctioned violence of being arrested just for walking down the street or being deported more specifically I say New York is not a sanctuary city because though the NYPD and the Department of Corrections doesn't cooperate with ICE our school system isn't barred from cooperating with ICE our hospitals aren't barred from cooperating with ICE private businesses that have cooperated with immigration officials just this week and I'm not a parent but one of our members passed along a note that came in her daughter's book bag from the Department of Education saying if ICE comes to the school refer them to the principal and the note indicated we respect the rights of all immigrants yada yada yada if ICE comes refer them to the principal now if you just scan this this is like yes the DOE's doing its part but what that says is if ICE comes let them in and bring them to the principal and so there's no guarantee that students won't be pulled out of their classrooms and end up in deportation proceedings and young people can be deported for offenses like throwing an orange at a teacher which is considered assault so I think you know I think we should keep that in mind it's hard because New York City in many ways is a bubble and the rhetoric coming from the city and coming from elected officials is we you know we are all New York we welcome all immigrants but New York is not a sanctuary the word sanctuary by definition does not apply to New York when it comes to black immigrants and like I said before black immigrants face especially black Muslim immigrants face the consequences of their race their religion and their migration status so like all black people in the city they fear being arrested being stopped by police just for living in their communities like Muslim immigrants they are targeted by the NYPD they go to mass that have been victims of NYPD surveillance increasingly the face of quote unquote terrorists that we see in the media is that of a Somali immigrant or another black immigrant and then again when it comes to their immigration status while for now you know the Muslim ban is halted and so refugees from certain countries are protected millions of immigrants are still out of deportation in this city and across the country and so that's something and I hate to be the Debbie Downer on the panel I swear I'm normally a very optimistic person but you know I don't want us to leave here celebrating you know celebrating as though the Muslim ban has been halted so everything's okay because it's not okay so yeah I totally agree with that around New York not being a sanctuary and what we found is that after the election as the mayor was coming out promising sanctuary that was kind of dangerous because a lot of folks believed that they were like okay we're safe in New York nothing's gonna happen and that's not true and how can you promise sanctuary under broken windows that are criminalizing black and brown and immigrant communities you cannot say I'm going to protect you and then criminalize you it just doesn't work as well as the whole notion of sanctuary just can't be for immigrants sanctuary has to be for everyone sanctuary has to be for immigrants for black folks, for queer and trans folks for women, for young folks, for everyone and as an undocumented Muslim person if sanctuary is only offered to me and not let's say to black folks, to Latino folks or to criminals that's not sanctuary I want folks with criminal convictions are the first to go and are always left out of the conversation right with the whole narrative of families not felons felons have families too right and just because you've committed a crime doesn't mean you should be separated from your family or you shouldn't deserve this in a month of right having a piece of paper whether that's your green card or your citizenship should not qualify you for your rights and neither should being American I don't identify as Asian American or Bengali American I don't identify as American one of the reasons is coming here post 9-11 that was something I was never allowed to do but two it's always been the narrative of okay when you're American when you get your papers you can do this you can do that I don't want to be a paper to justify myself as a person I just wanted to add that I always get I don't know it just never sits right with me when we allow government to be the ones who define what sanctuary city is I think it is us who create sanctuary cities it's people who create sanctuary and I think oftentimes the conversation has been about sanctuary basically I don't know at least my understanding is when people say sanctuary meaning like in these government policy conversations people's city government is not going to work with the federal government that's really like the definition of sanctuary but is that in fact enough and to Naeem's point and to Carl's point in particular about broken windows policing that's not seen necessarily as a policy that impacts black and brown people in the way that black and brown people see it so my point is that I want to define what sanctuary is I want you to define what sanctuary is and I always say to people how are we going to protect the most vulnerable amongst us we don't even know who our neighbors are and I always say you can't protect people that you don't know and when I think about sanctuary communities I think about canvassing I think about on an individual level like on my street like knocking on people's door and being like by the way my name is Linda and I live up the street from you just to get to know like people literally tell me they don't know who lives down the hall from them in their buildings right they don't know who their next door neighbors are so if you don't know that I'm your neighbor there comes a day where local undocumented neighbors are being rounded up how are you supposed to just jump out of nowhere and be like not my neighbor like you don't even know those people for you to stand out and defend them and I think what I'm hoping that people realize is the power of us as individuals that if you know there's someone in your community who is an immigrant is new here maybe English is not their first language you probably are not going to go up to them and be like yo Naeem are you undocumented maybe you have a yeah don't ask that don't ask that but being able like in my neighborhood where I live in South Brooklyn in Bay Ridge like you know there's a lot of a very large Latino community in our neighborhood there's obviously a very large Muslim community in our neighborhood there's a very up and coming Asian community who's coming out from the you know Sunset Park area into our area and my thing is always like I talk to everybody and I'm just going to be like hey good morning good afternoon how are you doing if you're on my street if I see that you send your kids to the same schools that I send my kids to or if I see you on the bus stop every morning when I'm going to work that must mean you are my neighbor I think that's the virtue that we don't have as New Yorkers right New Yorkers were always walking straight from your house to the train station you're getting to work you get your cup of coffee in the sanctuary community so even if on an individual level we can do that and I will say something really powerful that just happened recently around when we're talking about organizing as someone who's a daughter of a small business owner in New York City a bodega owner is man those Yemeni bodega owners my people man I mean I you know watching immigrants many of whom English is not their first language other newer than that who decided and said hold up a second New York City let me show you who we are and what we have power and for many people who know bodega owners right they are like right now it was snowing this morning you better believe that Yemeni bodega owner was open he was not messing around these people are in our communities they are part of our communities they come and invest their money in our local communities they come and open these businesses and those very people who you get your cup of coffee or when you forget your wallet at home they're like don't worry we got you come back tomorrow are the very people whose families were banning from coming here and so watching the organizing of immigrant communities in particular immigrant led organizing has been super inspiring for me personally as a born and raised Brooklynite and also a daughter of a bodega owner so I think that's the kind of organizing that we need and the organizing that needs to be kind of fueled by their fellow New Yorkers so I'll give you an example of something that people did in Brooklyn that I thought was amazing so they did this campaign the few days after the that weekend after so which was last weekend where people said you know what on Saturday if you were going to Costco or Whole Foods maybe you'll take us maybe you won't go to do the shopping maybe you'll just go to the bodega and instead of spending that $20 on a cup of coffee and a newspaper maybe you just spend $20 that day at your local bodega so to help people regain some of the money that they lost during the bodega strike for the past eight hours that was some ordinary people that were like that's what we want to do so again yes it's the institutional organizing is important but the powerful organizing is happening by everyday New Yorkers in the city who are coming and showing up at JFK who are organizing locally with bodega owners and the third thing that I've been seeing in Brooklyn in particular is bystander intervention trainings right? Nayeem talked about an increase in hate crimes and often time is when hate crimes happen New York City there really isn't a place where you're walking down any street where there ain't no people around I'm sorry like we don't live in the rural like you know forests like there's all these things always happen with other people around but often times people don't know how to intervene in these situations so when you talk about sanctuary communities it means that I can feel confident that I can walk in the streets of Brooklyn and that my fellow New Yorkers and my fellow Brooklynites are going to find different ways to intervene as we should be intervening in sexual harassment or street harassment cases so if you're interested the Center for Anti-Violence Education which is also Brooklyn based you know my organization the Arab American Association of New York we have some resources together through some local donors and some foundations we've been doing bystander intervention trainings actually across the city after something really amazing happened two sisters in Harlem called us up and said do you know anyone who can take the train with us from the 125th train station they were Muslim young sisters in Hijab at this time they don't need anyone to do anything extra they just wanted people to accompany them on the same train ride right so we just put up a Google Doc and said hey howdy in Harlem takes this train route in the evenings next thing you know 8,900 people across New York City were like we're interested in this if there are other people in other parts of the city this is the neighborhood we live in this is our zip code we would be happy to take trains with people we would be happy to walk people to school in the mornings here's the time so my previous deputy director who actually left being a deputy director just so we could make her do this full time this is Kayla Santoso and she Kayla so anyway my point is that's the power of ordinary people that said look I may not be a full time organizer I may not work at the Brooklyn Defenders or at Baji or a drum or at the New York Immigration Coalition but I want to accompany people so they can feel safe going to school or going to take their kids to school in the morning so again I want you to leave here understanding your own personal potential and understanding your responsibility when the mayor of New York City stands up and says we're a sanctuary city that doesn't give me solace what gives me solace is when my neighbors say that my community is a sanctuary community so then the mayor then the mayor what the mayor says and the Comptroller and the public advocacy is cute but they're not the ones that are going to intervene in our communities if there are raids in our community if there are people picked up in our communities if there are women being harassed walking down the street it is you who are going to be those buffers and those people who are going to protect the most vulnerable amongst us I think that's a great place to not end because we're delighted to field questions from the audience but you know I I love that the natural curve of this conversation has gone from really understanding fear and anxiety being suffered by individuals and by our neighbors, our Brooklynites and our New Yorkers to the power of individuals and communities to change hate and to change fear and to change anxiety and I hope that that's an inspiration to everybody here that in large parts or in small parts you really can change what's happening and I would encourage you all to support the phenomenal organizations to my right they really are doing incredible work and actually there are a lot of great immigrant organizations and non-immigrant organizations in Brooklyn doing great work I certainly would encourage you to go to our website Brooklyn Community Foundation and support the organizations listed there we stand by them Standard for Anti-Violence as well and in fact our Action Fund does fund by Standard Training organizations are interested in doing more by Standard Training we can support those efforts so I certainly would like to say that I think you've helped bring this around to a sense of hope that we all have the power in us to bring about change so thank you all to our phenomenal thank you so I'd love to open it up to questions first of all I just want to say that now I'm actually looking at the audience I feel like the size of it it's just doubled and so I'm just really gratified that everybody has come in this crazy night thank you so much so if anyone has questions please just stand up oh there are mics there I guess get in line or speak loudly and yes they're in line great go ahead I just want to thank everyone and so I'm a journalist and after the election and particularly after the inauguration there is a call for a lot of organizations I'm a part of to invest more heavily in Muslim stories articles and media on Muslim communities that are underrepresented so my question to all of you is what stories do you feel that are in your communities that are not being talked about that are not being represented in the media I have a question anybody here want to take that so yeah recently there has been a lot of attention on Muslim refugees right but those are folks that are able to you know get through that process there are a lot of folks who let's say from South Asian countries who aren't able to go through a refugee process or aren't even able to go through a refugee process there are a lot of talented visas who end up having to come to let's say they will go from Bangladesh to Brazil and then spend upwards of 6 months walking across South and Central America to come to the US Mexico border and cross over which is like the majority of the base that I am here many of whom fleeing economic hardships and a lot fleeing political violence we say there is a Muslim ban but the amount of visas that are granted to certain communities or certain countries that's like a soft ban in itself the reason so many people are willing to take such an extreme journey is because they are not granted those visas and in fact the political parties that they are a part of that are being then identified as terrorist organizations by the US government right so there is a lot beyond just what's popular right now and not just within Muslim communities but within like one example I'll use is last night one of the first people to be deported from Trump's administration Guadalupe Reyes a mother of two been in this country for over 20 years only offense that she had was she was issued in deportation order and I used that deportation order to track her down and deport her so there as raids and detentions and deportations in case we're going to see a lot more of these stories but a lot of them are going to fall through the cracks and aren't going to get the attention and aren't going to get people to demand for their release can I just I know one question that people have just about that particular example is when a caregiver or a mother is deported but has children here who are American citizens what is the legal what are the legal intricacies of that situation and is there any kind of compassion for a situation like that maybe Victoria is a question for you but maybe any of you Linda or any of you know what the answer is so it used to be there was something called prosecutorial discretion that ICE had the authority to issue and it would often is cases where someone has been here for a really long time they either have zero criminal convictions or really minor offenses and then they're often caregivers and ICE just takes used to take the position that it wasn't worth it and maybe they had a little bit of a heart to actually keep people here I think now it is up to the parent what happens to those children so sometimes the children are forced are deported with the parent they are forced to go back to that country or they can enter our foster care system or stay with family I mean but it's really and they're American citizens Maraad did you want to answer the other question? Yeah I think the narrative around the Muslim community has been spun out since 2001 as kind of like this community that's been silent here for a very long time and I think one piece of the actual narrative that's been ignored for a really long time is that the Muslim community has not been silent the Muslim community has been organized within their communities as an Arab-American Muslim I've seen my community morph into a really fierce resistance and it's not just been in this past week it's been in this past 15 years that we've had to endure mass surveillance from law enforcement, from the NYPD the FBI making sure that people in our neighborhoods and our communities aren't really getting played by law enforcement but also that when we're talking about the Muslim community I think a lot of folks and Carl and Linda and Naim we're referencing this is that we aren't just a the Muslim community spends entire spectrum and when we're talking about it we have various stories and I think the media tends to highlight the hot topic at the time and that hot topic right now is the Muslim ban but before that we were up until the AP broke the story where Linda was really critical in that where we had always figured we're under surveillance but then when we actually had hard evidence showing that we were indeed being surveilled by the NYPD it was kind of like what the F this is like we knew it in the back of our heads but we needed something to verify it for us so I think like highlighting those stories also there's been a ton of stories that have been ignored by the media of people being entrapped by law enforcement and being like forced into situations where if they're a young person getting amped up by an informant to do some dumb shit, sorry and then getting literally locked up for it and now they will rot in prison so those stories are really critical and the Muslim community isn't just one person that's what I want to end it on we are as diverse as everyone up here and in the room and I think that that's something that needs to continue to be told because a large portion of the Muslim community is African American and that story is never really told. So thank you first of all for coming to speak. I get the sense that a lot of what is being talked about in terms of planning for the next four years is a mode of self-defense a lot of what we're talking about is about defense but my question is about the long term like what got us in this place in the first place, right, like what kind of political system and economic system got us to this point. So my question is and I hear you talking about self-organizing communities, I hear you talking about not wanting a government to decide whether you're legal or illegal. So my question is for all of you what are some of the long term changes that you hope for what kind of like is this constitution working for you for any of us, right, is this sorry is the electoral college working for you, thank you, is the political and economic system working and if it's not what are we going to do about it I'm interested in this platform that you mentioned but I somehow doubt that taking over a branch of the government is going to be enough because it's this system, this government that got us to this place so thank you. Capitalism anyone? I think the winning one branch of government back for me is a short term, right, that's not part of my long term strategy, I think it's what we need right now as part of the self kind of defense mode that we are in to put checks on what's happening in the interim. Look, we got to get out of this two-party system, call me crazy, right, like I understand that, like I know that we are one of one of few countries around the world you know quote democracies who are still in a two-party system, like duopoly, like that's who we are and we are going to keep going back to the lesser of two evils of this election, we weren't doing the lesser of two evils, it was pretty obvious to me that there was fascism and not fascism, but that was just me but we keep going back into the cycle and the reason why we're in the situation that we're in, I think capitalism is a problem and I think that people have been talking about this and everyone who's been talking about capitalism for the past couple of decades are the radical fringes crazy, but guess what we're getting to become the like mainstream now we're mainstreaming that socialism or democratic socialism is coming into them like there's a lot of language the reason why I'm optimistic is a lot of the viewpoints that we're seeing really to the left almost falling off the spectrum are becoming a little more to the center left right now like we're moving and creeping along and getting into a little bit more of the mainstream and I think that young people, I think young people are like we don't got loyalties to know political parties right I don't give a damn about any political party I my loyalties are with the people that I organize with with the communities that I come from so I think for the long we got to be short term long term in the interim we got to protect our people like that's just facts right now like people in our communities are in imminent danger so let's protect the people so let's not ignore that there are some short term things that don't seem really radical that we got to do to protect our people in the long term I think we do need to crush the two party system like it's just not working for us right and I think that we are now in a situation where we have proven that that might be the next kind of and don't hate me Brooklyn I don't mean the green party like I'm just you know I'm saying like that like I want people to be clear that when we say not the two party system I don't mean green party and I'm not saying that green party shouldn't be on the slate but I'm saying that we need a party that centers the most marginalized communities that puts into factor that the demographics of our country are changing in 25 to 30 years we will be a majority minority country so the parties that we are going to create have to reflect that reflect our values as people of different backgrounds and different values and different principles that we we bring so we need to be looking short term and long term long term is waking up the silent majority to God's point the Muslims been banned before this is not the first time number two we were already registered in a system right here in New York City where 26 Federal Plaza you had men around the corner sleeping outside in March when it was freezing outside it was like 15 degrees there were at least 1500 Pakistani men in Coney Island Avenue who disappeared off the face of the earth where were our fellow New Yorkers when that happened you know what I mean so I want you to know that a lot of the things that people are so outraged about right now already happened on our watch they are not I mean they weren't happening on Naeem's watch or my watch or these folks watch or their organization because these people were working back in those days but we are in a moment right now where people are awakened and I know you're going to think I'm crazy for saying this but Donald Trump and his people and fascists may be a blessing in disguise because I have never seen people so woke in my life in the past like some of us were forced to be woke because we were awoken by the evils of both of our government and some of our fellow Americans like we were forced into it but now everyone else joined in so the question for me is what are people willing to risk right now and that's the real question of long-term organizing in order to crash a two-party system you got to take risks and I also want to point out one last thing also when we think about organizing we got to protect the people who are on the front lines right because the people on the front lines right now we're getting tore the hell up by the right wing the right wing is so coordinated and organized delegitimizing those on the front lines black lives matter activists black lives matter leaders Muslim organizers and Muslim leaders you know the alternative facts that you're talking about those same media outlets that engage in fake news and alternative facts guess what they got White House press credentials like we have to understand that we are under fascism already it's not coming or we're not trying to prevent it it's here the question is what kind of long-term organizing do we need that is revolutionary that is radical and I don't mean radical like the kind of word that the government uses radical because that's why we are all being criminalized because we're radical I'm talking about true radical organizing that gets to the root of the problem and the question that you have to ask yourself to look at long-term organizing is what are you willing to give up you know how much stuff our community gives up every day we have to worry about I just was out of the country I didn't even post the picture from being out of the country because I didn't want the US government to know I was out of the country because I was trying not to get banned from coming back into the country like why do I even have to think about that as an American citizen who actually carries no other nationality or at least a piece of paper other than an American passport the question is what are you willing to do that makes you uncomfortable the women's march on Washington let's be real people I'll put it out there as a national organizer that shit wasn't uncomfortable that was on Saturday it was Q you wore your pink hat we were all together and it was great but you really didn't give up much coming to the women's march on Washington so what are you willing to give up for the long term could I could I just jump in on that as well I think Linda did an amazing job like talking about the reality we're in politically I think if you look at who voted for who even in Brooklyn you would have seen that some folks have voted for this man and I think this is a conversation piece that is very uncomfortable to have with people especially as a Palestinian American Muslim guy trying to have this conversation with some of the folks who I think might have voted for him not passing any judgment but let's be real I think that racism is really it's become normalized or so than even I've ever seen it before and I'm only like 30 years old so maybe you know flashback to the 60s but the reality that we're in right now is that people need to have hard conversations with their and specifically white folks need to have hard conversations within their community because the more that we keep talking about like how did we get here homeboy campaign for a year on blatant racist shit xenophobic like bigotry across the board like he did not spare anyone you were Latino, you got it you were Muslim, you got like he did not leave anyone who was not white alone and that has riled up the hate in this country and I think that one piece that we have to have is not just the political angle but like the community angle and how do we build that up with the intention of changing hearts and minds as opposed to just winning elections and that's the hard piece because we're in New York City we can change a couple of folks' minds but I think that this is a conversation and this is what I've been telling gentrifiers is that maybe you might want to go back to the Midwest where you came from and actually start organizing in the communities you left so that you can get your people woke as woke as you are but that's just a thought and then and really every time it's not just doing the bystander training stuff is really important but it's not just that because when we see these microaggressions we see them all the time and no one really says anything about them in the workplace, in the train at a library at school, in this museum we just need to be cognizant and aware that we have to call that shit out and continue to just be like that's not what they meant or actually look at and start looking at what privilege is doing within our communities then I think that that is plus the political angle but that is where how we start changing the situation we're in so that we never get back here yeah this is very hard to follow but I think long term beyond looking at how we center communities that are most oppressed within political parties I I'm of the belief that I would never rely on a political party to affect change I think that we have to center those that are most oppressed within our government and within our society there's never going to be a political party that completely aligns with all of our values and so I wouldn't put my trust in the two or three or multi-party system or in specific political leaders in order to fight for me I have to fight for myself and our communities have to fight for themselves the second point I just raised is I think you know we everyone's shocked by the election and shocked that Donald Trump is our president but I think Donald Trump or someone in Donald Trump's vein was a long time coming this was if there wasn't Donald Trump last year there would be someone like him on the horizon and largely I think it's because there's an undercurrent that has ignored the fact that racism still exists in our country and xenophobia if we look at who's being attacked it's Muslim people it's immigrants, it's black people and what they all have in common are that they're people of color we don't see white Muslims by and large being attacked we see Arab Muslims or brown Muslims so I just think that we can't put our faith in the party system we really have to focus on how our government and our society as a whole centers those that are the most marginalized yeah I totally agree one of the things that I like to say is is it from you know finding Nemo like fish are friend not food right a politician is a target not a friend a politician even when they're at their friendliest is always a potential target right and one of the things I want to bring up is just as if you identify as a leftist just as we on the left have been organizing our folks the right has been organizing theirs they've been having membership meetings they've been having town halls and I would argue they've been more successful at popularizing their message than we have right that's one of the reason we are where we are right now and the other thing is so when we speak about solidarity right as I mentioned for our hate free zones which you kind of also mentioned like right now the way we need to go forward to build community power is to build relationships with each other right so for our hate free zones the tag is love and protect each other I think you all know where that comes from we can't be in solidarity with others if we don't love them and solidarity is not just something that we preach it actually has to be practiced and it means being uncomfortable it means sacrifice one of the ways that we like to break it down and drum is in four levels like the first is the symbolic you're coming out and you're saying you're in solidarity with another group the next is very transactional it's not for one community if they turn out for you then the next is what we saw at JFK right embodied solidarity you are willing as an individual to put your body on the line to protect someone else the last level the fourth level has to be transformative solidarity it is all of those levels but on a mass base us as communities are willing to do that for other communities right one example I'll use is when the comprehensive immigration reform was being pushed around right our community in New York would have benefited from that but we know that it was coming with a lot of enforcement and enforcement means people along the border being targeted being oppressed and in fact would lead to people losing their lives right so we would turn to our community to talk about that to be like okay this is what it would mean sure it might mean that some of us get papers but this is what would mean for the future of all of these folks along the border and we were willing to make that sacrifice to not support that in that moment that's a level that's not easy to sustain or easy to get to right it requires those constant relationship building within your community and outside of it and one of the things around like as you mentioned around being able to you know if you see something being able to intervene or protect your community members nobody knows how to just do that right you need the resources to be able to know what to do if I shows up in your apartment building making a ruckus one of the tactics they do use is trying to embarrass someone to open the door they'll make a lot of noise outside so the neighbors come on like hey what's going on hey tell your neighbor to open the door you know we want you to sleep peacefully but your neighbor if they just let us in will stop making noise right if you know that that's the kind of tactics they'll do you know how to act so as a part of hate free zones what we want to do is provide those trainings for everyone and really help build those relationship cross communities hello thank you all so much for this incredible opportunity to hear these conversations my name is and I'm the director of education here at the Brooklyn Museum and one of the things that I wanted to ask you to speak to we have an incredible team of educators including teen educators many of whom come from immigrant families also LGBTQ teens that are really helping us to kind of move forward the conversation of what is the link between the arts this idea of a radical imagination and social justice so I wanted to ask each of you if you could speak both in particular to what you what has been your experience around youth led movements and how youth are taking the lead in some of the initiatives that you've described and then the second part of the question is what is what do you understand the role of the arts in the broad sense of the arts not just like a painting on the wall but this idea of culture or as you said hearts and minds how do we understand the role of the arts in moving forward towards helping us to develop that imagination muscle that creative process of seeing what we actually want outside the parameters of what we're given yeah so we'll ask a couple of other questions so that and then they'll all answer a couple of questions actually luckily the luckily it's actually entirely related because my question is what advice do you have to folks who are organizing with students around immigrants rights on campuses and particularly those with very large immigrant if not almost entirely immigrant communities and we know that of course we don't ask large populations of DACA students and do you think that the sanctuary campus movement is one that we should continue to organize around I mean given the conversation we've been having about sanctuary cities also so let's do that should we do young people in the cultural movement and culture I think the art question of like how do we start activating artists within the movement is this resistance isn't really going to be one just in the streets right we need every angle to be actually lifted up in this process and I think that our expression and like protesting is a form of expression but we also need to have multiple forms of expression showing our distaste and disgust for what's happening at the national level so I do think that arts specifically from impacted people is really going to start changing the way that we start seeing experiences through other people's eyes and as a person who grew up organizing as a young person I think that youth organizing is extremely transformational and not just in the sense of like community transformation but individually transformational for the person who's going through it and I think that once you try to structure it in a way where it's moving the person along with just one campaign that they're placed into as opposed to something that they want to work on that's really disheartening and then it actually turns people away so how do you build campaigns that are youth built and youth led and being sure that they're moving forward on the sanctuary campus idea I think that that goes back to something Carl said earlier about the DOE sending home that letter to parents about like well if ICE comes we'll send them to the principal's office it's like well if ICE comes we're changing the doors locked they're not coming in and sanctuary and campuses are amazing I think you're going to keep hearing about that but don't believe the hype all the time because if you read the statement that they put out of what they're going to do moving forward are they going to continue to share data from the school with federal authorities are they going to continue to allow law enforcement onto campus are they going to continue to actually implement policies that are not good for the students on campus are they going to provide undocumented documented and people with in between status financial aid that is part of sanctuary that is part of being a sanctuary campus so what exactly are they doing and everyone who does have status right now and may lose it is the school going to be like you know what they lose their status they're going to keep their job on campus and we're going to pay them so I think that that is the other piece of it so I think that we tend to get lost in the rhetoric but we just need to really pay attention to the details because that's what ends up really hurting or helping yeah the only thing I'd add I think when it comes to young people I think there's often an assumption that young people aren't developed enough to understand what's going on in the world or that they don't have opinions or that they aren't affected by social justice issues and I think that that's wrong in order to you know having worked as a youth organizer young people have a stake they have a stake in all of the issues that we care about and they you know I think our role or the role of adults is to help facilitate their involvement but also to engage them as equals as leaders the same way that you know you have to educate your grandma around the kitchen table is something that you know you should treat young people the same way with the same amount of respect and at times swallow your pride in order to accept leadership from them because the most powerful organizing that I've seen is when people that are directly impacted actually make decisions and play a leadership role and when people like myself or those that aren't as impacted step back and take direction and you know swallow our pride and get our hands dirty just to the art question I don't know if people noticed but we saw a lot of recent movements as well and we saw it at the I remember you know being so taken aback during the climate march that happened in New York City just the beautiful art that came out and even at the women's march the amplifier foundation we partnered with the amplifier foundation and the beautiful posters that came out really you know just kind of aspirational art is an opportunity to do a few things it's about giving people healing space and allowing people to use art and share their aspirations whether it be through music or whether it be through actual art in the form of you know the posters that you saw even things as simple as people doing sign making parties I mean some of the most creative signs I've ever seen in my life during the women's march I was like this is amazing what people were able to do so I think often times when we're in reactionary mode and we're in imminent danger we think the arts become like the last priority when in fact that's what people may even need the most the place to reflect and put there you know what is it that we want sometimes people are able to reflect that through the art of what is the world that you want to live in and to the question about young people and I remind people about this all the time we think about someone like congressman John Lewis and we think congressman John Lewis was that age you know 60 years ago and some of the most powerful organizing whether it be in contemporary now in the past maybe 15-20 years that I've seen or when you look historically back in the context of American history in particular the civil rights movement we're talking about 17-year-old Diane Nash you know we're talking about congressman John Lewis who often times there was a lot of tension between him and the Martin Luther King crowd who are maybe just a tad bit older than he was and some of them you know the counter sit-ins the freedom rides like that was young people right we just think about we don't think about that now we think of these people and we think of them only as adults in the way that we've been taught when in fact those people were 17 and 18 and 19-year-old college students and it's been the way that we've been taught that you have to be some sort of like adult that has had some sort of life experience to be able to organize and even recently just a few days ago you know a young Palestinian Muslim girl who is from my organization organized the student walkout you know in New York City and when you look at the crowd that came out here's a young Muslim woman in hijab and there were black students and there were white students and Latinos and South Asians and others who came out and did a walkout out of their school and the question is what is our education system are we supporting that are we going to penalize students who want to take the risk and organize and say I'm a young person that wants to stand for something that's the question to our educators it's a question to our in light of Betsy Devils what are the teachers going to do what kind of examples are we going to set for the next generation are we going to stand for the privatization of our public education system our education system is already in shambles just imagine where we're going to go over the years and who's going to be losing here it's going to be our next generations and to Murad's point I'm a parent of New York City public schools I tell my kids what to do when they get to school I said you know what you need to do in your school classroom has these posters on the doors and they say and it says refugees welcome here immigrants welcome here whatever and then my daughter takes her little pictures and makes sure that she did what she needed to do are we as parents are we as parents who send our kids to New York City public schools are we encouraging our young people to defy and maybe not defy but to request to engage in some sort of organizing that reflects their values their feeling as young people of color or even not a young people of color even if you're a young white girl and says you know what I'm feeling you know upset about this I want to do something about it are we allowing our public education system to encourage that type of organizing so I think to end and say the most powerful organizing is going to have to be led by young people we're going to have to respect their judgment and understand also that they come with less baggage and less loyalties than a lot of adults do and they also are willing to take more risks than a lot of adults are and the question is are we going to allow them to thrive and create the very communities that they themselves are going to be the ones growing up in and I think it is our responsibilities on multiple levels of the community whether or not we're going to allow that to happen so from my personal experience I find it it's a lot easier to get people to come through to things when arts and culture is involved right if I'm trying to sell people to come out to an action or a rally that's a lot harder than to say like hey there's going to be like music and dancing and like food and cultural stuff but we need that we need the cultural work that can bring people in and also politicize people right cultural work is an act of resistance it is an act of opposition and it resonates to people right coming out to protest and rallies for some folks that might be too high of an ask right for folks that aren't like really into the movement that might be too high of an ask but cultural work is the easier way to get people in and we should be like creating space and promoting people to do that work and you know like with organizing around young folks so young people are some of the heavily policed groups of people around there are people at drama on my age who have been stopped and frisked over a hundred times through their high school careers to the point where they are on a first name basis with the officers that were stopping them right on the way to school leaving school and stop and frisk might not be around anymore but low income neighborhoods and the schools in those neighborhoods are the least if you go to high schools in those neighborhoods you'll see police officers waiting after school dismisses to basically move people towards the train station they don't want them hanging around the neighborhood and if they try to resist then that becomes an altercation that then results in the students getting in trouble and with the sanctuary sanctuary campuses movement did anyone see the memo CUNY put out basically saying we're going to do the same thing we've been doing which is nothing so we need students to hold their campuses accountable to their needs and their rights as well as being able to plug in the community organizations working with the youth to give them the support that they need to organize on campus because campus organizing you don't really have that support and there needs to be a way to tie that into the community based organizing as well like that also goes for everyone here going back to how do we make this a sustained not just for four years or eight years but really from now onwards how do we make this a sustained thing it's about plugging into the community institutions that are there by turning our individual people power into our own institutional power in the form of collectives and organizations I just want to say something about the arts too which is that Trump just announced too that he wants to eliminate the NEA and the NEH which of course is the suppression of expression which of course is a form of fascism so I would say let's make sure to continue to support the arts in all its forms alright last two questions why don't we do them together and then we'll be done hi this one should be quick there are several non-profit organizations represented on the stage I assume that you all are overloaded right now and that you could use some volunteer help with grant work what do you need and how does one go about volunteering so I think the okay next question so I was just really curious what could a city like New York which is on such a national stage do better to be a sanctuary city if the federal government threatens them by taking away funding or something like that how can they resist something like that are other cities around the country barring schools from participating with ICE what can we do to be better here in New York great thank you are you the last question he's also asking a question I was wondering about organizing students in my school around like immigration rights and also other issues a lot of students have been going to protests I went with a group to the student walk out but like in terms of like tangible actions people in terms of like tangible actions people can be taking or like I can help organize people into taking that's kind of the reason I came to this meeting and the things I pulled out from it were kind of like four things like protests creating like expanding spaces for people who are like hurt by these issues maybe like canvassing and people like encouraging students to canvass their neighborhoods whether that's whether they're living in an immigrant community and like connecting people to resources or if they're living in like a more privileged community that I live in like canvassing for like fundraising and stuff and then there was a fourth one that's great so whatever I was wondering if you guys could you obviously have a lot of personal experience if you could speak to any of those points or point me to other actions like other students in my school could be taking so great are you done? one of the things that's been most discouraging in the last sorry to end on a down note in the last few months was Governor Cuomo vetoing a rather semi-decent, not great but at least a start criminal justice reform package that would have increased would have started up a bail fund for indigent it would have attempted to try and put some kind of more power in the hands of public defenders and provided a decent bail fund for people who couldn't afford to pay bail it would have gone some way towards criminal justice reform and then two days later he says he's really pro-immigrant so I one of the things I've noticed over the last 30 years which Carl mentioned this has been a long time coming is that as the police have gotten more and more power the courts have gotten progressively stripped of power to defend against the police is there are your organization sort of targeting court side justice side defense side reform? so just thank you all so much it sounds like the what can we do building movement and the volunteer I think those can kind of go together and then maybe we can talk a little bit more about state reform I do just want to say that well all of these organizations are on the list and I would encourage you to go to the Brooklyn Community Foundation site and look at our immediate response grants under our immigration rights fund as well as in our invest in youth because our largest portfolio in fact is investing in young people so I'm really delighted to hear what everyone's saying here and we do have a big focus on immigrant youth it was long before Donald Trump was elected but it's a great group of nonprofits listed there as well and keep an eye on our site because we're going to continue to fund immigrant led immigrant organizations in Brooklyn and take it upon yourself to call those organizations and say how can I help but I will also turn it to my colleagues here to find out how you can help so ArabAmericanNY.org I won't speak on behalf of everyone here but I will say that we welcome volunteers we have the largest adult education program in our district so we're always looking for volunteers who want to help immigrant women study for their naturalization exams it's an opportunity to build relationships with people and for people to see people who are not Muslim who want to come and support them front desk assistants I mean we are organizations busting out the seams it is a community center you're welcome to come we're located in southwest Brooklyn and Bay Ridge if you're an attorney and you have some extra time on your hands we just have so many people coming in and asking so many questions and people again with different immigration status in light of this ban again while there's great news but CBP doesn't always follow instructions or doesn't always heed to what the law actually says or what any court says so there's been a lot of people coming in with a lot of these questions so if you have time to come we have our own attorneys but they're overwhelmed underpaid under resourced the Brooklyn Community Foundation has been a pillar for our organization for many years from the days it was called independence community bank foundation but also donations to our organizations individually is really helpful at this moment as we continue to not to be forced in a situation where we have to provide service these people are coming to us because we speak their language we live in their communities we're from their communities so whatever resources you could provide all donations to our organizations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law and to the question that someone said about like what do we do as New Yorkers to really be a sanctuary city and I always say to New Yorkers that we're home to some probably the majority of billionaires in the United States of America we're home to some of the largest prestigious law firms and lawyers and New York City just has a lot of money and it doesn't mean that everyone that lives in New York City is rich obviously we know that's not true but we do have a lot of resources so what happens when the government says you're not getting sanctuary or I mean you're not getting resources for immigration we could pay for that out of our own pockets we need to create our own funds private funds here so that we can let the government know that we will not allow you to target our communities we will not allow you to marginalize the most marginalized of our communities that guess what what we do in New York we take care of our own in New York and that's really the model that we can set nationally that it's not just about a saying we're a sanctuary city but we're in our money where our mouths is because that's really what where true transformative solidarity comes from and that's what it looks like when the silent majority stands up and says we will be silent no more we will serve those and we will serve our neighbors and to the last question about Governor Cuomo and I think Naeem said this really in a way that I think is going to stick with me there are we got no friends we got targets and we also got people that are aspirational and want to run for president of the United States of America so stay woke about when people are saying what you think is the right thing and when they're not saying what's and when they're not doing the right thing and remember also when our politicians are uplifting one community while throwing another community under the bus and that's really important as we build solidarity one thing that I realize in intersectional organizing is that if we're going to lose we're going to lose together if we're going to win we're going to win together let us not win on the backs of each other and on the backs of the most marginalized communities which is what elected officials have been doing to us for way too long so I've been losing for 15 years and I'm good because I will lose on principles and values but when I win I want to know that when I won for my community it was because I won with LGBTQ communities because I won with black communities because I won with women and I won with Latino and undocumented communities so let's win together and let's make sure that these elected officials know that we're all on the same page that we're all working together and that we will not allow them to divide and conquer us moving forward I echo Linda sentiment the sorry about before the volunteer question got me excited so as you guys may have noticed JFK like on the 28th like kind of like there was like an explosion of love there right and one thing we didn't realize is the amount of lawyers we needed so in the protest itself we were making an announcement saying if you are a lawyer who's admitted to the eastern district of New York please meet us on the ramp and like they just started trickling out and we were like okay we got oh wow we have like a hundred here right now and then the call went out on social media we had over a thousand lawyers over a thousand lawyers up until and that list is continuously growing because the no ban JFK work is still happening we got we left Terminal 4 on Sunday but that we left the airport but the work is still happening so it's just now headquartered out of the NYC and we're still taking calls we're still answering emails we're still helping people out but that sign up form wasn't just for lawyers we always need help with every aspect that you can think of from marshaling at protest to people helping us with comms people helping us with social media people literally at times we just need people to come help us answer phones and I think that's the reality that we're in is that when we're asking for people to help or you know come join our organization isn't just like talking about like give us money but that's great but actually show up and show up ready to help and I think that that's something that we noticed so we do have tons of volunteer opportunities visit our website theNYIC.org and I think that that's something that when we're talking about volunteering that we have different categories we're not asking everyone to just come out and marshal we want people to use their specific expertise and help us amplify what we're doing one other thing I want everyone to do real quick before time runs out is take out your cell phones real quick super quick you're going to text NYIC to this number 86 I'll say it a couple times guys it's okay so phones are out you got them unlocked you go to your text messaging messages app thing you're texting this number 86 42, 37 and the message you're sending to it is NYIC so once you do that you should get an automated response saying thank you for signing up for messages from the New York immigration coalition and what we do through that service is so a lot of the work as you guys may have noticed has been literally within hours so we're like protest JFK at 2 o'clock in the afternoon at 10 o'clock in the morning so everything has been happening and we're using different modes of technology we want to see what's actually working text messaging has been really great and we're going to do a little bit more in-depth analysis of like who's following us at some point but we don't have time for that now the political aspect of the question that was asked at the end about Governor Cuomo is actually really interesting so the New York immigration coalition what we do as a coalition and what our mission is is to help we're a coalition of immigrant rights and immigrant led organizations across the state we have I think like 130 last year we ended it off with 200 members across the state from western New York down to the east and Long Island the majority of our members in New York City what we are is a political vehicle for our membership so our members tell us what our priorities are at the state, federal, and local level and one thing that was really disheartening to see when the state budget was announced and I'm that kind of nerd who waits up until like about 10 o'clock when it's released online and I run through it to see what was allocated where was that there was literally everything that the governor had announced about the immigrant the immigrant defense project no funding oh no the Office of New Americans no increase like literally everything he had like come out and been really inspirational about after Trump's win was like oh you're doing the same thing again that you usually do so we have to continuously hold their feet to the fire and like Naim said what Linda's repeated is that we have to realize that early on and what people tend to forget is that elected officials are public servants and the servants part is the really important one they're there to represent us and to do what's best for us and sometimes they forget that and we have to help them remember and once you sign up for our texting service you'll come out and help them remember but our strategy moving forward at the city, state, and federal level is the federal level right now we're like okay we just have to continuously fight back at the state and city level and in different counties we're figuring out how do we harden the city and the state from federal policies and that is what our moves are for this year and next year so we have like an 18 month plan of these policies and you guys might have seen the Liberty Bill was introduced last Monday barely passed which was shocking which is pretty much starting to build out the state not working with federal authorities so that's one thing that people haven't really been paying attention to the state has always done it but now we're pushing legislation to ensure that that does not happen anymore and this coming Monday the senate's introducing it'll be introducing the senate and I'm hoping followed by a vote that's successful but that's still iffy you can go okay and so I will end on an optimistic mode and by channeling my inner Obama but in all seriousness you know I think we're in a crisis mode which I know doesn't sound very optimistic but we are in a we're in a crisis mode we don't know what's to come we know what's happened already and what's been threatened and we need to act as though we're in crisis mode often times you know I've been in your seats in the audience at events like this and I tend to you know my mind is like oh that's great work they're doing I you know and I rely on those organizations that are on stage for information to do the organizing and to do the lobbying and to to provide the donations etc without thinking of what I can do and I'm you know we're all organizers we're all philanthropists we're all advocates so if you're I define organizing in its most simplest term as you know coming together as a community to build power to win change so what that means is that if you in your chair can you know talk to someone talk to a friend talk to a relative and bring them to a rally with you or bring them to a meeting with you or bring them to an event like this you're taking a step toward building power so I think in this in these times it's important that we all see ourselves as not just lawyers or artists or you know whatever we do but also as organizers similarly we're all philanthropists we don't need you know obviously you know I wish George Soros was paying all of us up here 300 grand a year to do our work he's not and you know we hear philanthropists we think of George Soros we think of Warren Buffett and those people but you're also a philanthropist if you have three dollars in your pocket you can go to any of our websites and you know are not in your pocket but on your credit card and donate and donate money to us and you're doing your part you're helping sustain social justice movements and similarly we hear a lot about corporate lobbyists we hear a lot about the ACLU pressuring elected officials and groups taking buses to Albany you can just walk in the office of your state senator or assembly representative or congressional rep and ask whoever is sitting there questions and express your concerns you don't need our organizations to do that you can do it yourself and so you know I think everyone just with you know with this it's not just our responsibility to build a movement it's also yours I just want to say thank you so much to all of you and thank you very much the Brooklyn Museum