 Hello everyone and welcome. My name is Rachel Alexander and I'm the deputy director at New America, California. New America is a think and action tank based in Washington DC. New America, California's efforts center on economic equity and community voice and how people with lived expertise can drive policy and system change on the issues most important to them. Thanks so much for tuning in to our webinar today. We're talking about Latinx economic resilience in the time of COVID. This is our ninth online conversation since April. Others are focused on issues like COVID's impact on black communities and how we can support women owned small businesses during the pandemic. I'm incredibly grateful to all of our speakers for joining us today and particularly to our moderators Cecilia Munoz and Hector Mujica. Hector a huge thank you to you and to Google.org for your partnership and for co-leading this conversation. And Cecilia thank you for your years of leadership on issues of racial equity and for agreeing to moderate this series. I'm going to hand it off to you to get us started. Thank you so much Rachel and thank you for your wonderful work in New America, California. I'm very lucky to be Rachel's colleague and very honored to be co-moderating this amazing panel with Hector. So I'm going to just start by introducing the panelists and setting the stage a little bit and then we're going to get right into the conversation. But we will have time at the end for questions from the audience so we're hopeful that you will think about what you want to ask. You can use the chat or Q&A functions to ask your questions. We're interested in having as much of a conversation as possible. This is an extraordinarily important time in our country. It's an extraordinarily important time for our community. You will hear what the data shows about the impact of the virus and the disparate impact of the virus on the Latino community. You'll also hear about the disparate impact of the economic fallout from the virus in our community. I was looking a week or two ago at data that came from the Brookings Institution that looked at specific age cohorts of Americans and found that Hispanic Americans were more likely to be sick than any to get sick with this virus than any other group. African Americans more likely to die than any other group of the virus. And sometimes the death rate within the people of the same age group was as high as 10 times the rate of whites for African Americans and eight times for some age cohorts among Latinos compared to white Americans. Those are devastating numbers. We're feeling the impact of that in our community, which makes us a tremendously important time to be having this conversation. And it makes us tremendously fortunate to have these leaders with us. So I'm going to introduce them to you and then ask them a question just to get us started. You've already met Hector Mujica, who's my co-moderator. He is the director of economic opportunity in the Americas for Google.org and our co-host for this event. You also have Frankie Miranda, who is the president of the Hispanic Federation. Professor Manuel Pastor, who is the director of equity, the equity research institute at USC. And I'll just point out that Dr. Pastor is going to have to leave about a half hour before we're done. So any questions you want to tee up for him, we want to make sure we get to first. And then Janet Murguia of US, which is the largest Latino advocacy and policy organization in the country. So thank you all for taking the time to join us. Janet, I introduced you last, but let me turn to you first just to answer just this is the two minute intro question. Can you just kind of tell us the story of what you as a person as a leader and your organization, your affiliates in particular, are dealing with right now? Of course. Thank you, Cecilia. It's wonderful to be part of this discussion with this distinguished group of panelists, people, individuals who are respect immensely. So including yourselves, Cecilia, thank you for the invite. Look, we're dealing with an unprecedented crisis, an unprecedented moment for the country, but in particular for the Latino community. And we're seeing exactly what you've already hinted at that the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 is playing in our community is really devastating, both as it relates to the health impact and to the economic impact. I know we're going to get into that a little bit more. I would just say more than anything else as an organization, we've been shifting our work to be able to be effective and as effective as we possibly can be in meeting our response to this by working remotely. You know, we as an organization have about 150 staff. Our headquarters has been here in Washington, D.C. where I'm talking to you from, but we have regional offices and we have 150 staff who on a dime literally had to learn quickly how we could communicate. I'm grateful for the investments that we were able to make in the last couple of years into technology. So we found ourselves with some strong technological supports that allowed us to be able to be communicating across digital platforms probably more readily than we would have been two years ago. So I'm grateful for that. And of course, I admire very much the efforts by and commitment by our staff to make it work. Many of them, as you all know, if you're listening here, are working in more crowded spaces perhaps than most, you're working from home perhaps with children or perhaps maybe you're caring for a parent, all of our staff have found a way thus far to make it work. And so I'm very grateful to them. I've been working as secured in place with my husband, Maudle, and he has a full-time job and is running an agency, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. And we're trying to manage two very busy agendas within our respective work roles and try to stay out of each other's way, but at the same time function at a high level. So we're obviously very mindful of our mission. Happy to go deeper into that as we talk about the direct challenges as it relates to health and the economic impact on our community. But for now, I'll leave it there. Thank you so much, Janet. Manuel, how about you? How are you and how is this affecting you and your work and the things that you care about? Well, certainly like Janet, I've learned to work remotely. You can see my lovely home office. I had to buy a shoji screen because when I first started broadcasting from my office, you can see my closet, and everybody kept asking how many black shirts can one human being actually own? The answer, of course, to that is infinite number of black shirts are all very different shades. So we've moved our staff remotely, as she said, and I just want to kind of lift up maybe two things about the moment. About a week or a week and a half after there was the declaration of the stay-at-home order here in California. So that was March 13th in two weeks. We had done an analysis of who we thought was especially vulnerable to COVID and where we thought this disease was likely to go heading forward. It's a disease that started with people who either were traveling internationally or had contact with international travelers. So here in Los Angeles, that was mostly people on the West side, wealthier, wider communities. But it was pretty clear if you started looking at the data about who was in essential work, who was riding mass transit, who was living in overcrowded conditions, and actually also who was undocumented. Because here in Los Angeles County, 18% of our population is either themselves undocumented or living with an undocumented family member in the absence of any kind of relief have had to go scrounging to go find some work. That this is a disease we predicted two weeks after it started was going to rip its way through the immigrant Latino community. And normally academics really like when we can say, I told you so. I feel pained by the fact that I'm able to say, we told you so, but we didn't put the safeguards in place to put the testing in these immigrant communities, in these communities of color, to recognize the vulnerabilities that existed. So the space I'm in is a little bit pained about that, but then also trying to stay busy because we are in an extraordinary moment, which I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about later. There's a saying that there are decades when nothing happens, and then there are weeks when decades happen. And I think we've been through those weeks where what the COVID crisis did was reveal the systematic vulnerability, precarity of employment, structural racism in the society. That unveiling got sharpened in terms of its vision with the murder of George Floyd and the attention that's being paid to policing. And now that's a tip of a racist iceberg in terms of inequalities in the economy, education, and the environment. And all of that has come on the heels of three and a half years of our community being brutalized by this regime that currently exists in DC. So there is this huge moment to have people's consciousness raised for things to break open and do something about it. So I feel a lot of pain, but I also feel a lot of hope about what is possible in this moment. Thank you so much, Manuel. Frankie, how about you? How are you? And how is this affecting you and your life and your work? Hi, Cecilia, Hector, Janet, and Professor Pastor. Thank you for the invitation. And I think that I have a very unique perspective on this, on our current situation, because although I've been at the Federation for many years, I actually became president of the Hispanic Federation started in January. And one of the biggest decisions that I have to make a few weeks later is whether or not we needed to shut down our offices in New York, our headquarters in New York. I was just like, what is my board is going to say? I am starting my job. And I'm just basically trying to just figure out what exactly is this emergency and how it is going to affect our staff in New York. And when you start hearing from rumors that the subway system in New York City is maybe shutting down or that the larger school system in the country is looking at shutting down, you know that something serious is coming your way. So we started very early before the entire city and the state started shutting down. The Federation was able to quickly move into doing an assessment of our technology and being able to start working remotely. It was something that, as Janet said, we were investing in before, but we didn't know if we were going to ever going to pull the trigger on having the entire team in several states working remotely. And soon after we were able to secure our team, make sure that everybody was safe, that everybody was somehow connected. We realized all the challenges. We realized how many of us were having decent broadband, that we were able to have the technology. We were able to function at different levels from our homes. And then we started looking at how about our member agencies? These are the organizations, the grassroots organizations that are working in communities. They're employers. They're serving the most vulnerable of our communities and they were completely forgotten by most of the response of government and many other sectors. So we realized very quickly that if we were having some sort of issue trying to transition, what about our members? So in the meantime, we also realized that New York was becoming the epicenter of this epidemic very quickly. I lived next to a hospital and when I started seeing the refrigerated stored unit, the first one coming in, the second one coming in, three refrigerated units, trucks storing people passing from this disease, we realized this is very serious. We started hearing from our member agencies that people were dying in their apartments, members of our community because they were afraid to go to the hospital or to go to a testing site because members people in uniform were helping put together these sites and they're afraid, as Professor Pastor mentioned, of the toxic narrative that has been created around our community. Depending on the zip code that you live, especially in New York City and that was the horrible test ground, our neighborhoods were the ones with the highest rate of infection, the highest rate of unemployment, the higher rates of deaths and it is, it has been very difficult six months, very difficult for us, but we have seen that when you put science and you put the right response, we were celebrating this week that we have zero deaths in 24 hours. It is, it is for us when we were having rates of deaths mostly from people of color in the hundreds. This is an example that New York, we all believe that New York was going to be the example for the rest of the country and that our pain was going to serve for something and unfortunately that's not happening. So we are continuing to work and create ways to support our communities and our member agencies and I will be more than happy to talk a little bit more about it a little bit later. Cecilia, if I could just build on that couple more minutes in terms of, you know, Frankie and Hispanic Federation talked about member agencies, you know, our structure is to support a national network of community-based organizations that have served our community and others for many years and we felt it was important to offer immediate support for those affiliates of ours all over the country to respond. But as Frankie mentioned, one important gap that immediately surfaced was for our own community and our affiliates to get information not just in English but also in Spanish and that was a huge gap. We immediately put up a website that was both not just our English language website but in Spanish to provide critical information in real time. So having bilingual information was one immediate need that was not met by the federal government or many state agencies so that was really important. But secondly for us as with Frankie we felt it was important to provide support to our affiliates who were in turn turning around and supporting the community needs both on the health care front and we're fortunate to have some key centers that provide health services that don't ask questions about status and do everything they can to provide that support in English and Spanish, have cultural competencies. So that could be Urban Health Plan in New York City, it could be Mary Center in Washington DC, Seymour in Washington State, Alameda in California, Alibio Medical Center in Chicago, those organizations became a critical safety net to provide health services to everyone who needed it and that meant treatment as well as testing. But more importantly to provide supports for those community-based organizations to be able to do their work remotely immediately because they needed to be also taking care of their staff and not all of them were able to make investments in technology to do that. So we set up the Esperanza Hope Fund to make sure that we could draw on some resources to turn around and support those affiliates to be able to continue their services and their supportive communities in a bilingual and culturally you know relevant way and to make sure that our community was getting important information but also what we were seeing because of the economic impact. A lot of folks just needed access to food and some direct assistance as it related to cash and so we had a number of our folks maybe at Central Campesino in Florida helping the homestead farm worker community get information get assistance perhaps it was HECA in Alabama getting information to those folks who might not have a broader support network in the south but Conexión in Nashville and HECA in Alabama to do that we were also seeing responses by Moheris Latinas in Accion in Chicago because sadly in this environment that is such high stress we saw an uptick in domestic violence and getting information so there's an array of services that we continued to support through our affiliate network and these community-based organizations that had to sort of change the way they are providing services the need for technology to do that work remotely and then to actually provide assistance on an immediate basis to our families you know I think Cecilia is going to find out Jason really need to ask us many questions but I am keeping with that spirit talking about working remotely I do want to point out one really important thing which is the existing internet inequality which has been also revealed by this so again some statistics from LA County that we calculated early on for students who were in K-12 who were sent home and expected to do remote learning many analysts to find the digital divide as lacking in your household high-speed internet and the device like a laptop or a computer instead of just a handheld device by that measure the digital divide 13 percent of white kids in LA County went home on the wrong side of the digital divide but it was 35 percent of black kids and 39 percent of Latino kids now schools made a big effort to hand out hot pots and Chromebooks and the like but that level of digital disconnection has meant that there's a really permanent cutback or a reversal setback in terms of the learning of these children and it's exacerbated by the fact that you've got many kids who are in ESL programs their parents can necessarily help with their homework particularly if they're monolingual Spanish and really counting on what happens in schools to make a difference so this you know while a lot of our agencies and many of us were able to go to relatively high-speed internet my internet was working until my musician son moved in with me and those young people used a lot of bandwidth so we had to like really amp it up but for folks who've got no connections at all this is a really serious issue and it's one that a lot of professional middle-class people are not in touch with as a daily lived experience of digital disconnection indeed indeed so what you're really seeing is a community that's already facing enormous challenges and frankly a safety net infrastructure that's been built by the community that's being challenged in a way that we've never we've never seen before so thank you i'm going to pass the microphone as it were to Hector but before you start asking questions Hector you too tell us like how are you how is this affecting you and your work and the things that you care about thanks Cecilia well first of all thank you Janet and my new friend Keith thank you for the work you got your all are doing i think these times have been incredibly incredibly difficult for all of us and very complex for all of us to navigate and each of you are an inspiring leader in our community and we really look up to the work you guys were doing you know i think we've been trying to i've been trying to navigate this personally and it's been complex right we were talking about this prior to the call coming live about how it's a mix of frustration and anger and at times some hopelessness but we got to stay determined and fixated on on the light at the end of the tunnel and we got to we've got to stay fixated on the ability and the capacity and the privilege that all of us as leaders in the latino community have to be able to leverage our organizations or resources that they have accordingly to be able to support some of these folks that are falling through the cracks and i commend each of you for the work that you're doing to to lead in that in that direction it's it's a pleasure to be moderating this commiterating this with with Cecilia and to be in this dialogue with with all of you all of you that have been on a quest for social justice day in and day out for so so many years and um and like i like we've all acknowledged that by this point the work that all of you guys were doing is more important today than ever before particularly when it comes to building economic resilience in the latino community in that post or mid-covid-19 pandemic economy and in the context of racial reckoning that america is undergoing right now so i do want to ask professor pastor in a minute to set the stage for us a little bit more focused and centered on economic opportunity and some of the trends and challenges that we're seeing there but uh i want to underline a couple of points first uh there's um one point that i want to acknowledge is that nearly two-thirds of all new jobs created since 2010 require either higher medium-level digital skills for them to be able to participate in those roles that's why google.org has been investing since 2017 over 200 million dollars to increase access to economic opportunity for communities around the world including the latino community including with groups like one of those in the hispanic federation so we're so glad to be be supporting the work that you guys were doing we also know that COVID-19 has accelerated the need for the workforce to acquire digital skills like we've acknowledged in the earlier part of this conversation most of us all of us are currently working from home that's also a luxury and a privilege that we all have and as a result of this crisis we know that nearly one one-third one in three businesses small businesses say they will rely more heavily in digital tools for their operations and that's going to require their employee base to also be more adept and acquainted with digital skills and digital tools so as we solve for these acknowledging the fact as you guys have all called out that we need to be responsive to the immediate needs of the community whether it be cash and putting food on the table whether it be internet and the connectivity divide we also need to be looking out towards the long-term employment needs access to a more to more recession resilient skills and jobs for the future so within that framing and kind of centering us and centering the conversation on the themes of equity access opportunity and the intersection of these with technology and the digital economy professor pastore i would love to ask you to kind of set the stage for us as an academic what are you seeing in terms of historic trends over the last few years few months in terms of Latinos and the access to economic opportunity and how do those trends how have those trends either been disrupted or augmented or amplified by COVID-19 oh well thanks for the really simple question Hector I just you know so let me say a couple of things maybe five big trends to kind of pay attention to one is uh there's an enormous shift going on right now in terms of the way we think about the economy which I think is going to be really critical and that is that we tend to think about the economy in terms of people pursuing their individual self-interest in the market or the government kind of needing to play a role taming that I think there's a couple of important lessons coming from the current crisis number one there cannot be a robust private sector without a robust public sector unless we solve the public health problem we do not have a space for private enterprise to be able to succeed and the kind of traditional counterposing of the state versus the market private versus public never made sense to me it's clear it doesn't make sense right now second we've begun to realize that the way that we protect ourselves is by protecting everyone else if you don't have everybody else with health insurance you're going to get a pandemic that spreads broadly if you haven't got unemployment insurance and income cushions that are actually available for everyone they're going to be forced to go back to work when they go back to work they're going to wind up creating a danger for everyone so we're beginning to realize that if we really want to protect ourselves we need to protect everyone and that means things that would be good for the latino community universal access to healthcare universal basic income universal training etc the third big philosophical thing we're learning is that our fundamental principle needs to be mutuality and it's really interesting if you ask any successful business including yours uh cool uh how you became successful it's not by trying to rip off consumers it's not by trying to exploit workers that's a really short-term way to go it's by treating your customers right treating your employees right and treating your suppliers right you only succeed if mutuality is your norm and we have organized an economy based on competition versus mutuality we need to fundamentally rethink how we do things we've been calling that solidarity economics how do we act in solidarity with one another then there are and I'll do this quickly four big trends that we need to pay attention to number one the expansion of care work we are an aging society we are going to have more need for elder care we're going to have more need for healthcare and for example in california or i reside the number of jobs in home care is going up faster than the number of jobs in high tech because we're aging and we need care second the move to remote work is actually going to have a really significant uh deleterious effect on commercial space in a way that will impact all those little small businesses that operate around office buildings and feed into those folks and a lot of those small businesses owned by folks of color uh staffed by people of color uh third big trend here the hospitality and tourism industry are going to be permanently damaged in ways that people don't realize partly it's what's going on right now but it's also if you're in another country why would you go and visit the most mismanaged country perhaps with the exception of brazil on the planet earth uh we in california have had a big benefit from asian tourists who now understand that we are dangerous um and i think this is going to have a huge impact on industries where a lot of latinos work last thing i'll say that's really important is about young people and i bet frankie looks like he might be the youngest of us uh but that's just your good looks frankie um that uh understands this which is that when young people come into a labor market in a recession they are permanently damaged in terms of their wage trajectory for the rest of their life and for millennials they entered the labor market during the great recession they've had their wings clipped by the covid crisis their ability to access wealth own houses be successful is really problematic and you know those youth are disproportionately black latino and asian so it's got a racial element to it as well and it means that issues like forgiving college debt coming up with new mechanisms for people to be able to get the assets to buy houses or start businesses as young people is incredibly crucial to repair the generational damage that's being done right now by a boomer generation that's living living high on the medicare and social security hog and all of the benefits of previous loan programs while this new generation is being starved of the resources that they need to succeed and that's a generational issue and it's a racial issue and we should be lifting it up because latinos are disproportionately young and what we do about this generation's success is incredibly important for the latino community at large thank you thank you for sending the stage for us on that and i want to i want to pick up on the second kind of trend that you mentioned around move to remote work uh what the impact that's going to have on commercial spaces and then the by extension the impact that's going to have on small businesses and janin i want to look to you for for this one um we know that small businesses are the backbone of of many economies including our economy and they're a key pillar of the latino uh wealth generation uh capacity we know that one of those recently did uh did a poll with color of change and found that nearly half of black and latinx small business owners who are still in business will likely need to close their doors by the end of the year these businesses are you know they're employers they're anchors of economic stability in our communities what are the cracks in the u.s economy that covet has exposed when it comes to minority owned smb's latino owned smb's and what must be done to support these smb's built back better more resilient in the new economy yes thank you um hector and appreciate manuel's overarching uh trends just before i get into the small business piece i would just say one of that takeaways from manuel's comments i would say from professor pesto's comments is that um you know public policy making will never be more important for us as a latino community and we're going to all have to really think about how we're engaging more effectively in advocacy at the local state and national level because we won't solve this problem nearly with the private sector and a robust private sector it's going to require us changing policies going into the future uh hector to get to your point it is true that we did this joint survey with color of change and manuel's u.s and that our survey found out that half of black and latinx businesses would have to shutter their doors within six months because of a dramatic impact economically that they were feeling from these closures that uh professor pastore pointed out not just short term but could have longer term effects but it's important to remember what they said in that survey and they said that without help this would be devastating and continue to be with this would continue to have it but despite this need um i would say to you that latinos and other communities of color have yet to receive targeted assistance in any of the stimulus packages that have been meaningful according to the poll only 12 percent reported receiving the full amount that they requested from the the ppp program the relief program that was established despite the fact that 60 percent that's 60 60 percent of latinx small business owners apply for less than 20 000 in assistance we're not seeing the response uh at the federal level or frankly at the state and local level our own affiliates that i referenced are also small businesses we need to think about the nonprofit sector being represented here and frankie understands this at hispanic federation and according to an internal survey of our own affiliates only 31 percent of our affiliates have been approved for that paycheck protection program uh loans although 82 percent of them applied for the program so so far we're still seeing a lack of response but it's also why we're pushing and i know hispanic federation is in that fight as well very hard for the senate to take up the house past heroes act that has targeted funding for minority owned small businesses as well as other relief for communities that were left out originally in the cares act and other stimulus packages we have to continue to advocate for this relief in at the federal level and frankly the heroes act which was passed by the house has a number of provisions that would be effective in helping our small businesses our nonprofits and other families mixed status families that have not received that relief to date so a call to action would be to have any of the folks participating as viewers on this particular uh uh panel to contact their senators and demand that they act on the heroes act and take up the stimulus provisions that were represented in that heroes act that will help our community thanks janet yeah and i really appreciate you you making that distinction that the half of small businesses closing their doors by the end of year will only happen without intervention and intervention is possible and it's uh is really up to us to hold our elected officials accountable for those type of interventions that benefit our communities um Frankie i went out slightly not entirely shift gears but kind of looking at it on the flip side so we have smd says wealth generators as employers in in our community when we're looking at employees and we're looking at individual latinos that we also know have been disproportionately impacted by unemployment as a result of covid when it comes to unemployment we're looking at low wage part-time female minority workers being the most affected and most likely continue to be impacted by further displacements as a result of the economic downturn this also happens to be the same group uh going back to professor pastore's point earlier on how we did that these injustices built up on themselves this happens to be the same group that often lacks digital skills or access to skills we know that latino workers of any race make up about 14 percent of the overall workforce but represent about 35 percent of workers with no digital skills 20 percent of those with limited uh digital skills what must be done to ensure greater access to adequate workforce development programs that prepare a community for the digital economy of tomorrow um i think that the simple solution is more targeted investment uh we knew that before this pandemic only uh less than two percent of philanthropic dollars were going to latino-led organizations or latino serving organizations so we have already uh working with uh our sisters organizations around the nation uh uh unidos us uh and also other uh incredibly uh uh incredible corporate citizens google.org to try to bring to light the fact that latinos need to uh or or organizations that are providing workforce development programs to latinos need to incorporate these new digital skills uh in different uh states in different cities there are different kind different programs that in many cases have not really kept up with the kept up with the new technologies or the new advancements that needed to be added to uh these curriculums um our mission at the federation is to provide capacity building to non-profit organizations that's why we were created 30 years ago and that is what we keep uh advocating for because these organizations are amazing um uh janet affiliates hispanic federation member agencies they're doing the incredible work in our communities but they just need they are on the resource and they're underfunded so by collaborating with google.org we have been able to select 24 organizations around the country providing uh workforce development programs and making sure that they do an assessments and look at what they're offering and how they can improve on those digital skills now this is pre-covid now that we are talking about a new world in covid 19 we have been collaborating with them and assessing their new needs and for example we just need to start thinking about the same way that we transition into teleworking what is going to be the new needs for these uh uh participants uh for example uh instead of creating computer labs now we need to think about a way that they can we can loan computers to these participants and in that also it's looking at what are their realities if you live in a zip code that does not have broadband adequate broadband how can you actually do teleworking or you can do remote learning so this is about going back to uh janet's point and um professor pastore's point in terms of public policy this is the time when we were working for the last two years and a half uh in puerto rico after hurricane maria irma and maria in puerto rico we knew that uh unless we put pressure on the federal government this administration was not going to provide the equitable or justice to all the american citizens that happened to live in the island of puerto rico let's think about for a moment about this right this is about an administration that is denying help to people in puerto rico so what did we decide to do is to provide non-profit organizations with the the funds in puerto rico to be able to provide the solutions doing the most extreme circumstances that you can face no electricity no water no food no anything and they have been able to do that we can do that here we need to reimagine the way that we think about jobs that we think about training and while it is uh really difficult because circumstances are changing every single week and we have 50 homegrown solutions for a national problem which is our pandemic i think that the our sector can provide these solutions and can can provide also the necessary information to uh be able to move forward and also provide these services for our communities so i'd like to just draw your attention to the chat function for folks who know how to access it um there's quite a good conversation happening about housing and crowded conditions and the impact of that on families and um and uh dr pastore has already answered one question but also some of you are answering each other's questions which is kind of awesome to see um there's a remark in response to the question about crowded housing and how you get people into safety um of a couple of places in massachusetts that are using hotels to quarantine residents who aren't able to isolate um so i just want to draw your attention to that and then it's a little earlier than we were planning to go to audience questions but there's some really terrific ones that are coming up so let me just pose one that's come um from a from a participant that's focusing on this extraordinary moment of elevating the black lives matter movement which i know is something that that our panelists have participated in um the question is that our african-american leaders have been able to increase investment in startups and venture funds what would your call be to call the action be for the latinx community so that we can also increase funding and opportunities in the tech and innovation space that's open to anybody so so silly can you repeat that last part i'm sorry it faded out on me so what would your call to action be to increase investment in our community particularly when it comes to tech when it comes to innovation and i would just add maybe entrepreneurship um well i would like to highlight investments that uh we have leveraged from partners um like google and i appreciate hector being part of this conversation because i think well everyone has uh more to do in this space i really appreciate the efforts that google has made to invest uh in um preparing our community for those future workforce opportunities um one area where we've been involved in is called the kasa code project and uh we've been working to develop a toolkit that's targeted at latino students and their families to better expose them to STEM learning and encourage them to consider getting into the tech field and not to mention the fact that you know we're already what i would call beta testing the toolkit for public release next spring but i think i can identify some of the best practices for reaching the latino community and that is that the toolkit is first culturally confident meaning it's it's bilingual and produced with a latino audience in mind we know from our work and experience that just these cookie cutter approaches just won't work uh and we're involving parents and families some of some models that we're building on are our fatherless one from a fetals model which is a parent involvement program and you know training parents how to become more effectively engaged in their children's education to layer on top of that this sort of tech uh layer and helping parents and families encourage their children to access STEM education and a career path in tech jobs is is uh really important but there's an important service aspect to this kasa code project as well and and we're teaching many of our students and participants how technology can improve their neighborhoods and their communities and so that public service lens can be a great motivator for our young people and i know it's a little bit of a stretch but our young people as we know are very colorblind they're working across communities of color to engage each other already and so i do think there's an opportunity when we think about the shared challenges that we have as black and brown communities to leverage the work we can do together in this space and making sure our young people are leading the way if we can give them a lot of the resources through programs like kasa code a lot of them are already developing approaches that are very multi racial and multi ethnic and at the same time preparing work pathways for them into the field of technology that's just one example but obviously a lot more work to be done as we leverage uh more funding i believe for stem programs not just from the private sector but from the public sector it's just going to have to happen we won't get there alone with just a corporate investments it's going to require both cecilia if i may add to what janet so so well put put together uh these response i just think that also i would like to add the the the models exist uh unidos have the models many of our agencies have the models well we need to just start talking about going back to the public policy and demand that right now with these in the middle of this emergency the emergency response needs to reflect the faces of the pandemic what we have seen over and over and over again is that investments are being made big announcements are being made commitments are being made but the reality is that they are not reflecting the communities mostly affected so there is an opportunity the models exist it is working in many of our communities but how do we ensure that everybody that we just don't check a box and we just continue giving and doing philanthropy or community investments in the same way pre-covid it is time to look at this and at the end of the day we just need to try to find a collaborative effort as janet mentioned because at the end of the day when we talk about latinos or or brach and brown communities at the end of the day we actually have sometimes to compete for the same funding resource for the limited funding resource that should not be the case at this time we need to start thinking about a more collaborative approach and we need to just we have already the models to promote and we just need to think about investments in a different way professor pastore mentioned that already but i want to emphasize that we cannot continue doing this the same way that it was done pre-covid so i'll just add a couple things real quick one a couple places where i think the private sector could lead with some support from the public sector as well the first is to recognize something very fundamental about high tech which is that behind every software engineer is an army of nannies and gardeners and food service workers and every place where there's a cluster of high tech there's a cluster of service workers janitors etc whose working conditions and wages are uh not sufficient to be able to buy a house uh help a family survive and any responsible high tech leader needs to understand that even as you drive the top of the industry you need to lift the bottom that's around you so high tech should be strongly in favor of an increase in the minimum wage should be strongly in favor of universal health insurance should be strongly in favor about equity and education spending recognizing that the ecosystem being constructed around high tech includes these other workers as well second thing that i think high tech can can can lead on is the digital access and understanding that digital access is not just about laying out a pipe to a community but making sure that there's lifeline programs so that people have low incomes can actually afford the access that's being brought into their community that they are equipped with the kinds of uh laptops and other kinds of uh uh mechanisms that you need to access the internet in a high quality way not simply trying to do your homework by typing a paper in on your parent's phone um and that the high tech industry you know google has a great program of giving your folks a day off to be able to invent something how about a day off for them to be digital core going to communities doing training around how to use these tools particularly for uh older folks last thing i would say is we need to be thinking about how to steer venture capital and not simply in the direction of app development but also of content creation because of course the sort of newest wave uh in technology has had it we filled up all these tubes uh with actually stuff that people want to watch and any people that have been able to come up with jay bavine and bat bunny in the same like you know period of five years that's fucking content creation pardon my French um and you know it is a the way reggaeton has blended cultures and captured the imagination not just of latinos but of the nation the under investment and content creation by latinos that's a space where people come and then they wind up learning the technology to be able to do the content creation and i think uh working with hollywood and understanding content creation and getting venture capital into those spaces would be very important thank you that was super helpful and i know professor professor you're gonna have to drop uh in just about five minutes so maybe i'll pose a question to you that um that i'm hoping to also ask frankie and janet at the end of of our session so we'll have a little bit of time to think about this one but um one of my closing questions that i would love to that i want to hear you reflect on right now is given the the incredibly difficult and complex time that we're all navigating right now and giving your role as a leader in this as like an academic in the latino community what is one sentiment that you can leave our audience with that will help us focus in the light at the end of the tunnel however faint that light may seem at any given point in time boy you're asking academics to make just one point after that's that's almost brutal so i'll uh i'll make uh two and you don't mind the first is um a lot of my life like a lot of many of folks has been uh trying to deal with crises in communities trying to figure out how to address them and i was always struck by i worked in i did political work too in los angeles in the 90s when our city blew up around the issue of police violence and actually also around the issue of economic desperation which is part of the reason why about half of the people unrest at during the l.a. civil unrest were actually latino uh and it was a minority of people arrested were black um because it was as much about economic deprivation as about racist policing and many of us were kind of going from meeting to meeting thinking if we went to one more meeting we'd actually solve things you know uh some of you may be doing this right now but in the middle of one of those meetings someone leaned back and said there's an immediate need to think long term and i always hang on to that because even though this is a crisis moment the stuff we need to do around uh ensuring that immigrants uh attain a path to citizenship assuring that we make investments in our schools that are equitable ensuring that technology gets to all communities ensuring that we combat racism and respect difference those are just fundamental long term principles and thinking about what the long term agenda is and not just the agenda of desperation is really critical in that regard my second point is that we need to understand that there is no contradiction between the need right now to center the struggle against anti-black racism and promote latino and multicultural alliances we live in a society in which its original sin of course was the taking of land and genocide but it compounded that original sin with you know America was quite original uh with the sin of slavery and assets tripping assets tripping of labor and then after reconstruction assets tripping of land and then assets tripping through our financial systems and the ability of people to buy stuff uh and we've created a systematic uh anti-black racism that has set the contours for the other ring of other groups latinos immigrants asians and so we as latinos need to step up in this struggle for black lives matter and to struggle against anti-black racism understand that it is our struggle too and that there's no contradiction between embracing that as a central theme and urgent need particularly in this moment and at the same time saying we do need to develop multicultural alliances and we need to make sure that the latino story is also being told a latino story of challenges but also a latino story of assets and creativity and hope and that's what i would leave you on i'll hang on for five minutes that i've got because i really want to hear how everybody else answers this question can i just build on that uh if i can i would just say that um as i hear professor pastor talking i'm reminded of the letter that dr martin Luther king jr wrote to sessar chavez while he was fasting during one of the boycotts and in that letter uh the reverend dr martin Luther king jr said our separate struggles are really one a struggle for freedom for dignity and for humanity and to me it's a reminder today that that's still true and that um as we say in espanol tu lucha es mi lucha your fight is my fight and until we address this original sin that has created these systemic inequalities uh for people of color but in particular for black uh people we will not see the reforms that we need to see the changes not just in attitudes but in policies that are going to drive a future for all of us and so i just couldn't agree more with what uh professor pastore has said and i know that there is still some who are struggling with this and we should be honest about that but for me and cecilia may have an appreciation for this a lot of people have asked about why mclr the national council a lot of us changed its name and a lot of the early information that we received as we approached our 50th anniversary and we're looking at our milestone moment two years ago reflected that we needed to be very clear about our inclusive nature and understanding that we had a mission that needed to include everyone and our name before didn't necessarily convey that especially to younger latinos and latinas and so for us it's very important that we embrace this notion that we have to end systemic racism as it relates to the black community for us as a latino community to benefit as we move forward into the future so a couple of comments um to just note so participant josue revolorio points out also reminds us about the genocide against native american people obviously that's also one of the stains of our history that affects our present and then andres squareville asks can any of you speak to the challenges and needs of the afro latinx community in this moment this is a segment of our community that's often left behind and he wonders how we can do a better job of including them in our efforts of recovery and resiliency so frankly do you want to drive in yes i really appreciate the the the comment because the reality is that when we talk about joining these fights for racial equity for us latinos it is there is there should be no question about our support to the struggle because we come from a very complex history also of colonialism and slavery and genocide in many of our countries of origin and when we arrive here in the united states it's even compounded with a a system a different system that we quite don't understand in many cases and there has been definitely afro latinos have been in many ways invisible in our own countries of origin and the way that we are portrayed that we are talked about the images that we see in the media are always we are celebrating culture afro latino culture salsa we see celia cruz and we celebrate it but we erase it from many other parts of our culture and it's important that while we reflect about these social justice issue that we continue incorporating afro latinos and our mixed background into this conversation to really understand how we can more effectively uh advance this conversation uh janet and i and many other colleagues join a call for action for our for the media and and basically include more representations of afro latinos and just show the richness of our diversity and our community so um i want to always say when people say like is there is a problem with racism in the latino community i always response we have a lot of work to do but we are not the enemy we are uh as much as i revisit that the literature and documentaries about african american black leaders since the 1960s they always talk about black and brown we have been there in that struggle from the very beginning and when we get divided it's only because sometimes members of our community has to go to the to compete for the limited housing for the limited risk health resources or for the limited uh educational resources that are out there and that gives the impression that we are not working together but the reality is that we are in this fight because we're fighting for the same the same goals and the same uh aspirations i'm gonna go ahead and say goodbye although it's a very rich conversation right now to which i would just add uh people bring racism and colorism from the countries from which we came but arriving in the united states is not destined to beat the racism out of you um in fact it's destined to put a whole other level of racism and competition and the struggles to forge a new mob people of color framework and black brown unity are incredibly important thank you so much for having me with you today thanks dr costaud thank you can i can i just add something this is a vector real quick because i do think hey look we could spend hours uh and it's a very real issue talking about identity and we as a latino community are changing back to how we what we saw as we led up to our name change not only as a latino community are we changing the demographics of this country but within our latino community we saw uh what is leading now to this latest statistic that at least 25 percent of our latino community identifies as afro latino we marry outside of our community more than any other race or ethnicity identity is a real issue but i'd like to bring back if i could because Cecilia new america has been working on an issue related to data and data collection and again this all gets sort of mixed up and i would welcome your comments before we open up to more questions on this but let's reset on how coven has impacted from a health perspective at least our community all of the statistics that we're seeing are based on available data that's critically important because it's not complete and it's disconnected but even based on available data shows the devastating disproportionate impact that latinos are feeling as a result of the covid crisis but we know that that data is incomplete there was a recent washington post story that also pointed to the fact that federal and local governments and hospitals all count race and ethnicity differently we're but yet policy decisions and resource decisions are made on where we need to provide that kind of assistance most urgently but if we're not collecting that data in a accurate or correct way we're going to see our community yet again disadvantaged uh and that's a layer on top of the systemic inequities that we're seeing play out so i know new america has been helping and we're partnering on some of these friends but uh cecilia you've got a lot of expertise on this now you want to talk a little bit about that i think it's so important for our audience to hear about this right now well thank thank you janet and you're absolutely right and i saw that piece was written by jose rico on um related to yeah thank you related to um what we don't know um and what we can't quantify about the impact of the virus itself on our community and there are huge problems with the way healthcare data is collected at the local level it's not standardized and then it gets reported up to the cdc and then there are delays and how the information comes back so you don't we don't have as much real-time capacity to address challenges like the one that we're facing in real time and that's something obviously that that the cost of that is incalculably huge and our communities are paying the price for that at the same time new america has been looking at the data with respect to the economic response and with respect to um the the what what congress has done through the cares act to try to get money into the pockets of people who need it you talked about the ppp program and the extent to which non-profit organizations and small businesses and entrepreneurs have been able to access that money and there are huge disparities there it's also true that the individuals who are trying to access that money face obstacles we've been able to document tens of millions of people who have not gotten their stimulus check um in some cases because they um they don't earn enough money to file for taxes and so the pipeline that congress chose to get the money back to them doesn't exist and then we uncovered the fact that the the irs's work around to get those dollars to people who aren't in that pipeline created a new obstacle so now they can access the stimulus money but they can't access the urnicum tax credit um now that's uh i think that was an unintended impact i hope it was an unintended impact but it was an impact that nobody knew until we figured it out and we figured it out simply by going around and talking to service providers like the affiliates of onee those like the member organizations of the hispanic federation who are in there in the community with people and they know what people are going through they know how they live their lives and how that affects how they're able to access the resources that congress intended to make available that's leaving aside the question of the big chunk of our community that congress did not intend to benefit right the undocumented folks who are not eligible for services under the cares act and they're family members who can't access it either so it it becomes incredibly important for us as leaders as organizations as advocates to make sure that whatever data exists that we have access to it so that can we can begin to quantify what's going on in our community and that we insist when it comes to health care when it comes to other issues um that data be collected that we actually be counted and visible so that we can highlight where there are disparities i mean janet your your point is an excellent advertisement for the importance of the census which is i know which i know is something that all of you are working on hector over to you thanks to celia and thanks for the the great points uh janet frankie another question that we got from the audience of i think is tangentially uh tied to this topic that we're talking about in policy making policy building is the following um when there is a change in administration in november what do you think should be two or three economic policy priorities that our community should unite under to the demand of the new administration i'll open that one up to either of you oh i got it fine well first i would just say um two things i want to make sure i pick up on the point that um uh cecilia made and that is in terms of call to actions we have to make sure everyone participates in the census and there are still a lot of efforts underway to make sure that that information is fully collected so i want to and i know again we've been part of coalitions with his panic vibration the leaders and others to naleo to make sure that that happens that information again uh is the starting point for how we can continue to build on policies and resources so that's important to get to this point if there is a new administration a reminder between now and november people have to register to vote and they actually have to go out and vote so uh we have efforts underway to register at one of those us please go to our website our avalanche campaign hispanic veneration others have many efforts targeted to our community to make sure we're registering our latino voters and that they are mobilized to vote on election day and by the way that we're fighting any voter suppression efforts that are occurring in an increasingly growing fashion in different parts of the country and nation so that's so important and we can't just blow by all of this and assume that we will have a new administration we don't know that we have to fight for our community to be engaged and involved in the election and electoral process but let's assume hypothetically that we do have a new administration there are going to be so many competing interests for this new administration to respond to but i do think that first and foremost uh it is important to acknowledge that we're still in all likelihood going to be dealing with the effects of a pandemic until we have a vaccine that we know will begin to start to address this issue we have to make sure that our community is addressed in terms of the needs from a health perspective and economic perspective so one is to make sure that we're getting care to our community and the policies are in place but let's assume we have a vaccine again once we have a vaccine we have to determine who's going to be prioritized and who receives that vaccine that's going to be so important and right now i don't feel like it's getting very much attention i think speaker polosi has raised it and talked about it in terms of the heroes act but there's going to be a commission that's probably going to be established to determine how do we decide who gets that it's going to be very important for us to make sure that our community's needs and interests are addressed there both from a health perspective and then i think they're going to be policies and we have lists of them to make sure that economically i mean someone raised we have an affiliate network that's very involved in all of these issues but the housing needs right now we're trying to make sure that in again something that was passed in the heroes act that should be taken up by the senate is to make sure that there are eviction protections right now and economically our community is still going to be struggling and we need to make sure that whether it's mortgages or rents that they're given the time or thought the resources to buy time for them to more adequately respond to these challenges so there is a list you can go to the unidos us website and see the various policy issues that we have been formulating to be addressed both in the context of the present administration but you know we haven't even touched on DACA and the fact that we still have so many in our community who are at risk of being deported right now based on an administration and the president that has not just threatened so but has acted to deport our dreamers there's a list there's a number of priorities we are going to be at the forefront of leading a lot of that policy engagement and our hope is that we'll be able to have a chance to do that as we see our community involved and participating in historic ways in the election process I may add to what Janet said that something again going back to our sector we have demonstrated that we can be able to do a lot with very little but that doesn't need to continue we know that in the last economic recession a lot of nonprofit organizations community Latino led Latino survey organizations did not survive the economic downturn in the mid of the 2000s so we need to make sure that this sector our sector is healthy we need to continue to eliminate the barriers to funding to organizations that are in community many of the contract government contracts are so difficult so difficult to reach our communities because the communities the organizations representing these communities have no capacity or or the resources or that or the training to be able to access this in new york city we piloted a new program groundbreaking program the nonprofit stabilization fund for communities of color so this is demanding the city of New York being able to allocate funding to make sure that these organizations in good times and in bad times have are increasing their capacity and be able to be more stable to when COVID-19 hits that they are there to serve these communities but we need to do more for our communities of color for these organizations so uh jared uh unidos and many other organizations the Hispanic Federation we have been providing funds uh emergency funds for our members for these organizations but we need to continue investing in them we need to to replicate the examples that we have done in central florida what we have done in puerto rico what we have done across the country to make sure that these organizations are better prepared but again we need to make sure that federal state local funding are hitting those communities that are the affected the most this cannot be equal for everybody and we need to ensure that funding reflects again the faces of this pandemic so hector you had a couple of the concluding question that that you offered to manuel right about what how do we move forward do you want to ask it again yeah let me let's uh let's present that question and see if we can uh we can bring this bring this home so the question that i presented to manuel again within the broader context of the complexity and the challenges of the times that we're living in this a society as a latino community as minorities in the u.s um what is one sentiment that you can leave us with that will help us focus on the light at the end of the tunnel however faint that light may seem at any given point in time so we'll start with you jenet sure i'd say there's probably a couple things but i would say first and foremost again if there's a silver lining in all of this and we need to use this new revelation of of what we've seen behind covet 19 and its impact on our community and i hope that is that there's finally an understanding that latinos and immigrants uh are the essential workers they're the ones who are putting food on the table caring for our sick caring for our children for the elderly and on the front lines of this pandemic they have been of service to this country in keeping it going during this crisis moment and that they are essential to the well-being of all americans and that we will be moved by that as a country to do what is fair and just and that is to support those individuals who are filling that important role and give them the assistance that they need regardless of their status they are fulfilling essential work that is keeping this country going we need to do our part as a country and honor that work we need to honor that that is consistent with our values as a country and i would say secondly that um as others have said that my hope is that out of all of this we're seeing not just a moment but a movement and um you know with this racial justice lens capitalize on what we're seeing as the opportunity to see change we've all seen the demonstrations the protests i've participated in those and i've been moved and inspired by the multiracial multi-ethnic multi-generational uh engagement that we've seen in this but i see hope in the actual changes that we're starting to see not nearly enough yet but the fact that you've got the flag in mississippi that now will finally be changing and you know moving the confederate uh symbol nascar removing the confederate flag from its events the fact that we've seen local governments remove chokeholds and other police excessive practices and seeing a more openness to looking at how we provide law enforcement with the new lands with with community and and public uh uh based uh organizations to provide more assistance in that way we're actually seeing localities change the way that they do that now we still need the justice in policing act that has passed the house to pass the senate but i'm encouraged by the fact that we've already seen some changes that we probably thought were unthinkable lastly the the name of the washington national football team uh is changing and that's after in caps the owner said never we're seeing people who have thought that things would never happen happen that should give us all hope and for our latino community we have to be right in that mix of demanding that change and that respect for our community thank you janet Frankie um i'm still angry i'm still sad i i i what we have witnessed in the last uh few months had been unbearable and we just need to continue pushing as janet said and we just need to fill out that dance census and we need to register to vote and we need to come out in november i i cannot tell you how much i worry about my family in puerto rico i cannot tell you how much i worry about uh our people in all different communities around the united states i i need i need to see that we are going there's these two 32 million of us are going to get out and vote and decide who is going to represent us and not only for ourselves for our families but for the 28 million people who are latino and they are unable to vote so uh my message is that we need to continue as janet said we need to continue this momentum we we have seen things in my in these uh few months that we were never able to imagine a few months ago but we need to we cannot get complacent we cannot get distracted we cannot allow the infection rates to to to give us more to to get us scared we just need to just do it it's so easy it's so easy they can call us they can call unidos you can uh get all the information that you need we just need to continue pushing that just being angry on social media is not enough we need to fill out that census we need to get out and vote and i would just say an adding on to frankie is that he sees this in his member organizations i see this in our billiards truly what's giving me hope is seeing how these organizations are responding in this moment to the immediate needs of our community and they're trying to position themselves to be there for the longer term we need to respond to them i see a few of them are on as participants in this chat and i think about uh sanisidro health center and an amaldosa and the work that they're doing right on the border in the in the california and south southern california i mean there's example after example of how so many of these nonprofits are stepping up but they need our support because they're responding and they have the trust of the community and they can be the best responders in this moment so i'm inspired by the work of our affiliates as i know frankie is by his member organization so i just want to say thank you to them i know they're doing everything they can and we want to be there for them we should be there for them as a country because they're responding to such important needs right now kate do you mind if i respond to your question too i would love that and in a way i'm in both a hopeful place that janet is and in the sort of angry still grieving place that frankie is um my family's been affected by this virus and not everybody made it and we haven't hit the bottom yet we know that there's going to be a lot more suffering and we know our community is at the forefront of that suffering and it is hard not to not to focus in on all that um but at the same time this crisis has laid bare a lot of what we already knew were the ways in which we had failed each other as a society but it and it has made it visible to people who couldn't didn't see it before i think the people on this certainly the presenters on this call understood it because that's the work that you do but the country hasn't understood it and i think i think we have new access to the information now i think most americans now understand who's an essential worker and understand that 40 of these are folks who don't get paid a living wage they understand a little bit more what it takes for a farm worker to to to harvest the food which then somebody transports to the grocery store and somebody either packs up to be delivered to you or is that you know the cashier behind the plexiglass when you check out i think we have a greater awareness of who people are and the ways in which we have failed them as a society and i hope what that means is that we're not going to have a conversation of building back to where we were before because where we were before is not sufficient i hope it gives us an opportunity to talk about how we build an economy that actually works for everybody and i i believe in our community we can we are positioned to be at the forefront of that conversation and that's where we should be and so that's where i take some hope is that we this everything has broken open now and we don't have to go back to where it was we are not this isn't about just hitting rewind this is about getting somewhere else that that is better than we were before and that's that's what i take out of both this conversation and out of this moment but hector you hosted this event i want to give you the final word with our thanks to you and to google.org for for your support thank you Cecilia thank you to all of you for participating in this conversation i'm also walking out of this hopeful i'm walking out of us out of it hopeful because like frankie said i think we have to leverage our anger and our discomfort to be centered in righteousness in the pursuit of justice so we have to be constantly anchoring ourselves and leveraging that anger to turn into drive and to continue to push us forward we have to be like janet said not seeing this as just a moment but as a movement and finding inspiration in that like Cecilia said uh you leveraging the awareness of this moment and time and seeing the people that have been in the margins for so long and using this as an opportunity to reset and as an opportunity to build an economy that is more inclusive and has more of a level playing field for everyone and like uh professor pastore said uh how do we keep ourselves anchored on the immediate need to think long term so that's my challenge to everyone on the call that's my challenge to all of us as leaders in the latino community and i remain hopeful because of people like you so thank you guys so much for participating thank you for your leadership thank you for being with us today