 My name is Mark Schmidt. I'm the director of the political reform program here at New America. And we started this program eight years ago now to look for new ways to think about the connection between people and government in the United States, not only through the electoral process, legislative process, but really where government meets the ground in people's lives. And my colleague, Holly Russon-Gillman, has been leading a lot of this work. And we've found just a tremendous number of really fascinating examples of how people and government are operating in less adversarial ways to solve problems locally, or at the state level, or beyond, in a more collaborative way that's sometimes called co-governance. I think we struggle with the right language here. From the perspective of Washington, I'm sitting a couple blocks from the White House. And one of the things we're, I think, really realizing is the enormous amount of possibility for government to really engage with improving people's lives, coming out of the several pieces of legislation that passed in 2022, which will be unpacked over the next several years. And I think it's a real chain. There's a book I've been reading by the historian Gary Gersel called The End of the Neoliberal Order. It really is a change from the Reagan era kind of approach to government that we've all grown up with, which is to say, we're going to be asking a lot of government in the future. And we're going to be asking in ways that will require people to be engaged deeply. And to do that well, we should be understanding and drawing on some of the different models of how this can be done successfully so that we can, so that communities can learn from one another, states can learn from one another, federal agencies can learn from what's happening on the ground. So this event today is kind of an attempt to pull together some of those threads. We've been publishing some case studies of. And some of the people you'll hear from today have been the subjects of those cases, the participants in and subjects of those case studies. But there's a little more to it than that. But we're also really trying to show the variety of approaches here. So what we're going to do is, first, one of the most interesting approaches to public engagement that's been done a fair amount internationally, but not very much in the US, is the citizen's assembly, a kind of randomly or carefully selected group of citizens working on public problems in their communities. The first real citizen assembly in the US was done recently in Petaluma, California. And the city manager of Petaluma, Peggy Flynn, will be in conversation with Holly about that project. And unfortunately, she can't participate live, so we're doing that. That will be a video at the beginning of the conversation. And then we'll open it up to our panel with Deborah Scott, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Georgia, stand up. And I think we all know there's just a huge amount of civic activism in Georgia that we can learn from. Richard Young, who's the Executive Director of Civic Lex in Lexington, Kentucky. And Dr. Sara Said, who's the Chair and Executive Director of the Civic Engagement Commission in New York City, which has been doing a lot of this work for a long time. And my colleague, Dr. Holly Russon Gilman, who's a senior fellow in our program, who has been working with all these folks and really leading our effort to understand co-governance. So I think it's going to be a super exciting event. We'll have time for both back and forth among the panelists and questions at the end. But for now, let me just turn it over to the recorded discussion with Peggy Flynn from Petaluma, California, and all. We are so honored today to have Peggy Flynn at the city manager of Petaluma, California here. We are so eager to hear about the transformative work you've been leading on the ground to engage residents in decision-making and to hear a little bit about the Citizen Assembly model. We're so honored to have you. Thank you so much for joining us today, Peggy. Oh, Holly, I'm so thrilled and honored to be here and to be able to talk with you today about this exciting new paradigm shift. So let's jump right in. Tell us everything. It seems like forever ago, but it's still creating a buzz in our community. So over a year ago, our city and our community was faced with a decision on a 55-acre parcel in the center of our city that has been used for a five-day fair, but has been leased to the fairgrounds, which is also what's called the Fourth District Agricultural Association, which is a state-appointed body. And so they've been leasing the property for a dollar here for 50 years, for the last 50 years, and to not only hold the five-day fair, but utilizing the property for a variety of commercial purposes throughout the year to fund their operations and save money. And so the lease is coming up. And actually, it comes up at the end of this year, so December 31st, 2023. And the community has never really been a part of not only determining what occurs there, but just in conversations about visioning for the property. So when I first took this job in 2019, the big challenge was that this topic has always been, the conversations have always been in closed session with our council, with the fair board. And so what happens in a vacuum of transparency is misinformation, urban legends and myths, and then creating a lot of not only distrust between the two negotiating parties, but also among our community. And what more important thing to do than open that conversation to the community who owns the property. So the universe conspired for Petaluma, as it always does. And I have a background in communications. And I knew the traditional ways of doing a very robust engagement process. You do your charrettes, and you do your surveys, and you go out to the farmers markets, and you go to the people, and you get that feedback. And then you bring it together, and you amalgamate it somehow, and present it to the council. And with a decision like that, it's a typical World War III at the council, because you've got your pros for whatever you're recommending. And you've got the folks that are the detractors. And I kind of played it out in my head. Didn't matter what the topic was. And so I attended a conference and heard just the most melodious pitch regarding a new process, or at least what I thought was a new process, didn't realize it was around for centuries, and heard from Healthy Democracy about the lottery selected panel. And kind of not only a paradigm shift, but how to make governance more accountable and transparent and independent from outside political interference. And it was so exciting to me. I think I rushed the table that Lynn was sitting at, and said, we've got to work together. And I remember him saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, just sign up for newsletters or something. And I said, no, no, no, we really need to talk, because I feel like this is exactly what we need for this important community conversation. That's amazing. That's so inspiring to all of us. I mean, we have a million questions. I think I'd love to just get your thoughts about how you were able to get that buy-in to do the process and how you all, I know, you sort of over-sampled for some traditionally underserved communities would love to think about how you were able to think about equity and inclusion in this process. And really, as others are thinking about what are the lessons in learnings, it would be great to just get your two cents of other localities, because, Peggy, you're so inspirational. I think this is going to catch on everywhere around the country with your good words. Well, like I said, I felt like I stumbled upon it, but it was definitely one of those things where you say, how do we get to those voices that we never hear from in our community? And we always talk about our Latinx outreach, the work that Petaluma is doing with our unsheltered community. So when we met with Healthy Democracy, really just trying to understand, well, how does it work? And how do we remove ourselves, because it was really important that this was not a staff-driven process. Not only did we have to rethink about what our interaction was going to be at the panel, but it was an agreement that, yes, you would be information providers, but staff would really remove themselves from the process, which I think is hard for public sector employees who are so used to serving and being hands-on and helping mold the work that gets done and assist. Not influence, but really assist. And that was a huge paradigm shift for staff, but we were so committed because it just took, I think it was our first meeting with Lynn and Alex from Healthy Democracy that I just, I was whatever they were, whatever they were going to come up with, whatever we were going to come up with as a team, I wanted it to be the most robust effort because of the decision that was hanging in the balance and the impact it was going to have on the community. So we did, we oversampled. We actually used our K-12 demographics and then we oversampled for those to ensure a diverse panel because we are a primarily Caucasian, affluent, older community. And so how do we get youth voices? How do we get, actually, we reached out to all of our nonprofit partners so we could give our golden tickets to our unsheltered community? Because these are people that live in our community. So we were just really committed to getting that cross-section of Petaluma that we just have never heard from and create that more equitable approach to decision-making. And through the process, I mean, maybe you can just briefly walk us through sort of, I know, through healthy democracy, you were able to offer stipends for people to participate. That's also challenging when you're reaching out to sort of, as you mentioned, unhoused or non-citizens. I'd be curious about that. And just sort of what was most surprising to you or sort of unexpected about this process and any sort of obstacles you felt that you navigated and that others can really just learn from? Well, Holly, I should know my community by now because they're a very engaged community, very highly engaged community. However, I thought when we sent out the letters that kind of sent out over 10,000 letters. Wow. And to do the survey, and I thought, boy, are we probably not going to get a very high response rate because it's a letter from government. We're here to help kind of thing. And we did get a fabulous response. And people were so honored because they probably most of them have heard about the fairgrounds, but they felt so far removed from it that they didn't even think that was a possibility. So to be invited to participate on a decision-making process or to be able to dig deep and get reimbursed, get paid for your time and have child care and elder care and the technology because we were also dealing with the pandemic at the time. So I just didn't think we would get a high rate of response. And we did. So not only was I super thankful and grateful, but again, our community stepped up and said, yes, we're going to give that leap of faith. And on the flip side, my counsel, this is totally brand new. They kind of scratched their heads and said, well, how does this work? People elect me to be their voice. And I said, well, that doesn't change. That's the beauty of this model. It's just adding a really robust and effective tool to our engagement toolbox. That's amazing. And you were really intentional and thoughtful sort of explaining this to residents because part of it is with a new process like this to really build in those hooks and levers for co-governance. It's sort of showcasing here's how it's going to work. Here's where your input will be used. Here's how it will end. And the result would love to hear a little bit more just about it's a new process. You had to walk in your external stakeholders, your internal stakeholders. And it's a learning journey when you try a pilot like this. And I think this is really one of the largest examples of a citizens assembly that's ever happened in the country. So it's really a huge learning opportunity for a lot of us thinking about this work. Well, funny you should say that because I had no idea that we at the time that we were the largest effort in the US, I didn't even cross my mind at the time. And nor as intentional as we were about putting this together, we were learning as we were going because I also believe healthy democracy, this was the largest effort they had put together. And so our program was like, when we brought it to council for approval, it was like a 50-page document. Oh, wow. Incredibly detailed, right? Like incredibly detailed down to, you know, the rates and where the money was gonna go. I mean, it was so transparent and amazing. But we all were learning because, you know, we'd all try to wrap our brains around, well, so you seat the panel and then you have this curating group, this what we called Informational Advisory Committee that was made up of stakeholders that would help curate the information as, and of course the panel could ask for anything, but, you know, you had historic preservationists, you had housing advocates and you had our nonprofit sector and you had our agricultural sector, you have our 4-H and FFA leaders and it was pretty phenomenal on all the touches. And then of course you have a lot of doubt, like because of the misinformation that had already been out there, oh, what is the city doing? Oh, it sounds like, so it was kind of hard to even get through to the community about what we're doing because we weren't sure what it was gonna look like. We knew what our intention was, but it was really hard to visualize until it actually happened and when it was happening, it was a magical, wow, impactful unfolding of how government should work. Like without sounding cheesy, it was amazing. It was just really amazing and inspirational, yeah. Any clothing thoughts as sort of we're thinking about some of these models and the opportunities and challenges in the space? If any of my government peeps are out there listening to this, and I mean this for electeds who do such a hard job to staff, don't be afraid to try this, to have informed participation and not even were we trying to seek consensus because that wasn't the goal, but to have people of very different ideologies, especially in this time in our country, to have them work together and build community among a group of very disparate and different people and watching them work together and come up with final product and present it to council was, it's transformative. You've got to try it. And even if you do it on what you may consider a very routine conversation for your community, you give it a try because I guarantee you that your community will be better for it. Wow, well, we are so much better for having heard from you, Peggy. So extremely grateful for your inspiration, your leadership, your thoughtfulness and just your willingness to share this really important story. So we're so grateful to you for taking the time and thank you very much. Holly, thank you. Thanks to Elizabeth, thanks to New America for the work that you are continuing to do and for lifting up the work that we're doing on a local level, really grateful for you. Thank you so much, Peggy. Wonderful, well, thank you all. The future is here. We are watching pre-recorded award videos. We are gonna have an amazing lunch conversation with three tremendous leaders who are just advancing incredible co-governance work in their own communities. I'm gonna turn it over to each of them to give brief introductions, sort of outlining ways they're engaging residents in sort of some of this really critical democracy work. And then we're gonna have a discussion. We're tracking your questions in our documents. So please continue to filter them in. And I just wanna give a quick round of thank yous. Events like this take so much work. I wanna thank you to the panelists for taking time out of their busy days to join us. I wanna thank Mark for his introductions, team at Political Reform, Elizabeth, Marisa, Grace, Dossica, I wanna thank New America Events, tremendous work, Angela O'Reilly, Jason, amongst others. And some of our partners, Lindsay at the Forge, Sasha at What Works Plus. This is a team effort and we are so honored to be a part of it. So without further ado, I'm gonna turn the floor over to Ms. Deborah Scott to give us some opening remarks. Thank you so much. Hi, well, good afternoon. That was a riveting conversation. So thank you for having me. So I'm Deborah Scott. I'm the CEO of Georgia Stand Up and we're a think and act tank for working communities and we're a part of the Power Switch Action family. We've been around for about 18 years, but really if I look at our work, it all starts with people and understanding that how do you move policy? It's really you're moving people and you're moving organizations because the people want something, right? And so part of our job at Georgia Stand Up is to organize, strategize and mobilize folks. One of the things that I learned over the years having worked for city government and other forms of government is there's a disconnect often between government and the community. And so part of our goal is to kind of leverage the playing field on behalf of the community. So oftentimes you'll get from city government or other governments to say, oh, well, it was on the website. All they needed to do was go there, right? And so for some communities that is problematic. If they're just not scrolling and looking at websites, they may not know that that's there. So part of what we do, part of our approach is to take that information and translate it to community. Example of what that looks like, Georgia passed and of course we're in Georgia where all wonderful things happen but bad stuff happens too. But so you may hear about some of our voter suppression issues here. So one of the things that they said is that people had to have IDs, voter IDs, when they go vote, if they don't have a driver's license. But they didn't tell them how to get them, right? And they didn't tell them which agencies give you the voter IDs, where you go. So what we did is had our organizers actually call each county to find out where the free voter IDs were. And then we published an orange book which is akin to the green book where they can see where you can go get your ID. That's one example. But another example that we use when we're working with government is looking at where development is going and how we can translate that for communities so that they know the impact that is going to happen on their block or to their homes or to the economy. So whether it's, we drive by these signs all the time and wonder, well, what are they building over there? We try to teach communities that those decisions are made often three to five years in advance. And so there's a public record of what's going to happen on that corner and you have to get involved very, very early in the process to make it a better project. So part of what we do is to try to explain that to people and get them engaged so that they understand that it's not enough when the development starts. You have to engage very early on. You have to pay attention, but then you have to ask the question, how does this impact my community? Part of the theory that we have is if you build trust with the community that you kind of mitigate some of the negative that happens on the backside. So having an organization like Georgia Standup that's a trusted organization, we've been around for 18 years, they know us, they, you know, people engage with us on a different level. We're starting to see more government coming to us and saying, can we have our venture location? Can you help us with canvassing? We have a 10,000 square foot office and recently we have the White House here. We had Mitch Landrieu announcing, I think it was the Affordable Connectivity Act and they wanted to do it at a place that was community based so that people will realize that getting wifi is possible and getting a discount for your wifi is possible. Part of the role of nonprofits as I see it is not only to translate for the government, if you will, but also to empower the community. So we always look at it as, you know, how does this play in terms of equity? What about the power dynamic of the community? How do we make sure that they lead this project feeling better about it than they did before? So some of it is the understanding the language, the lingo that, you know, government officials may take it for granted and may not understand. Sometimes it's really working with government to say, you know, you can't have the meeting at six o'clock and not provide food. It's dinnertime, right? And so if you don't provide food, then you're actually creating a dynamic that is unnecessary for the community. So have food there, have a childcare facility or room so that they can watch TV, play games or whatever. If you really want people there, you're gonna make it accommodated for them. So we try to help them kind of look at other ways in which you can really get engagement. It's not enough just to send an email out. In closing, one of the things I just really want to support is a real collaboration with the community and utilizing organizations that are trusted on the ground to be that bridge. You know, there is naturally, and we're in the South, so there's definitely a distrust for government here. So, but you need to have an ally both on the side of the community and on the side of government so that we can see that there's a bridge from the other side because what we have to train our people to understand is those elected officials actually work for you, but you can get them to work better for you if you're more informed as a citizen. And with that, I'll close. That's amazing, Deborah. We're so honored to have you. I mean, the work that Standup is doing in Georgia has just been such an important paradigm. I'm gonna turn it over to Mr. Richard Young right now. I mean, I think one of these themes of connecting information to action is one of the things that really energizes me, and I 100% agree with you, right? Building, sometimes I call it hooks and levers between community members and decision-makers, and that's why today's event is so powerful. We just heard from Peggy Flynn, the city manager. We're gonna hear from Dr. Sarasait from the New York City Engagement Commission and really get in dialogue. How do we do this inside-outside strategy? How do we do it in a way that actually builds power? And how do we think about building that long-term civic infrastructure? So over to you, Dr. Young. Mr. Young. Well, well, either way, you're welcome to call me Dr. P1, although I don't deserve it. Thank you so much. Yeah, so I am the executive director of an organization here in Lexington, Kentucky called Civic Lex. If you don't know where Lexington is or what it is, we're a fairly mid-sized city, about 330,000 people in the middle of central Kentucky, about an hour and a half south of Ohio and about an hour and a half west of Appalachia. Civic Lex is a sort of unique organization. We're about six years old, and we focus on sort of bridging the relationship between the public and local government. We do sort of two types of work. One side of that is what we talk about is civic education. So we help folks understand what's going on on a daily basis in our local government. Some ways that looks a lot like, looks like a local news organization, right? So we have staff that are in every single city meeting, providing reporting that comes out from those meetings. We have a newsletter and a website that talk about meetings coming up in a week and talk about what happened the week before. It covers the sort of big issues that are happening in our city. We also convene a lot of workshops and events that bring together residents to understand these issues in person, right? These are really the issues that local government are dealing with, whether it be housing or transportation or economic development or any of these really, really complex issues often require like in-person conversations to really process them. And so we hold between 50 and 70 events and workshops throughout the year that bring together residents to understand these things in person. We also have a K-12 program that started just a few months ago that's working to bring sort of local government into high school civics curriculum so we can really help young folks understand how to get involved and engage with local government. But the other side of our work that I think is really pertinent for this conversation is what we talk about is sort of civic transformation projects. And these are projects that we work with government on to sort of open up the processes for public engagement to be much more broad and much more inclusive. So these tend to be sort of one-off things focusing on specific topics. So right now we're working with our urban county council to overhaul the public input process of legislative items which could mean shifting around meeting time so that people can attend, could mean providing ways for people to comment on items remotely or comment on items online. And it also involves a lot of education. But across all of these programs, right? So we have these civic transformation projects, we have civic education programs. Across all of them, the thing that we understand is that especially in a community our size, 330,000 people, the thing that really causes change in local government, the things that really causes things to happen are social relationships, right? It is who you know in local government that enables your ability to get something done. And so across all of our work, what we're really interested in doing is broadening who has those relationships. And so you see it in small ways across our programs. So in our civic education programs, we'll hold a workshop on the city budget. We do about five to 10 of those a year. And in those meetings, we'll bring residents together, help them understand the process, how they can, where money goes, where money comes from, how they can get involved in the sort of decision-making process. But we'll also bring in people from the city's division of revenue. We'll bring in people from the finance department. We'll bring in people from council that are on the budget links and budget committees that make these decisions. And not in a role that is sort of explanatory, right? Not in this role that really centralizes their power. We actually wanna really decentralize their power, right? We wanna make it so that when they're coming, they're not coming to speak with authority, they're coming to learn from the community about the community's priorities and how the process could better engage them. And then on the sort of civic transformation projects, all of those things are sort of being done in collaboration with residents and government officials. And I think a really great example of that process is a project that we ran back in April. So in Lexington, the biggest thing that our city sort of struggles with is urban and rural growth, this sort of tension between how our city grows. It's really important in central Kentucky. We have Lexington is a merged city county government. And in our county, 30% of the land mass is used for the city, 70% is rural. And that is because the rural land is occupied by a lot of very expensive horse farms as well as sort of food producing farms. And it's sort of the cultural identity of our place. And so what happens to that is really important to us. And every five years we create a plan that sort of manages how our city grows and expands into that rural land. And so we approached our city's division of planning to sort of examine what would it look like? What would it look like to really deeply engage residents in the process of our comprehensive plan? And so we organized a process that over one week in April, anyone anywhere in our city could host a conversation about the future growth of our city. We hosted 509 conversations in one week across our city about this. And all of that data ended up amounting about 15,000 public comments about how our city should grow in terms of neighborhoods, transportation, economic development, environment. And that was used as the official process for providing public input into this comprehensive plan. And what has resulted is a comprehensive plan that actually was just released. The goals and objectives were just adopted by our planning commission. They're going to council now that has so many more community priorities in it. For the first time, we're talking about racial equity inside land use planning, right? We're talking about combating the impacts of redlining. We're talking about how we can make sure that when development comes to a neighborhood, it doesn't cause harm on the folks that are there. We're talking about in the environment, we're talking about climate change for the first time in our city's comprehensive plan. And given that it controls how we use our land and what we do to make our land more sustainable, it's pretty wild that this is the first time we're talking about climate change. And so all of that really reflects the priorities that were brought forth by residents. And I think the thing that's really exciting is we're now seeing our city's decision of planning adopting these practices into their everyday work, right? So when they are working on a sort of long-term plan for a highway like sort of the ring road in our city, they're thinking about community first, not thinking about community as a way to sort of agree or disagree with the things that they're proposing, right? They wanna lead with that community vision. And we think that some of these collaborative projects that we're running with government is sort of one of the things that's really changing how our city functions. And I think the thing that's the most exciting about all of this, just a couple of months ago, our city, Lexington was named as the first our common purpose community of the United States by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. And our city, our council and our mayor's office have committed to expanding access to public meetings, expanding access to public decision-making and investing in civic education so that the next generation and current generations that are still alive know how local government works and know how to participate. And I think that our city taking that formal stance on bringing the public more into how they make decisions is a really clear commitment that not only is this good for governance but it's good for the sort of civic health of our community and something the city wants to get behind. So yeah, that's what we're up to here in Lexington. That's fantastic, Richard. Well, this is very exciting. I have a lot of questions and so many interesting themes that you and Deborah have emerged. I'm gonna turn it over to you, Dr. Sarah Syed live from New York city government. Thank you so much, Holly. Thank you for inviting me. It's really an honor to be in this conversation and it's such a critical conversation, I think, to keep having moments like this where we're continuing to exchange with one another and learning from good things that are happening all around the country. So just to introduce myself briefly, my name is Dr. Sarah Syed and I'm the chair and executive director of the Civic Engagement Commission in New York City. And for those who don't know, this is an agency that is relatively new in government in New York, is formed in 2018. And through a ballot measure to prove and it was part of a larger charter revision process. And the commission's mission as given in the charter is that it is to promote civic engagement, enhance civic trust and strengthen democracy in New York City. And we are working on a variety of programs to increase civic participation. And today I'm gonna be focusing largely on citywide participatory budgeting, which again, most people are probably familiar with this but participatory budgeting is a process that is open to everyone regardless of their citizenship status. And PB for short is definitely not new to New York City. City Council has been doing this for over a decade. However, it was not in every council district. And what's new about the commission's work is that the charter revision asked specifically to institute a citywide process that is open to all New Yorkers. And in a city of 8.8 million people to run a process like this is a remarkable opportunity and a challenge. It's a very large city. So it'll be really wonderful to see how we build this. And we are very, very much in the infancy stage as far as citywide PB goes because this was the first year that we received an allocation to run a process of $5 million. So what we have done to date is we held idea generation sessions that involve 12,000 New Yorkers across the five boroughs coming to two-hour meetings in their communities or at the borough level. And they generated over 4,000 ideas to address their neighborhood's most pressing needs. And a lot of these participants live in neighborhoods that were hardest hit by COVID-19. And we worked with over 80 partner organizations of different sizes all across the city. Some of these organizations had never worked with the city before and never held a government contract before. And we took these ideas that were generated, the 4,000 plus ideas. And then we put these into a borough assembly process for further discussion. The idea generation sessions and the ideas essentially set the agenda for the borough assembly committees. And these ideas were passed through the backs that could more deeply get into what the ideas were, what the issues were, and how they wanted to sort of like filter and sift through these ideas and generate a ballot that was essentially the task of the borough assembly committees. What I wanted to say about this and we can talk more and I think we're gonna be saying a little bit more about best practices later. But what I wanted to share is just that, this work is deeply personal for me because I come from an immigrant family. And when obviously when we first came to America we did not have a right to vote, right? And I grew up and still live in one of the poorest congressional districts in America, Congressional District 15. And that is also home to the Cross Bronx Expressway. And some of you may have heard about this Expressway highway that was really built by dividing neighborhoods in the Bronx. And I think typifies environmental racism, noise and air pollution. And like thousands of others who live in this area my brother was directly impacted by poor air quality and struggled with asthma from a young age. So having grown up in this area I still live in this area where I see the daily, the impact of systemic inequity and racism. I'm really driven to arm people with the knowledge, skills and opportunities to participate, have agency and impact the conditions of their own lives on a daily basis. And through participatory budgeting the commission has come across many people just like me and my family eager to get involved and contribute to changing the quality of their life. And I want to share a story of one of those people Nilka Martel, who is an environmental justice activist who was randomly selected to serve on our PB Borough Advisory Committee. And we were just talking about citizen assemblies the Borough Advisory Committee is an application of the citizen assembly model. We had attended a citizen assembly workshop last summer had actually read about Petaluma as an example of a place that was implementing this. And we thought about how to apply this approach in our own work, right? And we were about to roll out Citywide PB. So the application that we thought of was to randomly select people who would be serving on the smaller Borough Advisory Committees. We asked people to apply to serve on the Borough Advisory Committee. So we got us, you know, a bunch of applications and we had asked people to check off like different demographic characteristics. And we took this list of applicants to a sortition who based on demographic makeup randomly selected a diverse representative group of 20 people per Borough to come together to deliberate and make decisions on the ideas that were generated from the idea generation sessions. And Nilka is the founder and director of Loving the Bronx which is part of an organizing effort that pushed to get and this was public, you know, recently in the news pushed to get $2 million in federal funding to conduct a feasibility plan to cover portions of the Cross Bronx Expressway with green space and reconnect neighborhoods. And someone like her, you know, is very, very civically engaged, right? So you would expect, you know, what would this experience of serving on the back be like for them, the Borough Advisory Committee? And we asked what she valued about this experience and I wanted to share a quote. She said, really listening attentively to someone else's struggle, to someone else's challenges, to how these issues impact everyone's, you know, their daily life was really transformative for me. The other people that I was working with on my committee, they were so different from each other. We lived in different sections of the Bronx, different wheelhouse, different skill sets, but this process really showed me that regardless of how many differences we have, we have a lot of things in common. And what she's referring to here I think is the sense of connection and common ground that she felt from getting into a deliberative space with others who are different. And we heard this kind of feedback from, you know, other people in these Borough Assembly committees, people who are very, you know, sometimes focused on their own issues and therefore very kind of siloed in their work, who through listening to each other really came to appreciate, you know, one another's struggles and work. And this is the kind of democratic process, you know, that I think people coming together discussing neighborhood needs, deliberating over solutions to problems that they've identified, right? And work together to advocate and advance solutions with government is the kind of direct democracy that we really need to promote at a time when civic trust is weakening. And this kind of extends out from the representative politics from election day, election cycle focus that has been really how we've been thinking about what is civic engagement. It's been very centered on voting. And we're moving into a space where we're thinking about daily civic power and democratic cohesion where communities learn with and from one another to make collective decisions about the future of, you know, our city of our country. And I want to just underscore here, voting is critically important. We were just this week in public schools supporting the celebration of civics week and actively involved in student voter registration. And at the same time, we need to widen the net of participation beyond elections to people who, you know, we were in these classrooms and there were students who couldn't register to vote, right? And there are all kinds of ways that we want to make sure that people are engaged and that we're honoring that engagement and continuing to build it. And that's, you know, that's the work of the commission. And I'm looking forward to talking more about how we've been doing this work. Thank you. This is fantastic. I mean, such inspiring panelists and I'm seeing really thoughtful questions coming into the Q&A, so please continue. I'm going to ask some of my own and then go right to the question. I mean, one of the threads that's really interesting to me is sort of this idea of that leadership development, bringing people into the process, including traditionally underserved communities would love to sort of double click on that. Deborah may be hearing a little bit more about the policy leadership institute that you all run. Richard, some of the work you've all been doing on civic education, including the artists and residents program. And Sarah, just hearing also how you're building that youth pipeline. I know you guys leverage the Seedham platform around a youth-driven PV. We'd love to just think about how we're really building this pipeline for the future. Yeah, well, I'm so excited because I'm taking notes from Richard and Dr. Sarah because we're trying to do a lot of things here in Georgia. But one of the things that we do is our policy leadership class, civic engagement. We take community leaders that are already active at some level. They show up at a city council meeting and they may be there talking about the pot hole that's in their neighborhood or the streetlight that's out. But what we see is the potential in them to be a more robust leader if they knew a little bit more information, if they were connected to an organization, if they really kind of learned how the seed of power works and government works, that we could really develop leaders from these groups of activists. So we started this in 2005 and we've trained over 400 leaders so far. We take them for about six weeks. We put them in a leadership class at the cohort when we have labor folks in the room and community folks and educators and students. And what we try to do is to get them on the same playing field, the level playing field, understanding race, class and power and how government works and where the seed of power is. They usually have a project that they have to do and it's usually related to something that is brewing in the neighborhoods or something that they bring to us to say that they want to engage in. So one, it forces people that wouldn't normally work together to start seeing each other as allies even though they may come from a different walk of life. But then it also teaches them other skills on how to find out information about what's going on in their neighborhoods and what's going on in their communities. But then we learn about things like race, class and politics and how the city was really designed and just like we talked about the redlining and talking about how these highways have divided neighborhoods, all of that has happened here and we're able to take real life policy decisions that have been made, that have hurt communities and kind of break it down and say, well, what would have happened if you were in charge? What should have happened? What should government do? How should they listen to you? When should the meetings be? So they begin to unpack and see themselves as a part of the solution as opposed to just complaining about the problem. And so we take those leaders, we educate them and then they get really, really engaged not only in the class but in whatever their community group is but then those are the folks when we put out an action alert and say, we need people to come up to city hall without question, they're there, right? And they're there as an army and they're informed and they're bright and brilliant and they're willing to work with other people. Now go ahead and pass the mic. That's amazing. So you're really building this pipeline and then you're also moving them along and you all are taking all of this information and I love the orange book. I think it's one of the most powerful resources out there and you're actually plugging them into things. I mean, the role that you and Civic Lacs are playing as these trusted intermediaries to kind of bring people to these opportunities I think is really key. Richard, jump in. Yeah. So I mean, it's first off again this is just like such an inspiring group of folks and so wonderful to be talking with you all and learning from you. I also just like the Siferous notes over here. Yeah. So, you know, the thing for Civic Lacs like what we're really trying to do is provide, right? As many sort of different opportunities that scale from like basically just learning a little bit to like being in government, right? If it was anything along that continuum we're trying to give people different stops along the way so that they can sort of move at their own pace. So every Monday we send out this newsletter super easy for people to just like read through see what's happening in local government and be like with, you know every sort of meeting we talk about how you can get involved or engage in that board or commission or council committee. So we provide people like with this little bit of opportunity, right? That just happens every week. Then, you know, we people if they wanna get a little bit more invested can come into one of our workshops or events and meet government officials and learn a little bit more in person about these processes. And then if people wanna get a little more involved we actually have for all of these civic transformation projects we have advisory groups that basically guide that project that's that are generally made up of about 50% residents and 50% government officials. So they can sort of serve with a government official and in helping build this project. And then if they wanna get a little bit more and get right, so we provide all of these of just different scaled opportunities for people to get involved. I think one thing that we've been doing that's really interesting, we sort of just rolled out a new civic transformation project about nine months ago and we're seeing some pretty that came out of the this comprehensive planning process that I mentioned earlier. In one of the biggest things that we heard in this process around the comprehensive plan was that there's significant inequities in how green spaces, public spaces and parks are distributed in neighborhoods across our city. And we knew that that was something that we wanted to tackle sort of afterwards. And by happenstance we were talking with our cities divisions of planning and parks and recreation. And they also had found all of this in their research right about these decisions that were made in the 50s, 60s, 70s that were policy decisions that our council intentionally voted on to really change how parks are funded and how they're placed in neighborhoods. And they were like, this is not a super effective way of doing this. And it's also leading to really inequitable outcomes but we can't really do anything about that. Residents need to advocate for a change to that. And this happens a lot in local government where a lot of the staff have really amazing ideas. I wanna do really wonderful things. And then it hits a ceiling. That's not an, sometimes it's an intentional ceiling. Sometimes it's not an intentional ceiling, right? Where that idea can't really go any further. And so what we found is that there's this really interesting space where we can service this intermediary where we're like, okay, well, y'all might not be able to do that, but we can. And so we designed this program that's called a park equity accelerator where we recruited seven or eight community organizations in. We held sort of listening sessions with them. We built a partnership with a community gardening organization called seedleaf here, and then our cities divisions of planning and parks and recreation. And together, our four organizations can be in these sort of seven to eight community groups. We had listening sessions about their experiences with park inequity and sort of the impact that that's had on their lives. And then we're now moving into this sort of training phase where we're gonna be training these same organizations on the histories of green space policy in Lexington, how these decisions got made, why they were made in this way, and then how to actually moving forward to impact the decisions that are gonna come down the pike, right? And so we're doing a pretty intensive training with these community organizations to really teach them how to get into the nitty gritty of policy making, right? Which is something that's actually available to people in our city, but just a lot of people don't know about it, we're working on it. To try and shift some of these historically awful, right? It's these policies that have had these incredible inequitable outcomes along race and class and economic status. And then moving forward, we're actually sort of, again, with these divisions in our local government, we are able to sort of roll out these projects that are going to essentially allow these community organizations to put some of the ideas that they have about green space access into practice. And all of that wouldn't be something that the city could do on its own, right? And it's also not something really that the community organizations could do on their own. We sort of are able to, through these deep partnerships, build a collaborative process and sort of bridge these two sort of power dynamics, right? Between city government and community organizations and are able to go find the funding that enables us to actually pay these community organizations for their time, right? They're all getting paid through some pretty significant sub-grants to be a part of this process. And so we're investing in community organizations, training them on how to be engaged with this process. But the key thing that's important is that local governments alongside us when we're doing this, right? That they are hearing directly from these organizations about the issues that they're experiencing every day in their neighborhoods. And we think that's going to be pretty key and essential to the success of any shifts that these organizations might want to make in policy down the road. And so that's, I think, sort of a pretty clear example of how we're sitting in this space in between the two. That's really helpful. Sarah, I would love to get some of your thoughts and reactions. There was also a question on how long did it take to convince the city government to institute a federally funded participatory budgeting process from Charlie? So it's another question. I'm going to start turning to more questions from the audience right now. Sure. I guess I was just thinking about how we're trying to think about engagement holistically from different lenses. And I think one of the things that has been named here is systemic, right? Systemic issues and how engagement is thought of from the systemic government side. There's also a cultural lens and a community and individual lens. And on the system side, since I am sitting in government, I think it's very important for us to acknowledge that there are actually factors and processes that have exclusion baked into them. And we want to try to avoid repeating things that have been done that don't work and that have caused harm. And I think the charter revision process has really allowed us to kind of name, explicitly name that there are underrepresented and underserved groups that government hasn't done a good enough job. And I want to, I guess, also highlight to people who are listening that the charter reform process is, I think, an important tool for people to look into in terms of supporting systemic change. There was also a recent ballot measure that passed in York City to create a Racial Justice Commission and to support agencies in creating and tracking their work to address racial inequity. So we're starting from this explicit acknowledgement. I think we, as a government office, are now able to kind of do a different kind of engagement that goes deeper than check the box and performative engagement, which has been what the practice has been for so long. And we are able to think about more transparency, restorative approaches to engagement. And it also kind of says that government can actually reform itself because we're inside government. And this is very different from operating with this belief that if you work with the system that's broken, the system is broken, we can't fix it. Or if you're working with government, you're kind of guilty of being co-opted. So I wanted to name that as a systemic kind of system-based approach. And then also to think about this on a cultural lens, you were talking about young people involving young people. That is also a little bit of a culture shift because a lot of how we think about engagement is centered around voting. Voting happens when you're 18. And it makes civic engagement really an adult activity. And we want to try to shift that into an intergenerational approach and a family activity. Because if you think about engagement, it is something that people learn about at a very young age. Around a dining table really about how you engage, how you stay involved with community. So we want to honor that and strengthen that. So what we're doing in terms of participatory budgeting is extending this ability to participate to anyone who's 11 years and older. We actually went through a charter, a rule change process because the charter said it could be 16, we made it younger. And we are also trying to acknowledge civic engagement on a spectrum. You can enter the door of civic engagement at every age and at an early age. And we're also involving young people in thinking about how we are actually creating public events as an example. And thinking about the communities that was already mentioned, thinking about people and the neighborhoods they live in, the ecosystems, they are served by organizations. So how do we involve the organizations in our process? And that's something that we've been able to do through funding and strengthening the civic infrastructure. That's interesting. On this funding question, there was a question from the audience about how is Lexington funding some of the public engagement work. So Richard, if you want to jump in. And then one of my favorite ones so far is how would we all turbocharge this work? So I want to hear from all of you what would that look like if we were to just say we're going to turbocharge it. And Sarah, I really appreciate your point also about reaching people where they're at. And Deborah would love to hear also just some of the work you all are doing sort of connecting those kitchen table issues to policy lovers. Because one of the things I'm hearing from all of you is how do we find those opportunities? And I know in Georgia, thinking about whether it's the transit campaign or something else, how do we figure out what is the right hot? And then how we move people on it. Because I think Sarah, you're so right. We know there are systemic racism. There are systemic challenges to this work. And so we have to kind of take an ecosystem approach. But we also need these real hooks that are visceral and connect with people. Yeah, so I'll talk a little bit about funding here in Kentucky. There's not a lot of it is the answer to that question. You know, I think so I'll just run through the sort of city transformation projects that we've run that were to these sort of projects that we've run with the city. So we ran a civic artists and residents program that embedded three artists for a year inside local government to sort of help them three departments rethink how they communicate with the public. We ran this public engagement process for our city's comprehensive planning process. We were reimagining how how legislative input happens with our urban county council. We are looking at reimagining how park policy and equity is is the sort of centering that in in park and green space policy. There are a couple others. And across all of those projects, the the dollars that the city of Lexington has put into them is around five thousand. So for us, we take the sort of stance that the city needs to make its own investments in this and they should make their own investments in it. But we are not going to wait for them to make an investment in it. And so we, you know, are out scouring the world for for funding to support this work. Our civic artists and residents who was supported by the National Department of the Arts, our Park Equity Center is supported by the Trust for Public Land, our our this comprehensive planning process was supported by some organizations here in Lexington, including the AARP. Right. So we're we're we have to sort of go out and find funding to be able to support these projects. And I think, you know, when we talk about scale, we talk about how this grows, right? I mean, our organizations, more five, six years old, our first year's full year budget was twenty five thousand dollars. There is just not funding to support this kind of work in my part of the country. Right. In the middle of Kentucky, it just it just ain't here. And so we have to go out and find it from national sources. That takes a lot of work. It takes staff time and it takes, I mean, you know, thirty grant applications submitted to get one. And so I think, you know, as we look to how to broaden this sort of concept of co-governance to every community in our country, right? To communities my size and smaller to communities in red states to red towns. Right. We have to look at ways to systemically fund this kind of work because places just aren't going to do it on their own. Right. A lot of local governments don't have a lot of resources to do this. Have shrinking populations, especially in more rural states and so have a dwindling tax base and are worried about keeping poppoles filled and keeping flooding from happening. Right. And and while we need to sort of help those folks understand the importance and the value that can come from this engagement, that's going to be a hard conversation. And so we really need to talk about how we sort of systemically across the entire country create opportunities that an organization like ours can exist in every community that exists in the country. That's really helpful. One of the questions is about sort of public-private partnerships. Deborah and Sarah, I invite you all to jump in. And then I'm going to also ask about the turbocharged opportunity, which obviously is, you know, Medicaid on funding and also this federal funding moment we're in. So Deborah, over to you. Right. Oh, wow, this is so exciting. So what I would say is part of what we have to do and continue to do is to work together and talk to each other. For me, it's been very helpful because I have been here in Atlanta for about 40 years. So some of those elected officials that are in position now, we've known for years. So this automatic trust, not automatic, but built trust over time with these leaders. So trusting an organization like Georgia stand up that they've known for years on both sides is helpful. But to the point of how do you get people to really work together and how do you get government to really work together? It really is a value proposition. If you want a better project, then you need to include the community. If the community wants a better product, then they have to be included. They have to include themselves. So one, it's imploring people to get involved civically. We want people to understand these issues from a level that really it's their kitchen table issues because either it's about access to transportation or access to more opportunities in their communities or even to stay in their communities because we're in the city that is the most unequal city in the world right now or in the United States. We have poor is poor and in middle classes, middle class and rich is rich. But it's hard to get from one class to another here in Atlanta. But what we see is if you can get to them when they're younger, if you can get to the high schools and start because they take they've taken civics out of the schools. So if you can start talking about what power really means and who really has the power, then and and get them to understand and organize people actually organize means to organize power. That's one thing. But then we had an issue where we had accounting. The world's busiest airport is actually in Clayton County. And if you ever been to the Atlanta airport is an incredible airport. But it sits in a bedroom community called Clayton County. Clayton County's bus system, it was not connected to the metro system, which is Marta here and they ran out of money. You know, and literally for four years, people were walking alongside the highway because there weren't sidewalks because this was an urban, a rural area that had become a suburb. They became a suburb because housing was unaffordable in the city of Atlanta and people started pushing their way out and started renting apartments that are around the airport. And those neighborhoods grew exponentially, exponentially without the kind of infrastructure they really needed to support the population coming from the city of Atlanta. So you had two things. You had this urban urban people in this excerpt that couldn't get to the grocery store. They were walking. There wasn't a bus system. And so we really had to partner with organizations on the ground as well as government, because everybody wanted this community to join this transportation system. It took several years, one to get some folks out of office, but also to get the shifting of the mines. Of course, people were were resistant to transportation in an area that had previously been rural. And so we started hearing questions like, well, you know, they're going to come and they're going to break into our houses, you know, because the bus is coming. And so, you know, we had to explain, well, I've never seen someone with a TV on a bus because they wouldn't break in and then get on the bus to get away. So we had to just kind of undo some of those isms that happened in our community to the point that the year that former president won, this ballot measure was won. Seventy eight percent of the county voted to to to tax themselves in order to get a bus. And so part of that negotiation was half of that that penny goes into a lockbox, if you will, for transit, because we know a bus system is not enough. They're going to connect, need to connect to a train system. But what that did is showed that if government, the community and surrounding neighborhoods actually work together, that everyone wins. The transit system can grow. Folks can get to work and that there's a return on investment because the economic development of the area has now exploded because now you have people who are working people that can afford to go to the grocery store, that can get to the grocery store. So as we're looking at T.O.D., which is transit oriented development, we're looking at how we can partner with government and the communities to make sure that there's a better product all the way around. But again, that goes with having trust, having respect for the residents, making sure that people can attend those meetings, giving them the resources they need, breaking it down if you have to, to make sure that it's culturally relevant, talking to government on the side to say, what is the information and can you make this a little bit more simplified for folks? Understanding that, you know, that community members sometimes don't have the ability to go to two or three meetings a week in order to get engaged. So what other ways can we get engaged, whether it's door knockers, whether it's robocalls, whether it's text messages? How do you get the information out should be equal to how other communities gets information or equity, the equity component needs to be there. So part of what we're trying to do is really make government more responsive to our communities in our lens. It is working in some ways with some of our government partners. We still have a long way to go in some of the areas. And again, we're in the south, which is in Georgia. And, you know, whether it's a purple state yet, I'm not sure. But we're certainly a blue dot in the middle of a red state. And so the cultural, the economic differences of the rest of the state always come into play when you're talking about the economy here in Georgia. But I am hopeful. I am excited about the future here. And we look forward to not only, you know, adults getting it, but really making sure that from the time kids start going to school, they need to understand that that's their government dollars at work and they have a responsibility, but they also have a right to expect equity. Wow. I mean, this is fantastic. I could talk with all three of you for all day. I am so inspired. I am watching the clock. And if there's any other questions from the audience, we have a bunch of really great ones there. I'd love to invite you in to share some reflections and also just what are some best practices for this kind of engagement sitting on the government side? Like what has worked really well? And then I want to pose to the audience some questions around some of the challenges you're facing and some of the opportunities you see with sort of unprecedented federal dollars coming to communities. That's great. So I wanted to just start and I think pick up on some of the threads that were mentioned for us, you know, being in the space at this time, like thinking about this room, restorative, almost restorative lens, not almost, it is a restorative lens. I mean, I think one of the things that I really want to do is we keep talking about the people who are walking into the room, right? That means that we really need to be people oriented. And I think a lot of engagement because it's been so centered on voting has almost commodified the vote and turn people into, you know, objects, not people. And I wanted to refer back to a speech, the Vietnam speech that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave at Riverside Church. And one of my team members found the language in this in the speech where he was talking about linking U.S. militarism, racism, poverty, like how are we really spending our money? Right. And he talks there about the need to shift our morals from being thing oriented to people oriented. And that is, I think, something we really need to continue to center. And when you think of think about people, you really need to think about them holistically, a lot of policy work is very reason based. And I think we need to welcome the whole person as they are and really think about their experience with government, which has unfortunately been traumatic for a lot of the people that we're talking about, including at the table. And I think there's a lot of potential for arts here. You know, we just heard about an artist in residence program, the Civic Engagement Commission also had an artist in residence with us. And that really allowed us to do transformative work, I think. And it is really understanding that people have emotions and we want to get to people's intellect. We want to get to their emotions. And one of the things we've done is creating games, you know, gamifying civic engagement of it. We created a trivia set of trivia cards, you know, for New Yorkers to think about the budget and New York City civics overall. And we also integrated like a budget poster where people could, you know, tell us how they would make the allocations. And then digital tools are obviously really important. We do have an open source platform that we're using where people can submit ideas. So creating an experience that is fun and memorable and brings joy to quote our Yasmani, our artist in residence. I think it's really important. And I think a key to turbocharging, if you will, because you really have to engage people in a way that they will come back to it again and again. That's the turbocharge, right? And then on the intellectual side, really taking concepts from the budget. Like a lot of people don't spend their time learning about the budget. And we want to find a way to make this information relevant for their own lives. So really thinking about that and integrating that into the experience has been really helpful for us. And then for for the PV process that we're currently running, it is an expense process, not a capital process, where people have to wait years and years to see results. The expense process means that they will have be able to see the results of their vote in a year next year. So I think that's that's a good practice for us to be thinking about is like, how long does it take to have people see the results of their engagement? Right? A lot of times we collect feedback from communities, but people don't know. It's like a black box. Where did it go? We don't know. And so it's very important whenever you do engagement to loop back and let people know how did you translate what they gave you? You know, whether that could be in the form of like, I don't know, something that you put on your website. Here's what we did. Here's what we took. Here's what we didn't take. And here's why I think we need to explain why we're not using the feedback. Be more accountable for that. And the last thing I guess we mentioned also is just thinking about budgeting structures from recognizing the contributions of people who come in through the door, you know, for engagement, giving honoring their work by giving them like a gift card. That's certainly one piece of it. And then thinking on the spectrum is really how we're creating a pipeline of engagement and leadership. From community volunteers who can then enter, you know, a larger system and become employees managers. And in New York City NYC service runs an AmeriCorps program that places AmeriCorps members and city agencies. And this is like an avenue where they get to become city employees and hopefully stick around. And we want to have people serving in government and serving in these spaces, people who look like the people we want to engage and we need to give compensate, you know, people fairly for that work, sometimes engagement work, well, a lot of times probably engagement work is devalued in terms of how much we pay for it, right? And we need to be thinking about that. And then, you know, involving youth, I think is critical in all of this. We did have a youth led process when we did a pilot before in this process, youth helped to facilitate the borough assembly subcommittee. So these are some of the things that we're learning about and we're looking forward to, you know, continuing to just learn from others and try out new things. So it's an exciting opportunity to be in it. It's kind of like being in, you know, like a startup inside government, which doesn't always happen. That's amazing. And I think what's so powerful about all three of you coming from very different parts of the country, urban, rural, south, you know, East Coast, there's some commonalities that we're hearing, right? And I think these questions of how do you manage expectations when things don't go someone's way? How do you do those positive feedback loops? You know, would love to hear a little bit more from each of you about some of that. I love the compensating people for their time, showcasing that this is not just a volunteer opportunity. This is a way you are actively participating in your democracy. But that requires some accountability, some sense of, you know, where is their agency and these sort of civic artists and residents programs. That's really fascinating. And would love to hear more about that. I am mindful of the clock. So I think we'll do one more round. And then I'll give everybody just a short opportunity for a closing remarks. Deborah, Richard, would you like to jump in? Great. So one of the things I do definitely support paying folks to participate in, whether they're stipends or whether when opportunities come up, we have a pool of folks that we pull from. So during election season, we also have a seat for. And so when we're looking for community members to come on board during election season to knock on doors or do our phone bank or text bank, we pull from the folks that have been active and we ask them, we send them out an email asking them if anyone in their family needs a job. So we start with those that we have been impact, have been impacted by our work when we have opportunities. We're pulling from that source so that they're actually invested in the success of the organization and outcomes. And so when we're on the phones, it literally we're asking people, one, how are you doing? Because the the connection, the human connection that happens and doesn't happen in these kind of processes, kind of isolate people. So we're asking how are they doing? But then also, what are they working with? What are their what are their issues? What are their kitchen table issues? How can they get involved in making them leaders? Seeing themselves as the leaders of their community is very important. So we ask people about if you're registered to vote and we know that you are, is everyone in your family, everyone in your household registered to vote? Do you know when your city council meeting is it are you willing to get involved with what's happening in your neighborhood? So it really starts at a micro level at every time we have an event, we're asking those questions every time we're out registering people to vote. We're also giving them information about how government works and what's on the ballot. And even if it's not an election year, we're constantly giving information that they wouldn't have. And because we're a trusted organization, they keep coming back for more. So compensating people is definitely important, but also feeding people. One of the best organizing tools that we have is always having food at any meeting that we have. People cannot listen. They will not respect what you have to say if they're hungry. So you meet people where they are and it just shows the respect. A couple of years ago, we also did a report called the Listen Up Report where we listened to the community to ask them, what does it take for you really to get engaged and why aren't you engaged? And they said a lot of things about the times of the meetings. You know, you always have to go to city hall. You have to pay to park or you have to go to the county. And, you know, it's not always easy and you don't know what room to go to. And and so breaking down some of those issues that people have in real time. And then given the report back to those government agencies to say, when you're considering these public participation processes, consider these things and the things that they're saying. So it really is a rinse and repeat. Keep tweaking it, keep working together. But then when you get to a place that, you know, back when I was a activist, a student activist and a young, young, young, young activist, you know, we would be knocking on doors, let us in city hall. Right. We're like, you know, we need the power. And so then I worked for city hall. So then that's a different frame because, you know, now you're part of the government. But then having a serving on this side with a nonprofit organization and community, you understand that the disconnect is absolutely there, you realize, oh, wait a minute, you really don't even have the knock on the door of city hall. You can just go in. It's your room. It's your house. It's your place. And let me show you where the room is. Let me show you where the secret committee room is. Let me show you where that is. And the more you empower people to start investigating and finding out where the levels of powers are and then report back on what you were able to do once you found that room. People get more engaged because they really want to make their lives better. So tapping into why people get involved, people get involved because it's really about them and their families and reminding people, reminding our city employees and our county employees that they actually work for the people is essential, but also reminding people of their own power is essential as well. And then translating for our elected officials that they actually have to represent these people because we have the receipts. We help to put you in and we can also organize to take you out. So making sure they understand that there's the street works both ways. What we see now, we have some administrations that hated us, right? Like, why are you always in our business? But then you have some administrations that like, oh, my gosh, we're so glad Georgia stand up is here. Can you help us with that? And that's what we want to get to the point that we're co-creating. We're working together and we're making this equity to indicate a evaluation in a different way and really making change as part of what we're doing. That is so fantastic, Richard. Sure, yeah, I mean, you know, there's everyone said so many great things. I don't feel like I have some too too much to add. I just wanted to co-sign the having food at everything. It is so important. And I think it sort of kind of gets to what Dr. Said said about like honoring the whole person, right? Food, child care. And I think it's also the same sort of thread that goes into these civic artists, residency programs, right? Because we are we're cultural beings, right? We are things that want to participate in culture and participate and express ourselves. And I think, you know, art and culture has such an ability. My background is my only degree, despite you calling me a doctor, is a double based performance music degree, right? And like the thing that is after our next event, Richard, there you go. Yeah, you know, the thing that gets people animated are seeing themselves expressed, right? Like and seeing themselves expressed in a situation in a moment and seeing a reflection of themselves. And I think like arts and culture has such a power to be transformative for for for this sort of this issue. And I just like to raise that up. That's fantastic, Sarah. Do you want to jump in and then I'll give everyone, if you have any additional closing comments, the opportunity to share? Um, I I would I I actually want to make a request. It sounds like we're not going to really have time to do the QA piece. So I wanted to see if do we have to because we are we're going to be closing in a few minutes, right? I've been pulling questions from the Q&A. Oh, yeah. So I would love. Yeah, I would love to actually see the questions later. So I wanted to see if you could show we have a Google Docs out there in the interwebs. We're taking all of your questions. I've been synthesizing them in real time and we will share that with all of you so that you can see and we'll also be able to see sort of the resident the registrations and this is going to also like live as an asset that you all can share with your communities as well. Amazing. Thank you so much for that. I mean, and that's I just ask that because it goes to what I was just saying to try to be inclusive and be responsive to to communities. I mean, I think everyone has talked a lot about the food and I 100 percent agree with that. I think that the something that has really worked for us is just the flexibility to innovate and also like learn as we're doing things, right? So like prototyping solutions in real time and design thinking is something we've been kind of experimenting with here and just be open as we are learning along the way to like make changes and to programs to to really help people feel more more included. That's fantastic. Deborah or Richard, any final thoughts? So my my final thought would be first, happy Women's History Month for all the women. And if you you're not a woman, you came from one. So we want to say happy History Month because in part of the reason I wanted to mention that is because part of what we found in the organizing that we're doing is about seventy eight percent of the people that we really that really are involved in our programs are women. And they're often the leaders of their community or the leaders of their organization. And we know that if you take care of the women, they'll take care of the whole community. So centering the needs of women as we continue to organize as the population shifts, as the population gets browner, as we get more responsive to working families, making sure that, you know, you're having the meetings at a time that women can attend, you're having the meetings at the time. There's a respect for them being caregivers of both of parents as well as children. But then also asking people exactly what do you need? I think is is is also the core of how we try to do organizing is start with that basic need as that heart issue and then work your way outside of the issue to get to what your project is. But if you don't, if you don't meet the basic needs, then people will begin to react to the public policy that is happening. Thank you so much for having me. Richard, Sarah, anyone else? Sure. Yeah, I would just say very quickly, you know, this work is so relational, right, that it is at its core about relationships. And when we think about the places that that really need this sort of infusion of like civic pride and civic agency, right, places where we want to really sort of inspire people to get re-involved and engaged and committed to our sort of civic institutions, I would just really encourage folks to think about how we can make this work possible in communities our size and smaller. You know, the communities our size and smaller are relational. Like I can go to the grocery store, run into the mayor. I could be, you know, walking through the park and like trip over a council member, you know, in that sort of tight knit relational nature of our communities that are particularly small communities really lends itself well to this work. And there just is not enough support for organizations that want to spring up in small places. And so I just wanted to put a put a shot out there for that. But this has been an unbelievable conversation. I'm so inspired by the work. And there's conversation about charter reform here in Lexington. So Dr. Sayed, I may be talking with you at some point soon. Anyways, but yeah, thanks so much for having me. Fantastic, Sarah. Any clues? Yeah, I wanted to just say, you know, we I wanted to lift up storytelling here. I think it is so important for us to change the narrative about civic engagement, who is I mean, it is it is essentially the story of us, you know, like the story of America as a country. And who are we? What does it mean to us? And I think that the folks like us who are doing engagement work really need to strengthen our partnerships with media. So we get the stories out there of all the dynamic people who are on a daily basis are involved, are engaged and lifting up their voices, right? And that experience, because to me, that is also the key to turbo charging is like understanding that this story of engagement and how well it's working is missing from the headlines. And I would love to like work with everyone on how we can do that in a better way. Well, thank you so much. I know we are a minute over. I mean, we could talk forever. This is such an inspiring group and hearing some of these inside-outside stories, you know, Deborah, about your time in City Hall and Sarah seeing you inside there and Richard just thinking about this transformative work. I loved also the restorative justice lens. Deborah, you know, the Black Women Best framework is a framework that's really informed some of our policymaking. There were some questions also just on mechanics. We're going to have a case study on citizens assemblies. And we actually have case studies of all of your work that we've been featuring at New America. And so we're always eager to lift up these stories. I think we're just really grateful to you all. And I'm taking away just the humanness of this. I was thinking about early COVID, where the economy was doing well. And it was just this non-human aspect of our lives. And what I'm hearing for you is this joyful, focused and equity focused on people and communities focused on those hooks and levers. But how do we really build a new with imagination, creativity, a multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy for the 21st century? And to have leaders like the three of you in your respective communities doing that, this is an honor and a privilege. So thank you all so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you so much.