 Okay, so my name is Madi Solportes, I'm the guest of the piece of justice. I will say a little bit about what this echo did, and the current series that we're running is kind of what we're wanting to focus on, but I want to introduce the panelists really briefly first. We still are waiting on one of the panelists to be running late, but what we've done is split the order so that he will relax. He said it first, and he is on his way, reading the solace. But we have Dylan Dain, who will be seeking first. He said, unite here, so he will be seeking about workers' rights and as they are impacted by how the city defines economic development. We have Nnedi Hinton, who is a longtime community activist on the east side and all over the city, and who most recently has been working with the A.C.U. Bridge Reservation Group. And we have Madiha Bediyosavadi, who is a former council woman, and author of her book that she just published, called Madiha, Daughter of Immigrants, telling the first story of her family and then also her time involved in local politics here, what she learned from that experience. So, and then Rudy Rosales, who is a retired professor of political science at Utah State, and who wrote the book, The Illusion of Inclusion, the untold political story of San Antonio. So we've seen the four of them. We have a wealth of knowledge about what that term economic development means, where it comes from, whose interests it serves, whose interests it excludes, and why, and how we might organize to shift the way we think about development. So, just to give you a little bit of a pre-context, this series, this session is part of a community school program that we're doing. What this included, which means bridges of power, bridges to power, and kind of playing on the idea of the Hay Street Bridge, but also the bridge work that we do as community members to try to explain things, to extend the analysis that we have in this community, and make that analysis accessible to people, and really just challenge kind of the way that things are thought about, things are done here in the city. I am originally trained as, well, I've kind of shoveled back and forth between the streets and the accounting. I got my start kind of thinking about these issues with PGA, and from there went on to get my doctorate in cultural studies looking at environmental justice stuff in the cities. From there, came back and organized with self-exercising and around climate justice stuff, went back to the academy and taught for a couple of years at the University of Kansas, and ultimately decided that my place was here, home, back home, with community, and that I wanted to try to build, to do teaching, writing, collectively, in a community process, to put the goals of liberation and the goals of social movement. So I think of myself as a community scholar, as a kind of liberation sociologist. And the series that we're doing this time around is to support the work of the H2G registration group, and more broadly, folks that are organizing around downtown redevelopment issues, generally, and how it impacts the most vulnerable communities. It's called Cities of Hope, see that it's in San Anza, and this is the third session, we've showed films, we showed the garden, about land grab, and South Central LA, we showed the City of Hope, the John Sayles film, we did both of those things on the H2G bridge, and now we have this panel, which I think tackles, you know, that most infamous of terms that we hear every single day talked about in the context of from schools to, whatever the city is doing, it's in the name of economic development, right? And so it's really important that we have a critical conversation about what that term means, so that we can decide if that's something we want, or maybe it's something different, if it is something different, you know, what is that different thing we want, and how can we organize to create it, to develop it. So the purpose overall of the community school and of this series in particular, is to really try to get to the root causes of these issues, to look deeply into the historical context, the sociological context, so that we have the best analysis, the most radical analysis, radical between two groups, right? That we can, so that the solutions that we come up with as community can be effective. We don't want to just band aid solutions to things, we want to go, we want to understand things on the fundamental level, so that we can address them on that level as well. So, Alice, please turn off your cell phones, that's a good reminder for me as well. So, I have some big slides that got left in the room, would you be willing to look at the big slides that were on the talk board? How's everybody doing today? It's a great thing out. I'm really, I'm really, really, we're happy and excited. How hard would you go to be today? Half a hundred and five, a hundred and eight? A hundred and eight? Really? Oh. So, that was the time we were trying to have this event, we got flooded out. Yeah. And this time around, we made baits. Maybe next time snow. Let us pray. We didn't have production, so I just wanted to do this old school style that makes some really big oversight slides. There's two kind of big ideas that frame the entire series and obsession with panels. And the first one is that anytime there's something taken for granted or understood to be sort of a common good, like a term like economic development, the more important it is that we have to question it. So, that's the first kind of big idea. The second big idea is, well, how do we do that? And what we've talked about in previous sessions is that it's very important for us to say for whom, anytime somebody uses a term like economic development, economic development for whom? Economic development or to whom? So, when you hear those kind of big buzz words, you can ask, you can really kind of critically interrogate them and ask who benefits, who loses, who decides, which I've learned over the time. Maria has always asked me to share her analysis in that way with me. Next slide. It's been a brownie. Yes. An important distinction to make when we, oh, Rudy is here, yay! Yay, Rudy! We'll have to restore his secrets and Rudy, you'll be going first. When we can be critically about economic development in that way, we can make an important distinction between economic development as rhetoric or how something is talked about as a code for certain values, certain interests, certain desires, versus the actual quality of life in our neighborhoods and in our communities for the most vulnerable, I think that's important. So, we have to make that distinction between the rhetoric and the reality and measure the distance between them in order to have a good conversation, right? Yes, but I saw the question come back to the other side. Some guiding questions that I was hoping that panelists would address and if they don't address them directly, we'll be addressing them afterwards. We'll have a kind of more conversational kind of format and human aid, but along the way, I'm hoping that we can ask or address one, what is the history of the term economic development? Where did that term even come from? Who first started using it? Why did they start using it? Two, what does that term mean from the point of view of those who use it? What is it a code for and we're thinking about it as rhetoric, as the way of talking about something and not as reality? Three, why is it important that we think critically about it? Four, I'm hoping we can talk about some local case studies where we can see either problems with how the term is used or with the way economic development is defined. So how do we know that there is a difference between the rhetoric and the reality, in other words? Number five, is economic development as defined by the city ever good? When are there case studies for that? How do we tell? I think that's really important. How do we, what are some criteria that we can use for assessing whether a particular project or initiative is good for our communities and whether it's on our communities? Six, if it's not economic development we want, then what is it? Do we need a different term? And seven, how do we get there from here? And hopefully by the end of the panel, we'll talk about some next steps. We have a meeting date coming up. We have some upcoming events and I will take it from there. So thank you again everybody for coming. And at this point, we'll start with Rudy, who we'll talk about from his perspective as a historian, as a sociologist. I will call you the scientists. What are the tracks that have been laid for us in terms of economic development? And 15 minutes for each and I'll be on the agenda. I don't know if I have, I think 15 minutes is enough. Okay. Thank you. Okay. First of all, I apologize, I thought I'd like to be careful, but it gets more complicated. So anyway, here I am, what I want to talk about is the focus of economic development. What I want to do is do a kind of a political and economic survey of economic development. Actually, there's a lot of literature on San Antonio beginning all the way back to the roots of the Tejano roots of San Antonio, all the way up to Ramos, through all kinds of literature. I wrote a book, The Illusion of Inclusion. You can't hear me right now. Yeah. I wrote a book, The Illusion of Inclusion. And the read hasn't been any playful economic study of San Antonio, okay? That way. No, no, no, sir, close the air. Okay. We have to be really politically economic study of San Antonio. And that's really, that would really tell you the whole story, but let me begin with after World War II, I think after World War II is a relevant gift to me that we want to, that we want to trace and look at what economic development is. During the war, San Antonio exploded from about, I think it was about 250,000 population from the 500,000 that doubled in size overnight. The world, the capitalist system itself was also beginning to go through changes. We think the changes occurred in the 80s and the 90s. But actually they begin to occur right after World War II. Then the major corporations begin to look at how are they going to reorganize and decentralize production? Because if you decentralize production, you break the back of unions. Like that was, that's part of the key. The whole key in production in our system is that while we don't like to hear this because it sounds like, oh my God, Marxist, but it really is about workers and corporations and what kind, and that means then also communities and corporations, right? So after World War II, this, it begins slowly. They begin to look at the lean industry that were labor intensive from the Rust Belt of North. And so San Antonio, like many other cities in the Southwest and we would call the Sun Belt area, begin to court these businesses. We want them to invest in here. That means jobs, that means economic activity, that means growth in a city that doesn't grow, dies, right? So from that perspective then, they begin to pay attention to what business means. They begin to look at what do you mean, how can we affect it? What kind of, what kind of basements can we give you? All in one amount. And so through the first period from about 1950 to about 19, and I documented this to about 1970, 778, the, there was a group of businessmen from the North side of San Antonio who brought about the change to the city council manager and the form of government. The city council manager and the form of government, I would point out, is organized exactly like a corporation would be organized. It had a city council that originally was elected at large, elected a mayor from the city council and then they hire somebody to run the city. The corporation is the same way. You have a board of directors, you have the chair of the council of board of directors, and then you hire somebody, a CEO to run the company. And what this means is that it creates what they call is greater efficiency. In other words, less bickering about what the city is about, who could be served, who's supposed to be served. And they're adding to the beginning from the 50s and the 60s was about, not about the needs of the community and in fact, the horrible conditions of McDonald's and Blacks before World War II was kind of as bad as sometimes worse as the World War II because of the lack of simple public services. They'd rather spend their money in developing the economy, so economic development so that they could bring the businesses. And the argument was that what was to do is to get jobs, blah, blah, blah. But in the process, they ran some over communities. And this there, it doesn't, I think it's not an open project, but because it was about, then the practice industry could come in. And what they do, they've leveled an entire community in the campus right there. They actually destroyed the oldest Black church in Santa Monica without looking at an eye, just like that, right? And so all of this was occurring this time and meanwhile, a lot of us grew up in that period. We learned politics by losing. We were always going against the PPL. We were always campaigning against doing all and we lost all races, mostly, except for a few and I won't work with the whole political history here. I do that in the book. So economic development that naturally develops into what are the needs of business. Because then the assumption is that if we serve the needs of business, they provide jobs, we become self-sufficient and on and on and on. Well, we know that one of the most important costs in the labor-intensive economy, because you can have a labor-intensive economy, not a capital-intensive economy. A capital-intensive economy is like Gary and Diana were at a steel mills, right? And they couldn't move anywhere, like the ordinary company in River Rows, but they couldn't move anywhere, period. And the union's organized and they won, at least until they decentralized, right? So here, it was very easy. You start organizing in a company, boom, they could live like that. Boom, they could live like that. So what they were looking at was cutting costs, making more money. So in the end, the idea of creating jobs kind of gets lost in all that revenue. And it's not about jobs, it's about cheap labor. And so economic development moves in that direction. Is there a different kind of economic development? I think there is, but it has to be through the participation of the communities. I think there is because the communities can organize and empower themselves. Doesn't make it begin to at least reach out and control some of that production that is occurring about their lives. Right now, we depend on everything, on Walmart, we depend on new and cost of the democratic store, it's still outside capital. We depend on the hotels that come in and give us out and treat us nice, like we don't make. And we depend on, then we glorify small business, which is okay. But in the end, it's all at the expense of the community. And we don't have any kind of agenda that addresses the community. Cops try to do it. Cops try to address this, but they were so busy catching up the public services that they didn't get to do much more or else. Because, quite frankly, in the 50s, we still had programs where you had houses built around one faucet, water faucet, that was it. The levels of, the levels of, am I right on time, am I all right? Yeah, about seven minutes. Oh, okay, well, I was talking about I'm not talking about you know. So the levels of, the levels of the levels of material diseases all around were just incredibly high because on top of the economic development, or the level, I think the economic development is on top of that, right, is an incredible segregation in San Antonio. Up until the 1970s, very few Mexicans moved out of the website. Harlemdale had a respective covenant for, if you were a Mexican, you couldn't buy that. If you were black, you couldn't buy that. And I guess they had to, if you were a Jew, you couldn't buy that. I'm not sure. But the point is that we were caught, our communities also doubled, with the doubling of the San Jose population, but we were stuck in one area, and that was the website. There was a couple of historic communities, like sunny slope, or high school, and now, like around the missions, the small communities, the main, the main population was in the website. And then you have a recall community that was very rich, and they, as long as they put up with the slurs and didn't say much, they could enjoy a nice life of a rich person, right? So San Antonio was a two color, real town. And as we tried, as we made, we could still be very difficult to break that image, especially from somebody who grew up in this town, because I see it. And even though we've grown a middle class community, we've grown a black middle class community, and we spread out all over San Antonio, although they're still so very native-like communities, usually very wealthy, the diversity is incredible in San Antonio, but it's class, it's class, because of the 1.2 million people in San Antonio, there's approximately maybe 20% that are closely delivered. The jobs, they're all dead-end. I don't care, I can kill, I can kill, that went to school with my sons, at least they won't do school with my sons, not out of my generation, who all the way look forward to maybe working long enough in a restaurant where they become manager of the kids and we all working hard. And this is good, I talk a lot of these kids, but they're not kids that are born good. My son's already kids here, that's a look at the mind. But, so that there's still, you can only go and then somehow the other forgot them. Or it will deal by then, it's okay. It will deal for you, it will deal for you, it will only bother them as part of the cost of economic development. And so if you have a company, what is your major cost when you're in a labor-intensive economy where most of your money goes into labor, it's labor. And so that there's a tension is there, even if you don't want to call it class struggle, let's just call it an exit. I'm a businessman, right? A lot of my money goes into labor. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna look at ways to keep the cost of that labor down. And if you're not organized, I have to give you an example of it. Like, for example, in the hotels, if you're not organizing, they keep the labor down. The cost. So in essence, our communities have become expendable in the general notion, historic notion of economic development, right? Marietta, I have to say this, when she was in city combat, she was waiting for an airman. She read a beautiful saying, she said, you gotta go, it has to be about neighborhoods. It has to be about children, it has to be about old people. It has to be about sidewalks, it has to be about them. And then I found another source, beautiful, I caught it all the way, where they interviewed some insider in the city hall who didn't want to give their name, and said, poor Marietta, she's so ignorant. She doesn't know that even our involvement's about this. I mean, this is, their attitude is built in. And they don't even have to consciously define it, it's there, historically it's been built there. But what has to happen, and I know, this is a lot of rhetoric right now, but I was just saying, what has to happen is that communities have to begin to empower themselves. Communities have to begin to play a role in deciding who makes the decisions in our community. And we don't have to give away the tips and sink for a business to come to Santa Cruz, because they need the business, right? Yeah. They'll come, they'll come. But for example, when cops demanded that every corporation, this was in 1978, they demanded that every corporation that comes to San Antonio have to pay a minimum of salary of $15,000 a year. The people went berserk, the economic development people, they went berserk and they sat down with cops and the national business magazines were talking about these raving radicals in San Antonio. They were just simply asking for a decent salary, right? So what cops did was that, okay, okay, if you want us to back out, we want libraries in our communities, we want streets, we want curves, we want railways, we want all of this. And that was an important step in the history, but it wasn't enough. And I think that what we have to do now is to begin to think about how we can empower communities. And the first step, of course, is defining the communities, okay? So, I think I'll leave it there. That's great, thank you. Thank you. Maria, Rudy was talking a lot about the laying of the traps in the historical context that defines economic development in particular ways. And Maria was then on the inside of those traps and will share her experience about what that was like and how it limited the things that she could do and what she learned about how things were set up from the beginning and it was interesting. Thank you. And I'm really happy to be part of this panel and in front of these very active people. You are, because I know many of you, you are a lot of your powerful people in the city. So thank you for being here. I decided to do a testimonial. This is a personal statement on kind of one woman's view of the world. And I'm going to start with a shiro of mine. And I went all the way to India for a particular reason. This shiro of mine is Dr. Vandana Shiva, a physicist who has been working on development, human rights, sustainability, and the environment for many years. She is known and admired worldwide. I looked up some of her writings on the subject that we're discussing today. And the first thing to note is that India is growing very fast and there is increased wealth. However, their growth has brought many problems. Today, for many, they no longer have water. Their rivers and other waterways are polluted. They cannot cultivate their land. Multinational corporations like Monsanto have ruined their crops with GMOs and there is a lot of poverty. The wealth has not trickled down to the people. In response to all this, Dr. Shiva and her mostly women collaborators have created a grassroots organization and it's interesting how they are responding. They are promoting biodiversity, conservation, organic farming, and the process of saving seeds. They are protecting the seeds for their food and for their future. They are also going back and seeking the knowledge of the customs of their indigenous communities. The dangers that we talk about that may come to our country if we do not mend our ways have already reached countries like India, things like lack of water and lots of poor people with no work. So what this woman has to say is very important to me and should be very important to all of us. In a speech she gave some years ago in Berlin, she spoke about walls that need to come down. And illusions, illusions really. And she said, one of the biggest walls that needs to come down is the wall of illusions. Illusions like growth. Illusions that tell us that the more money that moves in the economy and society, the better off we are. All that economic growth measures is the flow of money. It doesn't work out how the money is created. It does not work out in what direction the money flows. It doesn't ask, is this going to destroy nature or build nature? Is this going to destroy society or build community? A powerful statement that she makes in this speech is that, quote, the poor are not the ones who have been, quote, left behind with the current economic models. They are the ones who have been robbed. They are the ones who have been robbed. And when I heard this, I again thought of my maps that I have used for many years in talks all over this country. And one of the maps that I'll pass around is this map that describes the growth of San Antonio. Rudy was talking about it. And as you can see, the darker areas are new growth between, well, the whole growth is between 1961 and 1998. And all the growth is to the north and over our Edwards Aquifer. The other map that I have, and I'll pass it on to, is a map based on 2000 census statistics. And you can see where the poverty is in the city. Still in older areas of the city, although I'm sure it has spread, south side, east side, and west side. What we have not done in the city, as Rudy has stated, is stop and ask what growth and expansion, which was the goal of the GTL Bank in 1951, 55, when they created the current city charter, we've never stopped to ask, what has this done for nature and what has this done for people who has been robbed? For me, as I think of these profound questions, I think of my childhood in the west side of San Antonio. I was a child in the 40s and 50s, a young woman in the 60s. And we lived in a small house on a 25 foot lawn that when it rained, our backyard flooded like a lake. It was unsanitary as it started to dry up. When it rained, my mother had to carry my older brother who had asthma to school because he would get sick if he got wet. The rest of us really had no time because we got to walk in the water. We didn't know any better. My father earned measly wages in his job as a laborer, and my mother had the job of making a home for a family of eventually eight people. We did not have parks nearby nor sidewalks, and the streets were in horrible shape. But we belonged to a very special community where people may do with what they had. They helped each other and worked hard to improve their lives, to educate their children, and to contribute through their work and involvement to build community. In other words, there were positives and negatives going on. Problems, but also opportunities in the kind of people we were. And this is still going on, by the way. I was fortunate that with this background, I was able to serve as an elected official, a city councilwoman for a whole decade. And I say fortunate because I knew who had been left behind, who had been robbed. And I ran for public office because I wanted to help these neighborhoods where my constituents now live. At the time, District One, which I represented, was smacked in the heart of the city with its old neighborhoods, including the ones in which I was raised. Because of this knowledge, my priorities were, in some of them, rehabilitation and repair of older housing to provide for more stability within families, drainage, improvement and enhancement of public spaces, recreational opportunities for youth, protection of our historic structures, services for children, youth, the elderly for families, fair allocation of resources, protection of our natural resources, like water as our city grew, and to assure that those who benefited by new growth paid their fair share. But what a surprise to go in with these intentions and find that the economic development that we pursue was the one of growth and expansion that extended the city to the north away from the older areas of the city. And those I represented, and those I represented, and over our Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone. What a surprise to see that each week we rezone the properties over the aquifer so they could be developed later. What a surprise to see big ticket items like the Alamo Dome, which was built with a sales tax and just the Texas, which was built with a huge tax abatement become realities. And that my constituents had to help pay the bill as they continued without their share of progress. These were the models for economic development I faced and they are still there. While we hear words of investments in people now, and that is good because the words must come first, we still have not changed the goal of growth and expansion in our city. We have not examined exactly what kind of growth means for what kind of growth means for our city. And Eddie will talk about a very real situation here in the East side, so I wanted to address that one and that's the Hay Street Bridge. Now why do I say we have not examined this growth? As an example, there's something on the table right now that is going to be a real test for our San Antonio City Council. It is the latest development called Crescent Hills that will be over our Edwards Aquaver Realtor Zone and is totally in Comel County. SAWS, the entity that provides water in our county, has voted to provide water and wastewater to that development. That means that all of us rich or poor will pay for it through our water bills. And in this action, there is more development risks for water, for our money, it will require more money to develop it and something else. There are from 15 million to 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats who are skeletons which fly out each night to get their food. It is the largest bat colony in the world and the bats will be flying over and hanging around literally on top of all those houses. The development is bad for the aquifer, bad for our pocketbooks, and bad for the bats. And there is no place for the process of approval of this development to discuss the impact on the bats or where people can go and discuss the impact on our water or our pocketbooks. So why are we doing it? I think it is because, well, I don't think I know, there are big business interests that have incredible power over these decisions. In addition, I don't think there are enough people who are informed about what is going on in the world around them. I think because there are not enough people who understand that when other living creatures like birds and bats are harmed, we as humans are also at risk. Because there are not enough people who make the connections between paying taxes and what we get from them. For example, more money leaving the inner city's tax base, like we did in the 60s and 70s to begin with, was less money for our public schools. And yet, those inner city still pay taxes that help the new development, and we are taxed proportionately more for our public schools than other areas of town. It is because not enough of us see the poverty nor what the poverty among us. Because when we see huge government expenditures made, we do not ask who benefits and who pays. Because definitely not enough people engage government by voting, and sadly, thankfully, because even when we do, involve our voices are not respected, nor are demands heated, we've learned that. And also because enough of us do not take time to be informed so that we can be in a position to hold our elected officials accountable. Lastly, a lot more. Because we are still not united in our cultural, social, economic, and geographic differences. We do not yet realize that what hurts one side of town hurts the other, and that what hurts the undocumented government hurts us, and that what hurts people clear across the earth, like India hurts all of us. We have a lot of work to do. That is why this gathering today is so significant, and the whole process of when this will end. That is why people like you today continue to educate, question, organize, speak out, rhyme, and engage each other as they connect the dots on all the current issues. So you who are here become real hope and people of great power. I think what we need to do all together is start creating a new vision for our city that's different, and it's very hard. And some of us who are the oldies, but goodies, probably won't see it, but they're young people, like the two who organized this panel, Marisol and Jolene, and all the other young people that gather, and that is where our hope is, and we who are the older ones will be here to support you. Thank you very much. Next up is Nanny Hinton, and she's gonna talk a little bit and kind of bring it down to the neighborhood level. So some of these big forces that Maria and Rudy were talking about, how do they play out sort of locally on a community level, and especially in the A.S.U. Bridge case. Good morning, everybody. Back of the room, can you hear me? Okay. We are happily being hosted today by a faith community here on the east side, the British Oak Missionary Baptist Church community, and I really think we need to stop and pause right now and bring that religious affirmation of what we are about into play. And we've got him in the second room, and I'm gonna ask, remember the loose talking, I mean, writing at the moment, if he won't come forward and say a few words to bring God's grace down on us so that what we're doing today and what we do in the future will have his commendation to it, because we're doing the right things for the right reason and insistence. Reverend Moonfield. Thank you, my friend and sister, Maria, and let me say the morning to you. I hope that each of you will be taking positive notes because what they are about to bring forth is a thing that you can have once you understand and know how and what you're going to do in the direction of our city. Shelby Cronin, our Father and our God, thou creator of our life. We as your children come before you, first of all, in thanksgiving, that you have blessed us once again to open our eyes and to see yet another day. Our Father, we thank you for doing this in our sound mind, now Father, we just ask that you fill us with strength. The attitude as well as the human too, let those know that we can make a difference, but only through your power and through your grace and your wisdom that we can make a better city for each of us in regards to who we are or to where we might live, to know that it can be a healthy city and that we can prepare a future, but in that future that you may be in doubt in, we ask that you just let each of these empty spirits here be whom are sharing their knowledge with us. Grant us them the love and understanding as well as the knowledge and wisdom that we may all share and be a better people instead of you as well as the 12th man. We love you, thank you for the things that you do with us, through us and for us. And as always, we will call to you in praise and glory, for it is in Jesus' name we solemn pray, and by the say of man, amen, amen, amen. Thank you. When I was asked to be on this panel, I approached people in my East Side community and asked them the question, what is economic development anyway? And you can imagine that I got a lot of different responses. So I'm gonna ask you right now to think for a minute or two, what does economic development mean to you? What does it bring to mind? What does it propel the city? What does it propel you? What does it propel your community, organizations, whether they're religious, nonprofit, our front profit, to be doing to meet the definition of economic development? I'll give you minutes, not minutes, just a few seconds, to think about it, to you, what does economic development mean? Now, you probably realize it's kind of hard to get your hands around the subject because it does mean different things to different people. In the part of the conversation we've had already this morning from the professorial sort of a standpoint and from the elected official community activist sort of a standpoint, there are differences in what it actually means. To some people, economic development, and I think the city falls into this kind of a category, refers to increases in, what's known as gross domestic product, GDP. It's what our city fathers and mothers keep talking about in making San Antonio a world-class city. And it's the things that would, the corporate entities, the other kinds of opportunities that would put San Antonio on the map and would increase the profit flow to those corporations or to the city in terms of the kinds of tax advantages that they would get as a result of being one of these leading economic lights in the country. So it's tied to the domestic economy and what also happens in the state of Texas. And if you listen to our governor speak, Governor Gooden, you're constantly talking about the economic incentives that Texas offers that other states do not offer. And that's why he said to California and other places asking for those groups of people to come to Texas because we've got things to give you tax incentives, rebates, all kinds of wonderful things. And you can do your business here in Texas. That all refers to gross domestic product and income. But economic development on the other hand implies something much more significant. And the indicators of economic development is not the amount of money that your corporations are making. But for me, the indicators are things like literacy rates, life expectancy, poverty rates, environmental quality, social justice, leisure time that you can afford at things that the city is promoting that you can afford to participate in, not just the tourists among us. I found in talking to people and in myself, I have a profound sense of disappointment in how the city has approached economic development on the east side. And among the people that I talked to on the east side, there was one consistent view, simply stated. Just as all politics is local, economic development, it is truly to benefit the community. It too must be local. Now for me, economic development brings goods and services at economic value that improves the quality of life in the community. And under this definition for me, economic development must be altruistic and not mercenary. Now, those two models for me says this. The mercenary model uses the community, takes from the community while making certain that little or none of that money generated by the enterprise circulates within the community. Let's take a closer look at two projects sold to east-siders as economic generators, Valomudon and the AT&T Center. Altruistic model, you know that it's gonna bring things into the community. Mercenary model is going to take things out of the community, particularly the money. I ask you, how much money circulated by those two so-called east-side economic generators circulates at least one time in the community before it flees to bank accounts in more affluent parts of town. Valomudon, AT&T Center. A dollar spent at either of those places never, ever circulates on the east side. To the detriment of the community, even the existing infrastructure has been modified in order to make these venues easily accessible for others who live someplace else. For example, Houston Street. From the Ronald Avenue to Rio Grande is residential. However, that stretch now has a continuous turn lane right down the center that prevents homeowners from parking in front of their homes. Even when there is absolutely nothing going on at the AT&T center or the policy. And a lot of those homeowners have been there a very long time, and so they're old folks, like me, I'm 74. So if you don't have a driveway, and many of them don't, and if you do have a driveway, it only accommodates probably one vehicle, and you may have a family that has at least two vehicles in it. If you can't park in front of the street, you've got to park around the corner, down the block, and then walk back in order to get into your own home where you are tax-paying citizens for it. On SBC Parkway, you see COVID, AT&T Parkway, which started out years ago as Coliseum. Traffic patterns for events makes it almost impossible for homeowners living off Belgian lane to get to and from their residences or to the Belgian Cameron School because they change the traffic patterns with police and cones. So you can't get out of your neighborhood to get to 35 or to get to Euston Street or the Commerce Street. You've got to know a securities route all the way up to the WWI road to accessing. Tell you what happened during the playoffs with me. I parked over where Handy Andy used to be where you've got the lovely pond and the fountain. I parked over there, walked across the street to get into AT&T Center. When the game was over and it was happening one week long, I could not go the most direct way to my home and I lived off Hackberry and Nolan Street. I had to make a right turn out of the parking lot, go up Coca Cola to Commerce, make a left turn on Commerce, go up to I-10, stay on the access road, up to Martin Luther King's, make a right on Martin Luther King, drive all the way up to Martin Luther King, make the dog leg at the cemetery, get on Iowa Street, make a right turn on Hackberry when I finally got there and then get to my house and get into my driveway. That's because the infrastructure has been changed to make it easy for those dollars that are not circulating in my community to have easy egress from something that's supposed to be an economic generator for my community. No, we did not get money circulating. We got traffic jams from AT&T. And if you can remember Alamo Dome, what did we get? Toxic dirt, all in the name of economic opportunity. Now the East side hungers for economic development and why? Because we anticipate receiving what economic development has brought to other parts of San Antonio. Look at the map that Maria showed you. It all goes north, doesn't it? We want quality schools, we want better housing, we want job opportunities that are not mired in the low wage, tourist convention, entertainment service industries. Now don't get me wrong. We welcome service industries, some service industries, particularly those dominated by business services, healthcare, technology. And we wonder why it is that the movers and shakers in San Antonio's government and corporate sectors actively recruit new manufacturing office, research and development operations, and then place them on the north and northwest sides of town. Now, what I call the northwest side of town is Marty Winderland. Does anybody get the pun? Marty Winderland. Oh, yes. Google Marty Winder and see what development that you get in the northwest sector of town, which is why I call it Marty Winderland. And why on the East side do we get more of the same old, same old, meaning warehouses, truck stops, and land fields? Have you been on the South side lately? Look at the development that has been sparked by the Brooks City-based vision. If you haven't been, go. If you haven't been, go. Now, we experienced the Highly Towed in East Side Summit where are the catalytic projects for us that were promised that are now so highly visible on the South side. Now, I don't want to make this sound like we're trying to denigrate South side development, North side development, Northwest development. We just want our share of the development and we haven't been getting there. And I don't see the vision for the East side. And considering that location, location, location is what drives much of the real estate investment, we would think that because we have Fort Sam Houston and Sam C, that we would have experienced the kind of development that Brooks City-based brought, the added value that those places brought to us. And look at Fort Sam's mission as it relates to medicine, cybersecurity, and 21st century techniques. Only three minutes left. Oh, Lord, I'm going to have to talk real fast. We're in an apartment zone. And the apartment zone designation provides the city priority funding in the areas of public health, education, and human services, which can give us tremendous boost in our neighborhoods for revitalization areas. Now, my East side downtown neighborhood has been selected for a $23.6 million promise neighborhood grant. We have also been given a HUD grant, a multi-million dollar one, to demolish the weekly courts and to rebuild it as a modern housing site and to make it into a model development. What do our city fathers and mothers believe we need in our promise neighborhood? A brewery, a restaurant, and a beer pub. And they took land that the Hays Street Bridge restoration room got donated to be a park, to be an amenity next to the Hays Street Bridge, which we saved through the petition process, meaning we involve all of us like y'all to save the bridge from being dismantled so that we could continue to have connectivity from our downtown East side neighborhood to downtown and the revitalized Mission Reach of the River. We then went to Austin and we seriously, seriously worked very hard to make certain that we could get $2.9 million of federal money to restore the bridge so that it could become a part of the city's hiking bike trail. What did the city do? They renamed it on the park. Patty Giovanni, Mr. Ethics, then decided to strike a deal with a guy who has a brewery that he does in Blanco with 10 employees to essentially give him the land with the tax incentives and the tax breaks that they do for the big corporations to build a brewery and then a licensing agreement which would give him control of the right-of-way under the bridge, let him build a skywalk from his brew home onto the bridge, and then give him most of the bridge decking for restaurant tables, umbrellas and chairs so that they can drink beer on the bridge. Now you know for a few hundred dollars you can close any public thoroughfare for any time, which means he could close it so that we, the citizens, the neighbors would not have access to it at 4th of July next weekend, come and watch the fireworks. The current, it's best to San Antonio, y'all voted, it said the third best place to see the city's fireworks is from the Hay Street Bridge, he could close it and he could become a private party. We would not be able to be in on the Hay Street Bridge. We don't need another alcoholic beverage serving site so that people can be drunk and drive the wrong way on 281.37, making themselves and kill other folks. We need to surround our neighborhoods, our community, our churches, the Healey Murphy Center. Hopefully we will get a pre-K child care development center on the east side when they do that next one. Those are kinds of opportunities that we need. Am I through with not three minutes to go on? What you do know if you're from district two, that if you go up Broadway, on the east side of Broadway where 1800 Broadway is, up to where the new Jordan's Museum is gonna be across from Lyonsville, that's now a part of district two. And the new zoning regulations are taking the cottages, the small houses in our communities in government yield and in the individual yield, and using the new mixed use zoning designation to turn each of those little cottages and houses into restaurants, bakeries, cigar bars and all kinds of things that will feed the apartment developers who will be in those highly income units along Broadway. Just as sunset station, the Zappereets who control downtown development builds a community unit called Vendora, which is directing what happens in the intermediate yield neighborhood. When we get to Q and A, ask us about zoning and what's happening in the neighborhoods. And next we have Dylan Nainey from who organizes the Unite Here, who will talk about how these forces and politics play out in terms of the impact on workers and workers' rights. Awesome, thank you. Yeah, just wanna say thanks to Espananza for organizing this. I see a lot of friends here and it feels pretty good to be up here. I really appreciate the perspectives that we've gotten sort of like laying things out in a bigger context. I'm gonna speak from a pretty specific frame to look at economic development in San Antonio and that's through the hospitality industry, which I think is pretty important when you're thinking about the question of economic development because of the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent in the name of economic development on the hospitality industry. It is the fourth biggest industry in the city. We're serving about 25 million tourists, in Medjugorje, a year and it's about 100,000 people estimated now who work in industries connected to hospitality. So that's everybody from the cab drivers running to and from the airport to the coast to the housekeepers to the servers. And I'm gonna speak specifically from my own experience with two projects, two entities in the city who have spent enormous amounts of public taxpayer money in there to come into existence, which is the Grand Hyatt Downtown, the main convention center hotel and then the convention center itself, which has been expanded multiple times and we're on track I think for another $330 million expansion that is, if people don't know, connected to the general fund is no longer being financed out of tax dollars, it's connected to the general fund of the city council, which is pretty troubling if people saw the headline this week that were being told we're in the shortfall. So the Hyatt project was about, represented about $207 million in taxpayer money that was spent and that was a mix of federal funding through empowerment zones and a mix of municipal bonds. I will say that when you get into the money that's going into the hospitality sector, it is coming from all levels of government. It's municipal, it's state and it's federal tax dollars that are being used to fund these projects. And the county, excuse me. So $207 million spent to build the Hyatt project. We were lucky that there were groups like COPS who fought for a long time to get some, I guess basic minimal expectations into the deal. The Grand Hyatt was built with the understanding that they would pay a quote living wage minimum when it opened of $10 an hour. And I just want to talk to you about my experience there. I've been in the hotel industry for a number of years. I started as a security guard and moved on to be a banquet server. And I worked for the Hyatt as a banquet server in Indianapolis and I actually helped open the Grand Hyatt as a banquet server back in 2008. I remember when they offered me the position, for those of y'all that don't know, in banquets, the way our servers have been traditionally compensated is through a service charge, through a gratuity. We work for gratuities, that's where our livelihood comes from. And it is a job in the hotel industry that in many parts of the country is a middle class, a middle class job. You can make good money because the hotel's charged so much for the product that the gratuity ends up being rather large. And I remember when they offered me the position here in San Antonio, my beverage director said to me something along the lines of like, we're gonna do things a little differently. We do things a little differently down here in San Antonio. You're not gonna get paid your tips. I know you got paid tips in Indianapolis and maybe that was great for you, but we're gonna pay you by the hour and we're gonna keep the service charge. But don't worry, it's better for you. Right. It's, it smelled funny from the beginning. You know, when you're sitting in a booth getting told you have a new job and moving to a new city, there's not much room to negotiate. So, you know, I of course said, well, that sounds great. And showed up the first day. What I found is that, you know, a project like this where we were promising, where the city is promising good jobs to the people of San Antonio. That's why we have to give these hotel owners and construction companies millions of dollars. That's why the city has to back up this debt. Resulted in a job that was unique. The same corporation that's taking this money is only here in San Antonio. This is the only place I kind of wear two hats here. I work with the hotel workers union. So I talk to hotel workers all around the country and as a former hotel worker, only here in San Antonio do they keep all of this rigidity. It's unique. And I think the unique exploitation that happens here to workers on a daily basis is important to look at when people are standing there talking to us about how great economic development is gonna be and worse why they need our taxpayer dollars to fund it. This is happening all over San Antonio. The standard here for servers is one of the lowest in the country. That's why the convention center, which our city is highly connected to funding has a lot of influence over what happens there. They steal more of the tip at the convention center than they do in the higher. There are workers who I have met at the convention center who've been there for 20 years. They have never been paid their tips. And many of them are making less than $11 an hour. After 20 years. Folks who have not seen a raise in 10 or 15 years. The problems with the gratuity are serious. I would argue there are even more serious problems in this industry that is highly subsidized when it comes to subcontracting. For those of you who don't know, in the hospitality industry, in our convention center, in our hotels, subcontracting is a widely used practice to exploit workers even further. In the Hyatt, which was given the city money, when it opened, there were approximately, it was approximately 80 men and women who worked directly for the Hyatt, which meant they had access to benefits. They had sick days. I'm not trying to paint a rosy picture, but they actually worked for the Hyatt. And what we've seen since that hotel opened took this money, it's over the course of five years. Now we have, in the housekeeping department, almost, I think right now we're at about, say, 50 out of the 80 housekeepers are subcontracting. Which means they have no job security, no sick days, no benefits. They are giving up, right? The way subcontracting works is the hotel is paying, say, $15 an hour per worker, five of those dollars are going to a middleman. And on top of that, I'll just add for folks who may or may, for some of you who might not be familiar with the hospitality industry, and the level of exploitation that happens in San Antonio, in housekeeping in general here, it is also the worst place to work in the country. It is the place where it's, I always say to people, this is what it looks like when the companies can do whatever they want. Which means for housekeepers cleaning up to 30 rooms, 32 rooms in a day, in an eight hour day. We fight as an organization, right, in our union shops, our fight in housekeeping is all about that standard. And in many major cities in this country, we have been able to bring that number down to 14 rooms a day. I mean that in itself is a lot. But you're talking about double here. So the subcontracting though, I will say, it is particular to housekeeping, it's particular to that department, it is also how these hotels are exploiting folks who don't have documents. The hotels don't do it directly, they get somebody else to do it. And it is, it's ruthless. And it's happening all over downtown, it is happening in all the places where we're giving public tax dollars to fund these projects. And I think like, we have to ask ourselves like, when economic development is happening, what does it mean for workers? Especially in the hostility industry, the amount of money that's been spent down there, in terms of it actually getting back to the community, how does it come back? Generally, it's only opportunity to come back, it's through wages, through jobs. And it is an open question of what kind of jobs those are. And I will also add, I think since I have time, there's pretty interesting, it's pretty cool, there's a guy in San Antonio, I recommend folks checking out his work named Haywood Saunders who's a professor at UTSA, who is probably one of the top academics, kind of running around the country, critiquing the amount of money that's being blown on convention centers and convention center hotels. And he put out an article recently that I thought was pretty interesting called One More Hotel that looked at the fact that we've gone from 18,000 rooms to about 44,000 rooms from the 80s to 2012. So we've been expanding, continuing to spend this money. We just signed off on another convention center agreement and before the last convention center expansion, before the Grand Hyatt was built, we actually had more convention center hotel room nights, more business in this town than we have now. It's a, and you could argue that, well, we had to do it to keep up with the other cities because it is true that all around the country it's the same model, right? Spend all this money on convention center hotels, spend all this money on expanding your convention center. You need to do it to keep up, to keep the money coming in, flowing into the city. But it is a real question of whether that's benefiting the city and who it's benefiting. And it looks like I've got a couple minutes left. I just, so I did want to remark, because I think a lot of what we've been talking about is it's pretty sobering, it's pretty depressing and upsetting to learn that this is, where, you know, how much money's being spent and what's happening with it. So I do have two points of optimism in this. One, if people didn't know the story of the Marochon plant that people recently tried to build or that a deal that recently got tried to, or folks tried to make with the county. It wasn't a deal as large as the Hyatt, but it was $10 million, $15 million that was gonna be given away in subsidies to this company. Folks organized a press conference with 50 people. I was there, it was not huge. Couple news folks came out. And they did a good job getting the press. It took one press conference and one news story and Marochon called the city and said, look, we don't need the money. We'll come anyway. And that was a deal where the city was gonna give Marochon this money. It was five, the promise of 550 jobs, 500 of those jobs were subcontracted jobs, 10th jobs, minimum wage, no benefits, no rights, which is completely insane that we would hand that money over. But it is a point of optimism for me because it is a reminder that they are afraid of us, right? Sometimes a small action can move and change something because they are afraid. And the other point of optimism, at least for me, and I don't wanna comment on like, I think it's a big question for a lot of us what comprehensive immigration reform is gonna look like. And I think I don't wanna speak to the controversies around it right now and what's happening with the Obama administration. I think a lot of us are upset about it, but I do think we're seeing the potential for some kind of reform to come through. And I think for when we're thinking about the subcontracting problem and we're thinking about the potential to organize change, the fact that there may at some point in the near future be a path for folks to get status that is gonna enable them to fight. Because I think right now, these companies, they're taking advantage of the precarious position in this gray area that exists in the country because we haven't dealt with this economic problem. And so I am optimistic from that perspective because I spend a lot of time standing outside in the sun, outside the Hyatt and the convention center talking to a lot of those workers. And I do know that if we are able to get some reform, maybe not this time around, but at some point we are able to get some reform, it's gonna be a lot of workers who are ready to fight, who are gonna stand up, who are gonna come forward. And I don't, I mean, I'm a union organizer, so I look at it that way, but I do believe that to change this, we're gonna have to organize and we're gonna have to fight. So thank y'all for listening and we'll do Q and A. Since before we turned it over to y'all and have a more informal discussion right now, let's see, it's about 11.30, we started a little bit late, so maybe over about 45 minutes or two and a half, and so Gary was mentioning that parking is now open on the south side, I'm not sure I'm gonna get these details right, something in the very south, on the south side of the church. I didn't want, somebody could just clarify, I think the one question I had after hearing all the awesome presentations was, who started using the term economic development first, when did it, when? Like here? It's an Antonio, okay. There's a saying in Spanish that says, el diablo sabe más por viejo que por diablo, the debo knows more because it's old. So I have a little answer for that money, so the first time that I started hearing the term economic development that was really broadly used in San Antonio was around 1977 or six, when Henry Cisneros was a councilman of district one and he had a big convention center meeting totally on what is economic development and how do we achieve it for San Antonio? And I remember going, the place was packed, one of the exhibit rooms, and it was different people who presented, largely business people, all the chambers, and it was what Rudy was talking about. But that's the first time that I heard it in the city. They have been before, but it made a splash because of who Henry was in the hope that he had gotten elected and people had so much hope in him. And just to suggest to maybe those who want to ask a question, come up to the mic, so that since you are being reported. And by the way, thanks so much to now cast for coming out and being excited that you're here. Just so that we can hear as much as I might give a question. Thank you. Young man, you're my hero. My father was an organized vet in Germany after the World War II when they were exploiting the unemployed brick workers. They literally had working ovens. Today, he lives in a restaurant with a dust lock. That he did what he could, so my hat's off to you. But you only touched the corruptness and the crookedness with the hotels and what's going on in the city. And Maria might know who I'm referring to. I will not mention any names. When the pink elephant, that's how we used to refer to it down on the river. Which one is that? I can't think of it. When they were given, it's the tax evapements. Floats, you have no idea. They're giving away the baby and the bath water. I went down there to address them along with the priests from our lady in Guadalupe. I think with Lula and some others. And what this, this is a vicious cycle. You need to wake up, you need Christ's help. Go ahead, get locked up. It's worth it. And what's going on? And I know for last week, I used to be in the real estate industry outside of this city and state. We are, or we have been for the last 20 years, the biggest plum in the free world be plugged for the hotel industry. We have the lowest land cost. There's no other city of the size anywhere near to San Antonio where you can buy dirt cheap land on a famous river, major roadways. Fee simple means you own it. Everywhere else, they rent it in great fees. Then you get it billed at lower cost than anywhere else because we know where our cement workers come from. And they have contracts. It's not a question on bringing you more information. Then they have high hotel rates, high hotel room rates, high occupancy rates, low wages, no benefits. And do you know where the profits go? None of them come to San Antonio. The switch. Okay. None of them come to San Antonio, wake up folks. The profits go to Houston, to New York, to China, to Shanghai, but none of them come here. And unless we get radical, we will keep on being a colonial society because that's what we really are in the hotel industry, in the entertainment industry, in the inner city. I used to have acquaintances to include a mayor that I could call up and say, hey, look, my famous little speech was, and that includes the county commissioners. They gave it away to Adkins, to San Antonio, all of them. They gave them the tax abatements for 10 or 15 years because they say they can't operate and make a profit. Well, guess what happens when those years are up? They sell, then they need to have the same tax abatement so they can remodel and stay viable. You are getting great over and over and over. And what I used to tell Howard, y'all know who I'm talking about. I said, Howard, I hope you all are crooked. I hate to think that our city is led by somebody as stupid as you are. Let these international operators, you know, rape you, take our money. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna ask a question quickly, or if you know who to comment, try to keep it brief so that he has a chance to speak. I have a simple question based on your comments and who you stand with us. And that is, you're talking about the home who is more important. I think it will be important, and maybe you can address it is, the home behind the home. Because we refer to the rebounding of neighborhoods, we refer to the subcontracting, we refer to the more sites outside. But there is a home behind the home which nobody has seen us. We're saying away from the race politics and economic policies, but we know what it is and we have to name it. You see, these people have to know that they have to be brave enough to send out to them as we have their food generations. So, could you please address that? Sure, that's a great question. And I'll say a little bit. And Maria, I think you're probably gonna say a little bit. But anybody else as well. The home behind the home, there's, you know, since the 19, seven years ago when a lot of these changes began to take place, there's been a kind of sea change in what the people in visible positions and decision making look like. Recently they look more and more and more like us. But do they really represent our interests or do they represent the interests of someone else? And actually it's a good chance for me to draw attention to something that's taken and that that's happening tomorrow when we're doing a workshop with a direct action training camp. Power mapping San Antonio. And I worked with Maria and Graciella and Fabla and a couple other folks to kind of put together that map of who the home behind the home is. Maria, her theoretical construct framework is to call in the 17 white men. But that's been found out by doing this exercise. There is, there are many more, 17, at the time when she was originally making that list. And so these are sort of the invisible faces of power that are creating the biggest set of constraints and limitations within which then the physical decision makers have to operate. So like Maria was saying, it's about class but it's also about race, it's about gender, it's about sexuality, it's about, and also it's all of those things intersect with then environmental stuff. So all of these issues are completely and very, very complex ways tied together. But it's basically, you know, there's no longer a root angle of rule in this very colonial city. But the powers that be are much less in plain sight than they used to be. But continue to call the shots. And I would just like to just elaborate it too. Yes, hello. Hello. Just to be hopeful, to hear somebody, the age of Marisol, Dr. Marisol wrote this, made this statement is a lot of hope because many of us have been saying that for many years and that's how we need to keep our issues alive. Just very quickly, when we look at what has already been said about development and expansion and what we think of economic development in San Antonio, the hotels, the brewery and so on, we have to think who makes the money when that's happening. The people who make the money are construction firms, our engineering firms, our law firms, our the banks, our the media, our big businesses. So we have to look at who's making the profits. And then an interesting exercise for all of us is just to go to the city's website where contributions are listed, people who run for public office at all levels and then you're gonna see a repetition of the same names. That would be a very good job for somebody to do. So it's, people call it the power elite, they call it the establishment, they call it the 1%. We have the 1% of the city. And to me it's such a serious issue that a good chunk of my book that I wrote is devoted to that information the way I see it. Can you just, if I don't want to comment or I just want to give everybody a chance. Like, let me say 20 words. And that is, cities in a capitalist system are the sites of production, the circulation of capital and the reproduction of labor. And that's where the struggle occurs. If we don't know we're in a struggle to define our city, they'll take it away from us. I was listening to this, I wasn't entirely sure what economics of this would be about before I got here. And it sounds like it's a great idea, it's just not really in candle's breadth. And I guess I'm curious as to what the individual can do with this problem. I know that you can join a group and you can be active in all these other ways. But like as an individual, it's still really powerful with this, what can you do? I, for myself, since I'm a musician I know that what I often do is I hold performances and let people know like, there are good things happening in the youth of San Antonio and that there's a bright future ahead of us. And by example, I'm having concerts soon at the Carver Folklow Center on the 14th. And it's gonna be displaying the music of the youth of San Antonio. But I'm wondering what can most people do in order to feel like they have an effect with this issue? Oops, what's happening? I would like to specifically talk about HG Bridge, for those of you all who are not very familiar with what is happening. We have file suit and it is a restoration group and it is also a class action suit that includes everybody more than 2,000 people signed on to the petitions that we want all of the communities in San Antonio to get people to sign. We are scheduled to go to court for a jury trial on the 7th of October. Now you also need to know that we have had two small victories in court already. The first one is, and in the suit is of course similar to what was played out at State Legislature the last couple of weeks, our suit was that the sale of the land intended for public park, not to be determined by city council or city staff, but that it come to you, the citizens of San Antonio, the taxpayers, to determine whether or not the sale of that land to be a glory next to historic bridge is appropriate for the city of San Antonio. The State Legislature was dealing with that same statute because Michael Ayala in the after-representative and Senator LaTisha Bantipute had bills in Austin that would allow the legislature to take away from you as citizens the opportunity to vote on what happens in the development of Hymnus Fair Park. Now you know Hymnus Fair Park is a huge issue for the city than our small little park next to the HB bridge, but it was the same statute that was being considered and they went to Austin to have the legislature rule that the city could make those decisions without coming to you to vote on each one of the changes they were doing. Now it was going through with no problems. It was sailing until the Zachary's, you know who are these people running San Antonio, decided that they wanted a tourist hotel on the Hymnus Fair site. Now Michael Ayala had worked assiduously to make certain that the development of that site would be 80% for public use, parkland and things that would be advantageous to us the citizens of San Antonio and not something for the tourist entertainment and convention business. And only 20% could be for other uses, commercial and otherwise because there are people who still want to put apartments and other commercial things in the park. So he was limiting it to 20%. The Zachary's jumped in there and wanted to put a tourist hotel and it almost derailed the whole thing that they were trying to do. Finally, the powers to be must have muckled him and the tourist hotel has at least for the time being on the way of extinct animals. And perhaps we will do at 80. Just to make sure that very quick it's a question answered and also that if there's any, what else I can have. But you have to have the understanding because you've got to follow down here in San Antonio. They assume we have very sharp attention spans and don't remember anything. And if you don't remember anything and connect those dots, you will not know what's happening. So they managed to say you are not gonna vote on the Hemisphere Park and the changes that they made to it. But they're trying to keep us from putting on the ballot that you will have a say as to whether or not the park land next to the H.S.T. Bridge will be used as a park and not for something else. So the two victories that we've had. The developer, Eugene Seymour, who is the son that a former mayor never had. And his folks person was a person who was a part of the city manager's office. So if you talk about people who are really hooked up. He wanted to join on the city side. That's the lawsuit claiming that he had standing because the city was gonna sell in the park land. But there has been no sale of the park land because our suit and everything we've been doing has derailed that for the moment. Went to court in the county courthouse and the judge did not allow him to join that suit with Sherwin Scully and the city of San Antonio. The next thing they took us to court on was on the MOU that the city said that the restoration group had to sign. We lobbied for the federal monies to restore the bridge. 80% federal monies, 20% had to be guaranteed by another entity. The city because they were collaborating with us all of these years agreed to guarantee the 20%. We then the restoration group raised more than $200,000 which we could create to the city. We also got Union Pacific to donate the bridge which was all a part of what they were doing to not have to pay the 20%. So they went to court to say that because we didn't have a contract with the city in which they paid us to raise money that the MAMOU did not give us some legal standing. That judge threw that out as well. So we've had two small victories but we go to court October 7th, y'all need to be in court. You need to explain to people that when it gets on the ballot because I pray to the Lord that it's on the ballot that we vote on whether or not we want a brewery on that land or a park next to the Hays Street Bridge. You can do that. That's one of the things you can do. One of the other things that you can do is that in the today's Catholic right now there's a story about a current university that's looking for a site for a hospital. They've done the wonderful thing of putting their eye clinic at the corner of Commerce and Walters and have named it for Artemisia Bowden, the Savior of St. Louis College. Try to do the hotel, I mean the hospital at 35 in Walters Street. You can do that. Thank you. We have a couple of folks who might have some new policies on the area, and it's Dylan and Elizabeth and we're going to do another nice question. I think I see you back there, friend. So I would just say we have to think creatively about how to disobey what is happening. I think there is a pretty awesome and rich legacy in San Antonio of groups who have organized in disobedience against the powers that be. I think about the folks who jammed up Frost Bank to go after Tom Frost by pulling out their savings, putting them back in and then went a month later to jam up Jockeys by buying a bunch of goods and jamming up the lines, right? I do think it comes down to disobedience and we have to be creative and civil, but I would think about it in those terms. I just wanted to say instead of thinking in terms of as an individual, think about in terms of a community, how you as an individual fit in your community and how you can empower your community. People who know me know I'm not actually from San Antonio and one thing I've noticed since I got here is there's a lot more time for work here than a lot of us. There's a lot more time for this city than most other cities have been. So I was wondering why do you think San Antonio and businesses have adopted this model as opposed to other models? Do they actually bring in temps to replace the work entirely as opposed to assuming it was correct? Is it what I'm interested in? Did you address part of that? One of us, he addressed that in his speech. I think you can address it like personally the way you have lived it, but just as an example, when we created Fiesta, Texas, we did it with a huge tax abatement. And one of the things that those of us who work well, there were very few vocal people against Fiesta, Texas. That was a 10 to one vote and I was the only one in the city council who voted against it. But one of the things that I brought up was that in the model they had, most of the workers were going to be seasonal, which are temporary. And to the day, I know people who have been working there since Fiesta, Texas opened and they are still temporary workers. And when you do that, you don't have to give them the benefits of full-time workers, so it's cheaper. And as long as there's labor here that will do a very good job or less money, they're gonna keep on doing them because to begin with, that should have been part of the tax abatement discussion. In other words, we're not gonna give you a tax abatement if you don't commit to having X number of full-time workers. But they would say it's gonna be X number of workers and they didn't dwell on the fact that some of them would be temporary. So when the deals are getting cut for these big discussions, there's no debate. So people don't know what's happening. And I imagine that happens in other areas too. It's cheaper and number two, they can get away with it. You would think that a policy like what we heard this morning about workers at the highest not getting their tips would be something that you would get six people on the city council to say that's horrible, that can't happen, it's not. In fact, there's not much happening there on this. People can get away with it. I think my new clinician is also excited at how this has to do with the kind of industries that are the economic base of the city in particular. So tourism, if you have- If I reflect that- Sure, sure. Yeah, I mean tourism, service industry, these are, you know, what drives the city. The city I'm from is Portland, Oregon. It also has a very large convention street, very large tourism industry. But while you have tents coming to hotels, it's usually not like 60% of the staff is like tents at all times. It would only happen if there's like a union drive. I mean it wouldn't just like be 60% of the staff is the tents. So that seems usually a little- Texas sign. But you'll have to remember that Texas is a right to work state. So we don't have that union influence to temper the outrageous things that corporations do in order to make money. I would argue, man, just to answer your question, I think generally it's a problem in the broader economy everywhere. Because I mean, even friends of mine who are in say the tech industry in Austin are temp workers now. They don't work for Apple. They work for a temp agency. Professors. Yeah, professors, right. You think about what is, there's a broader social disintegration that's happening of just permanent labor in the United States that I think we would point to. And San Antonio, we happen to be, I think you've got to think about that. And the other thing you've got to think about is it's a measure of power. It's a measure of worker power, right? And in a place like here, where there is not a lot of worker power in the convention and hotel industry, you see the temp industry flourish. And I think there are examples, we can talk about it later, of places in the country where workers have been able to organize the hiring hall, right? And the union itself can take the role of providing excess labor when it needs to be and regulate that kind of thing, when the workers have enough power to take it over. But other, short of that, they are being exploited through the temporary process. Hi, I'm with Energy Area and PQT.org. My name is Alice. And so my economic development question is around energy. I know we need to keep our water clean. I know, I believe we need to capitalize on San Antonio. But for energy, to be economic development, we'd be closing down the fossil fuels, stopping the uranium extraction, and use the natural energy that's on the floor. You're so less than the sun, so less. Well, less, less, but we'd be very cool to have more wind power here, locally, individually. And please do not, the new move that nuclear is doing is to have individual nuclear mini plants. Oh my goodness, oh, wow. I want to, I'd love to see, I visualize green workers, workers of natural energy and research and development. And I know, many of them have included all of these things in the book. But other people would like to talk about green, I have things to say that they're still aware of. So if there are other comments or anything. I think she had a comment, so. Well, there's one thing I did want to say is that, what's that? There's one thing I did want to say is that, as, I mean, I think that the new energy economy that the mayor talks about. Rain watch. Yeah, we have to be careful, we have to be critical of that kind of rhetoric in the same way, so we have to be critical of the rhetoric of economic development. In some of the things that I've read from environmental sociology, you talk about the idea of ecological modernity, which is the idea that, well, the solution to environmental problems can be entirely technological, and we don't have to change the overall system in a way that what the system prioritizes in order to fix environmental problems, we can, and we can just get clean tech companies to come. We can just get, we can just convert a portion of our energy portfolio to renewables and not really have to make too many systemic changes, and I think we have to be as critical of that as we do, and what Alice, yeah, calls greenwashing as we do in the rhetoric of economic development. So it's a lot of work cut out for us. Hey, guys, I was inspired by working with the West Side, what they're doing with historic development on that part of town, and so I started an organization at the South Side that's trying to do the same thing, and we're getting a lot of skepticism from the people there about economic development and what are some of the outcomes of that, and one of them is gentrification. And as the South Town development grows, even in the East Side right now, they're going to see some of that happen, and I'm wondering if the Councilwoman or anybody else on the panel would comment on that type of outcome of that kind of economic development. Talk about, I live in the New Deal, which is a historic area. I also live in a house that's on the Department of Interiors, this is a historic place, it's just the Indian Amendment House. To my surprise, the Liberty Hill neighborhood is under way of massive rezoning exercise, and I discovered that my house on the corner of Hadbury and Burleson was being rezoned from residential to commercial. And that one block south of me, the cottages on Lamar Street between Hadbury and Allen, were all being rezoned in this new, mixed-use zoning that they've got so that you can turn them into the bakeries, the restaurants, the bars, and these kinds of things. The Catholic Worker House, which is located on Nolan Street of Hadbury, got rezoned because the Neighborhood Association and the Councilwoman are in their roots so that they can't do what not usage is supposed to do, be the hungry, cloned, and naked Councilpeople. Catholic Worker House cannot cook food in its house any longer and serve three meals a day to the homeless and people who are in need for them to come to depend upon that form. So the gentrification of my Neighborhood is in full swing. I have people in my yard and I went out to ask them, can I help you? And they said, well, this house is for sale and we're checking it out. And I said, well, do you see a for sale sign? And they said, is this fit on the internet? So that is the kind of thing that people in San Antonio will do to communities that they are offering up for gentrification. And unfortunately, the East Downtown Neighborhoods are right with people who are speculating. I've been burglarized six times because they figure out an old lady and they can scare me into leaving my property and that's not going to happen to us. I'm a child of the Civil Rights Movement and they're going to have to burn my house down and dish things in the yard to get rid of them. But that's the kind of thing that is happening in the Downtown Neighborhoods that are close to the tourists, the convention, the entertainment industry. That's part of the reason why they express news and pollutes with them. You know, they have articles like this in the paper, growth downtown, catching on in the Eastside, entertainment sites, proposed. It's terrible, but the gentrification of the old, historic neighborhoods is ongoing. And you've got to be really, really pay attention to what's on the council calendars because you won't necessarily even know that it's happening to you. I think so, I wanted to speak to you, because we do a lot of cultural preservation work on the Westside, as I once said. It makes a difference who is doing that work, right? Is it the community that's preserving its own history, its own buildings that's organizing to save a building or to remember, to create those archives and to honor them? Or is it this rhetoric of historic preservation that's coming from the top down where speculators and working with the city are coming to prove they were wrong? Oh, you know, this house is, we're gonna fix it up and it's displacing and driving long-term residents out. So there's a difference, I think, and we have to, again, we have to be really critical and maybe that's one way to sort of talk to your own neighbors about it as well. This is an effort that's coming from community. It's not, we're not talking about the kind of historic preservation where, you know, somebody comes in and buys up your house and you have to be, I mean, there's other tools as well that, you know, community land trusts, cooperative businesses, some of those are kind of tools that we could use to safeguard against speculators and other people who are coming in trying to displace neighborhoods, original neighborhoods. So if you look at the last issue of LABOS and I think there's copies that we brought with us, we did some interviews with people who have sort of concrete solutions to some of these courses that we're talking about today. Thank you for your question. Thank you. First of all, I'd just like to comment this group for a comment and seeking, I mean, not seeking, but sharing information that is needed because it is warranted that some things that you're hearing. But I would like to, with your permission, I would like to have a suggestion. And number two, I would like to comment. With your permission, only with your permission can I could do this. Suggesting is that this needs to have a part two because it's far more deeper than what they need to share with us. The other thing, and I think that by having a part two of this, you can get a better grip and a better understanding and a better knowledge as to what is asking of you as people of this community to do and how to go about addressing. As a comment, and to help you young man, I'm the vice president of the retired FSL council. And I know all about what y'all are trying to do with the high. The thing is that you have to keep working with the people and educating them where their benefits can become liable and be used to make us a factory laborer because that's what unions offer to people. San Antonio has been a city from the McAllister that doesn't know the GPL. It's always fought against unions. Why? Because it has kept companies like Ford Motors, companies like GMC, companies like Kellogg, people that will bring business and with all the good job benefits out because they know once the people have control and say so, then it makes a difference. So we have to talk about more empowering the people and understanding what empowering people means. One of the things that why the city gets away with a lot of things that they do and make that because they hire ex-city council people for lobbyists, they know the experience, I mean they have the experience, they know the knowledge. So therefore they can go and do the things that the city wants are those who empower them to do what they want to get out of it because they can control it. The only way you can change that is that they have your legislature and your city council to prohibit of hiring these type of people. And once you prohibit those people from seeking those jobs as lobbyists, then you buy more after to have a voice and be able to make some changes. But until then, you're not gonna make anything. All you gonna do is talk. Secondly, the community needs to understand that if you're going to make a change in your community, you're gonna have to pin down your city council person and hold them to the table of what you want. It makes no sense that this district has to go to court to find out who elected them, who elects them, but let them know, just like I put you there, I can remove you. But until this community comes to learn and understand that, when you talk about illiteracy, people in the city is not totally uneducated. They may not be able to comprehend some of the issues, but if you explain to them what it means to have a difference and by empowering you, you're gonna see a difference. But until they understand that, just use the word empowering. Who are we gonna empower? Why are we gonna empower? You have to take time. That's why I appeal to this committee. We need a two-part to this, because you need to explain to people, you explain what the situation is, and how you're gonna resolve it. And that's always where you're gonna be here. That's how you're going to resolve it. So I am appealing, and I hope, and that's being offended by it, but if you really, really want to make a difference in this community, then that's start with your city council person. And that's certainly has to go with your state purpose in the person. And that's go to your county person and let them know and understand. If you cannot adhere to the things that resist the energy you want. And then most of all, how a plan. You don't have a plan. You need to work with people who do I need to get with, and develop in a plan so that we can implement and carry forth out what we're trying to bring forth in this community. Thank you. Yeah, so I just wanted to say that the incentives that are given to these companies are very insidious. We hear about the abatements and the rebates and all that, but there are other things they do that we don't know about and we're paying for. One of them is, for instance, with SOS. We are actually subsidizing corporations because they use recycled water. But who pays for the plant? We do. Who pays for the maintenance of the plant and the reconstruction and whatever. CPS, we actually get a higher rate than Microsoft. Microsoft. When Microsoft came into San Antonio, the vice president said, we came because the energy is cheap. So yeah, the workers, there was 75 workers being hired in the whole Microsoft plant and they were getting a lower rate on the energy than you do. I don't think that's fair and they don't talk about those things. They talk about, for instance, the infrastructure. There's, like in downtown now, you can get the water connected and the electricity connected and you don't have to pay for it because there's an incentive package. And you read about that in the paper, but what you don't know is that your rates are subsidizing them in a very secretive manner. I went there to make a sauce because I said, how come we're paying $20 for the sewer? I'm using, I'm not watering my lawn, et cetera. She said, well, the rate went up. I said, yeah, does that have to do with the bare-med problem, the infrastructure problem that they're having to re-lay the lines and everything? Well, yeah, probably. I mean, the program, the students said that to me, but we all know that we are paying for bare-meds infrastructure. And why do the people go to those parts of town because they didn't want to pay taxes? Because they didn't want to pay sauce rates. And now we bought bare-med and we're paying for that infrastructure. Another one that I wanted to say, and it's not to blame Mr. Armistice, I was ahead of the very praise of this week, he's been trying to change it at the state legislature, but what happens with your property taxes is that the corporations and the apartments and the mansions, okay, mansions as in dominion, and the properties like that pay a lesser rate than you do, okay? So you say, well, how come you're paying so little? They'll say, no, I'm paying millions of dollars. Yeah, but their rate is frozen to where when it was constructed, that's the rate they pay. Why? Because every time those properties change hands, that selling price is secretive. So then the bare-praiser district can't make a fair assessment. And so they're being charged on the rate of the property when it was built, all right? So that's another one, Mr. Armistice has taught, and I was at a meeting downtown where the governor spent a panel of paid yes men, I guess, or elected yes men, and Mr. Armistice, the head of our praiser district was there fighting. I had to leave because I got tired. I couldn't wait the entire line to have anything to say, but he waited until the end, he's tried the legislature, and those are three examples of secretive ways that we are subsidizing the corporations. You don't read about it in the paper, and when you do with the praiser district, it's very complicated, it's very difficult to understand. So I just want you to know that when you're reading about another corporation coming in with tax breaks, there are hidden ways that you are subsidizing them every single month through your days. Thank you. Person in line, thank you for your questions. Oh, that's fine. I would like to thank the speakers, it's incredible. They say knowledge is power, but knowledge is frustrating, sick, I mean you go home sick, you see the apathy, people don't vote, 700,000 people didn't vote in the middle of the election and the legislature didn't vote. In my area, only 25 voted out of about 700, so how do you convince them to vote? They always say well, I'm always working, but what I wanted to bring forward was something that I was on and said, that I'm not sure a lot of people are aware of this, you can go and look for your tapping financial reports from the past in the city's website, the city's church website, but then last year, something very strange happened and the commissioners for it. This was in 2012, I'm not sure of the date, but my essay came up with Mr. Wolk that asked one of the attorneys, if it was really legal or for them to be required to show their campaigning financial reports as commissioners. Well, what I was not aware of, and I'm sorry, these were given that I didn't bring that research, but actually there was a law many moons ago in which it can destroy these reports two years after finding. And then when I looked into the state, what is it, state archives, I did find things that happened, I can't remember what year it was, but I looked up that year, unfortunately, whatever we made it to that specific bill I could not find, and maybe somebody else didn't find it, but what urge you to look for this? When I looked at the city courts campaign financial reports before voting, is this what it says in the bottom? Campaign financial reports are destroyed in accordance with state library retention schedule. Current regulations require local governments to retain these reports for two years after date of finding. So when I looked up the reports again, it's blank. There's nothing there. Isn't this supposed to be transparent? Doesn't it be, I mean, the only link between us and government is our votes, our votes, and these things don't exist. So I've been to a lot of meetings. I've been to Sarah meetings, September recording meetings, Solzio meetings, CTS meetings, all of these meetings, and then all of a sudden you start seeing a link. You're smart at saying meetings, regarding night rail, all that's always gentrification. I said, why don't people work this out? It's like a horrible north side. It took me like 30 minutes to run a lot. But over here I could run for votes, and my side of town over here in 50 minutes, there it is. Well no, the property values are too high over there. We're sitting ducks in the east side and the west side of San Antonio. Our property values are low. Now what do we need sickness mean? Is it the folks that live like in my area and not from the doors, because there could be some type of youth developing in the area? And the elders said, Nihon, of course. It's not entertaining, don't worry, because they're getting to just 25,000. Well how big is your house? Oh, it's pretty big and it's too bad. But when I bought it, it was 5,000. I need the garden estate to own enough landlords. I made the garden estate of this age to get some smart growth and all this. Oh, you've got to go to the water and all this. Well, they really want me up. Now I was fighting for this and fighting for that. But then you get burned out, knocking on so many doors and just being stopped down. So I'm glad to see Nihon have died. I'm glad to see Nihon have died. So yes, because we really get burned out after a while. This is our country. And what was really sad, I looked at your economic development because I didn't think you would fly it. And we have a West Side Development Corporation that keeps Nihon because they're already using Sarah for something else. Because you know Hong Kong treats its people better than we do. Hong Kong. I was like, what? I mean, I mean, they treat their elders with respect. Do you have anything better than house two beds? They'll find you the same house and ensure that your financial situation is not distorted. Because remember, when you get another house, you can't get another bed. I mean, another bed. So your tax is going to be higher. And I was like, this is unbelievable. So that's all I have to say. Remember, we need to look into why is it camping financially worse? And at that time, Nihon's a goal for change. Thank you. Thank you. Right now, we're closing in on 12.30. Part of what I had wanted to think about was exactly what Reverend was proposing back. There would be some kind of part two, some kind of next steps that we're not just having this conversation, but we're also following up with some kind of action. And part of that action, I would really like to continue the conversation about how do we know, how do we know to recognize what it is that we actually want to see? And I kind of took some notes as the panelists were speaking of what are the criteria that we use to measure what we want to see. I really like what Nihon was saying about altruistic models versus mercenary models and money that's coming into a community, staying in a community or at least not leaving the community right away. Things like libraries, environmental policies, literacy rates that are housing, quality schools, good jobs, some service, healthcare technology, Maria's questions from Flamena Shiva about does it develop and build up nature, does it destroy it, does it build people up, or does it exploit them? I would really like us to have a collaborative process where we're coming up with a kind of community plan that lays out those criteria so that we're not always on the defensive just saying no, no, no, stop this, stop that, stop that, but we actually have a proactive, positive kind of model of what we want to see. So there's, I mean, there's different ways you can do it, you can come join the meetings that are already happening around Hason Bridge, Restoration Group, we were planning on, we were talking about having a meeting May and July 6th, but there it says that that might not be a good weekend because it's before the July weekend. But we should talk about do we want to gather next to kind of take those next steps? The West Side Preservation Alliance meetings happen every other Tuesday at 5050 for this, the Red Ansel, which is 816 South Bolero. So there's kind of multiple venues depending on where you're living, which side of town you're living on. The next meeting for that is July 11th. I don't know, the young man who was here who was talking about the South Side Group, I don't know, if he, if you all have meetings you want to announce, okay. But different things happening on different sides of town. How do folks feel about coming to and having continued some of this discussion in the H Street Bridge Restoration Group meeting? And if that's a good option, where, I mean, when is a good time for us to have that meeting? To have the part two that you were kind of talking about. I mean, where? Part two? It is up to me to follow with some kind of action. That's what I'm saying, what I'm leading to. Lean towards, okay, what needs to be done and who we need to meet with and where do we need to meet and let it be understood and know that these sides is just as interesting and as positive development as in a part of the city. We're not opposed to the other parts of the city. But then again, we want something done, but then at the same time, how do you go about getting organized and how do you go about planning and then from that planning, see that those things be implemented. And this needs, that's what I'm saying. This needs to be a continuation. So, then that's what I'm saying to you. It's been made enough enough time for you to risk that and I mean, re-plan things or what? Yeah, I think we can rely and I'm going to see if there's some things that I already know about in advance that are scheduled for every night when you get in with other people's things so that you can get a larger group of people. So, why don't we try to plan for something to provide pretty perfect group that you have to be organized? Can you use the microphone to be able to take care of it? It sounds too happy, I don't know where we're going to. Did you get a list of people who are hard to meet? Well, why don't you then think about what dates that you can carry just to make a decision right now. I'm not sure if it's really doable. Yeah, just show of hands, are people interested in another meeting? Yes. Okay, are weekends better or Monday through Thursday? Okay, so we're going to go ahead and make sure that's why we were passing that signature sheet so we can be followed up and hopefully with the next month we can have this continuous, the continuity of this conversation and also to announce that on July 13th we have a film screening of my Brooklyn with a filmmaker that's coming in from Brooklyn. Same sort of, it's about gentrification and so she's been screening that all over New York area but we want to learn from what's going on over there and we already have those conversations so we invite you to come to that but she'll also be around afterwards. Yes, they're flyers. So that we want a smaller conversation should be available as well for that and again, they're not the experts, they want that exchange as well. But okay, so we have a weekend and all these folks here and then what you also want to do is continue to invite more people and then ultimately what we talk about community school is how you gain this information and then you're able to have those same conversations in your smaller neighborhoods, in your own homes and you continue to, you become the teacher because you have the information, you have the knowledge, you have the experience and we just keep on building and any of us can all be there to be support but really we have the knowledge and we know what's going on, that's wrong so we just need to build our movement, let's do it. Use the mic. Use the mic. I don't need one. I'll do it. You know, understanding is great and I think that we've met a lot of understanding this morning and I'm sure they'll pull it together but I think what the Reverend is saying is very important that we do some sort of near-term change, very wrong-term change in every year but we get something out of this next planning meaning that we actually do something. Simple. Well maybe I'm a little bit confused but I didn't think this was a planning meeting to start a movement because I think it's very difficult to assume that we're all on the same page, we're all from the same neighborhood, we're all from, and I think we gotta slow down a little bit, expectations are too high. I am very, also very frustrated with the fact that we don't go jumping to accidents or I would say I like to jump into the fire and do what we have to do but the function, we have to define this function. I thought that the function of this group is to sit in conversations and not put the burden on the wall, we're gonna have to do some action. You'll drop it like that because there's not gonna be very many actions to lose, that's what I thought. Well my, I guess my concern is that there are things already happening in the community, there's already movement being created and my hope would be to encourage folks and to invite folks to now have this knowledge to participate in the things that are already going on. So come to the next haste to bridge restoration group meeting, the date hasn't been set but we have all of your contact information now and we'll be able to let you know when it is coming up and really encourage you to participate and now you understand how that very, very seemingly small local struggle connects to all of the other issues that are city-wide, come to the West Side, preservation aligns meetings, yes. August 1st, I didn't say it, but we are holding city council to the table trying to push legislation that should stop the tip that is happening, it's called the METIA law and we're having a meeting that is open to the community August 1st and you can, through my soul, get our contact info on location. I don't know precisely the time, typically we do it at five in the evening and it will probably be held in the Granada Homes on the 15th floor in the Walnut Room, if you know where that is downtown, but you come talk to me after, give me your details. And for the July, come to the H3 Bridge and enjoy all of the fireworks because you'll be able to see the ones at Innisfair Park, you'll be able to see the ones at Whitmore, you'll be able to see the ones at the Scorpion Stadium down in the North Side, come and just, you've had 400 people on the bridge watching the fireworks and it shows that this is a people's place and we know it in private time, so come out and show your solidarity. And if the city has no way to just maybe the last time. And then that's also going to happen on Sunday as well. I think that's also going to, they got some free there, 200 as well. 14, 16 east corners. So are y'all comfortable in kind of switching strategies just a little bit instead of having a follower be a large meeting at the end of the month instead. Keeping on top of the meetings that are already going on, we'll add you to our lists and starting to attend, starting to come out and to support those movements that are already underway and you get a show of hands as well, if you're comfortable with that. The people not raising their hands is because you still prefer a large meeting specific to planning. I'm just worried about deleting our energy. So this school, if I understand it, with what she presented to us, helping, empowering us so that we cut through the semantics and we understand what's really going on. I think that's very necessary because we're all sort of talking the same things, but we unfortunately buy into the politicians' whole agenda because we don't understand the code. And I think the code, is what we need to learn as a community so that we can defend ourselves. With Spousal Abuse, I contributed work to a film that was done. And I have no idea, because fortunately, it hadn't happened to anybody that I knew, Spousal Abuse and that whole area of the children and how it affects them and all that. And it was after that that I started to work with the school, and how it affects them and all that. And it was after that that I started sensing whenever I heard somebody say something that was either demeaning or trying to intimidate me then, I kind of had the words clarifying my head so that I could recognize it and repel those people and take them out of my life. Not that I was going to succumb to them, but I'm just telling you that the codes are very important and I found this very useful, that you were giving us heading through the verbiage and the semantics that they used because that's one of the reasons that they stayed in power. And this goes back to the founding of San Antonio, right? You know, the outsiders always came in and they controlled it. And I want to name them names, but we've had that same situation since our founding. Outsiders come in, they control, and then they sneeze us. And then when we're no longer in the privy, they throw us away and then they get fresh people. And this, I think, the school that you're, despite this, they're there, it's very important. Who are the folks that still want to have a big meeting at the end of July? And who are the folks that prefer to continue this work in existing spaces that are already organizing? How do you suggest that we sort of resolve the difference in the different strategies of this? Can I just say, I don't think there's a difference. I think we need to recognize that the right-wing revolution has succeeded because they know to control the ideas. The schools, the media, the culture. And for 40 years, I've been at meetings where people say we have to get brave and go do action because it's manly and we've lost. We need to be able to have that information available to community so that we can fight the dominance that the right-wing has had over our media, over our ideas, over our schools. That's what I think the action of educating ourselves and our communities is about. It's very much about an action, and I believe it's an action that is much more likely to lead to serious change than any one isolated action that we are planning. Let me just propose to the media is very important that we have kind of clarity on what happens next. There's many, many opportunities for you to come to meetings that are already ongoing and we will follow up with the folks who attended here by sending out a list of those and times and places. I also think that if you are so inclined and you feel strongly within your own community and the environment that you want to organize a large community meeting to continue these conversations at the end of July or whenever, then I think that that should be done. I think that multiple strategies were really necessary. How do folks feel with that? Are you a little bit about that? Okay. So we will see you. Thank you very much for coming out and there's lots of stuff we look like into. Thank you. And thank you to now, class, thank you again so much for that. Now, class, we will take this. So please get online and get your friends to listen in. So we had about 75 folks here today, but let all our friends and family members know about it and watch it.