 Thank you everybody for coming. Today is Friday. Can we all say yay? I'm glad you all made it. I can see some of you came here, and you must have enjoyed the Nor'easters. And I think a few of us might have enjoyed it too much and haven't made it downstairs yet. But that's okay. That means everybody had a good time. And so this morning, I just want a couple of reminders. We do have a raffle at the very end of the conference. At the end of the conference, when you're in the last session, we'll try to collect your name tags. That's how you enter into the raffles. So just a little FYI on that. And so this morning, we have a lot planned, a lot of good sessions going on. And I'm going to introduce Rob Chapman, who is the chair of the conference committee, to tell you what's going on this morning. All right, good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Friday planning session. Opening, bleh, bleh. Let me say that again. The opening breakfast plenary. It's going to be an exciting one. We're very excited to do it. But first we'd like to have a welcome from a very special guest with us today is the Lieutenant Governor of the state of Vermont, Mr. David Zuckerman. Thank you, Rob. I appreciate it. Welcome to Vermont, those of you that haven't been here before. And I'm glad you brought some warm weather if you're from Connecticut or Rhode Island or Southern Vermont yesterday and today. I'm also a farmer. So we've been bringing in a lot of carrots and food so we could take advantage of these a couple days of warmth if you don't realize it's warm. Well, it is. Right, fair enough. It's real honored to actually welcome you here. I've had the good fortune to be on public access television here in Burlington many, many times, but also across the state. And I really value not just the election night coverage as an elected official, but really the small local programs that you run, the fact that everyday folks can come in and have a program that might have 10 viewers, might have 50 viewers, but it's a connected viewership to the community and to topics that often are not on mainstream commercial capitalist television. And to me, that is so critical in this moment as we are on the threshold of authoritarianism in our governance with the language that's being used, with the rhetoric, and with the following that's out there. The number of people that feel like breaking the rules a little bit to get what you want is OK in a system that I think we all feel that is critically not OK. On my way here, I was thinking about why is it that some of those folks are so able to be wrapped up in that mindset. And I was thinking about for those of us that are afraid of losing our democracy, for many it's often because our system is working for us and that we need to reflect on how the system, whether it's our election system and or maybe more importantly, our economic system is not working for so many people. And when the system isn't working, when you're afraid of losing your housing or not having housing or putting food on the table, that's when you're going to be willing to disrupt the system. And I think one of the things that's important about public access and what you do is you reconnect people with their neighbors that the system that we live in is a system of neighbors. It's a system of community. And the ability to have the conversations that you have and the shows that you have creates that connection in a way that sometimes larger scale broadcast doesn't really work with respect to community. I want to mention one of the things that I'm doing as I travel the state as lieutenant governor. And in Vermont, lieutenant governor is a fairly limited role. You preside over the Senate. You're ready to be governor if something happens to the governor and you've got to be governor. And you appoint people to committees. In some states, you're actually the head of the tourism agency or economic development or human services. That's not the case in Vermont. And so in the off time of the year, our sessions are not year round. I just want to express that one of the things I'm doing is a banned books or books worth reading tour across the state in communities. And I've had at those meetings great community conversations. Sometimes it's one sided. I tend to try to really welcome folks who have a different view than I do so that we can actually have the conversation as opposed to the rhetorical sound bites that are on three second TV situations. But what has also occurred at these events is local public access television has been there to record and replay those conversations, to talk about what is critical thinking, access to information, control of information, and so forth, which is what we talk about in these banned books or books worth reading events. And so it's really a pleasure to welcome those of you from across New England. I think it's just New England. Is it Northeast or just New England? Northeast? OK, who else do we have? We have New York as well, who's bigger than the rest of us combined. But anyway, welcome to New York as well, although I grew up in the Boston area, so I can only say a few good things about New York City and New York teams. But what you do to publish out those community meetings that have neighbors with different opinions talking to each other, not yelling at each other, maybe occasionally yelling at each other, but actually getting to the deeper heart of the matter is so, so critical and important. So it's a pleasure to have you in Vermont. Thank you for coming during stick season. I hope you still find it beautiful. If you're up for a walk this morning, you may have seen just the phenomenal sunrise that we had. And last night, I think it was a gorgeous sunset, so if you had a chance to look out at that, it's a unique thing to Vermont. I'm sure you don't get nice sunrises or sunsets anywhere else. But take them while you can, and I hope the rest of your conference goes really well. Thank you. Thank you, Lieutenant Governor. Next up, we'd like to welcome Richard Turner, who is the chair of the National Board for the Alliance for Community Media, and he's going to say a few words for us. Thank you, Richard. To the distinguished guests, Lieutenant Governor, as well as to those who have helped to organize this conference, the Organizing Committee and the Northeast Region Board, I bring thanks and I also bring greetings from the National Board of Directors for the Alliance for Community Media. It's certainly a pleasure to be here, to see so many beautiful, familiar, and new faces. The Northeast Region certainly has a lot of history for me, and I appreciate being here at this conference. I've been given a short amount of time, and I've been asked to extend it a little bit, because I recognize that there wasn't a land recognition yesterday as part of our opening protocol. So I asked for permission to be able to do that this morning, and my apologies to the panelists, because that means a little bit of delay for them as I include that in my remarks. I felt it was important to do this, especially considering the location, as well as considering the time being Thanksgiving, in which we recognize indigenous peoples, and we have a celebration of Thanksgiving. Some think of it as an un-thanksgiving, but I wanted to give that as part of the context for my comments. And so in so doing, I seek permission as I stretch beyond my ancestral boundaries, and I ask forgiveness if I offend anyone, and if for any reason I misinterpret some cultural understanding that is beyond my own ancestry. Jehan got sehri ho, which is good morning in Mohawk. First, let me, I've recognized those who have brought us together, and it is wonderful to be here among you upon the shores of what is now known as Lake Champlain. Pre-contact a sanitized way of saying invasion. This region nurtured the Abenaki part of the Wabanaki Confederacy to the east, and the Gaenye, Gaiehaga, or Mohawk peoples, are part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to the western shore. These peoples were here for over 10,000 years. There are archeological finds that can't even predate that, so we don't really know how long it's been. You will note in my remarks that I favor the western shore, having by marriage become associated with the Wolf Clan of the Haudenosaunee or Aquasasini people. It is a matriarchal society. Many of you have heard my story, and time doesn't permit me to go too much into depth of that on this morning, but I wanted to make sure that I gave some context. In July of 1609, Samuel de Chaplain went up the Richelieu River with his native allies to drive the Iroquois from the lake. In Mohawk, the lake is known as Gaenye, de Helaunee, Ga-lonye. In the beginning of the 17th century, you know about the pilgrims landing at Plymouth, but you might not know about what is referred to as one of the great dimes in which, by invasion, disease, and murder, the population of the American indigenous peoples were eliminated, nearly eliminated. This genocide was interpreted as divine intervention. I'm gonna quote Thomas Morton among the founders of current day Quincy, Massachusetts. And by this means, there is as yet but a small number of salvages in New England to that which hath been in former time and the places made so much the more fit for the English nation to inhabit in and erect in it temples to the glory of God. They saw it as a divine intervention to clear the land that this disease cleared the land for their way. So just as measuring, the measuring of time reinforces a construct, a way of understanding BCAD. Now we reinterpret as BP before present, but changing these letters doesn't undo the construct. We didn't abandon that calendar or a current calendar to adopt the Mayan or Chinese or Judea calendar which gives us a far greater understanding of epics. You're going to hear in this morning's panel about justice and the significance of media justice in our work. And before I do that, before I talk a little bit about that, I just wanted to bring a Thanksgiving address. The Thanksgiving address is significant in the Haudenosaunee tradition. And I think it's appropriate because this is part of the interpretation of what Thanksgiving Day is about. So again, you'll indulge me as I take a little bit of time to do this because it gives recognition and thanks. At the end of each of these phrases at times they're appropriate to say toe, which is the way of recognizing of bringing together our minds as one. Today we are gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty and the responsibility to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now we bring our minds together as one as we give our greetings and our thanks to one another as people. We are thankful to our mother, the earth for the, she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk upon her. It gives us joy and she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time to our mother, we send our greetings and our thanks. We give thanks to all the waters of the world for crunching our thirst and providing us with strength water is life. We know it is power in many forms, waterfalls and rain and mist, rivers and notions. With one mind we send our greetings and our thanks to the spirit of water. We turn our minds to all the fish life in the water. They were instructed to cleanse and purify the water. They also give themselves to us as food. We are grateful that we can still find pure water. So we turn now to the fish and send our greetings and our thanks. Now we turn toward the plants. As far as I can see the plants grow working many wonders. They sustain many life forms with our minds gather together. We give our thanks and look forward to seeing plants life continue for many generations to come. With one mind we turn to honor and thank all the food plants we harvest from the garden since the beginning of time the grains, vegetables, beans and berries have helped the people survive. Many other living things draw strength from them too. We gather all the plant foods together as one and send them our greetings and our thanks. We turn to the medicine plants of the world. From the beginning they were instructed to take every sickness. They are always waiting and ready to heal us. We are happy. They are still among us of those special few who remember how to use these plants for healing. And with one mind we send our greetings and our thanks. We gather our minds together to send our greetings and our thanks to all the animal life in the world. They have many things to teach us as people. We are honored by them when they give up their lives so we may use their bodies as food for our people. We see them near our homes and in our deep forest. We are glad they are still here and we pray that this will be always be so. And now our minds are one. We now turn to our thoughts of the trees. The earth has many family of trees who have their own instructions and uses. Some provide us with shelter and shade. Others with fruit, beauty and other useful things. Many people of the world use the trees as a symbol of peace and strength. With one mind we send our greetings and thanks to the tree of life. And now our minds are one. We put our minds together as one. We thank all the birds who move and fly about over our heads. The creator gave them the beautiful songs. Each day they remind us to enjoy and appreciate life. The eagle was chosen to be their leader. To all the birds with the smallest to the largest. We send our joyful greetings and our thanks. And now our minds are one. We are thankful to the powers we know as the four winds. We hear their voices and the moving air as they refresh us and purify the air we breathe. They help us to bring the change of seasons from the four directions they come bringing us messages and giving us strength. And now our minds are one. We send our greetings and our thanks to our eldest brother, the sun. Each day without the fall, without fail, he travels to the sky from east to west bringing the sun, the light of the new day, the source and all the fires of life. And now our minds are one. We put our minds together to give thanks to our oldest grandmother, the moon, who lights the nighttime sky. She is the leader of all women all over the world. She governs the movement of the ocean tides by which her changing face we measure time. And now our minds are one. We give thanks to the stars who spread across the sky like jewels. We see them in the night, helping the moon to light the darkness. And now our minds are one. We gather our minds together to consider the wisdom keepers who have come to help the people throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the ways we were instructed to live. With one mind we send our greetings and our thanks to our caring teachers. And now our minds are one. The Thanksgiving address is much more than that. It traditionally takes about 30 minutes, sometimes to days to do. And the tradition of the Haudenosaunee in the Longhouse. I abstracted some of that. And so for that I seek forgiveness for shortening that message. But I hope that you will find some time to seek that out on your own. And as I conclude, I wanted to share with you just a little bit about media justice in the context of community media. This is a documentary. How many of you have seen this documentary? Only a small number of hands. By George Stoney, directed by Betty Pielstein and I forgot one other person who will come up at some point. But this is my experience, it's my story. Because I was there in 1969, excuse me, 1970. When I first met George and it was the first time I had a video camera put into my hands. This was an extension of the challenge for change. Which George had used so effectively to address the issues of social justice. And included in that was the opportunity to experience it firsthand when a neighboring community of mine, Belport, New York, was thrust into conflict. It was defined as racial contact, conflict. And the students, you might refer to as white and black, I refer to as a European ancestry and of African ancestry, couldn't understand one another, couldn't dialogue and close the school down. Along with their protest against the administration and what they were doing. George, in his skilled way, used video to create dialogue and a bridge between those groups. He would bring a video camera into the rap sessions and record, and he wouldn't record, he put the camera in the hands of youth. And allowed us to tell that story. And in that process, the groups understood that their issue was not with one another. But actually the system that didn't provide them with adequate jobs, recreation, or opportunities to experience their world in a way that empowered them. And to that end, it created and gave birth to me a clear understanding of why community media and social justice and media justice must continue to intersect. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to today's panel. Thanks very much. Okay, as conference chair, I have to recognize all the people that have helped put this event together. And I was trying to think about who I'd like to recognize, but I realized that I couldn't do everybody. And so I just want to say, I think there was an old Steve Martin joke about it. I'd like to thank each and every one of you. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. So very exciting panel we put together this morning. We're doing, it's called, titled media justice, a reflection on the roots of community media and the waters in which we work. I'm not going to introduce the panelists. I'll lead that up to your moderator. So I'll just introduce representative Taylor Small. You okay? Anyone in the middle? Oh yeah, happy to bring up my panelists. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. How are we today? Great, a live, awakened, enthusiastic. Well, I'm enthusiastic to be moderating our first panel of the day focused on media justice with two powerhouse players, I would say, in the intersections of media injustice. The first I'd like to welcome to the stage is Daryl Lamont Jenkins of Ida Vox. And this is where I have to pull up my notes, everyone. One People's Project. One People's Project. Welcome, Daryl, come on up. I'm glad we have a tech person here who's going to help out with all the mics and such. And then our other panelist today is a local legend, I will say. From the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, we have Reverend Mark Hughes. Let's slip it in my pocket, let's slip it in my pocket. Of course, locally, I've gotten to interact with Reverend Mark Hughes many a times, but had a conversation with Daryl just last week and understanding the legend that he is. And I don't want to minimize the work that these two have done. So I'd love to hear, Daryl, to start with you, give us some background and what you've done in the relation to media justice. Wow, I didn't expect it to be that loud. That threw me off a little bit. I'm very loud and I'm spoken. No, I have, as it was alluded to, I'm the executive director and founder of an anti-fascist organization called One People's Project. We started in 2000. And basically, it furthers my trajectory into journalism that I started maybe 30 years ago, but it was journalism in the form of advocacy in the sense that I basically try to report on, and I and others try to report on the various goings on amongst the right and show the connections that they have to the fringe elements. And one of the more significant things that people might know about my work is that we were the ones that pioneered the practice of doxing. And we never called the doxing, we called the reporting. We never saw it as a weapon. We saw it as just getting information out to people about those that are trying to do us harm. Like I said, we've been around for about 23 years. We started when there was a white supremacist group that was going to march in Morristown, New Jersey. One People's Project is based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and we figured it would be a good idea to make sure that everybody knows who the players are. So we created a website, and they basically lead up to the event, to the march. After the march, we decided, okay, let us keep this going and let people know about other folks that we need to keep watch on. We're kind of like a radical version of the SPLC. I mean, that's the best way to put it. That is the best way to put it, especially when we start doxing folks. Because at the time, there was some anti-bortion activists that were posting information about abortion providers, and the court said that it was well within their rights to do so. So I said, okay, that means it's well within our rights to do so. So let me introduce you to Sean Hannity's address. Nice. Oh. Oh. Oh. And but mostly, we just focused on the neo-Nazis that no one heard of before. And because we thought that they were the ones that were the up-and-coming problem. And we've been pretty successful in keeping them from being too much of one. We got them fired from the jobs, which may include, which rate range from pizza delivery boy to police officer or teacher or politician. We've helped people get out. We helped people get out of the white power scene because they realized that it wasn't worth it as they got older, and it was raising families. There's actually a movie on Amazon Prime right now. Actually, it's on HBO right now. And it's called Skin. It's about one of those individuals that I helped to get out of the white power scene. And Mike Coulter, who played Luke Cage, plays me. But like I said, we pretty much have had a huge following over the past 20-some-out years. There are things that you are involved in now in media or what have you when you're reporting. And you might not have known that we had probably spearheaded most of that, at least in regards to the anti-fascist scene. So for example, when Richard Spencer started coming onto the scene, we had already been after him for about 10 years. So when he came onto the scene, people went to us to find out who he was. But that's just a snippet of what I've been about and who I am, and I'm also from the punk rock scene. So back in the day, in the 90s, I had a public access program called Channel X that hyped up acts that didn't have major record deals and made them famous or tried to. So we can get into that later. I hope we get into that later. We must. Thank you so much. Thank you. How I turned to you. Tell us a little bit about your background in media justice. First, let me just get settled in to sit next to this rock star up here. I was, we were on a call, I think it was last week. And I was just listening to just half of that. And I was just like, dude, tell me more. There's just a lot of stuff that I'm learning. So I'm just so honored to be sitting here next to you, Daryl. Thank you. I was looking forward to meeting you. Hopefully we can get a chance to chat offline. I am Reverend Mark Hughes. I'm the executive director for my racial justice alliance. I hail from Iowa. Hoo, hoo, go Iowa. And I've been here about 15 years. About almost 15 years. I give myself a little extra credit. It'll be 15 years on March the 9th, but I'm really not keeping track too much. And I love it here. I met my wife here and we've been married here for about three years. I'm a retired army officer. I've been in 16 other states, three other countries, recovering a cybersecurity analyst, recovering a Republican. I've also been ordained for about the last 23 or 24 years in the National Baptist Convention. So in 2014, I happened to take the time to step back from cyber for a while. We started this wildly successful penetration testing cybersecurity company in Berry, Vermont. Go Berry, in the house. I see you. And this is a multimillion dollar company. Grassroots started it in Berry. I was employee number two and we were like rock stars and that got old quick. And I was kind of stepping back because I was just stressed out and I was living in the woods in COVID. Nope, nobody's here. So, turned the radio on and there was Michael Brown. Turned the TV on, Michael Brown's laying in the street for about four hours in Ferguson. And it blew my mind and there was this cognitive dissonance, fear, confusion, just a whole lot of responses to seeing that and I started a C4 called Justice for All. That would lead to the Racial Justice Foundation which is doing business as the Racial Justice Alliance as well as the work out of and that spawned the Richard Kim Center which is a cultural empowerment center in Burlington. And along the ways, in terms of policy, ranging from, initially we were just focused clearly on policing. So we were taking a really close look at, you're gonna hate me for seeing this. Title 20, 2366 and 2358, race data collection and policy and training. So we were looking at that and how do we enforce that and that mushroomed into oversight. We're really pushing to get some oversight on law enforcement and then just the entire criminal justice apparatus that didn't work. They gave us an advisory capacity. That's how it always works. For those of you who are doing policy with the state or any state, it goes from, hey, it should be oversight to, hey, here's advisory too, summer study. So there's policy makers in the room who will probably get a kick out of that. So there's that and then of course the, and they call that the R or DAP, Racial Disparities in the Criminal Juvenile Justice System Advisory Panel, say that twice. The next year we created the Racial Equity Executive Director's Office which turned into the Office of Racial Equity with Susana Davis. Somewhere along the way, maybe it's in 2017, during what was Act 54, the R DAP. We also were able to get the Attorney Generals and the Human Rights Commission's collaboration on what we called a report on racial disparities in all systems of state government. So here in Vermont there is a report authored by the Attorney Generals Office as well as the Human Rights Commission reporting out on racial disparities across all systems of state government and that's a mouthful, those two entities as well as that particular broad spectrum and it's really another way of saying something else. It's another way of saying systemic racism. At the time we didn't really, I didn't really know what that was but we would evolve. So there's a lot of stuff that came out of that. We amended the Constitution with slavery, there's the joint resolution on racism as a public health emergency. There's the, so there's a bunch of stuff, the Health Equity Advisory Commission. So all of that stuff kind of emerged policy work. Then we started in Burlington, we did some policy work here, created the Office of Racial Equity Inclusion and Belonging Office and there's, I don't know if you guys knew it or not but you're sitting in a city right now that has a reparations task force as a result of some of the work that we've done and there's more. So just moving on from policy and not getting entrenched in anything else. Outreach and education we thought was really important because you kinda gotta be able to embrace this thing and so how do we replicate it, how do we train folks up? So there's been a lot of that and we've connected that to policy too. So if there's a policy, say for example, right now there's, we're looking at unequal protection constitutional amendment for reasons we can talk about later. How do you build power around that without folks understanding the issues? So there's that, the outreach and education and then the cultural empowerment piece is obviously, we've spent far too much time with this extractive culture, the erasure, the appropriation of black culture. So how do we find ourselves and lift one another up and celebrate our culture and also understand, teach our people more about our culture and so there's an intersection with the 1619 project and from that we've been doing first African landing day for the last five years which intersects also with the 1619 project and I think the last thing that we did recently was just kind of embraced more on what does community engagement and support look like because if we're really, if it's true and it is that we are experiencing racially disparate and adverse outcomes across all systems of state government, then that means there's a lot of people hurting. So what do we do about it? So a lot of that work, community outreach, bridging with designated agencies, building our own programs which led a lot to media justice which is a project that we have in the Richard Kim Center to begin to teach youth more about media and to use media as an apparatus to do the work of racial justice. So discovered a lot along the way about the concept of justice and also started to see a lot of folks because this whole business about DEI, I'm like, what is DEI? Everybody's talking about it. Turns out it was around all of the time so most of now I've been working very well. So that kind of, now I'm starting to learn that that's just like a really nice political correct way to say justice. And so as we were talking about justice, for example, we have an economic justice policy tailor right now, I think it's like H435 or something like that. Instead of saying we want economic equity, instead of saying we want, we already blew it on the health front, we said health equity, we should have said health justice. So this time what we did is we kind of turned the corner and said, well we're gonna say economic justice and let's just start using that word justice. Let's start even though justice in America for me and people who look like me, we understand it to be a good idea, it's a great project, but it has been aspirational for hundreds of years and we've never achieved it. Otherwise we wouldn't be sitting here. So when we start talking about our vocations and what it is that we're doing in media, I don't think media equity is what we're looking for, it's what we need. What we need is we need media justice and we need to talk about it as a noun, we need to talk about it as a verb and we need to talk about it as an adjective so we can actually get it done. Understanding that we should all be on that trajectory. So I'm glad to be here and it's a journey that's still underway and we're still trying to figure it out. Thank you so much for that Mark. I really wanna dig into that last piece there about what media justice is and how you define media justice. So Daryl, I'd love to start with you. How would you define media justice or how does that show up in your work? Well, we have a second website besides our main one, OnePeople'sProject.com, we have a website that's dedicated to just basically the news stories that we have. It's our news line. And it's called idevox.com. I-D-A-V-O-X.com. It's named after Ida B. Wells. Nice. And the reason why we decided to pay tribute to her is because we just like Ida B. Wells in her day write about stories no one else is writing about. In her case it was the lynchings that were going on in her day. And what was it? I mean her famous quote is the best way to write wrongs is to shine the light of truth upon them. And that's what we're doing. That is what we do. There's a lot of stories that we write that were not being touched until after Trump became president. And they would include especially the neo-Nazis that we had that had been trying to run rush out across the country for over 60 years. And I've had discussions with reporters in the past how the editors were hesitant to talking about this person and that person even though all the facts were straight. And we wanted to keep away from that. We wanted to keep away from the editors that would tell us not to write this story because it's gonna cause some sort of upheaval or what have you. I mean I remember one time there was this character his name was Marcus Epstein, half Korean, half Jewish, all white supremacists. I don't know how that works, but it worked for him. And he was executive director of Pat Buchanan's pack as well as Hamte Kratos' pack at the time. And we was trying to cost him all kinds of grief. He was putting him out there, putting him on blast. And then the New York Times wrote a fluff piece on him and we was like, what the hell are you doing? And so we knew that there was something about him that was off. And we went to CPAC, the conservative political action conference in Washington DC. And for those who don't know what that is, every year, right wingers come from all over the country or in the case of Nigel Farage, England and try to bounce off propaganda ideas or ways to screw with us more. Yeah. That's exactly what they do. CPAC for a good 10, 15 years, for actually a good 20 years has basically been my hunting grounds. I am not kidding. If I'm looking for some right wingers with some rather white supremacists with some influence, I've got to go there. There is video of me arguing with Andrew, no, no, getting in Andrew Breitbart's face about some stuff that he was doing. And this one particular time I was at CPAC, Marcus Epstein started yelling at me about something I knew Jack about, something about how we sent an interracial couple after him for some reason. I don't know. Me and my partner at the time, my partner currently, my sidekick. No, I've been and I say that should kill me. No, no, no, no, we're partners, partners. Laura Senate, she was looking at it and we were going, what the heck is going on here? And this was at a time there was a website called criminalsearchers.com. And basically if you typed in the name, you'll get somebody's rap sheet and it was free. It's not free anymore. We were bored one day and decided to punch in his name. We didn't think we was gonna get a hit. We got hit. And we saw that we got the case number. It was something that happened in Washington, D.C. in the Georgetown area. So we said, okay, let's go look this up. Now at the time, that information was not online. I mean, you got the case number, you knew that he had a criminal record. So he did something. So we decided to go ahead and do the legwork. This is really important for anybody who's a reporter. Don't think that everything you're looking for is going to be online. Sometimes you actually have to go out and get it. Like the olden days. And that's exactly what we did. We asked, we gave him the case number. We went to the D.C. Superior Court, gave him this case number. They came back with a thick file asking us, what did he do? And we opened it up or rather, I was not in Jersey. They went to go get it. Laura and her husband went to go get it. And they called me up and said, and pardon me, because I don't normally use the Lord's name in vain, oh my God. Wait till you read this. And then they told me what happened. Apparently, Epstein who has a drinking problem and a racist problem, people like to put him in situations whenever he gets drunk and act stupid. He saw an interracial couple on the streets of Georgetown. And just flat out attacked them. He just went to, short kid, flat out attacked them and just karate chopped them or whatever. That's what they said. He gets, he tries to run away, gets tackled by an off-duty secret service agent. Nice. And he was about to, and it was a case where he played guilty, I guess, to an, he made an out for plea basically. He doesn't have to worry about being criminally charged. It gets expunged if he doesn't get through any trouble or anything like that. He was trying to get into the Virginia University of Law at the time. Also at the time that we found out, bear in mind that this incident happened in 2007. We found out about it in 2009 during the whole Soda Soda Major confirmation when both Pat Buchanan and Tom Tancreda were going after Soda Major. So we're sitting there looking at it going, okay, he is the executive director of both their PACs, both their organizations. He's trying to get into the University of Virginia School of Law. And we even had, by this time, pictures of him putting on white supremacist events. They knew who he was, but yet this was going through the, he was going through it like there was no problem. So he said, okay, there will be one now. So we wrote the story up. That story went from One People's Project to Indy Media, to a website called Little Green Footballs, to Young Turks, to Rachel Maddow. Rachel. Once it hit Rachel Maddow, he was no longer going to the School of Law and he was basically persona non grata. And all it took was just somebody to just put it out there, to just simply put it out there. And it had to take somebody who really didn't have any, you know, stake in the corporate game, so to speak. It really took what James O'Keeffe called another person that went after because he went to one of Marcus Epstein's events. James O'Keeffe from Project Veritas, he calls himself a citizen journalist. No, he's a propagandist. I'm a citizen journalist. Okay? So we put it out there. And by the way, that was what Andrew Breiber got mad at us because we exposed James O'Keeffe for attending one of his events. One of Marcus Epstein's events. So we put it out there. We caused Marcus Epstein some grief. He eventually did become an attorney. He went to UPenn, but he lays the low now. But it was one of the first things that we did, it was one of the things that we did that basically nobody else was doing. And that's one of the reasons why I say it is important that citizen journalists exist. That is media justice. That is what it is to basically take the bull by the horns and just show everybody what's going on. You can say that there's a few propagandists out there. You can say that it could be considered propaganda, of course, I understand that because we do have a subjective bent. But you can have a subjective bent and not lie. Propaganda lies. We don't have to lie. Just put the story out there and let every, re-report, you decide. That's what it should mean. And no one can decide if you already made the decision for them. So don't skew the story to benefit whatever leanings you have. I mean, we're just simply trying to make a case in long run. And if we do that, and that's one of the reasons why we're considered reputable. It's reason why I eventually ended up on Rachel Maddow. And if I was somebody that was caught up in propaganda, caught up in things that ultimately I could not prove and get myself in trouble for, I wouldn't be here today. I wouldn't be talking to people about what it is we need to do out there. I would just be one of the activist crowd. And that was something that I didn't think would benefit anyone. So if you're looking for justice and you want to use the media to enact that justice, the best way to do it is just to be truthful, be on your game, and you will prosper. Tattooed on me of be truthful, be on your game and you'll prosper. Oh, great, I'm quoted again. Yeah. A tattoo. You were talking about before. You were saying the intentionality with language and how previously we focused on DEI and in particular equity. And you're saying we need to be moving in the direction of justice. So how does that show up in media justice for you? Yeah, I mean, one of the things that's like super important to understand, just to frame the conversation is, look, we're living in America. The land of the free, the home of the brave. We talk a good game about justice in America. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal with liberty and justice for all. Which we're seeing now and even more than ever, like over the last couple of years since COVID and Floyd laid it bare is, is that that's just some BS. We've never really lived up to who we've said we were as a nation and we're still not living up to it. You know, and you see the Black Lives Matter folks marching in there saying no justice, no peace. Well done. I mean, we've never really had justice as a nation. I think I put a stat out yesterday and everybody looked at me like I was crazy. I said that the median wealth of a white family in America is 13 times the median wealth of a black family in America. Just process that for a minute. You can't fix that with five honest lifetimes of work. Period. But here we still look, we're sitting around, we're looking at quantitative data about racially adverse and disparate outcomes out of our housing, education, employment, health services, economic development, transportation, the so-called criminal justice system, insidiously, simultaneously, consistently. But you wanna talk to me about justice? So when I think about, you know, having a conversation about equity or diversity or inclusion, I always wanna just take the conversation to justice because look, in America, there's been one group of people who have been hugely invested and incredibly impactful in advancing, advancing this vision and this hope of justice. And that's black people in America. There's nobody more than black people in America who've been invested in this vision and this hope and this promise of justice than black people in America. And we've shown up every single time, even when white people haven't, especially when you haven't. So when we're talking about media, and we say media justice, the first thing that I would point out is, is that the word justice is just one of those words that you just gotta be careful about just throwing around because we don't live in a just nation today. I mean, even the 14th Amendment is being used to purport so-called reverse discrimination. When it was created to protect black people, oh wait, first to designate them as people, then protect them and now it's being used to deny black people directed specific reparative policies to correct some of the economic disparities that we just talked about. And this is America, welcome to America. So when we talk about media, I think one of the things that's important with media is, is first of all, making sure that there is, this is gonna sound good to a lot of people in the room because it sounds familiar. Access, opportunity with media. When you're talking about systemic racism, you can't talk about it without a political and economic divide along racial lines. That's what systemic racism is. So the question is, where is black ownership in media? Where is black leadership in media? Where are y'all? And what are we doing to enable that? What are we doing to provide that access, that opportunity? Because there are activists who have a cause, they just need a voice. So there's a lot of folks who are out there who know and understand media very well, a lot of white folks with political and economic power, but they're not really looking at this thing from a United States America political economic divide along racial line perspective. Now, I would just conclude the thought process with something I started in yesterday, earlier rather, it seems like yesterday, I accidentally drank a cup of decaffeinated coffee this morning and I am pissed right now. Okay? So bear with me for a minute. So you ever do that? That's ridiculous, man. I was like, what the hell is this? So I drink about half of it, then you saw me get up and I went and I got another one. It's on the table right there. I didn't get to it. I said that media justice must be a verb in a noun. And I think when I think about it as a noun is just as I just described it is, as far as what it is, is there needs to be not an even playing field, but a tilted playing field. There needs to be more opportunity, more access for black and brown folks, especially those of us with an activism message, particularly those messages that pertain to addressing and eradicating systemic racism. Thank you, I'll wait for your applause. And what I'm getting at here is this is really, really important when I'm trying to tell you is because a rising tide does not lift all ships. You cannot be objective in this particular issue. Systemic racism is a thing and from the foundation of this country, a lot of people are scared to talk about the problems of capitalism. Why? Because everybody gonna come at you from all directions as soon as you start talking about it, in the media. Why don't we talk about it? There's a problem with capitalism because this is what it cost. And if you were to call me a socialist, well here I am, baby. There's our problem with capitalism and capitalism does not mean democracy. So this is what it created. So we have to do something active, proactive, intentional to reverse this process. And you don't do that by being objective and you don't do that by being even minded. You don't do that by just looking at this thing and saying, well, if we just do something for everybody, this thing will work itself out. Shut up and sit down. It's not gonna work itself out. So what media justice looks like is intentional, we should be looking for people with this message. We should be stalking people with this message. Saying, where are my activists? Where are my black people? Where are they at? The folks that are out there that are saying, hey, systemic racism is a thing and we need to do something about it. It is a political and economic divide along racial lines. It is our responsibility that they have access, that they have opportunity, they have technology, they have training, they have technical support, they have everything that they need and all the more than anybody else. That's how we fix it. That's what it looks like. Now, that's the what, that's the now. Tradition of my faith says we are to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly in what it is that we're doing in the sight of the Lord. So what does that mean to do justice? Think about that for a minute. I'm a King James Version God. To do justice, that means that that's an action word. So one of the things that we need to be thinking about is how do we, in the course of our daily activities, not just being able to talk about it, but to be able to implement it in our activities on a daily basis, we are working in a media justice manner. Okay, I just crossed over into the adjective. But the point I'm trying to make is that there's gotta be, with an implementation of this, it's not good enough to sit back and define it as much as I appreciate the question. I think it's more important for us to figure out how to do it. What are the things that we need to be doing on a daily basis to incorporate media justice into our vision, into our mission, into our daily operation, into our standards, our values, our principles, everything that we do, we ought to live and breathe it, because if we don't, then the status quo, because the status quo is white and it's a man. Yeah, I know you're mad at me. But that's the status quo, and if that's what we want, then do nothing or else do everything even kill because that's exactly what you'll get, Rob. That's exactly what you're gonna get. You're gonna continue to get the same thing. So these are two great and interesting perspectives. I respect a lot about what Daryl is telling us because I'm seeing it in full force because this brother is like killing it, crushing it out there as a tool. There is, I'm not calling you a tool, okay? But there is an apparatus that's in play out there that's pursuing it, that's pursuing justice. It's something hot, but there's an apparatus out there that's pursuing justice. But this right here, and I told you, I told you on the phone call when we talked to it, and so people are like, oh, I can't believe you said that. Daryl is an anomaly. Everybody got quiet as hell, bro. Please, please, Joe, because it's quiet in there. They're waiting for you to sit, okay, because you don't see this happening. You don't see the reason why he's so special, the reason why it's so incredible, the reason why it's so powerful, the reason why your mind is blown is because you don't see this every day. You very, very seldom see this. And there's been a cataclysmic series of events, talent skills, abilities, opportunities. Doors open the whole nine yards. I don't know what the deal is, but I don't see a Daryl every day. Do you? So we need some more Daryls. No, not really, but you know what I'm saying, bro. No, they can use different names. Yeah, use different names, but all I'm saying is is that this is not necessarily your guard variety organic growth here. This is something very, very, this man right here is very, very special, very, very anomalous, incredibly unique in all that he does, everything he represents. And for that, he should be applauded. Do it right now. There was a, there was what I know, and I don't know you, obviously I don't know you personally, but what I know just based upon the analysis that I've already done on the work that we're doing and the topic, the subject matter that we're talking about, I know that for something like this, even me, you can applaud me too. Applaud me, go ahead. Even me, I'm not your regular guy. I'm not your regular guy. You're not going to meet, you're not going to meet a guy like me every single day. I'm telling you, there are, every now and then, it can happen, but if we want to see it consistent, if we want it to be the norm, then we've got to create it. I don't even know if I answered your question. Of course you didn't mark it. I need some coffee. Can I just wait till I get some coffee? Can I make a point about something though? Absolutely. I mean, in regards to the anomaly thing, and I said the word wrong, I don't know why. It's changing. Tomorrow we're going to see the state GOP and another hotel complaining, no, another Hilton. I don't know the area all that well, I know there's another Hilton. Something in Vermont though. Yeah, yeah. Somewhere in town, they're going to be basically complaining about walkness and pronouns. Reason why is because that straight white Christian male that you mentioned are getting ticked off that the world does not revolve around them anymore. It's changing. And it's changing. I am not going to be in an anomaly too much longer. I'm partly that now. They are scared. They are terrified. That's why they went after occupy. When every, few people realized what occupy was about, but what occupy was about was trying to give power to communities and people outside of the political process, helping folks to realize that there are ways to build and grow and evolve within yourselves, within your communities, and also showing you how to fight for yourselves and your community. And occupy led the Black Lives Matter. Somebody say occupy. Occupy. That's what I'm talking about. 2011? It led the Black Lives Matter. It led to me too. It led to Antifa being prominent. I mean, why do you think Trump became president after Barack Obama? Because it was pissed off. They were pissed off. Pissed off. And we came along. They were to put a pig in there. And spent the past seven years telling them, we're going to give you something to cry about. They're crying about pronouns. You ain't seen nothing yet. Because people are going to grow. People are going to build. They cannot grow and build without information that we in the media provide. That's why they hate the media. Well, Dale, to be clear, though, just for those who think that we're just, that one of the reasons why I'm so excited is because I'm scared or we feel like we're up against the wall, to be very, very clear. Everybody say this. We. We. Will. Will. Win. Win. We. We. Will. Win. Win. We. We. Will. Win. They know we're going to win. You don't cheat somebody if you think you're going to win. I mean, we're going to win. Yes, indeed. Okay, so don't get it twisted, but we got work to do. We don't win doing nothing. Right. We got work to do. We have the capacity. We have the ability. We have the motivation. We have the heart. We're on the right side of history. But we've got, we still got work to do. We will win. And the reason why we're getting, what we're getting from the proverbial right, and don't get mixed up, because it's not just about right and left. It's not just about blue and red. It's not, and what it's about, it's about right and wrong. That's what it's about. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. So, but, you know, on the surface, and for the most part, when you envision this thing, but as the media tells us that, what's coming from the right, what it looks like is that there is an attack underway. Make no mistake about it. These guys are highly, highly prepared for this fight. They've done an incredible amount of homework. They're incredibly, they're well organized. There's a strategy that has been thought out that it is well funded, an incredibly well oiled machine that we're up against. The whole problem is, is that they're doing all of the wrong things for the right reasons, or all of the right things for the wrong reasons, but for whatever they're doing, they're headed towards a collision course. It's just that we gotta understand that there is a system in place that's on their side. That's what we need to be focused on. I could give a damn if you're a racist, right? Don't put your hands on me and give me my stuff. Other than that, I really don't care, but I will come after the system. We have to figure out how do we get smart enough to come at the system that supports. It was King who said, you know, why are you flipping people quarters? You need to dismantle the edifice that produces poverty. So what we collectively need to be doing is building that and dismantling that. So this thing stops producing. We need to cut this thing off at their children. We need to cut this thing off in a way in which it doesn't reproduce. Because what it's been doing is it's just been reproducing, and a lot of it, it's not just because it's such a well-oiled system, it's because nobody's checking it. It's because what we're doing is we're sitting back saying rise in times, lift off ships, everything will be all right. No, you need to, we need to destroy that thing. And how we do it is we have to build our own to Daryl's point. Not just what we're talking about here, but I mean, there is two things that we gotta do. First of all, disrupt the system. Second thing, build our own stuff in our communities. So when we talk about media justice, what it looks like in Vermont, what it looks like in Burlington, what I see is, as I see in the Richard Kim Center, we're building our own stuff. We're building our own stuff. We're bringing our youth in. There's black people that are here. We're not looking for other people to fix problems for us. What you can do, again, it's a political and an economic divide along racial lines. Sure, bring your money down to the Richard Kim Center, write a check or something like that, or provide the resources, bring the technology, give us, provide us access to your facilities and so forth, empower, enable black people to do work for black people, to enable black people to be able to embrace media so they can do justice. That's how we win, that's how we win. So no, I don't think that we're in a situation where we're up against the ropes and we're getting ready to get knocked out. We will win, we will win. As we're talking about action, especially when we're thinking about community media and getting those tools into the hands of the people who need to be telling the stories, I think it was a beautiful opening as we saw the discussions around race and not having someone in the background filming but having the folks who are participating there having those tools and bringing that conversation forward. And so, Darrell, I look to you as well in this and saying, how do we get these tools out there? How do we help our communities in moving this concept of justice forward through the tools of community media? I think, I mean, like I said, I've been involved in community media for 30 years. I was doing public access as of 92 and all of that. So it's there. I think the important thing to do is to just show people that this is available to you. Train people on how to get involved and tell them they can produce their own content. Sometimes you don't really have to, not in this day and age, not in the days of YouTube. But there are some folks who have no idea of how to navigate YouTube. Let's start bringing them in. Let's start saying, hey, we can do this. This is a medium that we can use. And not necessarily YouTube. You can start even your own YouTube type website or just start your own website that where you upload your own content or whatever. I think it's not so much the, I guess, the lack of resources. It's just pretty much the lack of the utilization of it. So once we start presenting people with ideas, or matter of fact, start listening to the community and see who amongst the community has ideas that we need to bring forward. That's right, that's right. Because you have a lot of kids out there, a lot of people out there that are trying to find some sort of opportunity to do with something that they're already doing. They've already laid down the foundations that just need something built on it. So it's just a simple fact of more engagement is gonna be key. More engagement with the community to find out what it is the community wants and what it is we can provide the community. And I think that's gonna be the direction. That piece there of listening. The community already knows what the needs are. They already have those stories. It's about letting them know that those stories need to be told and giving them those tools. But they already know that they need to be told. They just need to know how to tell them. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think it's cool to see what's happening in our community. Because we've got some trusted advisors. We've got folks that just keep showing up. Hey, we should be doing this. Because it's not just about media. What it's about is it's about our wellness. This is really where everything starts is, again, you've got a group of folks who are experiencing the insidious and the consistent racially disparate outcomes of all social determinants of health simultaneously every single day of their lives. So this is about wellness. We can talk about media. This is my fourth conference in probably like the last three weeks. And you just happen to be the media folks. What's up, media folks? But the thing is, is that I'm here to talk about systemic racism and what to do about it. Okay. And it just so happens that media seems to be a very good element of how it is we need to be addressing this work. And whether just access to media, it will give my people off the street. Some of these youth that are out there, I mean, we just had a double homicide last week on the discharge of a youth weapon or weapon that a youth was wielding over in virgins a couple of weeks ago. And the list goes on and on. And there's a murder, like the two or three murders right in my neighborhood here. And I'm not saying that this is it because there was youth being expelled from school. DCF is knocking on kids doors. There are, of course, the outcomes of the Department of Children and Family as far as the rate at which black children are being removed from their homes in termination of parental rights here in the city of Burlington and across the state, disproportionate. It is a mess out there and our people are taking the brunt of it, okay? So this is not just about media. Media is just a tool. It's just something that we're using in order to help us eradicate systemic racism. But when I started to talk to you about community engagement and support, when I started to talk to you about how we get into community and help kids out, this is just, this is yet also another program. Now we're talking about media justice. Next week we'll be talking about farm justice. Yeah, we're doing that too. But this is another way to get youth involved in something else, to get their attention. And maybe it might stick. It might even become a profession or something like that. Or at a minimum, it could contribute to our capacity. Why is there not a racial justice alliance media person standing in the room right now broadcasting on full blast? Because we don't have the capacity. Why is it that you don't see over on X or Twitter or whatever, the artist formerly known as Prince? I don't even know what it is. But why is it that nobody's, that we're not just blowing that thing up with this thing about this conference and all that other? Because we don't have the capacity. And some of us don't have the knowledge. I have a data team that I meet with every Friday morning at 9 a.m. I missed today. I did email them, they're white people. Why are they not black people? It's because we don't have the capacity because the system has created a climate where in which black people are typically not engaged technologically for various reasons, mostly economic. So what I'm getting at here is this is much more. This is much more than we're talking about. We're talking about wellness. We're talking about our youth. We're talking about our culture. So where all of that stuff converges is incredibly important. It's very, very important. What does it look like? As far as what's going on at the Richard Kims Center, what it looks like is there are vendors here, there are integration folks that are here. Now you know about the Richard Kims Center. We can raise some money together. Let's get that done. Let's get the technology in place. There are people that are here in the room who know exactly what it is that we're doing. There are folks in the room who know our whole history who've been walking step by step. We've got the CCTV folks are over here. The folks at Media Factory. What are y'all gonna do? How are you guys gonna come in and support us to be able to make sure that we have all of the technology, all of the support, all of the capacity, maybe come and send some of your folks down to where we are and mirror us and walk through with us. Have somebody tell us around. Maybe some of you vendors, perhaps you might need a tax write-off. Maybe you should bring some of your equipment down there and drop it off and say, hey guys, we're all in. We support you, we understand. You see, it's easy to talk about all of this stuff. But when it comes to making an investment, like the Kerner Report said in 1968, it's not a black problem, it's a white problem. You don't have black problems, you have white problems. Because the white people are the ones with all of the political and economic power. So let's not sit up here and pretend like black people and brown people need Rob to be doing something different. The reason why they don't have the information is because you're not making it accessible. The reason why they don't know is because you're not making it your intention to ensure that they know. If you're talking about accessibility, baseline accessibility, and if you're talking about how to announce your programs and services, shut up Siri, Siri always talking to me. Then what that means is instead of trying to figure out how to inform people what you're doing, why don't you figure out how to inform black people in what you're doing? Because if you figure out how, if you just say, no, forget about everybody else, and sometimes this is how I organize my events, is just like tonight we have game night at the Richard Kemp Center. I'm just telling all the black people, not because I don't want white people there, but because they're the hardest ones to get to. And if I just tell all y'all, that's all I'll see. And it won't be no black people there. We are trying to target black people intentionally. I'm not gonna apologize to you. Why don't you do that? And what you do and how you reach out to us is to say, you know, how do we get to black people? How do we get to black people? Figure that out. Even if you gotta come to me first and say, you know what, how do we get the black people? Let's figure out together how we get the black people. Because I think that right there, that will help us crack the code on some of this. We need to raise up some black technologists. We need to raise up some, I just got the two minute warning. We need to raise up some black technologists. We need to raise up some programming surrounding black youth. And we're gonna do that. We're gonna continue to do that. We're looking forward. We're looking to partner with anybody who's gonna help us do that. And I don't even care if you guys are in state. If you're, even if you're out of state, come and see me after this. Let's talk about how we move forward. Do your part. It's a white problem. A beautiful and powerful call to action to end on. And I hope amongst all of the conversations that you have today and at your tables, that you're asking yourselves exactly that question, what more can we do? How are we reaching out to the communities to make sure that they know exactly what access is available to them? Mark, Daryl, I am so grateful to have this conversation with you today and wish I could have all day discussing exactly this and more. But once again, please, for Daryl and Mark. Such a pleasure to meet you.