 Beautiful. Thank you everybody for joining us. We're just going to let a few people join the call We'll be starting at three oh five in two minutes. So get comfy in your seats or go grab a glass of water Start soon Welcome everybody We're very happy to see you. Welcome to activating the cultural power of a movement My name is Jordan Seabury my pronouns are he him his And I'm lucky to serve as co-director of the US Department of Arts and Culture We were thrilled to Join up with two partners for today's call Our good friends at arts and democracy who build a movement of work that cross fertilizes culture arts participatory democracy social justice And our friends at naturally occurring cultural districts, New York Which is a citywide alliance that engages the power of community-based arts and culture to create a just and equitable New York City At the usdac one of the principles we try to live by is honoring native sovereignty All of our communities owe their existence and vitality To ancestors who built their hopes and their dreams their energy to making the moment that we live in now We start to build bridges and pursue justice by honoring the truth And we try to do that With a simple statement, and I'll ask you to do the same I'm sitting right now on the ancestral lands of the Narragansett and the Wampanoag people I want to pay respects to their elders both past and present And i'm asking you to take a moment to consider those same legacies of displacement migration violence and settlement That bring us here today So i'm asking you to take a moment using the chat box function to type in Both your name The pronouns you use and then the name of the ancestral stewards of your home And if you don't know that's okay. I encourage you to say exactly that Emily is sharing a native land map in the chat box And I encourage you to take a look at who those ancestral stewards are for the land that you now call home More importantly than that I'm asking you to commit to opening your next meeting whether in person or on zoom With a similar land acknowledgement just start normalizing the practice and spreading that in your own circles Emily, I think already dropped in the usdac guide on land acknowledgement in the chat I strongly encourage you to take a look at it and get started on that Truth-telling journey in your next class your next business meeting your next worship service Whatever brings your circles together today's call Is happening because we believe that movements are rooted in culture and community and nurtured by networks coming together As we all have for this moment right now I do want to remind you that this is a non-partisan event the usdac arts and democracy NOCD and why and some of our speakers today Represent nonprofit organizations So we do have to ask you not to advocate for or against any specific political candidates on this call I want to go through a few housekeeping items This event is being recorded if you prefer to not be recorded. Please just feel free to turn off your video Please do keep yourself muted unless you are a presenter There's also no built-in break during the hour and a half call. So take care of yourselves as needed And please do excuse any technical glitches That we may experience one of our presenters already mentioned. She is Fearlessly battling a hurricane today But also if a participant is being intentionally Disruptive or trying to sabotage our time together. We will try to remove that person from the call as quickly as we can Lastly our program today is going to move as follows We'll start with a panel of presenters each speaking for around five minutes You can put questions in the chat. We'll be monitoring that during the conversation We've also invited a few folks to share their own work in their own communities briefly for about two minutes each And we've received requests from some of you to share work as well And if time allows we'll have a brief question and comment section at the end Lastly and importantly We invite you to share resources and upcoming events throughout our time together We will be gathering those into a shared google doc And we're pasting the link to that document in the chat I also want to give a big thank you to the puffin foundation for supporting this event A huge thank you to our presenters our panelists To the organizers of today's call Emily Ann Levy, Raquel Deanda, Carol Atlas, and Tom Azau, sorry For helping to organize today And as well a big thank you to HowlRound for live streaming our conversation I'm now really excited to pass it over to our facilitator for the call Raquel Deanda Who I'm lucky to serve with at the USDAC Raquel Beautiful. Thank you Jordan I'm really happy to be facilitating this call with you And of course somebody decides to call me right as I start talking Facilitating more than one call So as Jordan mentioned, my name is Raquel Deanda I am minister of bridge building at the USDAC and depending on the circumstances I also like to add Wall breaking at the end of minister of bridge building As many of you likely know the USDAC is not a government agency But really where what we like to call ourselves is a people-powered department We're a grassroots action network that's working to incite creativity to to shape a culture of empathy equity and belonging And these are three elements that I think we all on this call can agree are really critical in this tumultuous moment that we all collectively are finding ourselves in A moment where we really need everyone to wake up to show up and to take action like they've never taken action before And if there's anything that I know, it's that this awesome stellar lineup Of all female speakers we have on the call Are representing organizations that are just deeply deeply deeply embedded in the work of organizing Galvanizing and really just inciting people to take action Um, so I'm I've I've had the opportunity to speak with people in the lead up to the call And I'm just really excited for sharing the next hour and a half with you all And so I'd love to just introduce our panelists and Have them take it away so We've got five speakers today. We'll start with michelle ramos who's the executive director at alternate roots We'll continue with angeles solis who's the lead organizer at make the road new york um Ashley woodard henderson is a member of the movement for black lives policy table The leadership team and ashley is also the first black woman director at the highlander center um Which i'm a huge fan of I'm a huge fan of all of these organizations though. I have to say um sharon rebar will follow ashley and sharon is the co-director of cultural arts for the poor people's campaign as well as the director of cultural strategies at the kairos center and we'll be wrapping up this uh panel uh with a With a conversation or presentation from nina eichner who's the visual strategy manager at the sunrise movements um So after these individuals speak for about five to seven minutes We'll be holding some space for questions from the audience And then we'll also be making space for um some other two-minute presentations from people on this call We know have really great exciting projects to share with us So Without further ado, um, michelle are you ready and prepared to take it away? I am thank you so much for cal Thank you so much for having me. Um Just a disclaimer to folks on the call I am based in new orleans louisiana and the hurricane Delta has just made landfall here. So there is a good possibility. My internet is going to go out at any given moment so folks could just Give me a heads up if I start to freeze or Your the communication isn't working that would be helpful because um, yeah once once it once these things happen The internet is usually the first thing to go, but I'll I'll give it my best and thank you for letting me go first to try to get in here Um, so hello, michelle ramos. My pronouns are she her her I'm calling in from uh, bulbancha the native indigenous land of the chimacha the Choctaw the napchaz the tuniga and the the huma Indians and better known as new orleans louisiana I am the executive director of alternate roots And roots is a 44 year or 44 year old organization That was founded interestingly enough at the highlander research and education center And it was founded by a group of artists who are interested in justice equity and southern tradition And it eventually Evolved into an organization and of itself and that is how alternate roots was born um, it was a coalition of cultural workers artists community organizers looking to Work towards the elimination of all forms of oppression through creation And presentation of original art So for over four decades roots has become well known for artists who are embedded in communities And creating work that strives for social change Individual and community transformation Roots has spent much of the past decade kind of shifting From being a a service organization to a more fully actionable activated Partner with a lot of advocacy groups drawing on the strength of our traditions and and our Our groundings in place in order to build people's power We have been building power to shift policy as well as culture with our partners Some of our our closest partners are nalak the national association of latino arts and culture First people's fund media justice We are a member of the performing arts alliance where I serve as chair imagining america southern movement assembly and of course the highlander research center as well as the u.s department of arts and culture As a collective of artists and cultural workers roots Clearly understands the limits of electoral politics But at the same time we honor tradition of fighting for voting and civil rights From the founding generations work with snick So working with advocacy part partners is is how we achieve and accomplish the work that we're talking about on today's call So with that being said as a stepped into developing our policy strategy, if you will within roots and sharing resources information with our members That we have gained through our partnerships over the next couple of weeks roots will be sharing resources and information on getting people to activate On the election including voting rights Supporting what we know in our 14 member state region across the south the long lines of folks trying to vote and more So you might be asking how do we activate? So first as I said, we share information and resources related to the upcoming elections In our member state region. So we do that through our social media channels But then we also have activation at the local level across our 14 states Second we uplift the work of our members. This is the thing that we do Is is amplify right? We have members who are doing this work across our region. So we want to amplify that work Because they are working to shift culture and local policies and legislation in their community So it's great because we have this like tapestry network across our 14 states that we can just activate Finally we identify some issue areas and stories that resonate with the value of roots one of our founders John O'Neill Recognize the power of storytelling through story circles And so this is one of our our cultural strengths and part of our fabric Because we know that stories resonate with people so oftentimes more than data does So we also support our members doing storytelling Throughout the field as well So how do we partner so um, I know ashley is on this call and partnering with roots As we lead up to this election And so, you know, we have a lot of members as I mentioned who are doing this work on the ground um, and so What we do is are encourage our artists to Activate in whatever medium that they they choose, right? So it might be social media art It might be poll parties You know, we encourage creativity and safety at polling sites But our plan is to activate at least uh one to two ambassadors in each state who will then Activate out in their particular region without reach and support And we do that, uh, you know that type of crowd sourcing By providing a toolkit in partnership with the southern movement assembly And and that's sort of how we start to to navigate that tapestry Um, it's fast moving, you know, it's um, it's a really great way for us to Support our members who have been doing this work But you know, it requires resources, right? And so that is one of the ways in which we are able to be supportive in our role Is to get resources out to the field so that they can advocate more broadly and activate You have one minute remaining. Thank you So some sample members of ours that are doing this work women engaged in georgia Is very active around we rise in the seven million strong initiative Spirit house in north carolina has an online resource for census and elections that they have been activating One of our strongest members around election is art to action in tampa and doing work in tennessee Partnering in harris county, texas to get out the youth poc vote mobilizing over 100 000 people in partnership with the houston and action academy Connected to in north carolina activating youth and new voters as well as the black radio project out of mississippi Who is creating ps a uh for votes census across black radio stations in the south So again, how do we show up as artists? We do through street theater psas Virtual space creating memes and gifts animations through youtube tick tock instagram poetry slams Performances in the lines at the polls There are so many ways that artists can activate around uh election time and roots is honored to have such a strong Of foundation of members across our 14 states who are trying to do their best To pee apart in partnership with advocacy and other organizations social justice organizations leading this work And i'm happy to answer questions If my internet stays on Thank you so much michelle it's lovely to hear and i love the idea of Performances at the polls on the day of as a way of getting people to to stop and come in Or come back with a family member um, so As just so that you all know we're actually we will be compiling Resources, I believe this was stated earlier if you have resources to share drop them in the chat window And we'll make sure for anybody that was on the call that we'll be sending out that resource in this letter to you Um, and michelle i'm looking forward to seeing what what you're able to share from alternate roots's artist program um So uncleus Would you like to continue? Sure thing. Um, I will try to get everything that I want to say in under five minutes Um, it's an honor to be with everyone here today, but to start off with my name is an helis I'm a lead organizer at make the road new york and i'm on occupied lanope land Make the road we are one of the largest community organizations in the country with over 24 000 members organizing for dignity and justice across new york city We organize with our sister organizations across five states We fight for tenants for workers for immigrants for our elderly and for our young We fight for universal health care. We fight to decriminalize sex work We're taking on the real looters in our country like jeff bezos and the billionaires for the harm done to our people on our planet We fight to defund the police and invest in el barrio We fight to protect the democracy we have left and we recognize that all these fights are interconnected and center the leadership of those Most impacted as we build the road on the federal level make the road was instrumental in the suit that blocked public charge We represented the main plaintiff in the supreme court doc a fight and we worked with the judiciary committee on the antitrust tech hearings So that's some of our work at the federal level Um, and i'll talk a little bit about what we're doing here at home if you want to share some pictures So these are just some fun photos. Sorry. That's all I could pull together for now if you want to scroll through them Here at home we're doing work to educate and mobilize latinx and black voters across new york With particular emphasis on long island and statin island where a community has faced the greatest deficit in terms of representation We focus on making sure people feel heard on the issues. They care about we talk about issues like exclusion rent Ending the school to prison pipeline and we connect that back to voting. We're directly engaging more than 150 000 voters this cycle That's our goal. We've already made 35 658 phone calls as of today. I checked Our goal is to call 140 000 voters and text 200 000 voters total. So we're working hard We're running digital efforts to make sure people have what they need to register to vote request their absentee ballot or vote in person early as Um, as you know next week or election day And this means that making sure all of that information is available in a multitude of languages Um, I'll talk a little bit about security and access For organizing voters, especially for the first time we ask we're focused on asking the right questions How long in advance do you need to request time off to vote? Do you have a right to the polls? How can we coordinate your child care if you're missing work? Can we find other ways to supplement what you will miss so that you can Practice you can exercise your right to vote It also means doing deep political and popular education Steeping ourselves and our members in an analysis of how us imperialism Border militarization and privatization shapes conditions here at home and in our countries of origin And then recognize our unique role in confronting that In the last year as we've dedicated ourselves to no longer accepting What's so many of us here when we engage potential voters, which is it is what it is or I I can't really do anything about it And instead we're asking who wins when we think like that Who loses who's most at risk when we don't get out there Who has the most to gain by us resigning ourselves from the electoral process And now those same community members who used to look the other way are joining their family members who can vote in line To knock doors to canvas, even if it's to say even if I can't vote I'm going to do everything in my power to make this country safer for me and my family And finally mobilizations in terms of art and culture Make the road we have pulled off incredible marches rallies banner drops manifestations But um as we've seen in the last few years, we really need to ramp up our security efforts White supremacists are getting bolder every day. We're experiencing violence from the hands of the police We're experiencing violence from um outside agitators and domestic terrorists And I know many have spoken to to this But we all need to be very real about the the fact that the week leading up to the election and the week after are Particularly dangerous for black brown immigrant trans queer folks Who are likely to be assaulted or attacked or targeted on their way to the polls or the week following the election No matter the outcome So my question and my challenge to everyone here is what's your safety plan? How are you preparing if you're planning mobilizations and turnout events that are open to the public Do you have cop watch ice watch legal observers marshals an exit plan signal friends? Threads, do you have the information of those that you're mobilizing? So we're not just tapping folks on a hey, we're gonna check in for this day and make sure that you're voting But we're retaining them for the long term and letting them know that we prioritize their their engagement and their safety in that process um We're even building mechanisms to pop car tires that try to drive through protests here in new york Just because we recognize that it's it's getting hot and we need to be ready But that doesn't mean that we back out because we're scared Um on november 4th. We're hoping to mobilize close to 30 000 people We'll see how those plans develop as the weeks go on but I leave these questions with y'all not as um You know to engage with and to add to so that we can make space for our community to grieve to to hold rage um to build and to do it in a way that Brings in whole families as safe as possible in a moment that we need um to keep each other safe I hope I fit it all in there in time Thank you on chelisse um You're lifting up so many of the things that I just like that I I keep thinking of and then I compartmentalize because I'm just sort of like In some ways almost not ready to deal with what's going to happen after november 3rd But also so ready to deal with it. So thank you for just lifting that up and like bringing Front and center for us for this conversation. I'm sure there'll be some questions for us for you and in general after our conversation Your presentations Ashley um Would you like to follow up? sure So first of all just gratitude to be amongst comrades on this call Michelle Sharon and her less like y'all are some rock stars. I feel honored to be in your presence um And I'm Ashley Woodard Henderson. My homies call me ash. I use she heard her pronouns or anything said respectfully I'm from the greatest state of east Tennessee In the largest geographic region in the united states where the highest concentration of black people live in the u.s south I am from contested territory. Um, but is most well known to have been stewarded at one point by the Cherokee nation. Um And I I think the acknowledgement of land is important But I want to go a little bit of a step further and say I think they deserve their ship back. Um And I stand in solidarity with the indian collective who is making demands even this weekend Uh for their land back, right? I stand with the folks of sovereign nations that that believe the indigenous and black people deserve to be stewards of the land that they have Stewarded and cultivated and turned into this great nation. So, uh, I just All things right in good order So now that that's been said, uh, I also want to just see who you are people Like what is it hundreds of people that are on this call? Um, I want to ask you if you feel stressed out right now If you do just wave at me Yeah, I see you Do you feel overwhelmed? Are you losing sleep at night because you're stressed out about what's happening in the current political environment that this country has cultivated? Yeah, I see you me too Are you like god, please let there be somebody out here trying to do something about this mess that we're in Yeah, me too. I see you And though I know I only have seven minutes It's it's okay for us to slow down and to acknowledge this shit is crazy right now Um, and all the ways and all the ways and that we're bringing that while we're also trying to figure it out that in fact Is it the heart of cultural organizing? So to me, you know, it's always hard to be in a space So we're talking about art and culture and I do art and culture. That's actually how I organize, right? Um, and I was taught that by black people and southern freedom movement fighters that have been doing This work in the in the form of cultural organizing and cultural power building for centuries, right? This is not a new concept I'm gonna drop in the chat just like a link to the Highlander center's mission Which breaks down what cultural organizing is to us. We think about it like a triad like a triangle And if one plank of it is art and culture and creation and the bottom the foundation of the triad is faith and spirit When it got like politicized and like professionalized it became holistic wellness But we call it faith and spirit and black community and then on the third pillar of the triad is policy and practice We believe that if you put it all together But if you take creation art and culture and you pair it with faith and spirit, you will absolutely change policies and practices and politics, right? That's the work And so Highlander has been bringing people together across differences 1932 to do just that to learn how to do just that to become Experts and actually implementing tactical interventions to do just that And I think that why it's important to be having that conversation right now while we're also tired and we're also stressed out and we're all probably in grief to some in some shape form or fashion is because Who but artists and culture bears to help us see a new world that our people can't envision because we've never actually gotten to live in it, right? Who better to use their gifts, right to be able to help us see something? I love a good metaphor. So let me let me give you one, right? If I am heartbroken And I don't believe that love exists Then the easiest way for me to be shifted on that is to hear a Whitney Houston singing a where the broken hearts go, right? I might not be able to see it, but artists and culture bears might be able to make me believe in a future that I can't touch yet Right? That is the point of why this call is so important And let me tell you how some of the folks that I know are doing that. So Maybe you've heard of the movement for black lives. Anybody heard of the movement for black lives? Can you wave at me if you have? Yeah, a couple of us You know, it's just the largest social movement in US history is all And I happen to be one in the number that is helping to build and support that infrastructure And the movement for black loves has done incredible work. We have a whole mass engagement table of artists and culture bears that are doing work And we're also infused across all the other tables, including the policy table And you may have heard of a thing called the breathe act. Has anybody heard of the breathe act? Yeah, I mean, it's like the 21st century civil rights bill of our time Some of us might have helped to write it on this call even And you might have seen that if you go to breathe act.com, there's a whole pillar of the work that is just about art It's just artists that have made a commitment that they will use their gifts to help people see a world where there is reimagined public safety beyond policing Right? If you don't believe that we could live in a world where there are no cops where cops have been defunded Where those resources and even new resources have been cultivated to invest in building healthy sustainable and equitable communities For all people, then these artists are working with us to help us turn our policy into a vision that our people can feel Right? That's just one example of the word. I'd also point you to Okay, so like I imagine I asked you if you were stressed I imagine some of you are stressed because you're like, oh man white supremacy Really a problem and guess what it's in mad elected offices. Did you know that? We're listening to debates about whether or not systemic racism exists That's bananas, right? Who would have thought that we'd live in a time where that would be the case? Well, remember when I said I had no that some of you probably are wishing that there was somebody doing something about it I'm going to drop you the next link Go to election defenders.org Right? So there are folks across sector in a black led multiracial multi-sector movement a united front Essentially, they're doing everything in their power to make sure that we have trained hundreds of thousands if not millions of people So that we're protecting our elections before During and after november 3rd, right? I'm going to say that one more time because it actually really matters because you've never lived through an election cycle like this None of us have ever lived through what we're going to experience when we go to sleep on november 3rd And we don't know who the next president of the united states is maybe for a week. Maybe for a month, right? We don't know So if I minute remaining, thank you So if you want to know how to get involved Go and check out election defenders.org You can actually put your practice where your your values are around making sure that we're not only starting with elections right now Getting people out on election day But also following up and making sure that our people are making sense of what happens regardless of who ends up in the seat We're going to need to have a united front of people that are ready to push progressive politics, right? so the the last thing that i'm going to say is that we Work under the leadership of our elders folks and ancestors folks like Vincent Harding who said a new america needs to be born Let us be the midwives I am saying that now you know something new because of the incredible work that my comrades and I are sharing with you We don't do political education for the sake of just being smarter people because smarter people do not necessarily a world save What we're asking you to do is to take this new knowledge that you now have and do something with it Be the midwives understand that there is no neutrality in this moment You can't be neutral on a moving train as miles Wharton would say so we're asking you to pick a side Support this incredible work that social movements are moving where you are in all over the country To make sure that we can protect and defend democracy so that we're not actually talking about picking saviors We're talking about picking our next target in the organizing terrain that we'll be working in for the next foreseeable future I want to remind you that de-escalation isn't just about protection of our communities. It's also about cultivating joy I'm not just telling you to do artistic interventions at the polls because I want you to convince people to come I want you to do it so you can convince people to stay Right, you can stay in these long lines and you can feel joyful. It's not just about responding to fear It's about actually believing that we can cultivate joy in these in these experiences And certainly last but not least I want to remind you that despite our stress and fear our anxieties and the sense of overwhelm Is that y'all we can win We can win we actually are winning which is why it's so damn hard right now So I just want to encourage you to lean into the joy that comes with knowing that you are on the right side of history And that if you like all of us step into your rightful place and use your talents for the sake of liberation for all people We have no no uncertainty that the only option is victory. Thank you Wow so much truth. I told you guys fire. It's like fire after fire after fire Thank you. Ashley. I appreciate that in so many ways Election defenders.org if you haven't already written it down if you thought to yourself Oh, I'm just going to go back into the chat and write it down later Stop write it down put it in your note write it wherever you need to write it and make sure you visit election defenders.com after this call Also, if you have questions, uh, drop them in the chat We're taking stack and I'll make sure that we get to your questions after Our next two speakers join us. So, uh, following up with with sharon sharon Can you take it away? Sure. Thanks for cal. Uh, I'm actually as as folks said it's hard to do a culture call without doing culture So I just wanted to share a quick opening I'm not going to do a long song But I kind of need to ground myself on this for a moment. Um, and it's really what the work of the poor people's campaign And others here have been trying to do And it says we're getting into step and I think we need to get into step in this moment to be able to Bring people together and and to fight back against, you know, what's happening in this in this country and around the world Bear with me for a moment. You can join in We're getting into step. We're getting into step. We're getting into step to win our freedom Too many years we've been divided now's the time to unify. We're getting into step to win our freedom I'll just do this one more time. We're getting into step We're getting into step. We're getting into step to win our freedom Too many to unify, we're getting into step to win our freedom. And if I had more time, I would teach you that whole song, because I think we need some of that right now. But I just wanted to share that and say, you know, the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for more revival, is really about bringing work together, you know, not reinventing work, not doing something new, but is grounded in work that's been going on for many, many years across this country, in long-time work that's been trying to do fusion, organizing of bringing people together across racial lines, across religious lines, across geographic lines, across our issue lines. And Raquel, in asking me to speak today, had asked to talk a little bit about our Jubilee platform that we launched this past summer, after our June 20th large assembly that was originally scheduled to be in Washington, D.C., and we went online and virtual because of the current COVID crisis. But really thinking about this Jubilee platform and where it has come from and how we organize, I wanted to share a few slides today just to show, I'm trying to pair some of the artwork to tell the story just a little bit, because I think, as folks have said, we use the arts and culture work as how we organize. It's key and pivotal to that work and not supplementary to it. And as we approach right now, this moment in being ready for this election as well, and as Ash is just saying, an election that none of us have really been part of this season. The Poor People's Campaign, we ground ourselves in acknowledging that before this crisis that we're hitting right now, there were over 140 million poor and low-income people in this country, and that number is only growing. And I just wanted to share this study that we just came out with this summer, talking about low-income voters, and echo, again, another thing I think Ash, you mentioned, the kind of response we're seeing, the violent responses we're seeing, the pushback that our movements are seeing are not because we're weak, but it's because we're strong. And I really want to emphasize that, because I do think that our movements are powerful right now and is really why we see the kind of violent, physical violence that we're seeing from the state, the kind of voter suppression that we're seeing. And this particular study just was looking at the 34 million poor and low-income people who were eligible to vote in the last election, but did not vote, and largely not only because they didn't see their issues on any of the agendas by elected officials, but also because of voter suppression, of lack of transportation, of all the things that we know people in our communities are facing, and becoming obstacles to getting us to the polls and why so many of us are on this call fighting to make sure that people can vote and get out there and fight for what we know is necessary to push our elected officials to even put on the agenda, that they're not talking about. And so that is a lot of the work we're doing right now, leading up to the election, but to say why that's grounded in this jubilee platform and the kind of demands that the poor people's campaign is putting forward in this moment, I have to just say a word about where this work comes out of, and it really, as we're a national organization, but it didn't just come out of national groups coming together, it really came out of folks on the ground that we're fighting for, whether it be against water shutoffs in Detroit, or if folks that were unhoused, folks that were fighting against housing sweeps in Aberdeen, Washington, or Salinas, California, or poor communities that have started organizing for healthcare as a human right in Pennsylvania and Vermont and using healthcare as a key issue that was bringing people together, you know, across racial and geographic lines and statewide organizing that the demands that you see in the jubilee platform, and I'll drop that link later on in the chat, are really, they are from that work, like they're not a large platform from on high, but they come out of the specific demands that are from impacted communities and therefore are uncompromising, you know, they are the largest demands we can make because we know that our communities, if we don't meet their demands, like we are being hurt and we are dying because of it, right, and so we're not going to take anything off the table, and so if you look at that jubilee platform, you know, it's a very broad platform, but we believe that it's completely possible, and we know that we can actually attain all of this and the work that we've done in the campaign, whether it be for the audit that we did in 2017, or the budget that we put forward in 2019 show, we have the resources, right, we have the resources in this country to actually deliver on all of these things that our communities need from housing to education, you know, to police reform, and we just have to have the political will to do it, and that's the work we have to do in our communities, and so you have one minute remaining. Okay, I will go quickly. So just to lift up some of the things people said, the importance of narratives, I think have been really key in the poor people's campaign and having people tell their stories is essential to understanding, you know, hearing our stories out there and having other people connect with us around those stories and see that this is not only, you know, someone else to struggle, but it's my struggle, and so that that has been a huge part of our cultural strategy and our strategy of organizing and building power. I'm going to skip forward, but just to see, you know, we've been talking about building permanently organized communities as well. I think someone else touched upon that. And we organize in over 40 states across the country, and folks have coordinating committees in those 40 states, part of those coordinating committees are cultural committees as well, and really being able to, you know, not just reach out for a moment, but that we're building long term power and shifting the narrative by having this connected movement that is continuing to push forward a strategy, you know, through something like the Jubilee platform that is made up of the different pieces of the work that's going on all over the country. And just to say, you know, in 2019, we have this moral action Congress that we brought together over a thousand delegates from across the country getting ready for this moment, really, and starting to launch what we called, then we must do more, mobilize, organize, register and educate leaders for a movement that votes. And in this process, you know, we were launching this platform and calling all elected officials, both in our states, there's important Senate races going on, as well as, you know, in this presidential election, that the issues of those 140 million and growing have to be on, you know, the agendas. And the only way we're going to do that is if we can build the kind of power at the ground level that, as Dr. King said, will make the power structure say yes when it really wants to say no. And so just wanted to share some of these images just to see the great work that's going on out there and connecting, you know, you can see some of the visual arts and the music that is embedded in that, that really connects our communities, the stories that are there, the people that are there. And I'll stop there for now. Beautiful. Thank you, Sharon. It's really incredible to see some of those images. They're images that I've seen in newspapers and, you know, all over the internet. So it's, it's, I also love seeing images of people making them. I'm not sure if Nina's going to share any of those photos from our builds, but I know Nina also has some picks to share from Sunrise. So let's move along. And then we'll open it up for Q&A. We'd love to see your questions start bubbling up in the chat if you've got them. Awesome. Hi, everybody. My name is Nina. I use she, her pronouns and I am based in Philadelphia on London, Monophe land. And I'm going to start sharing my screen real quick. Give me one moment. And all right, you're getting a preview. So my name is Nina again. And my role with Sunrise movement is overseeing our visual strategy and creative action. Sunrise, as I'm sure many of you know, is a youth climate movement that's working to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process. We have a two pronged theory of change, which is to build political power and people power. So we work to polarize the public by forcing people to choose a side and absorbing people who are useful or passive supporters. Sunrise has had visual strategy based into our work since the beginning when we started our work back in 2017. It's been a huge part of our success. We know that to succeed, we need to think of our creative skills, like design, video, physical action art as key parts of our work. When I became involved with Sunrise as an organizer two years ago, I thought I was going to have to give up my work as an artist to do direct organizing. And it was so huge to learn how important visual strategy and art was to Sunrise's base strategy of organizing. I want to say briefly what we mean by visual strategy. If we had more time, I would do an exercise where I'd have you look at this image and tell me what word it invokes. And what about the image makes you think of those words. But that is our visual strategy. So the words you see in this photo and the next one are all what our visual strategy is communicating. And I'm sure some of you have seen these images they're from an action in late 2018 that helps Sunrise get a lot of attention and get on the map as a youth climate org. In 2019 and just to say that the visual strategy here was super intentional the setup of these actions, the yellow and black, the shared slogans are all part of the visual strategy. So in 2019 and early 2020, we worked really hard to get the Green New Deal to be common sense and to be an idea that was known all over the country as a way that we were talking about job creation and the economy and fighting climate change. And having a line visual has been a key part of how we've done that. If there's a three person group in a small town that wants to do a sunrise action, but they have the same yellow and gray colors, and they have the slogan that's being used all over the country, it helps us build collective power together. And this also means that there's a lower barrier entry for people to feel connected to the movement and get involved and build power locally where they live. Not just focus on a few actions in big cities, which is often what can happen. Our visual strategy also helps us tell our own narrative and combat the narrative and the public that we know is going to be said about us. So often, people say about young people that we're too young, we're disorganized, we're not very powerful. And having collective discipline around our visuals and our strategy for our actions helps us combat that and put our own narrative out into the world about how powerful we are. By getting the public on board, it allows politicians also to champion this work because they trust that they have our support. So the bigger the narrative can be that this is a popular idea, the Green New Deal is popular, it helps us also push for political support. I want to talk a little bit about working with the decentralized movement with a very specific visual strategy. We obviously have to get buy in from all our volunteer leaders in what we call our hubs, so that people feel like it's exciting to be aligned on visual strategy and it doesn't feel limiting. And I know a lot of us as artists can feel limited when we're told, you can only use this color palette, you can only use these slogans. And by talking with people and doing trainings around action or in visual strategy, about why this is so powerful, it helps us all feel part of building power together and not feeling like we're being limited in the work we're doing in the art we're making. We do a lot of training of our art leads to learn how to do this and stage actions like these. And we also work with all our action leads so that our artists are not just siloed off as one section of the movement. I want to highlight a little more some of the work we've been doing in this past year because these photos are pretty old. These are from 2019. These are some of the ways we got the Green New Deal out into the world. And then more recently in June, we started doing what we call wide awake actions. The wide awake actions started in Louisville, Kentucky. And the idea was that we're talking to our politicians about facing the crisis and that young people are wide awake to the crisis that's going on. And they should be as well. This idea really caught on and there are wide awakes all across the country. And even some of our movement partners started doing wide awake actions as well. And I think one of the thing that caught on was the really strong visuals that you can see in this image. We also did actions as the wildfires took place on the West Coast. Some of our leaders in Portland and the Bay Area in Southern California took action. You can see from these photos holding up some of our really powerful slogans and signs with these cloudy skies in the background and really taking action to show that climate disasters are so directly related to climate change, even though the media wasn't talking about the connection between the two. We have one minute remaining. Thank you. So the last thing I want to say is about the election. We know this is such a pivotal moment. Other panelists have been talking about this. And we can tell that right now, the work we need to do, a big part of it is a narrative battle. We need to show that the narrative is that people are powerful, young people are powerful and that we're going to win. And that narrative strongly counters the narrative that's happening in the media. And so one thing we're doing is supporting young people to take action so they don't feel hopeless and they don't feel as powerless and that they feel agency and building power, going out to vote and seeing that voting is just a small important but small step on the path to building a bigger movement and using our visual strategy as a way to see that narrative. All right, I'll stop for now. Thanks, everybody. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Nina. Those images of people holding up signs during the fires or during the smoke is really impactful. Thank you for sharing that and for speaking a little bit about your trainings. I believe pretty much everybody on this call, all these organizations have trainings. So I actually urge all of you all to follow up with either the organizers on this call or through the pages, the websites of these individual organizations and find out how to get involved because I've attended some of the trainings from some of these groups and been immensely immensely insightful for my own practice. So I'd love to just open up space for any questions. I'm wondering, I don't see that anything has really bubbled up yet. I'm going to give you guys some time to think about that in case something comes up. You can raise your hand or just drop a question into the chat. I'm just going to ask for maybe in in order to make a little bit more space for people to think through their thoughts. I'd love to just ask a question, a point of clarity. To Ashley or to anybody really, you know, this idea of defending the vote after November 3rd is something that's really come up for me. Like, what does that actually look like? How do people participate in that? How do people can vote participate? Who can't vote participate? How do you do it safely? How do you do it in a way where you might be willing to risk arrest or you might not be willing to risk arrest? What does it look like? I know one of you mentioned, you know, the need for getting cop watchers out on KLSU mentions getting cop watchers out, you know, at the polls or around the time of the polls. I'm sure that mass mobilization and getting people on the streets is another idea. But just thoughts, what does it look like? And how, how would you suggest that people get involved and prepared for that? I mean, I love this question. Thank you, Raquel. I think that a couple of things come to mind, y'all. One is that again, Election Day has already started, right? It's already started that where you live, you should already be talking about people going to vote. And in fact, if you're worried about voter suppression, particularly through white supremacist, nationalist, or paramilitary forces violence, it's in many of our states, you should check and see about where you live in many of our states, you can vote anywhere in the district, not just at your precinct during early vote, right? So you could be proactive and throw a party at the polls and tell everybody to go to one place, where all of the team can be together, celebrating this this incredible moment that we're making possible, celebrating that people are defending democracy by exercising their right to vote, even for folks that can't vote, right, that would be down to ensure that our people can make decisions by exercising their right to vote, could be could be one way that you could throw down, right? Even before the last day that you can vote, which is November 3, right? After though, to your point, Raquel, there's there's so many scenarios that might be possible, right? The most I think there are two that feel the most important to talk about here, right? Is that regardless of what happens on November 3, we likely won't know the results, right? Because folks are making the elected officials are making the decision to not start counting early votes, right? Not just melon ballots, right? But even the at least 10 million votes that have already been submitted across the country, right? So our goal immediately is to demand that every vote get counted, right? That every thing like defend the count, like to make sure that every single vote that got casted actually gets counted, right? I think I think that that's going to be one of the big things. And I think regardless of who ends up in the seat, right? The most important thing is going to be about making sure that the the sort of synthesis of our demands, whether that's the Jubilee platform, the People's Charter from the Working Families Party, the Vision for Black Lives from from the Movement for Black Lives, the Breathe Act, the Thrive Agenda, the Green New Deal, or even the Red Black and Green New Deal, right? From the Black Climate Justice Movement, that those that all of those be our full court press in the first hundred days, yo, right? Regardless of who's in the seat, right? Regardless of who's in the seat. And if what we find is that it is impossible to move on the federal level because of whoever ends up in the seat, then it's going to be incumbent on us to continue to do the work that many of the folks on this call have been telling you we been doing on the local and the state level, right? That we fight white supremacy and authoritarianism and fascism on the federal level. And we fight for democracy on the local level and the state level where we might be able to find it more available to us. And I think again, where you're going to be able to make sense of that is making sure it's like, you know, Ghostbusters, any Ghostbusters fans, like, who you going to call? To me, back to any of this point earlier is like, you're going to need to know who you can trust, who are the social movements that you can trust to help you make sense of what happens after November 3rd when you wake up on November 4th and still don't know who the president of the United States is, right? And I would argue that some of the folks on this call have just told you where to look, right? I would say look to the front line, right? Look to the front line. Look to the United Front that's going to be defending democracy. Look to election defenders. Look to the movement for Black Lives. Look to the Sunrise Movement and the Poor People's Campaign and all of the incredible organizations that you've heard about on this call today. I think that's the that's the thing that I would tell you. And I would wrap it up by saying, when my elders and ancestors said by any means necessary, they meant by all the means, right? So if you can't mobilize because we're in a global pandemic, notice COVID-19, and you can't risk yourself or your family being exposed to the virus, then don't go to the mass mobilizations, right? If you can do, right? If you can't do those things, there is always something that you can do, which ties back to what I was saying earlier about there not being in a neutrality, right? You actually are either support, you are either bending the moral arc of the universe towards justice or you aren't, right? So you have to make a choice that if it's not the direct actions and the mass mobilizations that you can do, what can you do to help push the narrative that we could win, like Nina said, right? What are you doing to make sure that you're developing art that can actually help move people to be inspired when they're tired because they have been out there, right? Just I think, again, it's like knowing your role and playing it excellently for the liberation of our people is what I would offer we should be doing after November 3rd. Thank you. I appreciate that point of clarity. Any other addition from the other speakers about practical ways that we can step up before or after November 3rd? I would just add one thing. Oh, sorry, Sean. Yeah, just that when I was talking about a narrative battle, I think part of it is the idea that we know that those of us who are defending the vote who want everyone to be counted have the moral high ground. And there's part of this narrative that's like, oh, we're being aggressive. We're something like we know that's how it's going to be fun. And we get to come out and say, no, we're the people who want our whole community to be counted. We want our families, our city, our community, whoever to be counted to get a chance to have their voice spoken and heard. And so just thinking about that framing and making sure that we're coming out right before the day of the election and after the election with that clear framing and coming out knowing that we're not the people who are fighting against the good guys. We're the good guys, right? We're the ones who are defending everybody's right to be heard, which is how things should be in this country, obviously. And so I think thinking about what is the art? What are the slogans? That's what we've been thinking about that fit that and that paint that clear narrative picture right from the beginning. So we're not playing the defense, but we're on the offense with that narrative being put out into the public. Awesome. Thanks, Nina. Sharon? Yeah, I was just going to echo. I mean, I just appreciate so much of what both Ash and Nina just shared and and saying 100% like connects with folks where you are and locally within. I agree with the idea of organizations you can trust. I think a lot of them are right here, right? Because it's coming out of a long history of work that has an analysis that, you know, is about knowing what direction we need to go and not just kind of pop, you know, coming out of nowhere, right? And I think it's having that in this moment is really important when there's so much that's going to come out. And like there's going to be a lot of jobs that I think, especially I know I've been talking to a lot of artists and who really, you know, are either feeling isolated and or wanting to like wanting to connect but not knowing how. And I think we like these organizations can really help to become political homes in this moment and help guide direction. And I think the power of our art is also it's coming together, right? Of being able to bring our voices together and develop kind of collectively this kind of shared analysis that then we're pushing forward a kind of a shared message out there through that work too. And so I think the more that we can connect with, you know, some of the on the ground organizing that is steeped in knowing, you know, this isn't new like there's new pieces of it, but it's not new, right? There's a long history that that has like paved the way for us and we can draw on that and knowing like who we can turn to in this moment that is drawing on that history and is understanding a little, you know, about the kind of clarity that is necessary in this coming time. And I think that the more we can can build that kind of united front, right? That's that's going to be how we don't get isolated, how we don't like lose, you know, our sense of reality and like what's necessary in chaos that that may emerge. Thank you, Sharon. Appreciate that. I appreciate all of your feedback. There's I'm seeing a couple of things come in to me privately and also just generally some folks are wanting to learn more about cultural projects that are reimagining the world we want. I think where there's actually going to be space for that after this Q&A two minute presentations from people. So thank you, Beverly, for lifting that up and it is coming to you soon. And then there have been a few messages and also just public statements about the Electoral College and people wanting to sort of clarify how that works and what we can do given that we know this system is broken. That's on the Electoral College. Yeah, abolish that thing. Like the party is what should win, you know, I mean, I think that that what's what's real is I don't think the system's broken. I think it's working exactly as it was designed to. And that's the problem, right? But I also think that like now more than ever, we have the when we started the movement for Black Lives in December of 2014, one of the questions that I asked is what is the impossible thing that we can make possible if we did some stuff together that we wouldn't get done if we were just doing as individuals or siloed organizations, right? And and because we did that, look at what we've made possible, right? Because of like people said the Green New Deal was a pipe dream. Look what sunrise and Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy and the Climate Justice Alliance and Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and so many people together made the Green New Deal table. Like look at what these people made possible, right? Look at what more on Monday made possible, right? Impossible things, right? People would have said like in the 1800s that the demands that we made of abolition were too radical, y'all. They would have said that Harriet Tubman's dream for a free Black Nation was impossible, right? They would have said that like indigenous sovereignty was impossible. They would have said that like getting rid of cages and prisons and detention centers was impossible, right? But we're seeing we're literally watching it come to fruition because of the the sacrifices in no small way and the and the struggle that folks have been through for generations, right? So I would say if you don't like that like to a college and you've watched multiple now from Al Gore to now, multiple presidencies be stolen after we voted and the popular vote was different than what came out in the electoral college, we've now had multiple cycles to say that this thing is working exactly as it was designed and that's to disenfranchise American folks, right? And if you do feel that way, then I think it's incumbent that you start to prepare yourself for what will likely be a contested election and say, see, we told you abolish the electoral college, right? This is your moment to make another impossible thing possible. I encourage you to do it. Thanks, Ash. Appreciate that. Any other thoughts? Cool. All right. We're actually right on time for moving forward for two minute presentations. Can I get a stack? Awesome. Emily, you're reading my mind. Micah is is Micah around? Micah Pazant. Yes, I'm here. Did I pronounce your name correctly? Perfect. Awesome. Awesome. I was really excited when I got an email from you because we actually have a copy of your immigrants or refugees are welcome here, poster at my father's office in downtown Laredo on the US Mexico border. So. Welcome. Thank you. It's truly an honor to be here with so many visionaries that I respect and our work is so deeply intertwined. I'll try and be quick. My name is Micah Pazant. I'm coming to you from unceded Aloni territory, AKA the Bay Area. And I go by Bay them. I am currently artists and residents at Ford together, which is a national women of color led organization, shifting culture and policy. And it's my honor to share a very beloved project that I support called the Transday of Resilience Art Project. And you can experience it while I'm talking to you if you would like to go to www.tdor.co. It is an annual culture shift campaign led by trans black, indigenous and people of color artists and poets to imagine their uncompromised freedom and seed a world of trans liberation. So this project began in 2014 at a time when the epidemic of violence against trans people and specifically against black trans women and femmes was not on the radar of mainstream culture or the movement. And the only narratives about BIPOC trans folks were ones of death and tragedy. And for the past 22 years, November 20th has been Trans Day of Remembrance, the only annual event centering trans people, which was a day of mourning. So this project has been part of a national cultural push to reimagine that day centering the leadership of BIPOC trans folks and celebrate their power, their resilience, as well as creating space to grieve and mourn our murdered kin. Since then, the project has grown into a national celebration. We've worked with visionary BIPOC trans grassroots organizations across the country, created this online archive of trans liberation posters, poetry, art. We've got the art into prisons, protests, altars and schools. This is part of our official Snatch the Babies strategy. We nurture the ongoing development of emerging BIPOC trans artists every year, including some of the amazing folks who just made art for the Breed Act. So I'll let you experience the website and please be in touch if you'd love to collaborate, we'd love to work with you. Beautiful. Thank you, Micah. So as a reminder, we'll be compiling resources if you have other resources and are not presenting or just something in general that has really peaked your curiosity or gotten you jazzed and excited about engaging. Drop it in the chat and we'll make sure to share it with everyone. Yasmin Morales, are you are you around? There you go. I was muted. Sorry. Hello, hello. I'm going to be sharing some slides. It's only four slides. I know it's two minutes, but I am a visual learner. So I always like to make sure people have something to look at. My name is Yasmin Morales and I am an arts and cultural coordinator at El Puente Screen Light District. So I'll show you some slides real quick. So yes, here we go. So El Puente Green Light District started as a holistic community development. I'm so sorry. Let me see. I went to another slide. I'm so learning my Zoom. So it's a holistic community development and sustainability initiative to flip the disempowering narrative of gentrification and instead placing that power of transformation and the power of the local residents. We have arts and culture, affordable living, environmental justice, health and wellness and education projects year round at the heart of El Puente, which our mission is to nurture and inspire leadership for peace and justice. At the heart of that is the arts, of course. So we have a collective of artists from Williamsburg, Bushwick and beyond. The name is Cadre, which stands for Community Artist Development and Resource Exchange. And these group of artists help us organize all the Puente Staple events and any other events that we might be hosting, like the annual WEPA Festival. We also have the muralistas of El Puente, which have been creating art since 1982. And most recently, we unveiled a mural at the More Street Market right here in Williamsburg. And then we have had other projects this summer. We called it the Artivist Summer 2020, and we hosted about 21 virtual events, including three series, Wellness Wednesdays, which was like a weekly conversation around wellness. Family Fridays, which would be like a follow up of the wellness Wednesdays, we will have an art activity on Facebook Live and the WEPA Sundays at the Plaza. Those were two concerts that were live in open spaces in Williamsburg and Bushwick. And our mission is to be in your community for the next 15 minutes. That's good. If you want to find out more, I'll share details on the chat about our environmental justice campaign. And thank you so much. Raquel, you're on mute. Savannah Barrett. Are you on the call? I am. Hi, y'all. Thank you so much for inviting me to share this work and to share this really powerful space with all of you. I had a two year old on top of me for most of the calls. I'm sorry. Didn't have my video on. I'm Savannah Barrett. I use she her pronouns. And I come from Kentucky, which is the land of the Edina Hopewell, Osage, Cherokee and Shawnee people. I see you in Tennessee. Part of the work that I do for the National Organization of Art of the World is through my work with the Kentucky World Urban Exchange, which I started with some friends at Apple Shop back in 2014 and continue to lead with folks from across the state. And our purpose is really just to build a network of really strong personal relationships that can and we believe those personal relationships can bridge cultures and grow social capital and unite Kentuckians. So the Royal Urban Exchange, we call it the Rucks. It's a statewide leadership program and we use cultural exchange as our vehicle for connection. So we do this by organizing, gathering experiences that really convey both the unique quality of each region of the state while also articulating the sort of common culture and history that Kentucky's region share. And so each year we accept a new cohort of about 75 folks from across the state and they then together experience six community intensives over two years and throughout that process we try to build and then deconstruct their sense of place so that they can begin to articulate their own kind of personal Kentucky identity, but also make space for broader experiences of belonging. So, you know, we share stories and discussions. We use a lot of story circles and through that process, we have found that we begin to recognize our own experiences in the stories of others and that that intensely personal work can really deeply shape our members relationships to one another and to places that they visit in regions outside of their own in the state. And so the heart of this work is that relationships are the connection that we seek or the impact that we seek. And because connection is the impact we seek, we were called to stand in solidarity with our fellow Kentucky and Breonna Taylor. So I want to share a video with y'all that folks from across the state of Kentucky made. And, you know, sorry, your two minutes is up. Could you maybe put the link of the video in the chat box? Yeah, thanks. Just great. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Cool. We've got Lynn and then gone up. Lynn Elizabeth from New Village Press Press for you around. All right, gone. We're going to we're going to skip and maybe come back to Lynn. Great. Hello, everyone. Thank you for being on this call. It's just an incredible group of creators and visionaries here. So I'm honored to be among you. I'd like to say a little bit about a project that was recently launched called I'm going to share my screen. That's working called the Climate Clock, which we launched about two weeks ago in Union Square in New York City. And it's it's at first glance exactly what it says it is. It is a clock that is showing the remaining time window that we have left to make a critical difference on climate. And the project is also called Deadline Lifeline, because it's not just meant to display these incredible urgent deadlines, but also the many lifelines that we need to pursue within that timeline, especially those that are rooted in principles of equity and justice. And it seems to have punched through a lot of the media resistance to talking about climate at this moment, where it's so critically important. But we're glad to say that people have been responding. We are now starting a global network. And so this is an invitation for people to participate. This is just the last week and a half, the different teams that have been starting around the world to start to launch their own climate clocks. And they just to let folks know there are many different ways to deploy this and different ways that it can be used strategically as a cultural intervention. We have those monumental clocks. We have portable clocks and we have digital clocks. These are great for big public squares and having sort of large public impact and generating mass action. But we also have smaller ones that are maker kit that you can download the plans for on free and download all the parts. You can make it in a high school or university class. And these are designed for action and direct action. And we have a whole set of strategies available. But these are meant to be tools to be placed in the hands of social movements. That's what this clock is. And we want to go from monuments into movement work. And we also have digital apps and widgets you can put on the website or on your phone that guide people towards action and show the different kinds of lifelines in addition to the deadline. And we are just starting up now. And so we invite you to join us and be a part of forming what this global campaign looks like. And the most important thing is that it's really not about the clocks. It's about the organizing and the way in which we wield and use it to pressure decision makers to reckon with our climate reality. And and so there's also an educational component that we invite people to be a part of. That's a we call it a steam powered climate justice curriculum that goes from tech engineering and math into climate science, arts and design and lance people in climate justice education and and action. So please get in touch if this is interesting to you and you can play hand in shaping how it really emerges. And we're at climate clock dot world. So just come and say hello. Great. Thanks, Gunn. Appreciate it. I can try again. Yes, Lynn. OK, sorry. My zoom had frozen several presenters back and I managed to shut it down and restart. So I'm Linda Elizabeth from New Village Press and we're currently located in the Lenape land island of Manahata and our nonprofit publishing organization is focused on movement building by animating social change through books. And, you know, it is our mission to build beloved communities openheartedness. The two books we launched this month are Mindy Thompson Fuller loves Main Street. And she's really looking at how to get in touch with the heart of a community. There are study circles going on about with this book. And she's hoping to really pour on the love. That's her latest theme. She's, you know, the author of three other books that we've published. We also have a book out by the revolutionary poet Margaret Randall. And, you know, she's speaking a couple of times a week and reading her poetry that also addresses social change issues. You know, most of our work is for the long term, not just, you know, this month, next month, but how we really can rebuild joy in our communities and how we can affect you know, really participatory community placemaking. And we've published guidebooks and case studies on that. We'll be we'll be publishing in a year and a half the Roadside Theater's anthology, two volumes set of all of the plays that that they have produced. We'll be doing work of Americans who tell the truth. These are these are portraits and profiles by the artist Robert Shetterly. That'll be in conjunction with, excuse me, a documentary film. Um, we're working on books about teaching, honoring, teaching artists do the Tannebelm who died this past year being put together by Spoon Jackson, who's incarcerated poet and playwright. And, you know, new works are coming up by Lily Yea and anyway, and we celebrate the ongoing work of our of our authors, Keith Knight, Beverly Natives, I think he's on this phone call today and many others. So sorry, I'm losing my voice, too. So I'll stop right now. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to participate. Beautiful. Thank you, Lynn. I just got a private message from gone to name that he's calling in from Laredo, Texas on ancestral territory of the Cafe Sofa Macrudo. So last speaker, Bernardo Masson. Bernardo Masson. Hi, everyone. Can you hear me? Great afternoon. I'm Bernardo Masson, my pronouns are he and him. I I'm residing in the south side of San Diego by the border ancestral lands of the Kumeya people. I'm pasting a link into the chat. It's for a nationwide performance project, also a nationwide performance protest called Good Trouble. And all of the information for the event is going to be on that link. What it is, it's going to be a free event on November 1st, a series of verbatim interviews with Generation Z activists and organizers turned into a musical poetic protest in the form of a of an audio performance. And so it will be free on top of trying to galvanize young people and progressive voters around policy. It's also an opportunity for us to increase visibility for each other's platforms, knowing that all of the issues that we work towards are interconnected somehow under systemic oppression. So we're inviting individuals and organizations to host their own gatherings as listening parties. That means I'm going to be licking up all of your organizations and making an invitation somehow to see ways we can. I think I was muted by accident. Am I done? Sorry. Yeah. You know, you still have time. Oh, OK. Sorry, everyone. That means I'm going to be reaching out to everyone to see if if you would like to participate as a listener or as a host, if you have ideas about ways we can amplify the events somehow. It's it's free and I can I can promise you very much. It's it's very exciting. I'm already seeing comments and thank you very much. Like I said, the information is on the link. You can also contact me directly. My email address is Bernardo at blindspotcollective.org. Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you, Bernardo. I don't see anybody on our list if you have we're willing to go over like five minutes or so if anybody wants to add to that. I don't see anybody coming up. I'm actually going to do a little bit of self promotion outside the box here. Emily, can I share my screen? I think I can share my screen. Yes. Rika, when you're done, there was also one quick question. I'll flag. OK, cool. I'm going to be super quick. Can you all see my screen? Sort of. Yes, I can. So as I mentioned earlier, I'm calling in from Laredo, Texas, on the land of the Carri soco me crudo. We are right here on this map directly on the border. I've been working with a group here, the no border wall coalition to stop the wall which the Trump administration is trying to barrel through before the election. And one of the things we're really trying to do is get out the vote and unite border communities. So on October 23rd, we're hosting a virtual concert to get out the vote and stop the wall, too. We actually believe that two of these states, Arizona and Texas, if we're able to get enough Latinos out to vote could be turned blue. So here are a lineup of some of the artists that we have, some Grammy nominees, some Grammy winners, lots of local voices, native voices from the border as well across the border, people who are really just lifting up a visionary narrative of the world that we want to create. And part of our message here along the border is we need to defund the wall and fund our future. So really quick. If y'all want more information about that, I'll share the link and resources. Anybody else? Oh, Jordan, you mentioned the name. Can you just repeat that? Yeah, there were just a couple of things lifted up. There was one question specifically for Gahn about more information on the steam-powered climate justice education. Gahn just chatted that answer into the chat. And then there was also Julie Dobkin was also lifting up some work around invisible and visible disabilities work at hiddentruthproject.com. That's chatted as well. But yeah, if there are any other quick questions, we'd be happy to field them. Quick request. Raquel, I really appreciate your talking about this. I'm Joan Lipkin. I'm she, her, hers from Osage Land in St. Louis. I really appreciate your saying that if we are able to get out enough people in Texas and along the border we could. I know we have to be very careful about how we talk about things in terms of the 501C3 status. But these elections really matter up and down the ballot. And there is this thing as the swing states. And there is this thing called the electoral college. And it's enshrined. And it can be challenged, but it can't be challenged in the current election. So we need to really try to make sure that we get the vote out as much as we can in every possible dimension. And there are organizations that are doing work to help us reach different states. What I wanted to share very briefly is that my organization, Dance the Vote, is offering, for lack of a better word, a contest. But the fact is everybody's work will be shown. And it's called Make Good Trouble, Why John Lewis Inspires Me to Vote. And it is for college students anywhere in the United States to make a piece that won in any dimension. Oh, did I get cut off? Yeah, I'll just finish. In any form that they want, spoken word, testimony, a graphic, and we want to give money away. We raise money because we feel that students and all kinds of people need money. And so we're giving money away with this contest. I don't like the word contest, but that's what it is. I will put it in the chat. If you know any college students of anywhere in the United States, we want to hear from them. We want to offer this opportunity. And we want to honor the legacy of John Lewis and help to promote voting in that way. So thanks for letting me jump on there. I really appreciate it, folks. Thanks. Thank you, Joan. What an invigorating, insightful moving call we have just collectively participated in over the course of the past 90 minutes. Thank you, everybody, for showing up. As we mentioned earlier and as has been just reiterated throughout, these are really terrifying moments. But they're also really revelatory moments where the veil on what's actually happening has been lifted and we're able to see what our true potential as community members, as society, is we have the vision and we're building it. So look to the front lines. Connect with organizations in your immediate communities. Visit electiondefenders.org. Stay active. Do not isolate. If you need to have some self-care, that's totally fine. That's totally called for. But make sure you reach out for help. Make sure you check in on your people. Thank you all for joining. If I can just have everybody take themselves off of mutes and if you're able to take yourself off of hiding video or let us see your beautiful faces no matter where you are, I'm going to count. And I would love everybody to jump to the stage and a collective justice shout on three. One, two. We've got this. We've got this. Nothing. Have to work, everyone. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. I love all of you. Thank you.