 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2015 Pass Forward Conference Closing Luncheon, sponsored by American Express. And now, please welcome to the stage Chief Preservation Officer and Executive Vice President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, David Brown. Thank you very much. Hello and welcome to the closing lunch of the 2015 Pass Forward Conference. The past few days have provided a time to reflect on all that the preservation movement has achieved over the past 50 years. It's also given us the opportunity to look forward and think about how the important work that we're doing today will impact future generations of preservationists, and more importantly, our communities and the places where we live. We are happy that you are all able to be here and participate in these conversations, and we look forward to you being involved in these conversations in the months ahead. We're pleased today to be joined by Tim McClyman, Richard Brown, and other representatives of the American Express Foundation. American Express has long been a supporter of preservation projects worldwide, and they've been a close partner of the National Trust for Historic Preservation for over a decade. In fact, a very important story in the history of preservation is the leadership provided by Tim, Richard, and American Express in helping to save some of the iconic places and hidden gems in America, as well as our pioneering work together to engage millions of Americans in preservation through innovative social media campaigns. In 2011, American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation established the American Express Aspire Award. This award recognizes an emerging leader in the preservation field and highlights the promise and potential of the preservation field through its talented emerging leaders. As a true champion of historic preservation, American Express is committed to developing strong leaders who help protect our historic places and ensure that their stories live on and resonate for new generations. Sponsoring this award is a wonderful expression of that commitment. This year, we are pleased to recognize Emily Evans, director of the Right Sizing Cities Initiative with Place Economics. Through this work, Emily helps municipal governments and nonprofits in legacy cities take advantage of older and historic places as they plan for the future. Prior to joining Place Economics, Emily worked for the Michigan Historic Preservation Network where she spearheaded an unprecedented smartphone survey of nearly 1,800 historic properties in six Detroit neighborhoods targeted for blight mitigation, the results of which are helping to inform strategic demolition and reinvestment decisions. Emily also co-leads Brick Plus Bean Detroit, a project that brings together Detroit's diverse community of building rehabbers and homeowners who are working to reinvest in the city. But wait, there's more. On top of all that, she's an active member of the Preservation Right Sizing Network's leadership team. Emily and the work she is doing represents the future of the preservation movement, and we are delighted to honor her here today. Emily Evans is a strong voice for saving legacy cities, including her hometown of Detroit. Emily led an unprecedented smartphone survey of properties targeted for blight mitigation and launched Brick and Beam Detroit, a project that brings together people working to reinvest in the city. Her current work with Place Economics, Right Sizing Cities Initiative, and the Preservation Right Sizing Network's leadership team cements her role as an emerging leader in the field. To present the award, please welcome to the stage my good friend, Tim McClyman, President of the American Express Foundation. Okay, thank you, David, for that really kind introduction. It's a real pleasure to be partnering with you, David, and with the entire team at the National Trust for Historic Preservation on many initiatives over the last 10 years. So it's been really our pleasure, and we love our partnership and our relationship with you. It's now my pleasure to welcome Emily to the stage to present her with the American Express Aspire Award. Emily, on behalf of my colleagues at American Express, we applaud you for your work, helping cities reinvent legacy spaces to attract visitors and revitalize neighborhoods. Emily, I'm so happy to see so many young people here at this conference because you all and Emily are the future of historic preservation. So thanks to all of you, and congratulations to you, Emily, really deserving. To ensure that the movement continues, we need to cultivate the next generation of preservation champions to plant the flag and be the voice of the places that history cannot afford to forget. Secretary Sally Jewell, who is with us today, and who you're gonna hear from in a few minutes, is one of our greatest allies in establishing historic preservation as a national priority. As a caretaker of 20% of America's public lands, entrusted with the oversight of more than 400 units of the country's beloved national parks, the Secretary and her team have implemented an ambitious agenda to expand access to the national parks, encouraging more young people to work, learn, play, and serve in parks. So Secretary has also set a goal to increase community volunteers in our public lands to one million annually by 2017, recognizing the essential role that volunteers play in conservation and park stewardship. Secretary Jewell, we thank you for your leadership in these efforts, and we at American Express are inspired by your vision. That's why the company joined the National Park Foundation's Find Your Park Movement as one of its premier partners. The Find Your Park campaign was created to inspire people of all backgrounds to discover that a park can be what a park can be, to share their experiences with each other, and to support those treasured places and their programs. Last spring, the National Park Service began preparations for its 2016 centennial celebration, and the American Express Foundation committed $5 million to help the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service build volunteer coalitions in 50 U.S. cities with the YMCA, and also through conservation crews, through the 21st Century Conservation Service Corps, and increased public awareness of the need for volunteers in parks, but that was just the beginning. So as of today, American Express has more than doubled our commitment to service and historic preservation in national parks, bringing our total to more than $13 million. This increased investment reflects two strategies that we are taking to encourage civic engagement in our nation's public lands. The first is additional programming to drive increased volunteering in parks. So through partnerships with the Student Conservation Association, Team Rubicon, and the mission continues to name just a few, we've rallied a diverse group of volunteers, including students and military veterans who are committed to conserving and servicing our national parks. Second, we've made new investments to ensure that important sites, historic sites, in national parks are preserved for current and future generations, and I'd like to share some of those plans with you today. To start, we're announcing today in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, more than $1 million in preservation grants that are being awarded to support the restoration and preservation of five national treasure sites that are in or adjacent to national parks. These sites are Hinchcliffe Stadium in Patterson, New Jersey, the Pullman Historic District in Chicago, the Painted Desert Community Complex in Arizona, and the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta. The fifth site will be announced at a later time. We're gonna do another announcement of that site in December, so you'll have to wait for the fifth one. To expand on this partnership, and in celebration of the 2016 centennial, we are also pleased to announce that the national parks have been selected as the focus of our ninth partners in preservation program. Partners in Preservation is a public engagement campaign which we created with the National Trust that invites community members to vote for which historic sites should receive funding in their communities to ensure their continued vitality. So taking place during Preservation Month in 2016, 25 national park sites will compete for a share of $2 million in funding with the winners selected by the popular vote. So here we're going to show you a video tape just talking about the program. History is a living, breathing thing, taking on new meaning with each generation and expressing itself through people that discover a love of historic places and landscapes. But what if we stopped appreciating the past or caring about the places that have shaped our identities? What if these places disappeared and their stories went silent? Let's ensure this doesn't happen. American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation created Partners in Preservation which puts the power of preservation in people's hands, giving them a voice, giving their histories a place to live on. We help people explore places, connect to history and their stories and cast their vote for sites to win money for preservation efforts. Historic places leverage this platform to raise awareness by connecting with communities and through open house weekends that welcome the community in to learn more. Building on previous Partners in Preservation campaigns in cities throughout the U.S. which have engaged more than one million community members to participate, resulted in $15 million in preservation funding for 200 historic sites. In 2016, Partners in Preservation will celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service to shine a light on the preservation needs of 25 sites in our national parks. Engaging the public as partners to preserve the past for current and future generations. Partners in Preservation will showcase 25 sites from sea to shining sea, who will compete for $2 million in preservation funding provided by American Express. These projects, managed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, promoted by National Geographic and identified as key priorities by the National Park Foundation's centennial campaign for America's national parks, will deliver on our goal to keep our stories alive and make preservation matter. Okay, so watch for that program next spring in 2016 and the voting will take place in May of 2016. So be sure to vote for your favorite historic sites in national parks next spring. So I'd like to recognize Will Schaffroth from the National Park Foundation as well as Krista Gibbons and Tammy Abraham from the National Geographic Society who are with us today. The National Trust, yes, please. Thank you. The National Trust and American Express are very excited to partner with your organization to bring this program to life. So those of you that are in attendance here today, we hope that you will join us in this campaign and that if you haven't already, please go out and find your park. So now here to share her impressions of this year's Pass Forward Conference, please join me in welcoming National Trust President and CEO, Stephanie Meeks. Stephanie. Thank you, Tim. That was a great video. We're so excited about this next phase of our partnership. And it's great to see you all. Welcome to this closing luncheon. It's been just a fantastic week, I think, from the Diversity Summit on Wednesday to our field sessions and our power sessions and field studies. I found that our conversations this week have been both provocative and inspiring. And I want to thank you all for that. And I also want to thank all of you who have been up on Capitol Hill. We've made more than 200 visits to Capitol Hill just this week. And I just want to thank you for taking the time out of your conference schedule to carry our message to your state delegations. I want to take just a moment to recognize the team at the National Trust who's responsible for putting on the conference every year. I think it just gets better year after year. And I'd love for you to join me in thanking our team, including Farine Salehuddin, Ronda Sincavage, Jackie Johnson, Colleen Dance, and Allison Yu, all under the very able leadership of Susan West Montgomery. And I'd also like to recognize and thank our supporters and our content partners, including the 1772 Foundation, the National Park Service, the Kellogg Foundation, and our local partner, the DC Preservation League. They've all made major contributions to making this conference a success. And I especially want to thank Tim and our colleagues at the American Express Foundation. As you've heard, American Express has been a very generous and long-term partner of the National Trust over the years. They've been absolutely instrumental, not just in our work, but in our nation's work to save historic places. They're the founding, presenting partner of our National Treasures Program. And they've worked with us on other initiatives over the years, including Save America's Treasures, Partners in Preservation, and more recently, the Aspire Award. So Tim, thank you very much and for the exciting news that you shared today. We're looking forward to this coming year. And they also paid for our lunch, so thank you for that. It's now my pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker today who's going to end this conference on the same high note that we've had all week. As head of the Department of Interior, Sally Jewell runs the largest preservation organization in the world. She oversees an agency of more than 70,000 employees, which serves as a steward for almost 20% of the land in the United States, including parks, wildlife, refuges, and beyond. And historic preservation is very much part of their portfolio. According to a 2011 study, the more than 400 units of the National Park Service, there are 27,000 historic buildings, 3,500 historic statues and monuments, 2 million archeological sites, and 123 million museum objects and documents. And only the Smithsonian Institution holds more, has a larger objects collection than the Department of the Interior. Secretary Jewell oversees all of these, and she's been deeply committed to this important work. Even before coming to Interior, Secretary Jewell helped develop a series of very forward-looking recommendations for the National Park Service that included, and I'll quote here, assuring that all Americans are able to recognize themselves and their stories in the National Park System, which is something that has been very much a theme of our conference this week and in past years. As Interior Secretary, she's translated that commitment into action. She and her predecessor, Ken Salazar, have helped President Obama use the Antiquities Act to establish or expand 19 national monuments across the country. These are places that tell the stories of all Americans, like the historic Pullman neighborhood in Chicago, and Fort Monroe in Virginia, two of our National Treasure Campaigns, but also including the Cesar Chavez National Monument and the Harriet Tubman National Monument in Maryland. Several of these monuments have been included in the National Conservation Land System, the Joules of the Bureau of Land Management, and Secretary Jewell has championed the BLM program that is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. We have a lot of anniversaries. As of this past July, this administration has protected more than 260 million acres of public lands and waters, more than any other president in our history. Secretary Jewell has been a strong proponent of initiatives to highlight more diverse places and using the Historic Preservation Fund to tell more American stories. In this year's budget request, she and President Obama requested an additional $33.5 million for the Historic Preservation Fund to support a civil rights initiative at the National Park Service. This includes $30 million for a competitive grant program to document, interpret, and preserve more stories and sites associated with the civil rights struggle and the African-American experience, and $2.5 million in grants for historically black colleges and universities. She's also asked to continue for a third year the $500,000 in grants to encourage more national register listings associated with women, Americans of color, and LGBT Americans who are currently underrepresented on the National Register. Secretary Jewell has also had a very strong commitment to our tribes and our tribal lands and has asked for increased funding for our tribal Historic Preservation Offices. And she's working to increase funding for historic and cultural survey work on public lands to ensure energy extraction isn't unduly harmful to our treasured places and also though to create a strong environmental legacy. As President Obama said about Secretary Jewell, she knows the link between conservation and good jobs. She knows that there's no contradiction between being good stewards of the land and our economic progress that in fact these two things go hand in hand. As we approach the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act, we look forward to working with the Secretary to ensure full and dedicated funding for the Historic Preservation Fund just as the administration has fought just as the administration has fought for full and dedicated funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Before joining the Department of the Interior, Secretary Jewell served as President and CEO of REI, the outdoor equipment company, and as an energy and natural resources expert in the commercial banking industry. She's also an avid outdoors woman who enjoys skiing, kayaking, and hiking. She's scaled Mount Rainier seven times and has just recently climbed the highest mountain in Antarctica. For all of this and more, Secretary Jewell is a woman that I have admired for many decades, and it's my great honor to welcome her to the Pass Forward National Preservation Conference. Secretary Jewell, thank you, Stephanie. And of course all that stuff that Stephanie just talked about is she's giving me credit for, but it's a huge village in this country that does these things that we've been able to accomplish, and you are all part of that huge village as are the employees of the Department of Interior. So thank you for making all of these things happen. Thank you. So Emily, what great work you're doing in Detroit, and I was telling Emily earlier that the administration's been very concerned about Detroit, and every cabinet secretary got a call saying what can you contribute? And my friends at the National Park Service did step up with regard to Bell Isle, but the reality is it takes local understanding and local leadership to recognize what's at stake and to be a catalyst for change. So Emily, thanks for being that catalyst for change in Detroit, great work. So I wanna start my remarks with just a little bit of reflection on a short trip I took just a few weeks ago, and that was to Texas. As the San Antonio missions were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. So it is pretty extraordinary that we have these incredibly intact San Antonio missions from the Alamo, which is not managed by the National Park Service, but actually has been taken over by the state of Texas, and they are working to acquire some of the lands around it, like the Ripley's Believe It or Not property for those of you that have been there, so that it can be more appropriately in a context like the other missions are that are overseen by the National Park Service. That was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the history of our nation long before English was the first language, at a time when the indigenous people of that area were converted to Catholicism, also a controversial topic as we heard with the Pope's recent visit in the canonization of Father Sarah. But these are stories of our history, and as I went into the San Antonio missions, I was greeted in the first room by a series of stories told by descendants of the indigenous people of that area, and it was a blending of the Spanish culture and the indigenous culture of the region in a way that the Park Service is doing a great job of honoring the complex history that is the story told in the San Antonio missions. So it is great to know that in the United States of America, we have a site that is right up there with natural areas like the Australian Great Barrier Reef and man-made structures like the Taj Mahal. And so thanks to those of you who preserve historic structures because places like the San Antonio missions would not still be here if it wasn't for people like you and parishioners at those churches, which are still active churches and so on. So that was pretty exciting. Then keeping the Catholic theme going here for a bit, you do get to do some pretty cool stuff in this job. There's a little bit of icky stuff that I won't get into, but there's some really cool stuff. And one of the cool things that I got to do recently was to be part of the party that greeted the Pope. And he is an amazing individual that I think cares deeply about many of the values that you share within this room. Certainly, I've read his encyclical on climate change and inequality, and it speaks volumes to the kinds of things we're doing within the Department of the Interior on the environment, but also the kinds of things that we're working on as an administration and are reflected in places like Detroit, which is that all people do matter, and there is a lot of inequality. Where did the Pope visit with the public? Of the three sites where I got a chance to see him, two were managed by the National Park Service, the White House, and Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The third was the Capitol. And yes, he went to a few churches while he was here too, but... One would expect that he is the Pope. But John Jarvis and I had the privilege of greeting him at Independence Hall as he pulled up in his Pope Mobile. And he picked that building because it is the birthplace of our democracy. And some people around the world would say the birthplace of true democracy without a monarchy in its place around the world. And these are historic buildings. The White House is a historic building, and every time I lead tours, which I do occasionally through the White House, I never forget the importance of that place. So the Pope chose those structures to convey his message, not his message about religion, but his message about the world and what we need to do together to create a better environment for our common home and the people here. So when I think about the words historic preservation, they aren't that catchy. Okay, coming from Aria, you think about marketing in terms of historic preservation. It doesn't really roll off the tongue about, yeah, I want to be part of that. So we work on that, work on that. Because the reality is what you do is so much more than historic preservation. Like the days I experienced at San Antonio missions, what you are doing through historic preservation is you are telling story of a community you're defining who we are as a nation, you're talking about our struggles and our journey. You're helping us understand who we are so we can pass that on to the next generation. So I want to express gratitude to all of you that are here in the room to do this really important, who do this really important work day in and day out. A particular shout out to my colleagues within the Department of the Interior. Stephanie said we've got to kind of a big job, half a million acres of public lands and lots of historic structures, about 25,000 of them. Some little ones in there, but there's some big ones as well. Many, many archeological sites that frankly we need to understand better working with native communities to protect long term because many of them have little or no protection and they are vulnerable to looting and to damage. And we have many, many 194 million is what I have in my notes, museum objects and archives. They're not always in structures that they need to be in to make sure they are preserved long term and that's something we're working on with our friends in Congress. We need to support the kinds of HVAC systems and appropriate storage, but also more importantly to display that. So particularly want to give a call out to Michael Bean who is the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary. So that is really a euphemism for the Assistant Secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Parks but we can't use that because he hasn't been nominated or confirmed because we've been trying to do that since Tom Strickland left the job two years in and Congress has not, the Senate hasn't allowed us to have somebody in that job but Michael is in the job and he's doing a great job. So thank you, Michael. So Michael is the senior official that is dedicated to this effort on behalf of the Department of the Interior, very ably supported by Stephanie Toothman who's the Associate Director of Cultural Resources, Partnerships and Science at the National Park Service and we can give Stephanie a round of applause. Let's do that. I will tell you that something Stephanie has done since the day I walked in here is say, don't forget historic preservation, don't forget cultural preservation. She has worked into my vocabulary so thank you, Stephanie. I also want to call out Wayne Donaldson who's the Chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. That work is so important to the department in helping advise us, showing leadership on a national level around preservation. So thank you very much, Wayne, for your good work. We all represent a variety of different organizations and I won't read out the list, you know who you are but let me just read out a couple that I will say really have been kind of a gathering of many of you that have spoken with a very powerful voice like obviously the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, TIPOs a lot easier to say. The National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers, SHIPO, I didn't know TIPOs and SHIPOs till I took this job. The National Alliance of Preservation Commissions, thank you all for the work you do to be a voice to a lot of the organizations in this room and some that aren't, we couldn't do it without you. And I will say that in this time we are working hard to get a budget, at least we're not shut down, look at the bright side, okay? And we think that we might still not be shut down when we get to December 11th because we do have a bipartisan budget deal which is pretty extraordinary and I do appreciate Speaker Boehner making that happen on his way out the door but we don't have enough money. It's plain and simple for quite a number of years now the American public has said we don't want to invest in the commons in the way we used to. And so what that means is that private philanthropy and external support has gone from being the margin of excellence in some ways to the margin of survival. Will certainly knows that in the National Park Foundation. We know that in the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It is organizations like Tim McClellan's the American Express Foundation and others that have really stepped in to fill the void. And I don't think we're gonna go back to the way life used to be but I will say that one really, really important thing that is happening because of the engagement of firms like American Express and the American Express Foundation is that we are engaging a broader community. And for American Express in particular and when I saw Tim and he announced their support of find your park campaign it was at another historic site that was Castle Clinton in Battery Park in New York City. We were working alongside some folks doing some cleanup of Battery Park along with some young people and of course that is the launching off point to the historic Ellis Island and Lady Liberty. But what American Express Grant is doing and the Play Learn Serve work continuum that we're working on with kids is engaging young people, fresh faces who will come up with a better name than historic preservation in this work so that they feel ownership. They feel ownership in Battery Park when they go there because they were pulling weeds and beautifying it and recognizing that they're actually native species planted they're not invasive species and gardens that aren't manicured in the way so many gardens are in our cities and that speak to the natural world in that very, very urban area. So Tim, the generosity of American Express Foundation has been phenomenal, $13 million that you announced the support for historic preservation, the support for stewardship, the support for engaging the next generation is going to pay dividends that are so much bigger than the $13 million you've invested. So could we please give the American Express Foundation another round? Thank you and I'll come out and pull weeds with you anytime, any place. So this is actually an exciting time to talk about historic preservation because of the anniversary coming up next year, the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act and the 100th anniversary of our National Park Service. So there's a lot of great ideas on what to do with these anniversaries and how to really move these things we care so deeply about forward. So I'm gonna offer three of them to you. One is celebrate the accomplishments. Historic preservation has been a huge success across the nation. It has strengthened our economies, it has created jobs, and it has built communities or made sure that communities that were on the cusp of being bulldozed, as we heard about with Emily's situation in Detroit, are actually recognized for their value and protected for the future in a smart way by having data and understanding and that was the dominated our conversation around the table. I've got a couple of examples that I wanna give you that I've been personally involved in. Two REI stores, it's actually three that I know of that are in historic structures, but one was just opening as I went to work as an employee for REI, had been on the board when we'd made the decision and that was a Denver flagship store. Have you been to the Denver flagship REI? Okay, so that's a historic structure and that is a very difficult place to retail, tell you. But we as a company, when I was there, invested close to $30 million and even with that investment, we needed support in the form of tax credits to be able to make it work economically for us. Was originally a power plant, it then became a railroad museum. It's actually, we're convinced haunted. You can do the tour of the catacombs. If you talk to the staff that works there, they know all about it. But we tuck pointed two million bricks and I think the cool thing if you go to that store is that you sense the history of the building and the character of the building and its importance in the history of Denver as a power plant and as the place that the trolley cars were stored and later in the history, telling the history of railroads in Denver. But we found a great structure to tell a story of REI that blended our heritage and history while also preserving a historic structure. But it couldn't have been done without the kind of tax credit programs that were out there. The other example I wanna use is a much more recent one and that is the historic puck building in New York City. Any of you been to the New York REI store? Handful of you, great. So that is in a district of New York that was the hub of the printing and media business. And so there's a lot of things as we wanted to be right in New York City and we wanted to be in a building that upheld what New York was but also tell the story of REI and we used that structure to tell the story of the heritage of REI, the co-op, in our 75th year, it was founded in 1938, the time we opened that, but also the heritage of New York City and the printing business. So if you go down to what was the kids section unless they changed it, two giant flywheels emerging from the floor. Historic tablets that were found when we were doing the renovations that are now mounted on the wall that show birth certificates and marriage licenses and diplomas that were printed in that building. And so because of the work that you do in historic preservation, you're supporting jobs like those we created in the construction trades and in the retail industry, but it gave us a chance to tell our history and story in the context of the history and story of New York City. So those are a couple of stories that should be celebrated as you think about how to operationalize and personalize the work that you do and why it's important as you celebrate this 50th anniversary. So let's tell those stories. Second recommendation I have is, as Stephanie pointed out, reauthorize the historic preservation fund and fully fund it. So I don't have to tell you that because you've been out lobbying on Capitol Hill and you've got your lines down and I can't tell you how important that is. But that same visionary Congress, I think it was the 88th Congress that passed the Land and Water Conservation Fund, also passed the National Historic Preservation Act and using the same source of revenue, revenue from offshore oil and gas development that was coming into the US Treasury. It should be fully funded. It has not been fully funded for the most part since its inception. But based on a simple concept that as we take things from the earth, we should put things back into our communities, into our natural world and our historic world that make them better, that are in a very broad way, mitigation for the impact we're having through resource extraction. So the grants that have gone out to historic preservation have made our communities more livable with more character across this nation than any other program. And as I go to different places and usually I'm staying in the Hampton Inn because you get the government rates there. And they have free breakfast. But they have no character. Decent gyms, but no character. I know that when my husband and I occasionally can get away for a weekend here, we don't go to the Hampton Inn. Nothing wrong with the Hampton Inn. They probably support historic preservation and the Hilton family of companies do certainly. But we go and try and find some place that tells a history of the area that we're in. We might stay in a bed and breakfast that's an old plantation house in part of Virginia. And we've done that a few times. We might, as we did, to try and give a little boost to Baltimore after their riots lately. We went and spent a whole weekend in Baltimore. We spent a bunch of tourist money in Baltimore. We got an Airbnb kind of thing, which was a historic building where we could walk to the waterfront and we could go to an Orioles game. We could eat some great food. And who knew, I didn't know anyway, the rich history of Baltimore and frankly how Baltimore's been known for rioting since, I think, for a very long time. See, we got one right there. So I would say that your voices are critically important on Capitol Hill. I didn't understand how valuable getting out and making calls on elected officials from my home community was until I was sitting in this chair and realized what a difference it makes. It is you and your constituents that vote for the people in Congress. If they haven't heard from you, they've heard from plenty of other people and there's a lot of demand for money, as you might imagine. So there's a saying that somebody told me before that I didn't fully understand until I took this job, which is if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, okay? So Congress should not have allowed the Historic Preservation Fund to expire. We need to put pressure on them. We will put pressure on them from my seat. I need you to do that too and we're not gonna stop until this is done. So thank you for your efforts on Capitol Hill this week. And the third thing I would like to urge us to do, and Stephanie alluded to this a little bit and Maria and I were talking about it at the table. And that is that we need to expand the story of America through Historic Preservation. I'm new to Washington, D.C. as a resident in the end of March, 2013. And I did a lot of walking to and from Department of Interior, mostly preparing for my Senate confirmation hearings, but I've done a lot of walking since then. And what do I see? A lot of white guys on horseback, right? Everywhere you look, white guys on horseback, except for Simone Bolivar who's in front of my building. I'm not quite sure why. But we're telling a story in Washington, D.C. that is just one aspect of our history. And as we look around, we know that the history of this country is incredibly blessed. I spent all day yesterday with Tribal Nations. This was the week of the Tribal Nations Conference. Gathering where all of the 566, soon to be 567 federally recognized Indian tribes and Alaska Native groups are invited to Washington, D.C. to meet with the cabinet and the president to talk about their issues. And I have seen incredible history and culture being preserved by tribes, but also some that is at risk of not being preserved if we don't act. And that's a story that not only is an opportunity to tell, to increase the self-esteem and the recognition that indigenous people in this country were the first people here long before any of us rode the earth. And by the way, thanks to Adidas yesterday, I don't know if you saw their announcement, but they have offered to pay for any high school that wants to change its mascot. So that's pretty cool. But we have incredible stories shaped by women. Very few of those stories are told. Shaped by people of color. I was at another historic site, Lowell, Massachusetts, where the canals were dug by Irish Americans. The railroad, the Golden Spike in Utah, the Transcontinental Railroad, largely built by Chinese Americans. The struggle, of course, from the Civil War to civil rights, African Americans that Stephanie talked about were putting significant amount of money in our budget. There are sites that are not yet interpreted. There are stories that may not have a site left that still need to be told. And we have a lot of work to do collectively to find those places that tell these stories and to find a way, particularly through the National Park Service, to tell those stories. So very proud of John Jarvis and Stephanie Toothman and the team that's here from the National Park Service. Here with the National Park Service, raise your hand. Give these guys a round of applause. There's quite a few of them in here. Thank you. The Park Service is America's storyteller. And what they have recognized, and Stephanie alluded to the National Park Second Century Commission work, it's that we're not doing a good enough job of telling the story. So they've launched theme studies to focus on the American Latino community broadly. And Cesar Chavez National Monument was mentioned. That's just the tiny step in that direction. The Asian American and Pacific Islander community was out at the Hono Uli-Uli National Monument, another one designated, where the shame of internment in Hawaii, the selective internment of only certain Japanese-Americans was lost to the jungle, really, because people did not want, they wanted to forget that chapter. But that chapter was important to remember. And it's a good illustration of, in that case, Japanese-American community being very, very involved in working on uncovering that, along with archeologists and finding the site and then advocating for its preservation. The LGBT community, a great visit last year to the Stonewall Inn on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which was, at that time, the only LGBT-associated site designated as a national historic landmark. The theme study's been launched to find other sites, and I'm proud to say it's no longer the only site, the Henry Gerber House in Chicago was added to that list. But as we move from civil war to civil rights, and we continue to move civil rights forward, and if you go to the Martin Luther King Jr. statue on the National Mall, you'll see that, you know, out of the, I can't remember exact quote, out of the Mountain of Despair Array of Hope or something like that as a statue with Dr. King on it has moved between the Lincoln Memorial for emancipation toward the Jefferson Memorial for the Declaration of Independence. All men are created equal. We are on that journey together. The stories that we can tell through place is a way for us to continue to move that journey forward where people feel valued for what they bring. And to be at Pullman with the president, as he announced, the Pullman National Monument in Chicago, which is a place, yes, it's a place that tells the story of the Industrial Revolution, of the company town where everybody had housing, where the schools were integrated, African-American kids alongside white kids, but the housing was very different depending on your race and your position, not surprisingly. The place where the very first African-American labor union was started, the place where there was labor unrest 30, 40 years before that, that is the foundation of Labor Day. There's so much history that's going on. National Parks Service site, I think, is a one third of an acre, something like that. It's really one building, but it's a building that was lost to fire almost that was supported by money from Illinois, now supported by a philanthropic contribution from the American Express Foundation and from the community that's been very generous. And because of that, these really rich stories will be told. So I am very proud to announce today that the National Parks Service is continuing this effort. We're awarding half a million dollars to help document the historic places associated with underrepresented communities. The grants are gonna help states, tribes, local governments, nominate sites already identified as important, but also to survey and inventory new places which is so critical because these places get lost if we don't know what they are. By God, we've got great technology. Let's use it to identify that. Minority communities across the United States remain significantly underrepresented on the national stage. And this is another way we're committed to reversing that trend. And if I can harken back to yesterday's Tribal Nations Conference, I think that the tribes that were represented there felt for the first time that we've turned a corner on our trust and treaty obligations to our nation's first people, stepping up and acknowledging we took their land and in exchange, we owe them much. And so much of who we are as individuals ties into our history and our culture and our traditions. We worked very hard in this country early on to stamp out the indigenous cultures, but they are still alive and well. So it is a good illustration when you embrace those cultures as the president did with a group of native youth on stage and said, you know, being smart in school and being part of the new economy does not make you any less Indian than also being part of your rich cultural traditions. The history and culture that we represent into the country gives us a chance to make everybody feel good about who they are and the place that their ancestors played in this American journey. So your National Historic Preservation Act preamble makes a statement that I think is very apt to close my remarks. The historical and cultural foundations of the nation should be preserved as a living part of our community life. Where we came from shapes very much our pride in ourselves and our pride in this nation. So you're doing a great job of preserving that. Thank you very much. I'm right away. I've invited the secretary and Tim to join me in cutting this cake that we have here that is in recognition of the centennial of the National Park Service, the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act and the 15th anniversary of the National Conservation Land System at the Bureau of Land Management. All right, let's do it. Let's do it. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the closing luncheon. Thanks for attending the 2015 Pass Forward National Trust for Historic Preservation Annual Conference.