Activism on Race, Gender & Sexual Identity | DeRay Mckesson | Talks at Google

thank you all so much for being here today uh this year to celebrate Pride we wanted to create uh spaces to have some really meaningful dialogue about our identities and uh we're so excited that BGN black googlers networks and gers partnered up to bring D messen for you today um I'm going to read D's bio D is a protester and he's dedicated to ending police and state violence notably through campaign zero and as a civil rights activist both at the local and the national level he previously worked

at the Harlem children's Zone and tntp opened an academic and Richmond Center in West Baltimore and with Baltimore City Public Schools and Minneapolis public schools is leading systemic human capital change he was recently named as one of the 50 world's greatest leaders by Fortune Magazine and as one of the 30 most influential people on the Internet by Time Magazine please help me welcome J messen it's an honor to be here it's good to to see some familiar faces and and so many new faces um this

is embarrassing for you Ben but I went to college with Ben I saw Ben in the hallway I was like oh my God I haven't seen been in forever so most people know that I wear this belt every day but I also wear my Bowden I mean most people know I wear this vest every day but I wear a Bowden bell every single day um which you don't see and and Ben and I went to Bowden so if you don't know Ben you should meet him afterwards because he's great so I know we're going to do a moderator conversation I'm most

excited about these questions which I've not heard and also your questions which um are going to be probably the freshest things I worry sometimes that I tweet so much and I talk so much that you probably heard everything I could possibly say so your questions make me most excited but I will say in August 16 2014 I was sitting on my couch in Minneapolis I was a senior director of human capital and I was looking on Twitter to see what's happening at Ferguson and I was looking at TV to see what's

happening in Ferguson and they were not the same stories and I was like I want to go see for myself and I just wanted to go bear witness so I got in the car I drove nine hours of St Louis I put on Facebook that I am going to St Louis I didn't know anybody in the state of Missouri I wanted to find somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody whose couch I could sleep on S hours in I get a call in Iowa I some rough roads in Iowa I got a call you know it's it was a Google Maps if you work on the G

oogle Maps team Google Maps almost got me in Iowa let me tell you because there was like no reception so I like took this call and then it was like my GPS was like there was a lot of faith in Iowa but I got a call and they were like d we found somewhere for you to sleep and and that was my story so I showed up in the middle of the street in St Louis like so many other people in those early days you know Mike got killed on the 9th I was there on the 16th the second day that I was in St Louis was

the first day of the um curfew if any of you remember the curfew you back in those early days and it was also the first night that I got teargas it was in that moment that I said I will do whatever I can to make sure that this is not a world that other people have to experience like this before that my work was all about kids I was a teacher I opened up after school programs I was a number two in human capital in Baltimore City Public Schools in Minneapolis but I had this moment that was like yo

u got to be alive to learn right that I'm doing all this work to make sure kids have like a great teacher every single day and Tamir will never know our high school teacher Mike Brown will never know our college professor Ayanna Ria so many people and that changed the world for me one of the things I worry about when I think about the last 20ish months um I worry that people think of protesters or protests is only those of us who stood in streets only those of us who put our bodies on the line i

n that way but what I know to be true today is that protest and a true is this idea of telling the truth in public that we stood in streets to tell the truth of our bodies that Mike should be alive and Ria should be alive and aana that we disrupt a meetings and commissions tell the truth they should be using their power in ways that benefited the lives of black people and other marginalized people and in that sense there are many ways for all of us to tell the truth in this work that you are not

absolved from your commitment to social justice just because you have not been in streets but we all have a role to play and that has to be how we think about what comes next in the movement space um I'm excited to talk about the questions I do have many worries about where we go next but I'm hopeful because I I know that so many people over the last 20 months have done so much to make this a nationwide conversation that we are talking about race and Justice and identity and ways that we have n

ever talked about in public in our generation and that is really powerful uh and there's a real onus on all of us to make sure that we turn this into more than a moment that this is not just a really cool conversation we've been having for the last 20 months but that we actually change the world in some demonstrable ways and I think that that part of the work is a little potentially less sexy uh than the beginning part of the work for some people but that work is really important that if all we

do is change the conversation we have not done enough but changing the conversation is unbelievably hard work and I say that as somebody who you know we were in the street for 300 plus days I am just one of many people who did that across the country and it has been powerful to see people own their voices and new and incredible ways every single day and I bless you and I do think that the conversation about identity is something that we didn't we didn't know was going to happen in those early da

ys like we just had no clue but it's been powerful to see I remember the first time in St Louis that there there was ever a conversation about sexuality there was a protest so the police killed Mike and then they killed 10 people after Mike Brown in St Louis so it was like just continuous trauma and they killed verea and Shaw which is in St Louis city and I'll never forget it was like the police had circled in this intersection and they were there was like they were like pepper people it was a m

ess and this guy walks up to the police and he's like you it's like he yells at the police then he turns around this other protester looks at him and it's like chaos right the whole night is chaos and this guy looks at him he was like that really off offended me and the guy's like I'm sorry and I was like wow look at that and it was in that moment that I was like I think we'll be all right like I think that we will figure this out and that we will continue to push the boundaries of what people h

ave thought Community looked like um and that moment is something I refer to often because I will never I was like and he said he was like you offending me I was like oh this is about to be B and he was like I'm sorry and I was like yes so you know I think about those small moments often because I think that they have larger implications about how we build community how we come together what that means uh and how we learn to love each other differently so excited to be here that was just the beg

inning I'm excited for Rebecca she's been a great uh Wrangler of me over the last couple of weeks and I'm most excited for your questions thank you so much y'all so I want to start the conversation on the point that you made about our different identities or identity categories um the Glad Gala you you you had had a quote that so beautiful it says um there is beauti there's beautiful complexity in your identities and that there is danger in the either or can you touch a little bit I know you tal

ked about it now but can you touch on intersectionality and why is so important that we continue to have these conversations and actually drive them with action yeah so you know we show up is I was somewhere recently and somebody said D are you like black first or gay first I was like well you know um and in the end what I said was that you you see my Blackness first before you see anything else but I like live in all of my identities at the same time every moment right and part of our work is h

ow do we make sure that people are safe living in their identities at every moment whether you see it or not right and just because you don't know doesn't mean I'm hiding just because you don't know I'm gay doesn't mean I'm not gay and it also doesn't mean that I need to tell you every two seconds about it but it is about how do we make sure we do our part to make sure that people are safe in every part of the world they live in the thing about the either or uh was not necessarily about identity

as much as it was I think in some of these places where we are so passionate about the work like it become we like take these camps right we're like either reformists or revolutionaries we either like live in community or we don't live in like it becomes so in like the camps be become so intense um and people I think don't often do the work of saying like here's how we can actually do both at the same time so you think about Congress to sit in that Congress has did and you know I have my concer

ns with it but overall I support it and people are you know it's like this either or either you like hate the No Fly list and you hate everything or you know it's like people aren't allowing for people to say like I believe in the sit in that they did and I think the No Fly L is a bad thing I think those are both real people are sort of camped out where like either you like hate John Lewis and the other Congressman um or you completely support the Nile list right like and I think that that isn't

a fair way to think about the world and I think that the way we show up in the world world is much more complex than this either or at the both and takes a little more work to think through but I think that's like the most honest way to be in the world cool I know we were talking a little bit before on on your talk about the quiet so D had a um a comment that says I wasn't in the quiet I was in I wasn't in the closet I was in the quiet the quiet is a place where you're not supposed to make nois

e can you tell us more about the quiet and anything like the pressures that you might have felt or that we feel about staying in the quiet yeah I got worried about people talking like I don't think I was in the closet I just think I wasn't talking about being gay which wasn't me like hiding the closet to me is this idea that like I'm hiding and like I don't want people to know and I'm putting something away and and that wasn't how I thought about myself but I didn't have like the language to thi

nk about it differently so I was like you know I think I'm in the quiet right like just because you didn't know them doesn't mean I wasn't doesn't mean that I was hiding and it was like this image of the library is a place where like people are supposed to be quiet because quiet keeps you quiet as a how you learn right quiet is like the best way to access information it is what keeps you safe in a in a certain sense um but what we know about libraries is that people whisper all the time and it i

s that Collective whisper that actually makes noise um and it is The Whispers that I think we need to honor in many ways I think the movement was a lot of Whispers right it was people all across the country definitely all across St Louis saying we think something is wrong we don't know what to do and we don't know who believes with us but we think something is up um in the comp the Corel I see between sort of identity and the movement was there all these people coming together sort of saying I I

think we want to talk about something like it's a little it's a little quiet right here but let us come together and like make a louder noise um when I think about identity there is something about I do think a lot of people in the quiet and then our part as organizers is like how do we help people feel comfortable like moving out of that quiet space and not shaming people for being in the quiet but taking it as our responsibility that some people feel like that is the only way they can be safe

or that is the the most honest way that they can be who they are and also be safe I remember you know growing up in Baltimore and people like I remember the sting of being called a like I remember that as a kid and there are some places as a kid that I made a choice whether I was going to you know talk about identity a certain way because I just didn't want to be traumatized like that anymore right and how do we build a world where people can be who they are in the way they want to be that is s

afe like every time you think about that when you think about the bathrooms right like when I was on The Breakfast Club with Charlamagne and charlam has said some problematic things about a whole host of issues but we talked about the bathroom bill in the trans community and I'm like charlam what do you do in the bathroom right like what are you doing in the bathroom when I go to the bathroom I'm like going in going to the bathroom coming out I'm not having a party I'm not passing out like busin

ess cards right like what is you know people should be able to say like what you do in the bathroom people should be able to say doing that right and he's like I mean I guess dur I'm like yeah you know so how do we help people complicate the way um we think about identity and especially complicate the way we think about what safety means is there an added stigma to being queer in black and brown communities you know I I worry about in my head I think about this in the same way that I think about

black on black violence like I don't want to like stigmatize Blackness as being like more homophobic than anything else I am black and there are definitely a lot of black homophobic people that is real um I would like to or I believe that there are like the same number of hom phic people in all communities I have a different proximity to Black homophobic people because you know I grew up around black people but so I do think there is something about the way that masculinity functions especially

in marginalized communities is a signifier of power when you don't have power like when you are you know what it means to be marginalized is that you were like on the margins right and on the margins you are unseen you are um unseen and unheard and I think that there are moments when you can perform a certain way to be heard and seen in a way that's acceptable and I think masculinity functions like that that people can perform form a way to sort of mask some of the things that they struggle wit

h about being marginalized in general and I think that that encourages like a very subtle though still Insidious form of homophobia that is I think particular because of its manifestations in marginalized communities but not unique in Impact when you talk about like on these margins what are the people who are marginalized and from different angles because of their identity what are some of the needs that someone at these intersections has you when I think about the intersectionality P you know

I've started to talk about my worries more publicly just because you know I want everybody to like push forward but what I worry about with intersectionality is that people really only care about their intersection right that people are like intersectionality but here's where I st you're [Music] like um I think at the simplest level it's just this understanding that we have complex identities and we are all of them at the same time and that we need to again build a world with people get to do th

at um and it is true that people should be able to speak for their own and they should be able to talk about their experience in a way that is authentic to help people understand I'm an ally to the trans Community I there's so many things that I need to learn and I'm not the best spokesman I definitely try to be the best Ally that I can be which means that I have to listen more than I talk right um and I think that is a key part of what it means to stand at the intersection especially intersecti

ons that are not ones you claim uh but it is also about making sure that you actually believe in everything everybody's intersections and not just your own and I and I think that as the conversation has become more and more public that people really are camping out in the spaces that they feel the most comfortable and I get it in the sense that like I try to be a really good Ally I Think I have a big platform I want to push these messages I have to own though that like there are so many identiti

es that I don't know intimately right that I'm still learning and growing and we have to like continue that mindset as we push forward in the work because I think that is like the most honest I think that's the most impactful and the most true awesome I want to shift gears a little bit you you know you talked about how you got involved with black lives matter movement but I want to hear more about the Great War that you're doing with campaign zero and if you could just give us some background on

how that got started so when I think when I think about the movement I think about four phases the first was like the first nine months we were helping people understand there was a crisis across the country so if you remember like August 2014 people were like St Louis's screwed up Ferguson screwed up people were not like America as a problem they were like St Louis the police and St Louis are crazy and the police and St Louis are definitely crazy so that but it was not only the police in St Lo

uis so it took us it took until the death of Sandra Blain Walter Scott Freddy gray for people to be like okay I think there's like a crisis across the country it's like okay uh and the second phase of the work I think is about helping people understand and appreciate that there are real solutions out there and that's where campaign zero came in so campaign zero is modeled on this idea that we can live in a world where there are zero deaths by police you know in 2016 alone there have been nearly

three people killed by The Police Every Day in 2015 the police killed somebody every day but 18 days in all states right and like we just didn't know I didn't know that was happening before Mike Brown got killed and we wanted to to think about what are the real policy solutions that we can put forward to structurally imp police violence we believe that we can change structures and systems and ways that change culture that is like a core belief so it's everything from the things you've heard abou

t so like body cameras independent investigators to some stuff that we did for the first time so we created the first public database of police Union contracts some googlers helped us out with that we the first public database of use of force policies around the country and what we've come to believe is that the police are actually hiding in plain sight so the Freddy gy verdict came down today he this officer was acquitted and what I said to the newspaper is like this is disappointing but it is

not surprising given that we have like a shadow justice system for the police that will protect their behaviors at all cost and what we're saying is that the the things that actually protect the the police are are public documents so you look at the police Union contracts I mean in cities across the country police can only be interrogated for 30 minutes power chunks and then they get an A legally obligated bathroom break phone calls meals you're like stuff that private citizens like never get um

or you look at some of the more Insidious things so you there Clauses around the country that'll say like the police chief is the final Arbiter of discipline which most people are like that makes sense because it's a police chief right so like you're like that's a harmless Clause it is that Clause that prevents civilian oversight boards from having any power right and the police have just been amazing negotiators in cities across the country just Mak putting this language like so deeply embedde

d that looks innocuous but has huge consequences on how we hold people accountable so we've been trying to lift that work up and expose that and then the use of force policies it's like you know in cities across the country it is still okay to hog tie people like Baltimore you can still hog tie and choke people it's not against policy it's not against the law it is totally acceptable um and that's wild to us right like we don't think that makes sense so we would say the stuff that we're pushing

for is like not very controversial we think this is really Common Sense the police have done an incredible job though making it of systematizing it so you think about placees like La the protections for the police Union contractor in the charter of the city itself so undoing it becomes this crazy organizing battle um and there is some disagreement about some stuff about campaign zero R so we come out and support a body cameras there a lot of organizers around the country who don't believe in bod

y cameras for for reasons that make complete sense this idea that if you believe in community policing which is a notion uh that the police should like be in community right we think that that is a really race-based way of thinking about the police that if you put police in the upper west side and like they were high five and white kids they got off the bus and you know as kids are playing basketball people would lose their minds but in Black communities it's like the police should just be every

where right they should be like there when you get off the bus they should be in the corner so we worry about that with community policing but if you believe in community policing and body cameras you might create like a second surveillance state right like if the police are ever present they have cameras on them they could amass this wild batch of footage that could be used against people for a host of things especially because for most crimes like the statue of limitations is pretty long right

so you like I don't know hit somebody on the cheek three months later you're arrested for assault you know like and we've seen the police even in St Louis do things like that like they'll take footage of somebody throwing something four weeks later they arrest you right and like so we worry about those things we believe though that there are structures that you can put in place to hold people accountable the White House Megan who's a the chief technology officer in the country they're doing som

e really interesting things around body cameras one of them is looking at the audio to see if we can use the audio as a predictor of aggression in officers to identify officers who are more likely to abuse people before there's actually trauma right now the video is all post trauma right it's like you kill somebody look we like at the video but could we use the audio in a way that's really interesting and there's another partner with the white house that's looking at can we create a program to t

rigger the parts of the video that a human eye should look at and then delete everything else so that the government is just not amassing footage on people which we think is like an interesting thing too um so we love campaign zero met with Obama about it um and Valerie Jared and and Bernie and and Hillary and Loretta Lynch to talk about like how we actually make these things real the reality though is that most of the changes happen at the local level that the federal level you know we're worki

ng with the domestic Cecilia who runs the domestic policy Council around the FBI like an FBI if FBI didn't kills you today you're screwed um not only because you'll be dead but because there is almost no way that any activist can hold them accountable like we just don't they don't release the names there's nothing we don't we don't know anything about them and what people often don't realize if you know if you've heard any number about the police about police killings at all it is all from newsp

aper clippings like that is the source of Truth like that is the most robust status that we have and we think that we've actually been Under reporting that if you get Ked kill in America and a newspaper does not pick it up you are not in the data set like you literally are you don't exist and that is wild and that has huge consequences for how we think about demographic data so you there's some places in Texas where the data looks like white people are being killed disproportionately we think th

at they are Latino but they're being miscoded because it's newspaper clippings um so we are working with people to do some backend cleansing but that's even like the Washington Post database the Guardians database like all of it is newspaper clipping you kill in America it's not picked up by a newspaper you are not in the data set and that is wild you brought up a point about you know we think about cops hanging out playing basketball in neighborhoods if that is not what's providing safety then

how can we change the conversation about what safety really means yeah and and I'm not against cops potentially playing basketball uh but there's a there's a notion of policing that is like they should be ever present and then basketball becomes like a proxy for for the ever presence right it doesn't become like a way to build community or way as a part of like a larger strategy about government sort of and community building it's like well the police should be here anyway they should just pick

up a v you're like okay um I think that what's real is that we know the safety of our communities is not predicated on the presence of police right then if I ask you where you feel the most safe it's probably not in a room full of police it's probably in a room where there's like family where there's friends or people love you where there's food and shelter like that's what safety means and then the question for us becomes how do you scale that people how do you make that something that everybod

y can be a part of when we think about the police people often think about them in three buckets the first is the the first is crime prevention and crime prevention really isn't police work right that's like schools families jobs the second is about the response to crime and the responsive crime is um is more of police work but we know that one of four people killed by the police are people have mental health trauma and the response to all trauma can't be somebody with a gun so you think about y

ou know I've talked to people who call called for help when their firm might threaten to commit suicide and like somebody with a gun isn't probably the best responder in that situation so we have to start thinking about how do we not have a police first response to all trauma and then the third bucket is around solving crime and that really is that is more of police work than not police work but that can't happen when there's not trust and accountability and the trust and accountability doesn't

come when the police are get off on every single thing that they do right that's why people won't call that's why people uh don't give them tips right like that doesn't work when you're like well they're gonna beat up my cousin or they beat up somebody I know like that doesn't that doesn't work so at Google we love data and measuring success with numbers you're tackling issues that are so just large and important how when you go home you're like how do you measure whether or not you're successfu

l your campaigns are successful and and is is there an end point at what point do we say know check like we did our job yeah so I'm mindful uh about a couple things one is that the movement is Young that we won't undo 400 years of Oppression in 400 Days right that like that is not real I'm also mindful that so much of this is about lifting uh data sets and stories and putting making them as public as possible so at campaign zero we have these huge data sets and we're about to launch like a new w

ay to look at police un contracts that is a little easier for people and we're about to launch a new project around use of force policies and laws and we've been working with a lot of people in Tech a lot of googlers have been a part of our slack group about like how do we just make this simpler for people to uh for people to like access and understand because we believe that the truth is so damning that it should radicalize people but we have to like get the truth to people like how do we do th

at in terms of what success looks like I think that one real part of it is is changing the conversation which I think we did and continue to do and then the next part is like how do we continue to organize and build power and coalitions as we move forward I believe two things one is that there are more people that want to do good work to know what to do and there are more people that want to do good work they want to be members like I think we're in this this unique moment where people have this

aversion to membership like they want to do good work if you told them like do these things they're like yes if you said like will you be a member of this they're like yeah no um and which doesn't mean there's not a role for membership based organizations I think there is I think there will always be I think there's also a challenge and a role for organizers to think about how to mobilize and activate people who with whom you share the same values and beliefs but don't want to be members my bel

ief about that my hypothesis is that there is a generation of us who grew up being members of everything right you were a member of this and and that like still that still you still carry a little bit of that around so you're a little gunshot um or you just don't want to sit in the basement of a whatever every Wednesday right that just isn't how you think about being in the world today but if somebody said will you do these three things you would totally do them uh and we're trying to figure out

how to continue to mobilize people around those sort of issues that we don't care if you're a member or not as long as you do the work and how do we do that that and how do we demystify organizing I think that there are some people who have like organized for 30 years and d and I say that as you know you know I grew up in Baltimore as an organizer in 99 and when I was a teenager so like I'm one of the people who organized before but I do think that there are people in the movement spaces sort o

f make organizing out to be this like mythical thing right that like you got to call the ancestors and get a you know get a conversation with thumb you got to read 15 books and I think organizing at its root is this idea of like I believe the world can be better here's how let me find other people who believe that with me like that is what organizing is that's how it starts um and that's how I think about measuring it now I think that at some point we will need to be honest about whether police

violence is is decreasing or not right so once we actually institutionalize change if there's no change in the outcomes and we haven't done it right and I think the third phase of the work is about institutionalizing change so we change the conversation we help people believe in Solutions we institutionalize the change and the fourth bucket is around protecting the change once we make it so you think about the Voting Rights is a great example of the protect phase wasn't done well right that like

the roll backs happened in a in a really intense way they got incredible um traction with the Voting Rights Act and now it's been repealed a little bit so how do we put these changes in and then actually make sure that they are livable things that we see the fruit of so I want to change topics a little bit um there was there was a really interesting article that came out last year on those People magazine entitled um dear black men you are not pro black if you are not pro black women do you see

this like is that something that it's present like do you see it the raer of women in black and brown communities and how can we address that yeah and I think a raer often manifests in two ways one is that either our stories are never told or they're told by everybody but us um and what's been powerful about this moment is that like we all everybody gets to be a Storyteller so I think about so many incredible women of color who are leading who are organizing who are telling their own stories an

d not waiting for something they don't have to wait for somebody else to tell their story because there's not a barrier there in terms of who gets to be storytellers anymore I think that's really powerful I think that there is so much more work to be done around sexism and um in in that space and I do think that it is better and hard that we are having all these conversations in public I think that people are like learning from these conversations about sexism and misogyny because they are they

essentially get to participate as viewers first and I think that that is easier for some people before they step in I know a lot of people who are worried about sort of saying the wrong thing but they they're like well intentioned but the way they approach it you're like that was not it um but because of social media is really open up space for them to like watch they can participate by viewing first and then they can sort of dive in I think that's really powerful but I do think the movement is

important in the sense that there are men and women working together women leading in new ways and being present and visible and not having to be in the background in the way that they might have been in the past um and and people of complex identities around sexuality like get to be present in a way be open about those identities and ways that they couldn't be before something that is personally really sad to me is um we live in a country where one in five women will be sexually assaulted and t

he average life expectancy of a black Trans woman is 35 years you've brought some really challenging things to light and you've created a platform where we can you know successfully highlight the way that our society has failed these communities what advice can you give us um to create platforms where we can continue to address the issues yeah I think that's so you know I'm a so I'm a Twitter evangelist I love Twitter Twitter's great Twitter um I know you work at Google Twitter do you close on G

+ ever huh do you have a G+ we're g to get you a G+ I search all day long um I say that because I I do think that storytelling is like one of our most powerful tools um and at the root of every story is an idea and ideas matter because they inform the way we think about the world and the way we think about the world is the way we act in the world um and when I think about the trans when I think about sort of what is the next part of the work it's like how do we tell these complex stories in ways

that are simpler for people and allow them to think about um things they can do so we are about to work on a project that is going to catalog all the laws that have been introduced that are damaging to the trans community and put them in a really cool space and help people see so that we can tell the story about like the people we're fighting against are actually really organized right there's something common about all these pieces of legislation and then here's actually how you can combat it

like here are talking points like here's how we equip you in like a very visceral way with like things to do right and I think this having been so close to the work over the last 20 months I think that sometimes the people on The Fringe like the most Insider of us we start to think that everybody sort of thinks the way we do or everybody sort of sees the world the way we do or everybody like obviously they know that talking point and they obviously know it's wrong and I will never forget the fir

st n months of the movement where like there were black people who were like I don't think the police are crazy and we're like the police literally just kill him and they're like but that wasn't my neighborhood and you're like what right so like it took it took us mobilizing our own Community like a long time to like help people actually believe that this was was close to them and I think that with the worker on identity we can't take for granted that there are people who we love and who love us

who still don't get it but want to and then it's like how do we like equip them to to to get it on their own and to get it with like more data and information and I think about some of the things about identity we haveen it there's just not a public space yet uh to like learn the right things to say or like I think about love is love as a great example so when Orlando happened people offered really interesting pushback on Love Is Love and what they were saying is like yes love is love but my id

entity like my sexuality is not just based on whether I'm in a relationship or not right which I think is like an interesting way to think about it and that language like it's I don't know like I I don't know if I would have been exposed to that if I just hadn't been on Twitter that day like how do we help people be in places or go places to like complicate the way they think about the world so they can like be better in the world because I think that is like you're like yes love is love sort of

reinforces this idea that like you are gay as long as you like visibly love somebody else who is also same gender right like how do we say that that is a part of it but that is not I'm gay whether I'm you know single or not right and I think that like we have to do more of that storytelling work and be really intentional about it and I think that sometimes we take for granted that part we're like we're just going to put the data out and we're going to do and we miss the like simple truths that

people can repeat over and over and like Love Is Love is a great simple truth right it's like simple repeat it over and over it's like how do we complicate those and how do we create new ones that people can do uh that really push the work you know I feel like sometimes I could physically see people getting uncomfortable when we talk about rates like why are we so uncomfortable having these conversations I think some of it is there's still a lot of trauma and and people like haven't dealt with t

heir own trauma which is no indictment of themb because like you shouldn't be trauma you shouldn't you shouldn't live in a world where you were traumatized um some of it too is that there are a lot of people who are afraid of the outcome right they think that there's going to be a lot of loss that comes uh so you think about the privileging of whiteness I know there there I know white people who totally get white privilege who are like it is bad and don't want it to end right like they they want

to dismantle white privilege but can't imagine a world without it and like I think that is real and it's like how do we have public conversation about what that looks like like you have to you will not have the privilege once it's gone right like that is a condition of the end of white privilege and I think there are people who who like conceptually don't get that yet they're like yeah that's bad and you're like you're not g to have it and they're like no you're like um so how do we how do we t

alk about that and then I think that there is a real thing you know I've come to understand that my role is not always to be the person giving lectures to people about like in gracism right some of this work is about asking being the person sitting with people asking them the question that if I'm trying to get you to change your mind and I know you approach it from a problematic space like me lecturing you for 20 minutes like probably isn't going to do that but if I say to you like should Freddy

gra be dead and we start from there in like a real honest space and you say something and I respond like that actually is like probably better at converting you than me being like I can't believe you think that Freddy gray killed himself and then six people watched him you know you the conversation not believe in that right so me like yelling at you about it isn't going to do that and I think that there's something that we do as Mar people who live this every day that we hear people say problem

atic things and we're like which makes sense to me because it is emotional and real I think that in terms of converting people sometimes our approach can be like the really thoughtful insights of question that like puts the onus back on them right that like they actually have to do the work because sometimes we get so riled up doing all the work we're we're over processing things and they walk away still believe in the same thing totally chill you're worked up you're you need a nap you're like I

'm done um and they actually haven't thought anything differently and I think that that's real and also we white people have to figure out how to organize white people and challenge white people so think about there are white people who are going to say and do things about race around each other that they would never do around me which is probably better for both of us but it is about how do we get white people in those spaces to hold other white people accountable and to really push them to thi

nk about the stories that they allow other people to tell the truth that they allow other people to disseminate over and over and then how they use their resources and skills and abilities uh in this work you know I've met a lot of people um and we rarely have ever ask people for money and we met like a lot of really interesting people uh we always ask people for their time and talent because that is a conversation about resources right if I'm in a room with a billionaire like I don't need a gaz

illion if money alone could fix it like we would have fixed it I need to figure out like how we can use your time and talent to like create new something right and if you you know um who can I pick on that won't be whatever so I think about like there's some people it's like skip the street we don't need you in the street don't come to the street but you calling the governor mean something very different than me calling the governor right and how do we like be really clear with people about how

you use your access and privilege and ways that like change people's lives for the better so with that point there's people here that have incredible skills and have a lot of access and we have a lot of privilege how did we identify what to do with that access and to really drive like social and economic change I think that so there a couple things one is you can join people who have already made a commitment to doing the work right um I'm sensitive though that like you also you you probably hav

e an idea of like that cool thing that should exist that you're like I think it exists but I don't want to create it because it might exist like most of us have those ideas when we think about this work and like you can actually start that right now um and you don't need permission to do it you don't need like a huge platform to do it I I think about some of the cool Sam who built mapping police violence which is like uh one of the projects in campaign zero Sam like lived in San Francisco he ran

domly tweeted we tweeted me one day he was like Dre I want to do something I dm'd him back my phone number we had a good call he like made this website we pushed it out to everybody and it was like a thing you know and now Sam's a part of my team but he was somebody who was like I think we should map police violence in a different way and it was like build it and like we'll totally help people see it I think there a lot of I think that that you know there's this myth that people like have to joi

n these existing structures D and like if you want to you should right cuz there are a lot of great organizations out there but I think about the movement as a space that there was no organization that got us together in Ferguson right this infrastructure emerged and there's a difference between organizing organizations and infrastructure the infrastructure was there I was a tweeter there were people who were live streamers there was the bail fund like we all worked together and there was like s

ome some sort of Unwritten rules about how we'd interact but there was no like organization that we had to join to be in the movement space um and I think that now people sort of feel like they got to join something to be a part of it but like you probably already know that really cool thing that you should exist I think about somebody used twio last week to make a phone number that if people dialed it like you dial the phone number you put in your zip code and it automatically called your two s

enators and representative around gun control right really simple took it would have taken me like 10 years to make took this guy like you know 10 seconds he made it he had no platform we found out about it because we know some people at twio we blasted it out to like all these people and like Russell Simmons he put in his networks and you we pushed it out really wide and far like he just made on his own time right like I you I don't know him but we totally made that thing like a bigger thing th

an it was on its own um and he didn't need to join anybody he just like thought it was the right thing to do and we and now we like love twillo we're like twily everything um but yeah so if you if you want to do some of the stuff we're doing like we have a slack group of just tech people um and people who are committed to sort of building new platforms uh that help people think about the problem differently and most importantly think about the solutions differently because I worry in the movemen

t space that it's easier to talk about the problems than it is the solutions right that like there's this addiction to being like the world is bad it's like got it got it got it right it's like what do we do people like I don't know like well that's not helpful um so we'd much rather like at least keep failing around the solutions and only talking about the problems um and there's an easy way to to be a part of our team but again you can be a part of you being in the work will make you better at

this and I I know a lot of people in The Tech Community specific specifically who have joined and been in spaces and they are they might be quiet in them but they go home and they're like oh my God I heard that person say that we should totally think about this it's like yes right like that's often how this work starts and I worry sometimes that there's this myth that like I don't know again you get this phone call from the ancestors it's like please do this today and like isn't that's not what

happens so what about hash activism is it better that we're talking about the problem you say we like to talk about problem not solution is # activism helping or is it it just like procrastinating people actually making a change yeah I think that I'll never criticize people for telling the truth and I think that truth telling is such a hard thing especially for people of color and marginalized people and if Twitter is like the space that you tell the truth then like I'm all about it that like t

ruth telling is such uh such a has been such a difficult thing has been a thing that this country has prohibited black people from organizing around and doing it that like I will always honor the fact that people use digital spaces to tell the truth that is real um knowing that that is again not always the end of the work right that that is often the beginning of the work but that has a role to play and if feel were're not for Twitter in St Louis in August of 2014 Missouri would have convinced y

ou that we didn't exist you know they literally would have been like those people aren't there and it was like that is crazy so when you think about Baltimore what makes the Baltimore stand out is not only the circumstances of Freddy's death and sort of Baltimore's proximity to DC and all this other stuff it is that it was the first big city in protest that you saw aerial footage of because you didn't see any of that in St Louis because they put a no fly zone on like August 11th right they got t

he game down so if it wasn't for social media like literally you wouldn't have seen us and I even where I get frustrated now talking about the protest because people think that we like marched in solidarity with the 60s and we were like marching because that was what we thought protest was it was illegal to stand still in August of 2014 in St Louis right like we we marched because we had we literally could not stand still it was called the 5-second rule and it was like you can't stand still and

you can't pace and you can't return to the same spot so like you couldn't like walk down there and then come back to this spot it was like wild you know and that was a world we lived in and you didn't necessarily see all of that like on TV and stuff because they had put such a effective blackout on the media um but again the fact that you saw anything was because we had social media and I'll never um I'll never criticize social media for that I do think that like this has to be a combination of

the online and Offline that that has to be real it is always funny to me that the people that people take to Twitter to talk about how much Twitter doesn't matter right and you're like if it didn't matter why are you posting it right um but yeah no so I I think that most of the critiques that people offer about social media are disingenuous or it's people who loved it when they had a big platform and now that people aren't listening to them they're like oh my God Twitter's awful and you're like

well I'd love to open up the floor if anyone has a questions we have a mic over here would love to hear your thoughts um I have a question as like a black like how you said about white people should organize other white people about issues how can I organize other uh black males cuz there was like an issue at our school or like some people like some of the black m consider themselves like woke were unaware of like the sexism and homophobia they projected on like the people they try to fight for

they still would say some of the very sexy things like behind our group me and stuff like that so how can I have a where I can have like an open conversation with them to tell them like a aware of like their micr and stuff like they have cuz some of them are just like I can't be sexy homophobic bit or like they think they don't have like C privileges because they don't think like what's happening in America with them as a black male like they don't think they have any prives as being a straight

male in America so how can I have the open discussion or activities to make them aware of the things and make them more inclusive of the other people poos to represent and help out that's real you know I'm mindful that we are born woke something wakes us up and there's like a real difference between being woke and staying woke yeah and like I think about um I think about myself there are people who are like I like you and they hate gay people right but they're like I like you you're like I don't

know I don't know um a couple things one is that this work is often slow for people to like own their growth areas around these sort of deep things right um I also think that some of the most effective ways to change like individual people's hearts and mind is like in private sometimes and then using examples that are not necessarily about them like that they don't realize are about them but that are about them so I think about people who like say some really problem IC stuff and if I said to t

hem you just said that thing that is really crazy then we'd be fighting for the next whatever but if I said to them I can't believe that person said that which is really what they just said right and then we talk use that as like a launching pad and then sort of at the end get back to like you said that too and that was really problematic right like I think that people need to process this stuff um and I and I say that because I I've seen people try to beat people over the head about it like you

're homophobic and which I think like there's a place for sometimes right cuz some people just say wild things and you got to check it real quick but there are some people who are trying um but like need a different space to try and I think that like I know a lot of straight men who are really transphobic and don't know that like they they think they like are standing in solidarity with the Trans Community but are super problematic um and it's like how do we actually have those like conversation

s with people like in really honest like cloth spaces that like allow them to grow I think it's I think about my conversation charag Charlamagne say some really problematic things about the trans Community but if I had gone in being like you know you said this to like I don't think we would have had a productive conversation as oppos like charl let's just talk about this a little bit and he moved much further than he had before publicly and when we talked afterwards and like I think that that ha

s to be some of How We Do It um but it is important to to have people see that they have done some of this stuff too right that you said and that was really me and isalia Banks had that back and forth on Twitter um about her saying right and she was like d d she texted me being like d d d and then like last week she's like I will never say again it's like okay thanks this took a long time coming um but it was about like how do I say like that is just problematic right and we can talk about it bu

t I want to say to you publicly like this is not okay thank you I'm Arie I identify as transgender and have done like a training SE training sessions here at Google called Transit Google and some of it's definitely like dumbed down like it's kind of a 101 right and there's a really interesting conversation happening within the trans Google Community about you know how much of this is our responsib like our responsibility and why you know why are we having to justify our existence and I and I'm k

ind of of the mind like well there are people out there who aren't malicious and like we need allies like that's important but I think a part of me is like oh is this just like internalized transphobia that that's the reason I'm out here like just ifying my identity and so I guess I was wondering what your thoughts are and I think that's a debate in a lot of different places yeah that's a that's real it's a real question I think about like there are a lot of black people who are like it's not my

work to teach white people about Blackness right they like go read there a lot of a lot of things out there I think the reality is that it is not everybody's work right that there's some people who are like this is not how I plan to show up this is not what I think it means to organized and that is real and like we should honor that like you we shouldn't force people to like teach people other things the other thing though is that that is how some people think about their work and that is also

real and we should like allow them to do that and I would rather me like help you think through something than you like read some crazy thing from some crazy person and then you think that that is the truth and then we're fighting right and then you like say some so I am one of the people like you who's like I think that we can talk about it I don't think that it is internalized anything but I do think that we uh have to always be mindful of like our motivations in it there's some people who are

teaching because they want the validation from that crowd right there's some people who are teaching to like answer questions and and to be somebody who like helps people like think about a different experience and I'm somebody who like still is learning about the trans Community for instance right and if people wouldn't talk to me about their experience like I wouldn't know and I and I would think I'm like a really good Ally and then I say something crazy and I'm like well I tried to ask the p

eople you know so like you know I'm in that space of like I need like how do we help people um like understand this work a little better and that doesn't actually always mean that it has to be like a person right there are some amazing texts and things like that out there but I do think that it is some people's real work to like help other people think about the world a little deeper but it's not everybody's I think that again it's like this either or it's either like nobody's work or it's every

body's is how people often paint it as opposed to saying like it might not be yours but it might be mine right which I think is like probably a little more honest and real while we make sure that the people who think that this is their work like always check their motivations for being in the work you mentioned you know you're a big fan of Twitter and Twitter has been a great platform for a lot of people uh to sort of be able to have conversations that they couldn't have before at the same time

like Twitter has also uh come up in various contexts and like it has an interaction uh method that often enables harassment and abuse and so I'm I'm wondering about your thoughts on sort of n navigating the line between both opening up conversations but also opening up vulnerable populations uh in interactions y I think it's a good question um you know I block 19,000 people personally on Twitter so I completely get the like and like individually you have all of them one at a time God and uh I ge

t the you know I got I screened I did a screening of the Panthers documentary in Baltimore at this independent uh at the Charles this independent movie theater and people tweeted in death threats the police came they shut down the movie theater so I get it right like I get the rest in peace and my TT account got hacked the other my phones got hacked the other day somebody called Verizon um impersonating me like got my sim the Sim number changed so my phone was like bricked for a little bit and t

hen they used two factor to hack hack into my Gmail and um and my Twitter account so like I get the harassment piece there are a couple things one is I think that the Twitter just recently changed the blocking feature they didn't do I don't you know I know that people Twitter will uh I don't always know like why they make the decisions they do like they didn't there's no blog post about this change in blocking but I think it is like a real change so when you block people now they are like very b

locked whereas before if you if somebody blocked you or you blocked them there were like these workarounds that you could still interact with them essentially and now that is gone and I think that's like a real thing the thing that people um talk about the most is like the the sheer volume right so you'll get people who like flud them if somebody targets you on Twitter and then all of a sudden like a 100 people are tweeting you it's a pretty not fun experience right I don't know what the quick s

olution is for that like I don't know is somebody who gets it like I'll get people who will put um like you know when that when I got hacked somebody like spoofed these like fake DMS about me and Neta and they put them all over the Internet so like for two days it's like my mentions were like just people upset about that because the the DMS are like you want to put martial law in the country whatever so literally it's like hundreds of like why do you want martial law I'm like get these out of he

re right I don't know what Twitter would have done like I just don't I don't know what the solution looks like in that space um I do think Twitter's really slow around the harassment stuff right so you you submit a thing saying you've been harassed or whatever and it's like 10 hours later and they got to figure that out right there's a volume issue that I think is tough for them because people abuse the report function too like people will Mass report somebody they hate as like being hacked and

then they'll freeze their account um and they need to figure that part out like I I think that they have not figured out the speed part and I when my Twitter account got hacked it took me a while to get back in and I like know them right um and the speed piece I think is like what actually which is what I worry about more than anything else I do think it's Unique in the sense that it's like the most open platform right Facebook is your friends so when they see something crazy it's you know like

unfriend them or something and maybe block them or report them but it's different Twitter is like standing on the corner and like it's like the world is right there right and there's this question of like do you put up these cones so the world can't see you right which fun changes what it means to stand on the corner or do you make sure that people like can't run you over right it's like what is what are the two pendulum swings and I think that Twitter's like still finding its face but I do thin

k it doesn't get credit for uh how hard it is to keep the commitment it has while making sure that the platform is safe I do think that they've been really slow on usernames though you shouldn't be able to have a name that's like I hate the n-word right like that doesn't make sense to me and they have been slow in there I think that and I have no Insider knowledge about this but I think that they also have not moved away from the rat race around users right they're in this like user race with Fa

cebook and I think that Twitter's real story is about impact and they have not figured out a metric around impact yet and if they did I think that they would win like they'd win that fight but they are still fighting people around this like user thing and you think about yesterday with the siten it's like when when Paul Ryan cut off cpan it was Periscope right like that was it it was it was an immediate like this is an impact thing and they are still fighting people in this like user thing that

I think is a loss I think they will not win the user fight thanks so my question is about something you were talking about earlier um calling out comments that that people make U this is something I you know I really want to do more and I think I'm kind of getting better and better at at doing it um I think it's it's a lot easier though for me when it's in a context when you know I'm talking to another white person or there are only white people there where it's been a lot more difficult is ther

e are people of color in the group who don't respond to the comment um or even sometimes seem to agree with it and I think where this has come up with for me in particular um is with older gay men in the city which a lot of people here will know that the you know the sort of gay community in San Francisco does tend to skew older um so so I've come across older gay men of color who um who don't seem to want to respond to these comments and I don't know if it's because this is like a way of surviv

al you know having been in this community for so long that they kind of I don't know I guess I'm wondering if if You' noticed anything like that um if you have any advice for how to address the situation yeah sometimes it is real other people sometimes people say stuff around me that like I should say something but I'm like I'm too tired today right like we're we're going to go back and forth and I just like can't do it today I think about the woman this woman worked on the Amtrak train and she

said something crazy other day and I just had a tweet like I'm not g to let the devil get me because you so that is real so some people are tired and that's real I think confrontation though the world sound the word sounds harsher than it is I think there are ways to like I think they're simple things like what did you mean by that is like totally a way to like start a conversation with people that does that get you on the path of like either holding people accountable or like changing people's

minds but it's like a very simple entrance right and I think with people that you have seen say like not address things that you think are sort of problematic I think that there's a way to say like I thought that was really troubling like what did you think about that right as a way to sort of get to the why didn't you say anything so that you can like learn a little better I do think that people unfortunately start to think about confrontation is this like you need to have like a billboard that

's like I can't believe you let your community down right which is like a not helpful way to think about this work but I think there are like simple ways to like create the entrance that then allow you to build um which is like what made you say that like what did you mean by that is like like I think those questions I've seen those be like super effective entry points and then you just need to be thoughtful about continuing that and that puts again the onus on the other person like you're not d

oing the work like they're doing the hardest work you're doing the work of asking the question um I love the policy proposals in the platform uh on campaign zero it looks amazing uh and I'm really interested in seeing how it can be you know brought in the local and state level and National level one thing I'm wondering about though particularly because in San Francisco you know we've had uh huge increase in property crimes recently just there have been like two stabbings within a block of my apa

rtment and I know that the constituency like in my neighborhood was the Castro which is generally wider wealthier here even if gay would have like their Instinct would be to demand even more uh kind of enforcement of these like lering laws and like and those kind of things and then at the same time I see for my parents living in New Orleans who which has also been going through a crime wave their instinct is to have more police that are like more intervent intervening more so I guess what I want

to know is from your perspective when you're having conversations with people whose instinct is like driven by fear and who look to the police as like a way of address assuaging that fear and you want to say to them hey no this is like a longer term solution we need to like actually get here so that there everyone feels safe like how do you how do you approach that and what works people's like proclivity to call for the police makes total sense to me right in in a world where we have made peopl

e believe that police equals safety like I get it whether I agree with it or not I think that when we think about community violence like if you think about the legal economy there's a way to deal with conflict if I don't like you I like call your boss I follow lawsuit I like file a complaint there's like a whole apparatus in the illegal economy there's only one way to deal with conflict and there's violence right so if we don't if we if the solution to like Community violence all that stuff is

not about getting people out of the illegal economy I think we will always spin our Wheels like any solution that isn't about like uh like jobs education housing like those are like the actual solutions that will change the needle in the absence of those the police I think is like will always be people's like best solution so when you think about like Baltimore 40% of adults can't functionally read it's a crisis right so you we could bring every industry we want in America to Baltimore people ca

n't read not going to matter right it's just gonna it's going to matter significantly less people are going to wake up being like I need money how do I get it and if that is selling drugs or doing whatever like they're going to people are going to like get their needs met that and again like I think that too often I think that the the work around getting people out of the illegal economy is like the not sexy super dull but like the work that actually changes people's lives you think about the ho

meless populations it's like we know that it is better for homeless people to be in homes and not which sounds really simple but there are people who will see a homeless person and will take them to drug treatment first right and we actually know the outcomes if you do that are worse than if if you actually just put the person in a home right like that and it's called like the housing first strategy that people like need homes before they need anything else um but it's easier to be like we're go

ing to put you in drug treatment for today and then like you actually didn't solve any of the problems so I don't know like a great response to people who call the police like that because I get it like it may I get why older people do it specifically like my grandmother being one of them but I also believe that like the way to get out of that is to really think about Community violence in a completely different way that is like very structural very like not sexy it's about jobs literacy like ac

cess those sort of things Transportation you know I know people in Baltimore who can only work in parts of the city because that's where the buses go right so like they physically cannot get to another part of town in less than three hours and they're not going to get a job like they just won't they're not going to make that choice right which severely limits the opportunities they have you know which is like a crazy thing that's real though my question is well first of all we know change is not

happening fast enough um and you were talking about sort of the stages of organizing and how only the Third one the third step is being able to see outcomes and that's obviously not fast enough um CU people's lives are on the line um and I'm just curious about how you personally stay patient and how you stay sane um and how you bear witness and organized around all these things when you put so much effort in and things are still so very slow y so I know I'm not alone and that's important to me

right that I'm like one of many people who are doing this work um I have great friends which is helpful and I was a teacher you know I used to teach sixth grade math and I feel responsibility to make sure that those kids like live in a world that is not the world I grew up in and like that keeps me hopeful you know I'm like I got it we can do it and you know all across the country I've seen people like find their voices and like Step Up in ways that like give me incredible like if I had not been

in Ferguson I think I would not be an organizer in this way right now but I saw like all these people who never ever would be together like doctors lawyers unemployed people cause drop like we were all like one community in a way that like all those other labels didn't matter like we were people with share values and like that really changed me and like that gives me this immense hope and again it is I believe two things like there are more people that want to do good work to know what to do an

d more people that want to do good work than want to be members and for me there's this huge challenge of how do we how do we like organize those people and I think we can do it I think Tech will be a part of how we do it I think we've been trying to figure it out slowly uh partly because people have been dealing with the day-to-day trauma so they haven't pulled back to think about some macro spaces but uh that keeps me really hopeful thank you and um along with Andy and many many other medical

students who part of this organization called White coach for black lives and it sort of focuses on um bringing attention to structural racism and gun violence and other issues that are public health issues but historically haven't been thought of as so and my question is I've throughout my you know year and a half or so being involved with this I've come across many people who who whose hearts and minds are already one but because of the structure because of things they have on the line or beca

use of things they don't have on the line they don't feel sort of motivated to uh either affect change or to join the movement and so I I guess my question is how do you uh get people to sort of contribute more uh once you've already convinced them of of what you're doing good question I I met with the people who uh run doctors for America and like I think that they're doing great work I think y'all are doing great work with the Healthcare thing I I think some of it is messaging too like I think

we should talk about Healthcare U or health Beyond hospitals right like I think that's like a simple way to think about it that the health health is about so much more than like when you go to the doctor that health is like a broader thing and then we need that public conversation doctors need to leave that conversation so that's like one piece the what you do after you want hearts and Minds hearts and Minds is hard to win so that's like you pat yourself in the back for two seconds and then I t

hink it's about being as explicit as possible what the ask is right because I think sometimes we we we figure out we got this community we're like people care and then we're like go do the work and people are like what does that mean they're like the work and you're like I don't really know and I think that that actually doesn't help I think that's how we lose people really quickly is that they feel like it's like a lot of hot air when in reality I think that like the making the choice around wh

at what the discreet thing to do is actually really hard and organizers always feel really pained because there's all like there's a million things that people should do so saying to people like here the three things we want you to do right now is something I've seen even the most incredible organizers like really shy away from because they they're like nervous that they're like forgetting something but I think that that is actually what keeps people that just like when I was a teacher you know

kids want to feel success right they want to walk into a building and like feel successful every day and so do adults like adults want to feel like the thing that they devoted their time to is like a part of a success a success story and some of that we have to like man we have to be manufactur in the sense that we have to be really thoughtful about it so when I gave the first test in when I taught first test every kid was going to pass it not cuz it was not I wasn't giving them the answers but

it was like just hard enough but we would do enough prep right before that I knew that like you would you had to sleep through the test to fail it right like everybody was going to pass the first test second test super hard right it was like all this content that I needed them to like really really grasp but I need to set up a system where like they felt successful when the challenges came and I think that in organizing work like we have to make sure that people can like experience like success

early or they know that theyve EXP success and then we we offer things that like they can actually do so even when it might be a loss like they the success is like it's a new community and it's a new D that we are always thinking about how we make people feel like they're doing something because you know as well as I know there are million things that are competing with your time right you could be watching Game of Thrones great last episode um or you could be organizing right and like you want

people to choose a thing that you're doing but I do think it's about how you really discreet with like what the ask is thanks I was interesting and you were talking about the issues with homelessness and earlier about the issues dealing with like the police um contracts and I found in a lot of cases like it looks like theoretically there's a program to help someone but when you really dig into it there's like so much paperwork and so much like unsexy barriers like what can we do is advocat to tr

y to get attention around those issues and to deal with them like um my uncle is pretty much nonfunctional and it took six months of like constant work from multiple relatives just to get him like basic Medicaid and they still have to administer it like there's no program to like actually give him the help he needs yeah so I think about I mean I think this is where tech people come in too is and this is why I think it's important that we do keep talking about the problems but not only the proble

ms is that I there some people who have incredible skill can help us organize differently like just don't know what parts of the world look like right and then it's like how do we help people like be exposed to those experiences so they can do something like there's this great twio I know a lot about twio all of a sudden but um these people have created this way so food stamps go unclaimed and like communities all across the country and one of the problems is people don't want to go sit at the S

ocial Security bill then like type in the like who wants to do that all day so they've created like a text based way to figure out if you qualify for food stamp so you like text this number you fill out the whole questionnaire ont text it pops out at the end like you do qualify or not so by the time you get to the office like you already know yes or no right fascinating text solution totally simple I don't know anybody who knows the number right um but it is a great solution and it's like how do

we have people build the solutions and then put them out there I think about I did a when I was running from May Baltimore I did a um I did a visit to Meals on Wheels do you know the average age of a volunteer at Mills on Wheels in central Maryland is 70 I was like y' which is great for the 70y olds y'all need a new as you volunteers you know like this is and I will bet you that if people that there are people who would totally deliver a meal every morning before going to work they would do it

right like but they need a different way of thinking about how people sign up and da D that like they clearly don't they just don't get it right I think that there are people in marketing who would totally donate a couple hours to like help them come up with a different volunteer strategy and it's like how do we actually put those sort of like cases that are like relatively simple but have a huge impact on people um like how do we create space where they where people with skill with different ki

nd skills can like meet them so that's I don't have like a great answer but I do think that like uh some of this is helping people think about the problems and being exposed to the problems I think the solutions there's enough good energy out there that can deal with them and then we have to there's responsibility for people who have platforms to like really push them like I'm all about this food stamp thing I like saw I was like everybody should I mean only if you need food stamps but people sh

ould totally know this number because it does really good work um it just isn't B people don't know about it yet well thank you so much for coming and educating and having this dialogue with us really appreciate it