 So, it's been a great day so far and I am pleased that to be among all of us. My name is Jim Anderson. I am the president of peace action of New York State peace action and I am the national vice president of peace action, as well as serve on the board of the campaign for peace disarmament and common security. A member of abolition 2000 and much, much more. I am, like you, a concerned citizen. I want to say that truly and all that we heard and in a couple of the words that the senator mentioned, I'll use a buzzword he said decades. And when he talked about decades he talked about decades of dealing with these issues that we're confronting today and particularly as we gather here. And as I thought about that, it resonated with me, what Amanda Gorman said. And I thought, here we are, we are those who have stepped into a path. And since we stepped into this past we are the ones who have the task on how we will repair it. And that's it I'm going to welcome you to this session this session is paths forward. We talk a lot about these things how terrible we talk about what needs to be done, and we look around we see some action but not enough action. We see some of the ways in which we did engage. Move some things in favor of humanity and peace. And yet there's much more that needs to be done. We've also discovered that many more are needed. When I say many more, many more people. People worldwide and communities like ours are pushing back on way work governments who are putting so much money and so much effort and building and amassing weapons of war. People all over the world are trying to do everything that they can to get the dollars needed to that will take care of housing health care, education, all things needed infrastructures of their cities and their nations. And people all over the world like us. We're having this moment trying to find a way forward with that said, I want to introduce my guests and the order I introduce them in is the order that they will come to us in. And at the end of all the presentations we will have q amp a. And I'm looking for us to really get into this. I'm looking for us to see the light. And to be the light in this session. And with that I greet you again and let me just say the first one up would be media Benjamin of cold paint. And she'll be speaking to us on peacefully engaging around after her will be didn't Denise Dufffield, who is from back from the brain campaign. She is with, she'll be speaking on the back from the brain campaign she is with the physicians for social responsibilities, Los Angeles, and Lindsay caution Gary and who is with the Institute for policy studies and who will talk to us on a moral budget for America. Finally, after that will be Senator Jamie Albridge, who is a state who will be speaking towards on state legislative issues. And with that said, I yield the floor to my dear, hi, my dear welcome. Good to see you. Good to be on with you and thank you to the organizers for this incredible day of just extraordinary presentations and your organization is so impressive. So thank you for allowing me to be part of this. I'm going to speak about Iran, because it's such a critical issue from both the nuclear perspective but just a horrific example of how the US can screw with the country for so many decades and create so many needless problems for the people who live there. And so just to frame this, to keep in mind the US overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953, the support for the repressive regime of the Shah that led to the 1979 Revolution, that was understandably anti American, and the US has imposed some form of sanction on Iran ever since then. That's also frame it the way Iranian see why this focus on Iran as in terms of nuclear weapons. First of all, many Iranians say they're not even trying to get nuclear weapons. But then they point to the United States as the largest country of that has thousands of nuclear weapons and then they also point to Israel and say, Why doesn't anybody call Israel out on its nuclear weapons force it to join the non proliferation treaty force it to have inspectors etc. And then the other is to recognize that the joint comprehensive plan of action the JCPOA the Iran nuclear deal that was finally negotiated under Obama's term was not just a negotiation between the US and Iran. It was also one between England, France, Germany, the European Union as a whole Russia, China. It was the world community and and and ratified supported by the Security Council at the United Nations. It seems that in the United States. It was a tremendous feat for the Obama administration to move forward on that because there was so much opposition from US allies, like Israel and Saudi Arabia, but also so much internal opposition from lobby groups from hawkish who said it wasn't strong enough it didn't include ballistic missiles it didn't deal with Iran's maligned activities in the region. And yet, from the john Kerry Obama point of view. This was a significant breakthrough that would lead to discussions with Iran on many other issues. And I have traveled to Iran several times and our last visit there when we met with the foreign minister Shabbat Zarif. He said precisely that that they said, this was the beginning of talks with the US and other and the Europeans about all the conflicts in the region and how could they use this as establishing trust so that they could then deal with so many of the other conflicts that need to be unraveled in the Middle East. In the meantime, we had Trump coming in and withdrawing precipitously from this deal, imposing just horrific sanctions, especially during a time of the pandemic. I remember being in Iran walking through the marketplace when an elderly man came up and knew that we were Americans could we had some signs on us and said, you know why is your country doing this to us keeping cancer medicine away from my wife who is dying, what did you to deserve this. So really, these cruel measures that hurt 80 million people in Iran, and then almost bringing us to the brink of war, January 2 of last year with the assassination of General Soleimani. And I don't know about all of you but I really felt that this was the beginning of an all out war with Iran. And the results of Trump doing this have also been to embolden the hardliners inside Iran. We already seen the last parliamentary elections that it was the hardliners who actually campaigned against the nuclear deal, who won the upper hand, and there are June elections coming up in Iran, in which somebody will win who is not as open as to talking to the United States as the Rouhani government has been. We also have a recent piece of legislation passed by the Parliament of Iran that said that if there is not a lifting of the sanctions on the banking and the oil then the Iranians must increase their nuclear activities. This means that there's a very small window between now and the next presidential election in June to make some significant progress. Biden has said that he wants to rejoin the nuclear deal. This he has said it throughout the campaign. And during the last hearings of his soon to be Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, he reiterated that the Biden administration intends to go into the nuclear deal. But they are all ready getting tremendous pushback and you could see even at that hearing where he tried to say well, you know we want to strengthen the agreement we want to talk about the issues in the in the region. And he, and he talked about the Iran nuclear deal not as something that they would do immediately but actually said it was a long way off. We don't have the time for that. The people coming into the administration, several of them are very favorable to the Iran nuclear deal. In fact, the head now of the CIA, William Burns was somebody who worked on the back channels to get the deal going. But the, the Biden administration has recently suggested that it wants to bring in Rob Malley, who was and the National Security Council during the Obama administration and is now the president of the International Crisis Group to be the envoy for Iran. And that would mean that he would come in and immediately begin this process, which some are calling compliance for compliance. Iran goes back into complying with the nuclear deal, and the US goes in back into complying. But in the last couple of days since that suggestion of Rob Malley was made, there's been a tremendous outcry from the right. And we see this in the form of Congress people like Tom Cotton. We see it from right wing Iranian Americans. And we see it from a number of right wing columnists who have been putting out column saying that that Rob Malley would be a terrible pick. The reasons they say are that he has, that he is anti Israel because he wants to talk to Hamas that he hasn't made a overtures to the human rights groups in Iran over the years that he would be too soft basically for these negotiations. They also said that they threw out that when General Soleimani was killed that he had made a comment saying that wasn't good for diplomacy. Go figure. So, this is happening right now. And I think we have to push back code pink is right now coming up with the petition to support this Rob Malley as the as the Iran envoy. And of course, we have to support an immediate re entering into the into the nuclear deal. Yesterday, there was a peace out by the foreign ministers of Iran, Shabbat Zarif in foreign affairs. It was entitled Iran wants the nuclear deal it made. Don't ask Tehran to meet new demands. And he also talked in there about how it was thanks to the US invasions and arms sales that the Middle East is the most militarized region in the world. He said that Saudi Arabia, a country of less than 30 million people compared to Iran's is the number one weapons purchaser in the world, and that the tiny country of the United Arab Emirates which only has 1.5 million citizens is the number eight importer of weapons in the entire world. So, the US under a Biden has to not only go back into the Iran nuclear deal has to take measures immediately to ease those sanctions. And there is something that just came out in the statement that the Biden administration made about its global work around and one of the paragraphs in there said that it would look at the effect of its sanctions in places like Iran and Venezuela to see what effect they have had on those countries being able to deal with the pandemic and take measures accordingly. That's a positive thing. The US has to stop blocking the 5 billion IMF loan that Iran has asked for in order to deal with the COVID crisis and deal going back into the nuclear deal with Iran is really the first step to addressing all of these other crises in the region that have to be dealt with. So I hope we can all be working together to push the Biden administration and not to allow the Hawks to get the upper hand, for example, to quash the appointment of this Iran envoy and to move ahead quickly there will be lots of measures to try to stop them in the Senate from these right wingers and we have to be ready for those we have to fight against those and really push for the Biden administration do to do what a promise to do swiftly rejoin rejoin the Iran nuclear deal. Thank you. Thank you.