 Beautiful. Welcome everybody. It is 3.05 in Laredo, Texas where I am calling in from and I'm really pleased to see so many faces, so many that I haven't even been able to catch up. But I'm looking forward to seeing you throughout the course of the next hour and a half. My name is Raquel Leanda. I'm the Minister of Bridge Building at the US Department of Arts and Culture. As many of you probably are already aware of, we are not a federal agency, but rather we're a people powered department. We're an action network of artists, activists, and allies that are looking to incite creativity and to shape a culture of equity, empathy, and belonging. I was really excited to have you guys here today and I wanted to start by naming that in 2017 the US Department of Arts and Culture launched our Honor Native Land Guide. And in that guide we asked that all individuals and organizations open up public events with an acknowledgement of the traditional native inhabitants of the land. So as part of this gathering today, I'd like to begin by naming that every community owes its existence to generations from around the world. Some were brought to the place you were calling in from against their will. Some were drawn to leave their distant homes and hopes for a better life. And some have lived on the land you are calling in from for more generations than can be counted. And so we at the USDA see, believe that truth and acknowledgement are critical to building mutual respect and connection across all barriers of heritage and difference. So today I continue this effort to acknowledge what has been buried by honoring the truth. So I am standing on the ancestral lands of the Coahuilteco and the Carrizo-Comecrudo people in Laredo, Texas on the US-Mexico border. I pay my respects to the elders past and present and I'm asking that we all take a moment to consider the many legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that bring us together here today by placing the name of the traditional ancestors of the land you are calling in from to the chat window. If for some reason you don't already know who the traditional ancestors of the land are, we can offer you some guidance. Emily is going to place a map in the chat window and you can click on that and learn a little bit more about where you're from. I'd love to pass the mic to Karen, our co-host from Arts and Democracy to give us a little bit more information. Hi everybody, I'm Karen Atlas, my pronouns are she and her, and I'm calling in from Brooklyn, New York, Lenape land. And I invite you to introduce yourselves in the chat box with your name, pronouns, affiliations, where you're calling in from and the native land that you're on. I direct Arts and Democracy, which helps build a movement of work that cross-fertilizes arts and culture, participatory democracy, and social justice. We grew out of National Voice in 2004, a national campaign to further civic participation in historically disenfranchised communities. We believe that democracy is not a spectator sport, and that it needs to be actively cultivated every day, grounded in values of equity and racial justice. We know that culture and art are essential to creating a truly participatory democracy, and that transformation happens when people can bring their full selves to their activism. I'm so glad that you've joined us for this conversation. I want to remind you that this is a nonpartisan event. Arts and Democracy, U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, and some of our speakers represent nonprofit organizations. Please do not advocate for or against candidates on this call. Thank you. So some housekeeping items before we start. This event is being recorded. If you prefer to not be recorded, please turn off your video. Please keep yourself muted unless you're presenting. There will be no built-in break during the hour and a half long call, so take care of yourselves as needed. And please excuse any technical glitches. If a participant is being disruptive, we will immediately try to remove them. Our program today will be as follows. We'll start with a panel of presenters speaking for five to seven minutes, and you can put your questions for the speakers in the chat. We've also invited some people to share work briefly for two minutes and have received requests from some of you to share work as well. And then if there's time at the end, we'll have some brief questions and comments. We invite you to share your resources and upcoming events as we proceed. We'll be gathering them on a shared Google Doc, and we are pasting the link to that document in the chat. Thank you to the Puffin Foundation for supporting this event, to our panelists, to Tom Esau and Emily-Anne Levy for helping organize the call, and to Hollround for live streaming it. Now I'll introduce and welcome back our facilitator, Raquel, Deonda from the USDA-C. Thank you, Raquel. Sure. Beautiful. Thank you, Karen. I appreciate that. Without further ado, I'd love to move into our presentations from our four panelists. We'll be starting with Andrea Esau, who is representing Art to Action and H-Town Votes. Andrea, take it away. Hello, everyone. It is so great to be here. Thank you so much to the Arts and to Arts and Democracy and the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture. It's very exciting. So my name is Andrea Esau. I'm the Artistic Director of Art to Action, which is based in Tampa, Florida. Art to Action is primarily a theater and performance organization, although we do a lot of interdisciplinary work, creating, developing, producing and presenting original theater interdisciplinary performance and performative acts and progressive cultural organizing. But primarily we support artists of color, women and queer or LGBTQ plus identified artists and creative allies in our work. Since 2019, we have been working with Houston and Action. I've been working closely with them as a consultant and trainer. Initially, we started our relationship to offer cultural organizing trainings for their network of activists and organizers who are interested in integrating arts and cultural practice more into their organizing strategy. And as the summer erupted, I will say we shifted to offering racial justice trainings and the Executive Director Francis Valdez, who you will meet later in today's column, so glad that Francis is here, came up with the idea of what if we could offer some funding to a cohort of artists to actively partner and with organizers on the ground and work toward voter engagement and voter mobilization through these partnerships. So, Houston Action was able to raise money to fund initially we thought four projects at $10,000 each but with additional funding it turned into 12 projects, eight of them at $10,000 each and four at $5,000 each. And so now we have this incredible network of 12 artists that is quite interdisciplinary and includes individual artists, unincorporated collectives and nonprofit organizations doing proposed projects, everything from street theater to documentary film, animation, live streamed performance, spoken word, visual art, online game nights, dance videos, comedy and more. And we are just about to officially announce all of these projects and the funded artists we anticipate releasing the press release actually tomorrow. So, unfortunately, I can't show them to you yet or talk about all of them, but they are mostly Houston based artists and organizations, but we also have a few national projects in the cohort. And they really range in different kinds of models from large one time live streamed events to daily social media interventions to following specific voters or activists on their journey, leading up to the elections. All of the projects are nonpartisan. They're focused on voter engagement, education and mobilization. And we because of the pandemic we had to make it a requirement that they had a plan for safety and keeping people safe, safe ways to engage during the pandemic, which means that this cohort is perhaps more heavily digital than than it might have been in different times. But what is key to this model and what we're interested in with this model is really artists and organizers working together, artists partnering with organizing organizations and initiatives. This, this helps everybody for us we think of this as a win win in so many ways, so from increasing artists capacity to track metrics and actually understand the impact of their work and collect data which artists so rarely have the capacity and support to do, but they can do that with their organizing partners to for the organizing partners increasing their ability to reach communities and voters who have been in disenfranchised, either historically because they are communities of color, or, or be kept or youth who simply have a lot of questions about the impact of their vote in this time. And so we see artists as key to not only engaging people in multiple ways but actually inspiring them to take action and vote in the upcoming elections. Also Houston Action itself acts as a partner for the artists by amplifying the work of the artists through their network of over 50 organizing organizations throughout Texas and also nationally through social media. So, I'm a couple of examples we want to lift up for example we there's a documentary filmmaker named Miguel Alvarez, who is working in partnership with me family of both education fund on a project called both 2020. And that project follows a Houston, a young Houston activist in her journey to engage voters, and he's doing really beautiful documentary filmmaking work. And a lot of the footage was filmed pre COVID so they're in post production. Another example is Riaz Kowali, which is a music ensemble that plays Sufi music, and they're partnering with engage Texas, which is an organization that empowers Muslim Americans through political literacy and civic engagement as well one minute remaining. Thank you, as well as OCA Asian Pacific American advocates. So those are just a couple of examples. Art to actions role is really in designing and facilitating this process, offering trainings for the funded artists and coaching and consulting and lifting up their work in the arts field and and beyond through platforms like this. So how do you get involved I'll just say really quickly, look for the press release and formal announcements coming soon you can follow Houston action and art to action on social media, and follow the hashtag each town votes which I will drop in the chat, as well as on Thursday this 3.30pm Eastern, we're doing a whole session called artists and the vote with the Houston arts Alliance diverse works fresh arts Houston action and art action, where we'll be doing some case studies on some of the funded projects. So we hope you'll join us for that and I'll drop the link in the chat and thank you again so much for having me. Thanks so much Andrea there was a few questions that came out from people that were really excited and wanted to get some links to your work so do make sure that you include as many links as possible in the chat for people. And just as a refresher we're going to be sending out newsletter after the resource newsletter will include this and other information. Amalia Deloni, would you like to step up and start next. I am ready and I'm going to have some help with some slides so hi everyone my name's Amalia. I've been watching everyone in the chat and I realized that there's a number of people that I think I last saw in an election call in 2004 so here we all are doing good work 16 years later. I work at funding intermediary called the media democracy fund. We work at the intersection of the internet and social justice. We're also home to a project I'm going to talk about today called the disinfo defense league, and we'll post some links for how you get involved. Next slide. So disinfo defense league was conceived as a project that was meant to address what we're calling racialized disinfo. And by racialized disinfo we're really talking about tactical strategic in many ways very intentionally strategic ways that race and ethnic identities are used as either a wedge issue or to falsify information to spread disinformation. We know these tactics were used in 2016 and disinfo defense league was really developed to be able to build the capacity of groups to identify disinfo and inoculate against it in this upcoming election. Next slide. So we call ourselves a league because really really we're a rapid response network and we're specifically looking at disrupting the coordinated disinformation that's directed at black and Latinx communities Afro Latinx communities as well. That's not to say that we're not we're available for all communities of color but we know that these two communities in particular are being surgically targeted to to do what we call voter depression. Some people call it voter suppression we call it voter depression so depress the votes. And we work nationally across geography gender and generation to really build the capacity for leaders and organizations to have the tools and the training and the skills they need to be able to actively combat racialized disinfo in their communities. Next slide. So if you join the league which is free and any of you are welcome to join and hopefully my colleagues who here will post some links. You will get invited into an online community like many people the project started pre COVID and we imagine that all of this training all of this community building would happen in real life all across the country and then COVID hit. We had to recalibrate, but we have a really incredible online community with hundreds of individuals that takes place and sort of a listserv function, where you can have access to all kinds of things. So we have weekly reports that help prepare communities for what's coming. We have SMS or text based classes that let people know what disinformation is over the course of two weeks in Spanish or English. We have clinics where you can work with experts on disinformation messaging or or inoculation efforts. We also have places where you can workshop ideas with other people on the ground who are fighting disinfo in their communities. And what makes us different than a lot of projects is the is the focus on race is putting race forward and understanding the communities of color have leadership that come from comms and research and organizing. And that we understand how culture is, you know, is a is a tool for change, and the culture in so many ways has been weaponized by disinformation. Folks, and so we really want to embed, or we want to really address the issue of culture and identity in our work and provide people with technical assistance and resources and resource providers who come from the communities who are most directly targeted. Next slide. So, who is the league. Right now we have 174 organizations from across the country who are working with us three over 300 members. At the vast majority of which are folks of color who really come out of racial justice gender justice community organizing climate change background so these are folks who who are doing community building work social change work in their in their communities and that in order to win they really have to combat this new world of disinformation that is putting harmful and harmful malicious and lies into their community whether it's you know telling people that COVID started with migrant caravans moving north, or telling other communities that 5G towers in their neighborhoods that provide internet access, while people are trying to go to school online is another way that's called COVID is spread right like these tools, and this kind of disinformation that's out there is really wrapped in culture and identity and race as a way to target specific communities. Next slide. Oops, we lost the slides Emily. Oh there you go. So, you know why am I on this panel. You know it's because our work is really cultural work. Right so we can call it disinformation we can talk about technology. But as Malcolm taught us so many years ago, we know that culture is a weapon. We know right now that culture is being weaponized to create info wars that our communities have to address. But we also know that if we reclaim culture and identity culture is a powerful tool that we can use to inoculate disinfo. And so we really see the work we're doing in the disinfo defense league as cultural work. Next slide. Why is it cultural work, because disinfo thrives on personal relationships it requires personal relationships, right. The way disinfo is spread is because the person who told you the disinfo whether it came off of Facebook or Twitter, or WhatsApp, the person who you're talking to about that information is someone that you have approximate relationship to. And so that means that the most important disinfo inoculation efforts really take place at the hyper local level with trusted messengers. We know that in communities of color, we've always had trusted knowledge holders, we've always had specific cultural channels that we're working with and so we're working to build up and equip the knowledge of folks who are working in these areas. Right, so that means a disinfo inoculator, you know, is going to be as powerful at a quinceanera or tamalata or nail shop, as they are, you know, on bigger platforms and new stations. You have one minute remaining. Perfect. Last slide. So, we'd love you to join the project we have a sign up here and again you'll see it in the chat. But join us there is a full list of activities that are going to be happening throughout October, really preparing people for the election. All of our work is non partisan so so please sign up and we'll hope to see you in the lead. Awesome. Thank you so much Amalia hopefully you will get many more disinfo inoculators from this call. Love that title. Trapania Bonner will be our next panelists. Trapania represents the Crescent City media group and Louisiana counts 2020. And again, again, Trapania Bonner Crescent City media group center of civic action. And what I didn't mention to my to the team coordinating the call is that this Louisiana counts campaign as a part of a larger project called the revolutionary senses and redistricting initiative right and it's based on the 1870 senses which was the first post slave in 1871. The first post slavery district in process, where African American well actually people of color were able to form for the first time majority minority districts, one of which I still reside until this day congressional district to which is Frederick Richmond's district. And so the campaign is a part of a regional project called South counts 2020. I'm the anchor here in Louisiana, and we support the South count strategy by providing communications and tool kits for the sake of this call I'll try to tell you about this conversation. Let's talk a little bit about Louisiana counts 2020 are organizing tools are organizing strategy and our digital digital strategy leading into corporate 19 and pandemic opportunities and so then the last thing is obviously non response as we're advocating for the extension the original extension of October 31. And so the campaign is our statewide census education campaign. And our organizing tools we primarily leverage media as an organizing tool I'm a filmmaker by trade activists at heart and through Crescent City media group I'm able to basically live out my wildest organizing dreams. But so so we use media as an organizing tool to educate community stakeholders to increase awareness and also to support advocacy organizing strategy went like this we coordinated our census events to promote and provide access to census jobs. And so the purpose of that strategy was to allow community stakeholders to take advantage of counting their counting within their own communities right. I'm something we experienced on the Gulf Coast post Katrina was because people were displaced all over the country. And so many of the folks from parts of the region had to fly in and support canvassing during our census during our census time right. And so many of those folks didn't know the difference between a blighted home or a home that was under construction right so we we lost count in a lot of ways and so we find it that found that it was important for residents within our communities to take part in this count who knows our communities better than those who reside there right. So posting those census events early in the fall of 2019 allow for us to create to organize job fairs for folks to have access to those jobs, but also to combine our efforts of get off the vote and get out to count right. Usually at our events you would have a laptop setup for you to apply for your jobs online, and also to register to vote online as we have online voter registration in Louisiana. And it's also allowed us to eventually during covert push to have folks fill out their forms online. And so we hosted a get out the form get out the, get out the count fill out your form zoom party, which was crazy to try to get that many as many people join our call which is 195 people. We hosted two week two calls within that one day a morning call, and an evening call, and they both went really well to my surprise actually I didn't thank people join our call fill out a census form right, but they did. We had public health advocates on the line to share information about covert 19. We had partnership specialist to walk community stakeholders stakeholders through the process of filling out their senses forms. And there's a sex successful event, which allowed us to gain some earned media through USA today and our local papers. One of the slides that I wanted time to share was the slide where there was. I forgot to say put up the slides. I'm sorry. One one of the slides you can see a picture of Michelle Obama, because she was a part of that article. I did I was not in a picture Michelle Obama that would have been great. But her photo was there and my name was right above it so I thought that was really cool but anyway, we received some earn media for the cause and to promote the senses across the region to our partners who are part of this effort as part of the CIP culture in Mississippi Spirit House in North Carolina project south in Atlanta, etc. There's another great group in Dallas as well, working with the city of Dallas for Dallas counts 2020. All who are part of South counts all contributed to making that call a great success. One thing I wanted to highlight. If we can go to the last slide time, which is this effort to remind folks that the census process is a part of our electoral process. Right. When we're counted within our districts, we were able to vote for candidates of our choice or run for office within our communities right so that count does allow us the opportunity to be seen within our districts and also to allow our tax dollars to flow within those districts to provide resources to many efforts in terms of infrastructure projects. And so we just remind folks that the census is a part of our electoral process as well. If Tom could go to slide to I want to show you share with you guys just some of the what our tool kits look like. When we present those to our community stakeholders and we present this as our statewide specific and we had sort of individualized municipal graphics as well. We were able to do provide scorecards to municipalities based on whether or not they had access to Internet or not right and so we all received the C minus. We do have a number of residents with access to computers but not access to Wi Fi right so we saw what we needed to increase efforts there and we were happy to see Verizon and local cable companies step up. They did not hear our cry to provide free access to internet on National Census Day and throughout that week, because we know that would help to increase the count in our areas. One minute remaining. Great. And Tom, could you go to the next slide. And I'll just leave that slide note the one following that. And I'll just leave that slide up as we know for a fact that census does provide doesn't put money into our pockets will provide but pours money within our districts to support infrastructure projects whether it's public care or schools, mutual aid centers as many folks are really building those centers across the region at this point, housing, etc. And so, but but but the primary thing we want focus to focus to focus on at this point is non response follow up. And the fact that the Bureau has moved the, the deadline for NRF you up to September 30, as opposed to October 31. We know this was a push by the president. We know that we have to pressure the census director to not only move up the deadline, but also to follow what he thinks is the president's cry to limit immigrant or undocumented access to the census we know that everyone within the bounds of the state of the country must be counted whether you're undocumented or not. And so we're working closely with our partners within the immigrant community to address this issue and a number of lawsuits have been filed as well. To combat this and to support that and to push that original deadline back to October 31. I'll leave there for folks who want to learn more about the campaign or the work. I'll place the website in the chat, or you can visit www.the-mediagroup.us Thank you Tripania for sharing eloquently on this very important work. Appreciate it. Savannah Romero from Illuminative will be presenting next we have two speakers left Savannah, go ahead. Great. Can you all see my screen. All right. Haunt Zanzi can bet you my name is Savannah Romero. I am the partnerships and programs manager with Illuminative. I am also Eastern Shoshone from the Wind River Reservation. I will start with giving some quick background information on Illuminative. So Illuminative really grew out of this reclaiming native truth report in 2018. Sorry, trying to find this advanced to the next slide. There we go. The key findings for the reclaiming native truth report included that 72% of Americans almost never encounter or seek out information about Native Americans. 27% of state history standards don't mention Native American history after the 1900s. 27 states make no mention of a single Native American in K through 12 curriculum. Native American characters only make up between zero and .04% of primetime TV and film. And lastly, less than .3% of philanthropic resources go to Native American people and organizations. So Illuminative concluded that the profound invisibility of Native peoples in contemporary society coupled with toxic misconceptions perpetuated by pop culture, media and K through 12 education fuels bias and racism against Native Americans. Concluding that systemic erasure is the way that modern day racism manifests against Native people. So Illuminative was created to address this. As a national racial justice Native led organization, our mission is to build power for Native people by amplifying contemporary Native voices, stories and issues to advance justice equity and self determination. I'll briefly discuss our Indigenous Future Survey results that we will be releasing next week because it informs our voter engagement strategy. So in partnership with our Native led research team at the University of Michigan Native Organizers Alliance and the Center for Native American Youth Illuminative organized the largest survey of Native peoples ever conducted. With 6,278 Native adult participants across the country. The survey is the first step in a years long process to understand the motivations, priorities and changing demographics and beliefs of our community. Among important information about voting voting behavior and political engagement. The Indigenous Future Survey revealed that COVID-19 is having a devastating impact on Native communities. And that addressing mental health violence against women children and LGBTQ plus individuals and access to quality and affordable health care are among the most urgent priorities for Native people. I say all of this to highlight that the issues Native peoples care about most are all on the ballot in the selection and we're using this data to create community specific calls to action in order to mobilize the Native vote. So the 2020 election is taking place at a time when the grassroots political power of Native people is rising. In 2018 there was a record setting number of Native candidates including historic number of Native women running for political office. The election of two the first two Native women to Congress Congresswoman Holland and David's that year affirmed that the power of the native affirm the power of the native vote. In addition there's a new level of awareness of the importance and potential impact of engaged Native electorate, especially in swing states with large Native populations including Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Minnesota. However, despite the growth of native civic engagement political power 34% of the total Native population is not registered to vote and the turnout rate for voters is between 5 and 14% lower than other racial groups. Eliminative believes that to empower our people to take civic action we must see our issues aspirations culture and future as connected to the political process. Which leads me to our electoral strategy. So our electoral shop strategy is two fold. First we've been working with harness the Center for cultural power and the league as one of the four anchor organizations and culture search. A coalition of more than two dozen leading cultural strategy organizations, cultural strategists and social justice artists to develop and activate cultural content that sparks a massive wave of voter engagement and historically disenfranchised communities. Second, illuminative is partner partnering with native organizers alliance to create natives vote and national campaign bringing together native artists and storytellers with grassroots communities organizers and influencers to increase native voter registration and mobilize a historic voter turnout across Indian country. Our overarching overarching call to action is one register to vote and to make a voting plan via masqueramal. We're partnering with native artists and storytellers to create content informed by the priorities identified in the indigenous future survey in order to inspire and mobilize the native vote. On the slide you can see examples of the creative content we've already commissioned our campaign will be launching this Wednesday with the launch of our website and our And next Wednesday during national voter registration day will be hosting a national town hall on Facebook live to kick off the campaign. Lastly, I want to close by saying that as we face the election of a lifetime, it's imperative that native peoples perspectives and issues are present in the conversations about the future of this country. The recognition and inclusion of native peoples and the recognition of our inherent moral and legal rights as sovereign nations are key to building a more inclusive and representative democracy. And our collective ancestral knowledge as a community will ensure a safer future for us all. Thank you and please follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, subscribe to our mailing list on the natives vote 2020.com website once it goes live on Wednesday, and I will add the resources in the document and the chat. Thank you. Great. Thanks so much Savannah. All incredible information. Everybody just keep continue remembering to place any resources or information you have in the chat window we're really looking forward to compiling the resource guide for everybody after this call. So our last speaker today before opening it up to the floor we have more than 10 people already signed up to share is Dr Rob Biko Baker. Rob, would you like to start? How are you all doing. My name is Biko I appreciate the opportunity to get on the call with you all today such an important topic where seems like every four years most important election of our lifetime but I feel this one in my bones. A little bit of background on my about myself I am a for the former executive director of the League of Young Voters. I spend most of my 20s and far too much of my 30s, sort of spending time organizing the in the evenings I was working with hip hop artists and running for hip hop magazines. And I've known Karen for a long time we actually and I saw Yoshi's on this call to man we did some stuff y'all. A little bit about where we're at we, I was in 2016 I started this firm for firm called render it's a digital storytelling firm. You know we do great design we do, we can do some technology we can do some film production, but really we're a storytelling firm and that's so important because storytelling is we, everybody knows all the data that tells you that we're inspired by storytelling storytelling is our strategy. And so that's what we try to do. And, you know, I've known this for a long time but over the last four or five six years I really believe that the new American majority is the key to the future. I'm not going to get there with them but I'm going to try to my most the most that I can do to get them there. And y'all know who the new American majority is but I especially believe that black women have such an important role in this situation and my firm, most of my clients are women of color I was was referred by women of color so this is such an important part of our community that's never going anywhere. So we have our clients, you know, we've worked with, you know, our NASA trodman who some of you may know and Calvin Williams with the big we, we've also worked Ava DuVernay's nonprofit film organization called array. We've also did a big project with my longtime comrades Casper agency, we actually started a joint venture called get louder we work with big epic brands who are trying to bring social change through brand awareness. And as you know, young people millennials Gen Z's and even Gen X are very much brand aware of people. Some of the big projects we worked on we did a social cultural competency project with Warner Brothers new film, Ryan Cougar's new film I probably not supposed to talk about this so I should not put that in there. The next one is, we actually co produced a film cost range of fruit with a filmmaker a white, a white guy who went to Ferguson and told the story of my Browns family this is actually in stars and then we're helping women of color, such as director named J. Sharon UCLA student produced films with the British Virgin Islands. And last thing, but we're still grassroots I'm still Milwaukee Wisconsin. I'm always going to be Milwaukee Wisconsin I still live in Milwaukee Wisconsin. And so a lot of our efforts is lifting up grassroots superheroes at the grassroots and local level and so we have illustrators and comic book writers who are cap personifying you know people like one more who everybody everyone loves. Tyler from St. Louis who's a Ferguson protest hero 23 as a hero, and then Frank maybe who just walked across the country. Man to DC from Milwaukee. So, because of our network, you know we were we were night, we, we unite millions, you know, and we're loud, we're not afraid of this, this is what we need to be doing and have people my team, you know, we have lots and lots of experience at the intersection of digital and social justice. So we sort of understand how this works. You know some people go online like we're going to make it viral. It's like nah, you know, and you know when I was a civic engagement organizer these tactics live true online. And it's like, you got to meet them where they live. How are they communicating what lights them up. And you know we're, this isn't like a cyclical thing you know we're not just talking about civic engagement we have clients that are working on civic engagement projects. But we also might be in a studio with business boy or k camp and and future. So how we generate awareness. Our pros flips media on its head. We use experience online offline or both to pull voters and engagement. If the content isn't legit to the core community. They share it ready to move in our social media. This impacts culture. And so many people are coming to us to do paid media and that's great. We love paid media. But the best things are organic and so many artists on here know that and we try to create the the ecosystem so that we can make things blow up. I'm going to get to that. Push to that. People influence people, you know, we, you know, Jacob Latimore young man who's on the television show show time the shy he's been on that show for some years now he's also done a lot of great projects r&b major label he first started doing events with us when he was eight years old. And I could go up and knock every door of every 25 year old woman voter in the city of my the scene in which I live. But if we can get Jacob on IG with a young lady who's also making a record light up and we've done that time and time again. This is just the analysis of new American the majority. I don't know if anybody else has done this or looked at this but you know people are always looking for young or you know the working class white folks, you know the white voters of all the, the traditional Democratic voter, but the reality is you can't find them because they don't exist. The future is brown. You know, the future is brown they just don't exist anymore and that's not a knock but it's like trying to sell a product to people who aren't there. And the world, America has to realize that the future is going to be brown. It will be brown and that's beautiful it's so much potential and opportunity that's there and you know I got a PhD and focus on data and social change through statistics, just to show people that this is the future and they still don't believe me also sorry. I don't know. And it's been a lot of money and people that don't exist. You had one minute remaining. So this this slide is a little bit dated but we are the grassroots, you know, we're, we're in the communities where traditional people don't like to go. They're there because culture is there and that's where the hottest artists and music and creative will be and you know until I die hope to stay hip and stay around people who can play dope music and great great graphics. Awesome. Thank you be go much appreciated and beautiful slide show pops. So we have, as I mentioned, many people signed up to share short two minute pitches of projects that they're working on locally. But before we do that I'd love to just open up space for some questions or comments for this super rich content that was just shared. We can make 10 minutes for it. It's 350 now or where I live. But so at four o'clock we can move on to open up to that queue. Any hand raises or questions in the chat that would like to be shared. I'm going to give it a minute or so I actually have a question for you guys that came up for me I've been working on building out a strategy to engage voters along the border region from California to Texas. And as I think many of you know the young Latino voter is a really important voter in this election. And one thing that we keep like wrapping our head trying to wrap our heads around is like, where that's not me, you know, I'm not that young voter. I don't know how take top works. So, what do you guys do in terms of really trying to think about and to attract that young voter, whether it be for voting or for getting their information on the census. I'll jump in and say that actually one of the H town votes artists. They actually do plan on using tick tock. That's Mecca, which Mecca which stands for multi cultural education and counseling through the arts in Houston. Yeah, definitely I think you know one of the intentions of H town votes was was to engage youth. And so artists are taking a lot of different approaches to that you'll hear from Christina long in just a little bit about how she's working with you but I think social media plays really a really, really important role perhaps bigger than ever in this election and in reaching youth who spend a lot of time there the more creative we can get. I noticed that an artist called tofu riot is who's also one of the H town votes artists is on the call going to be doing animation through Instagram and social media interventions on a weekly if not daily basis. So, um, and you know some people are more old school like live spoken word poetry. Different kinds different. I think it's important that we use any and all tools and methodologies and approaches to creatively engaging youth voters this year. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that you know we got some really quick responses which basically we have young people which I think is a really solid obvious go to so thank you for naming that and and also I'm seeing that March for our lives.com has local chapters with lots of artists who are really writing hard this election. So, I'm no I'm going to be checking out March for our lives.com. Any other thoughts on that question around the young voter. Just inclusion in the process, long before voting season. We have to engage young folks and it's to be a part of the process and included in the scaffolding as it as we begin to build strategies to move forward. We take ownership and agency when you have it. We saw that when we produced early on, census films with the young folks at a local elementary school, kid more else school, and they were awesome and they were as informed. They were so informed, we didn't have to do our whole educational spill their teachers and their parents already had them sort of prepped. So what we need to do is provide them with an opportunity to amplify their voices and to support the overall cause. Great. Thanks for any other questions. You have a question from galaxy J7 crown, I believe. Are you there. I saw you raise your hand so Agustin, Agustina University shirt. Yes, that's me. I've been sitting here watching and listening as much as I could, building up my own little art studio here. I am out in the Midwest and I have started and founded a little thing called Midwest immersive artists collective and we are struggling to find ways of connecting with the community. Because, you know, being a person of color in a community that is just kind of now getting open to that. Where does a person start and what kind of community you guys have where you know somebody like me just trying to jump into it and bring this kind of information. You know, inspire young voters inspire people to get involved with all of the community activities and and outreaches. What is a good place for someone like me to start. I don't know much about your story but I'm in the Midwest and you didn't have to say much but I understood what you were saying. So, you know, I really encourage you just to believe in yourself I know that for a long time I've struggled with imposter syndrome and like my beliefs aren't right my creative vision isn't right. For a long time and I really believe that if you believe in yourself and you know you're also vulnerable, you know as a creative or as a leader, you can get to your purpose. Appreciate that. I think also to providing a space for folks to learn more about what opportunities they may have working with you, and a sort of shared opportunity to that end, which which is difficult during the quarantine. But, but also provide some opportunities to sort of link folks and to form sort of a light working group of coalition around the work that you're attempting to do. Yeah, I just also add you know, when you work with a value of intergenerational leadership, these questions about how you include youth or any other age group. You know, are less, they're less of a knee jerk reaction because it's a value the different ages and different perspectives make your work stronger. And I think, you know this anytime you're doing critical work is an important you always have time to hit pause and ask yourself what new principles and values you want to bring in to center your work, and a commitment to intergenerational leadership is important. Thanks. Thank you. Any other questions. Hi. Hi. I think I was after the galaxy guy. I'm sorry. Am I wrong. I don't see my hand raised anymore so I assume that it's me so I think I went after galaxy seven galaxy j7. So I actually organized on the ground with an organization called stop on violence against women, and we're particularly focused on digital vote suppression, going into the last 50 days. And so my question is as much as we want to talk about youth and understanding youth impact in terms of how they use social media and the like. I think this work is being done on how much they might be spreading or understand disinformation around the election, and it's impact. And or what any of you are doing about it, if at all. Well, I don't want to jump first again but it was getting a little uncomfortable. So but, you know, there's, there's huge efforts by foreign countries and other nation states. To change and alter our narrative and really weaken the civic engagement process in our country I've seen that firsthand. And I've seen it in a way that these ads and things that pop up on social media and we're not even close to being ready for the amount of disinformation as they're in fact I've had people that have formally worked for me. And I've seen weeks sharing memes that say like, you know if we can stand in line during the holidays we can stand in line to get our vote basically trying to weaken absentee ballot and vote and vote by mail. And it's because these these messages are being forced down our throat through content farms and I really am worried about our side of the game still not understanding how important stories are to shaping up the way that we act. As humans. Do you have counter narratives I mean you're the media guy. I have a lot of counter never narratives now. If you give me time I give you like 17 pitch decks, some mood board, some, you know, some treatments. So we have a lot of stuff on on this but right now we have about 30 clients and have a lot of ideas and what we're even doing right now. We're shooting a short film with going production this weekend. You know, it's a trick or vote everybody's involved with trick or vote but it's like a horse story where we're trying to convince millennials and Gen Z that actually the vote is a value and hopefully, if you see this film you can share it with the people in your network. Thank you anybody else. On this topic. Yes, my name is Nancy I'm from San Diego I've just encouraged artists and the community members about social media. Somebody mentioned it's a great way to really connect it with others and then, but just by posting something positive like I am doing my own personal projects. Right now like I'm creating art and put it every day like the image every day you're saying like you know why it's important and, and, and the reasons, and I created links that they're like what great information with the information that's valid. Sometimes we just have like seven seconds to see this information and we dependent that information and just remember guys that that social media is not. It's not, it's not your for people to really dependent that information genie is the starting point and from then you need to really research more information. I agree I think that's a really good question and something to ponder if folks have ideas on how to challenge that disinfo with the young voter please share it. I'm seeing other information in the chat from people like Penn who's going to present soon and one hood media we're definitely consolidating all that in all that info in the chat for our resource newsletter. Sort of out on time out of time but I also I want to give space to Garrett who had a hand up and then we'll switch to the stack of presenters Garrett. Hi guys, can you hear me. Yes. I was curious about like. This is like a non partisan. effort. Is that, you know, I kind of forget my question anymore but I was, I just like the fact that it was non partisan which is something that's like totally different from everything else that's just bipartisan like our whole loading system seems like it's just overrun by bipartisan propaganda like either Democrat or Republican and every election comes to the same thing. And I just thought it was really cool how like this this group or session is not like biased in any way. Is there a way that we can like promote that further in our political system like this non bias information I guess or non bias non partisan voting platform, or voting. Do you know what I mean, like encourage. I don't. Sorry, I wish I could ask this question better but I try in here. Yeah, does anybody else have can add on that maybe. You know, there was Francis unless mentioned the need to really center the work on community rather than parties which I think is really important and integral to the work of us to see and the work of arts and democracy. And I'm curious if other people have thoughts I know Sonya bias and on this also mentioned wanting to speak to that a little bit. And if anybody else has thoughts, by all means, before we move to the stack. One thing I just wanted to share with you. One strategic that, for example, was used here in Florida. And they were interviewing people from the community and then some of the question is why people have people, why people need to vote. I was one of Alice I was as an artist I was, you know, I was interviewing and I think that sometimes I think that if we think that then we can interview artists people from the community. And then we basically populate a lot of voices coming from different point of view of why we need to vote I think basically I selected three issues one was against police brutality climate change and the detention center. And it's for me for me that was an important elements of why we need to go and vote. But I think then for me that is a way of listening people the voice from the community the voice from the artist, and then basically was recorded on a phone. And then it was there in Facebook, I still they are maybe I should promote it more, but I think it's something that I feel that, you know, also have people from different color from different social class talking about this is really fundamental because I don't think that we can control the narrative. The, you know, it's a disparity is the resources then that the community have versus what the power, people in power have. So I think that we can activate those sectors to as well. Great. Thank you so much Sonia. So I appreciate everybody is sharing and openness to listen and be a part of this conversation. I now would like to just move to the next phase where we're going to be listening from other people who shared some information or shared excitement and enthusiasm. I am going to move Lisa gold to the top because I know that Lisa, you need to hop off in a little bit. Lisa gold from the Asian American Arts Alliance, followed by Lauren Kunis from the National Voter Registration Day and then you'll see Sargent from go vote. So just heads up those are the next three on stack Lisa. Thank you so much. It's so nice to see you. Hello, everybody. I'm Lisa gold. I'm the executive director of the Asian American Arts Alliance or a for I'm a mixed race woman of a certain age with my hair very dark pulled back into a bun and wearing a black sleeveless blouse and I'm seated against a backdrop of varied various artworks on a brick wall. First of all, I just want to thank recal and Karen and everybody at arts and democracy and the US Department of Arts and Culture to allow me just to say a few words about a for and our upcoming town hall event. So we are a 36 year old Brooklyn based artists service organization dedicated to ensuring greater representation and equity and opportunities for Asian American artists and cultural organizations. And we have a lot of programs that promote conversations around identity and we offer professional development workshops and other events that offer pathways of access to cultural gatekeepers and we bring together the community and try to uplift the work of our constituents and one of the many programs that we do and we've been doing it for 10 years. It's called town hall and it is a bi monthly event where we invite members of the community poets filmmakers dancers musicians and all artists of all disciplines to talk about their work and to learn about other creative projects and events that are happening in the community or to ask for support or collaborators and just to network with other Asian American creators and get inspiration so coming up next week next Tuesday on September 22 and at 630 Eastern time, we're going to be presenting our September town hall event, and the theme of that is arts and civic engagement. So we are going to have two featured presenters the format of this is that we have two featured presenters that give about 10 minute pitches projects, and then we have about 25 to 30 people that get up kind of like Petchacoo to slam style and give like a one minute pitch about their projects with video and other discussion so our two featured presenters. Thank you. It's been two minutes just wrap up. Thank you. Anyway, just Michelle Wu from for freedoms is going to be speaking in Ariela strada from one step for democracy. So I hope you will join us next Tuesday I'm going to drop the link into the into the chat so I hope you will sign up and join us it's free to participate and I would love to hear more about all of your projects I know all of our constituents would love to know more about what you're doing to so thank you. Thanks Lisa. Much appreciated. It's good to see New York for a minute. Lauren Kunis from the National voter registration day. Hi, thank you. I think there was a slide that someone was going to share. If not, I can just pull that up. Awesome. Thank you. I will dive right in in the meantime. The National voter registration day is a non partisan civic holiday it's held every year and this year it's going to be as you can see on September 22 2020. Sorry, so the holiday was started because one in four eligible Americans is not registered to vote and those numbers are even higher for youth and community of color. The goal is to change that and get every eligible American registered and ready to have a voice in our political system. The holiday is a coordinated day of action taking place next Tuesday it involves thousands of partners of all stripes and sizes nonprofits libraries coops businesses digital flat platform media companies and more. This year they'll be holding in person voter registration drives in a coven conscious way, as well as doing virtual activations on zoom using social media sending email blasts, all with calls to register to vote today before it's too late. The voter registrations as some of you may know are way way down because of coven. We estimate that we lost about 2 million new voter registrations per month when social distancing first went into effect, and DMV is closed and in person drives on campuses at concerts at farmers markets were put on hold. Two thirds of states require you to register ahead of election day if you want to vote at all. There's a lot of ground to make up for and a shrinking window of time in which to do so the first state deadlines are coming up on October 5, I believe. Good news is it's not too late to get involved with National Voter Registration Day. I see Karen just sent the link to our website around in the chat. I encourage all of you to get involved whether or not you're an organization or an individual organizations can sign up as an official holiday partner on our website. It takes two minutes. All that require is required is you give it your best shot to get voters in your community registered in a nonpartisan way of course on September 22nd. So again this could be in person, virtual calls to action. The partner organization toolkit on our website has ready made social media graphics and posts, emails you can send a step by step guide to holding a voter registration drive. I just can't stress enough it needs to be all hands on deck to get voters registered this year. If we want to have record setting turnout in November we need record setting voter registration right now. So thank you for the opportunity to share. Again our website is there you can contact me at Lauren at National Voter Registration Day.org or send to our general account and someone will get back to you. Thanks Lauren. Much appreciated. Thank you. Go see. Get to the share one second. I'm going to do this whole screen share thing hold on. Well it's not letting me so I'm just going to. Oh here we go. Never mind. Okay so. You'll see if you'd like we can skip to somebody else and come back to you if it's just awesome. Can you do that. Yeah, definitely. So nor not have any of this. Are you ready. If not we can skip to Joe Lipkin. Born ready here I am. Oh, go ahead. So sorry. I'm so sorry. No worries. Things happened things happened. Okay. Coming back to that. I run an organization called Task Force. I am a little thrown off so sorry about that. We started something about six months ago called the interaction lab basically want to give people the tools and resources they need to advocate on their own behalf. So we've been cranking out we've made over 5000 gifts and memes. They're all unbranded and offered for free. We have organically been uploading them to the repositories that fuel social media that's giffy gift cat tenor. People don't know this but giffy is the second largest search engine in the world after Google put this into context. That's a beat 27 billion views so scale. This is what it looks like. And we touch on every subject matter we've been partnered with over 100 organizations asking them to help inform the content sending us messaging sending us timely issues things that are happening in the in the context of now and things that will be remain evergreen and live on for use across social media when you use the gif search function and your direct one to one text in your WhatsApp when you try to stick a sticker on Instagram and snapchat and it's just stories. This is the these are the repositories that fuel those. This is what it looks like across education election. This is what it looks like. Local we can add we can get extremely local we can get go to city names sports universities when people go online they search for things that are relevant to them. Either you show up on their feet or you don't somebody else is putting things on there that they are that is showing up on their feet so either you're informing that process you're not for that process. I'm going to jump into that process. Your time is to say one flight and we have memes and the memes are funny and you can use them. There's census there's all the issues that we were just talking about. Also we're producing 200 live in person interventions in swing states between now and the election. This is we are the art partner for March for our lives that you heard about earlier. And then artists made 10 voter registration stations that we installed throughout the city will be doing way more of those. Last but not least, here's where you can find us. And I'll drop them into the chat as well. Okay, sorry, thanks. Awesome. Thanks so much you'll see. Hi everyone, I'm Nora Benavidez I am the director of us free expression programs at Pan America. I'm really excited to be here you know we are an organization at the nexus of literature and free expression. So I feel like we're marrying a lot of pens own interest and constituents that we serve being here. I, in addition to being a lawyer and a movement lawyer for many years, I also run Pan America's disinformation work. And so I wanted to give you guys just a little bit of a prelude of what we are doing this election season. We've been researching the effect of disinformation on communities, and specifically around elections for the last two elections, including our midterms in 2018 and in 2016. This year, we're going to be ramping up doing work in a few ways we in early 2020 launched a media literacy and disinformation defense program, which equips voters and other members of the public with tools to identify disinformation and other forms of misleading content. And so in the lead up to the election, we're going to be doing, I'm going to say five things, but I think we're doing more. And then we're going to be launching a social media campaign on what voters can expect this election season that results will be delayed. There will be fertile ground for disinformation to thrive, among other things. We're working with voters, media partners and librarians to educate them and also to give educators and librarians tools to conduct their own workshop. We're also working with on the media side journalists and editors talking through what the tough calls will be when they report on and call elections in concert with the AP. We're going to be also spotlighting and focusing a lot on how BIPOC communities and Spanish language voters are targeted with disinformation campaigns from foreign to domestic tactics. We're also producing a series of very short form guides on hot spots of disinformation. The newest that we released last week was about how to talk with friends and family who share misinformation. And it's the number one question we get actually in our work, all the time, every time we do a workshop, community session, a journalist panel, everything. And then we're also going to be working with trusted voices in battleground cities and states. Those are the radio host, the Spanish language TV people, you know, pastors and other faith leaders of pretty wide swath. We are focused on trying to elevate what we can to help voters actually identify disinformation, whether it's about the pandemic, even about protest, as well as the election itself and narrative. You're two minutes are at it. You're two minutes. Okay, I'll put the link in the chat for you guys to learn more. And I'll also put my email. So thanks a lot. Great. Thanks so much, Nora. Appreciate it. Hello, Mipkin. Dance the vote. Yes. Hello, everybody. So I am talking to you from Missouri. And it is a hotspot for misinformation and voter depression here. Four years ago, we started dance the vote, which is a St. Louis based initiative that pairs spoken word dance music, graphics and videos to with voter advocacy and now also we're working on the census. And with the pandemic, we have pivoted to a digital platform. And when George Floyd was murdered, and the, and we see you white American theater manifesto was out. We decided that although we'd always been racially mixed that we would center our, excuse me, we would center our commissions largely on BIPOC choreographers to create videos about voting and other issues that concern them. We're doing a number of other things. We're co hosting a 50 state 50 day National Dance Party tomorrow and I'm hoping Thomas can put that in the chat for us. We just finished taping a bilingual video on the census and voter registration for the Latinx community. We're looking forward to doing this as well in the disability community. I'm concerned that the arts community actually is kind of passive about these things. And so we're really making an effort to connect with the regional theaters. I could mention many other things, but the last thing I'm going to leave with right now is to say that next week in partnership with Webster University. We will announce our collegiate competition for show short videos in any media with cash awarded because we think it's important to pay people right to the extent that we can, but everybody's work will be available to stream, and we're calling it good trouble why John Lewis inspires. Did I hit the two minute mark. Thanks so much that was stellar on time. I just want to say thank you to everybody for all the things are needed right now. Thank you. Appreciate it. So we've got Christina Wong next and then Francisco less afterwards. Hi everyone I'm Christina Wong I'm a performance artist comedian and recently an elected representative in Korea town. As of last year, 72 votes if you count the vote a cast for myself for neighborhood council so I had the show called Christina Wong for public office that was set to tour the country alongside real life rallies, and now I tore the show from my house. So that's my kitchen. That's the area previously known as my kitchen so in the researcher doing the show I learned that Asian Americans have the worst voter turnout at 40.2% in the 2018 election we flunked voting. What do we do about this because I mine 42 year old but can't quite influence the young so I have a web series called radical cram school, which is not bipartisan but I borrow from that humor in this series of videos that we're going to make using H town votes grant called vote for the future and so we have Asian American kids. We just shot yesterday, kids having tantrums. This is a thing people like watching kids have tantrums. So it's a little scripted but the kids are like, yeah wrote in my life, please. Oh my god you're an embarrassment. So we think this is going to do really well. I know it sounds crazy, but kids are weird and they like watching this kind of stuff. And then we have other videos where older woman gets bombed by her younger self who shames her for not wanting to go out and vote. So we will use a local cast from Houston to talk about to offer up all the adult reasons why, why adults don't vote but but said through kids so we're hoping that this is engaging and kind of funny and weird. And that's what we're making I can keep I can keep dancing for you showing my house if I haven't gone past the two minutes. You have five seconds left. Other group is on to sewing squad. I run a mass making group. So, thank you. Much appreciated Christina. Thank you for the enthusiasm. Hi, folks. Thanks so much. It's just so great to be around so many artists and creative people. I'm a, I'm a lawyer but in my former life, I played the oboe and I played my music and I was in high school and college. I think I really bring that into our work at peace and in action and just want to say that with all the questions that I've seen, this would really love to talk to anyone who's looking at how you bring artists and organizers and community engagement is something that I think was really great in our process that art to action help us with this building relationship with artists as we as a precursor to this work, as well as making sure and asking them what they needed what what I was really surprised to hear is how much artists wanted to learn about how to organize their community for the things that they need so that's something that we're also thinking about as well and that's not just artists in service of the organizers so would love to connect with anyone who's doing that kind of work and continue to learn as we because we're really excited to be working with Christina and a bunch of other artists and to see what happens. This is an experiment for us, but you know I'm calling you from Houston, Texas and if you watch the news you know Texas is a hot spot for so much. And so also a place for a lot of opportunity for us to be very creative and do something different so don't ever discount us down in Texas we have a lot of really great work and folks on off to know this that we are. It's just diversity in the country and so getting people of color to vote and young people is essential for us because that's who we are and, and really making sure that we ensure that people of color lead with their arts and cultural practices to make sure that we can get folks engaged. So thank you so much it was a wonderful presentation and look forward to staying in touch with you. So thanks Francis ripping Texas. Dale, Dale under Dale Andre and then Jamie McCrae Lex Lamir and some problems. Hi, if Jamie McCrae is on if she's here, she can also speak to this because we're together on dance the vote, which is not the same as Joan live kids but we met because of this forum so I thank you for that. We've already found a way to collaborate on what we're doing. I'm director of national water dance and I'm working with Jamie McCrae on this campaign dance the vote. National Water Dance is a national organization that uses dance to bring attention to the environment climate change and water issues it's a biannual site specific simultaneous event that we live stream. This campaign of dance the vote is going to be the week of September 22 which is as we've already heard national voter registration day. And we're going to use the whole week to do a kind of ice bucket challenge by using movement to speak to why we're voting which Sonya from Miami Miami just spoke to to there's so many overlaps. Anyone can do it. We're doing it through Instagram and through Facebook and the idea is to use your own physical expression a simple gesture as to why you're voting and pass that on to someone else as many people as you know. We have information through vote for 11.org on all the information you need for voting but also we have national voter registration day here is another link we can probably put up on there. So I hope you'll join us and participate. It's fun but it's also very serious as we all know we have to get the vote out. Great. Thank you. Jamie would you like to add something to that. Just want to respect that you're also on this list. You might not have been able to make it. She was awesome. Okay, so we've got Lex Lamere and and Sabra Williams. Lex. Maybe Lex is not here. Sabra. Hi, thank you very much. Williams. I am a woman of color wearing a black t-shirt against a bright blue background with my hair in a dark hair in a ponytail tail. We run an organization called Creative Act. We are a relatively new organization. I used to run and started an organization for the Actors Gang Prison Project. I've been working inside prisons for 15 years bringing in arts programming and act creative acts. We do really three programs. One is a crazy virtual reality reentry program that we do on maximum security yards for lifers who are returning. But the two that you will probably be more interested in are our art attacks program in children's prisons in Los Angeles County where we bring in an arts workshop. We're partners with March for Our Lives so that when our kids return they can continue their civic engagement in the community with March for Our Lives. But we bring in an arts program. We started it in 2018 for the primary elections in 2018 and of the kids we worked with, 86% of them voted in a primary election who are incarcerated. So we're doing it again for this election and we hope to have a similar result even though we're doing it on this craziness instead of in person. And then the other program we have is called hashtag party at the polls where we ask artists to perform outside their polling stations to draw people to the polls and also to keep them in line to make sure that they vote. And it was super successful last time. It was only going to be in LA but actually ended up being across the country. So if any of you are interested in participating or know any artists who might be please feel free to reach out to us. And just so you know, our mission at Creative Acts is to transform urgent social justice issues through the revolutionary power of the arts to heal trauma, build community, raise power and send to the voices of those who are or have been incarcerated. So we're not teaching people how to be artists. We're using the power and the tools of the arts for people to be able to heal trauma and create make different behavioral choices and to create value in their communities. So please reach out. It's creative acts dot us not dot com dot us and we would love to. Oh, I just need to show you this because this is going to blow your mind. These are my kids in juvie they've made these my vote is posters in 20 minutes inside. They're very beautiful. And we're really fortunate to be able to bring these that outside my voters my ancestors voice. So this is what they're doing inside juvie and they all committed to vote by absentee ballot. So thank you I'll put the website in the thing. Oh, someone did thank you. Great. Thanks so much for adding for sharing that both the story and the images as well I appreciate that. So, we are right on time just one minute over which is phenomenal that seldom happens in this world. I just rather than taking questions I want to create a few minutes for people to just think about the any resource that you've come across that was eye opening to you that you found to be interesting that you found really work that you found really sparked some curiosity, or was smart or engaging in some way for any demographic. Share that with us at it in the chat. It could be a project you've worked on it could be a project your neighbor worked on your colleague worked on something you randomly came across on social media. We want to see as much of that information as possible, because we want to share it back out with you all. Share it in the chat. If we if it comes to you tonight you can also just email it to us will make sure to get all this information back out your way. So, um, Yeah, you know, we can't announce just yet what exactly is going on but the net call part two of this series of calls is taking place in early October, and that call will really focus on how movement building can support the call for people to become energized around election season. So we've got some really stellar speakers from the racial environmental and economic justice world, who are ready to present on their platforms and all the different ways that they've been working to mobilize communities nationally across the country and build momentum towards election day. So hopefully you can join us if you're on this list you will get an email for that for part two, and this call will be recorded if you know of others who might be interested in this that we're unable to attend. We'd love to see you. As a moment of closing I would love for us to just if everybody can unmute themselves and if you are able to let us hear your video as well. I know having some is so weird because there's all of these silence black boxes. But on three I'd love for everybody to just shout hooray we got this beautiful. We got it. We got it. Everyone's joining us please stay in touch. It's lovely to be a part of this community with you. Thank you. Thank you.