Chunni hits, Adamus got hits. Chunni hits, Adamus got hits. Chunni defends, Adamus got defends. Adamus got defends. Yeah, he got the hits. The hits are amazing, hits are stunning. Adamus got the hits. They're amazing. They're stunning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing. Standing, William and Donis, amazing. Standing, hit the ball and he hit the ball. Wow, wow. It's amazing. So, standing, keep going, keep going, keep going. Don't stop the dumbest, can't stop. Player, that's hot. Let's go. Bad dumbest. Hit the ball, catch the ball, throw the ball. Do what you gotta do. I tell you, it's all mongers. Zalepapa.


Hello everyone, welcome back to my channel. So today I'm in my classroom and it's day one, well actually it's technically day two of setup because as you can see I have already been in here. I came in two days ago, today is Wednesday, I came in here on Monday. I was only here for a couple of hours but basically all I did was unpack all the boxes and organize everything just out on tables. There's nothing inside any of the cabinets yet. Basically my job today is going to be putting everything away. I'm not gonna start decorating probably until maybe tomorrow, probably more this weekend. So most of today's job is just gonna be organizing, cleaning and my goal is to have everything put away. So I'm just gonna take you through everything and then I'm gonna start a list on the board of things that I'm gonna do and then just slowly start checking them off. I do have a meeting at nine o'clock so at nine o'clock I will have to leave and then come back. But basically I'm just gonna start over here. And right here I have a trash pile started. These are all the boxes that I had and that I've unpacked and then over here is just a pile of stuff that I need them to remove. So all of these chairs, this teacher desk and then I'm slowly just piling things on here that I don't need in the room. And then we're gonna pan this way. This piece of wood is actually going to be mounted on this wall at some point I'm not sure when. And I'm gonna be using it to hang backpack hooks on so that I can have all of my students' backpacks just right here instead of out there. Also the cubbies are gonna be used for book bins and binders because we are an avid school so we'll be using binders. I'm just gonna slowly come over here. This is kind of like my random pile, this table right here. Just kind of like everything else is landing here. This area is my teacher area. It's probably not gonna stay this way. I don't know if that bookshelf will stay there. I did buy a new black bookshelf for actual books. So we'll see once that's built, if this is actually gonna stay here because I kind of like the idea of putting the black bookshelf right there instead and using this for student books maybe somewhere else. So that's not gonna change but this is basically like all of my stuff, like things that I personally use, like all my planning things and like my desk decor and just stuff that I call mine I guess. And things that I've purchased and made. This is like all the stuff that I brought from home just now.  And then over here, just some more things that need to be organized. This is my library up here on these tables and then these are like my little cloth bins that I need to organize things into. This is kind of where all my flexible seating has landed. Kind of, I mean, it's kind of a mishmash of stuff but basically like chairs, tables, cushions, they've all kind of landed here in the middle, mostly furniture. Then over here we've got all the supplies. Okay, all of this minus this box right here was already in the room. So I need to go through and organize all of these supplies things. There's a lot of manipulatives down here. I need to organize them and clean them up and do what I do. These are all composition notebooks but I'm pretty sure these are all for like the whole grade level, not just for me. So I think that maybe some of the grade level stuff got stored in here for the summer, I'm not positive. These cabinets are all empty and need to be organized. These cabinets have right now the curriculum that I probably won't use but I'm thinking I might move all of this from this cabinet to those cabinets since those are like kind of down and out of the way and these ones are more like accessible, I just might move all of this stuff over there so that it's just gone and not thought of. This is all stuff that was left here as well so I just need to go through and organize slash put all of these away. These are mine, need to organize, put away. This whole thing is empty. All these drawers are empty except for the top one I did put my signs in there but all these drawers are empty so that's a really awesome, useful storage piece. Then coming this direction we have more like bins that need to be organized and sorted and put away and then this big old section here is all decor stuff so things that need to be hung up, all of my like butcher paper and stuff for bulletin boards, all of my posters, all my signs. This is all decor. These are gonna be spray painted so those are there and yeah so this is all my decor section so this probably won't get touched at all today and then just random things that need to be organized. So like I said, big to do is just to start organizing things and putting things away. I did buy some bigger crates from Walmart. I bought six of them so I'm hoping that I can use these crates to put things that I will use but not necessarily all the time like supplies and things and I plan to store them up here so I plan to use the crates up here. I don't wanna put like boxes up there like I want up there to look nice so I want to use these bins to store things up there. Anything else that isn't in those bins can go in the cabinets because I don't want them to be seen. Basically I'm trying to make the least amount of clutter in this room as possible. I don't want things out if they don't need to be out. I want everything to be put away and gone. So I think I'm gonna make, I think maybe I'm gonna move all of the curriculum first and just move it over there and that's gonna be task number one and then after that I think I'm going to sort through all of the supplies and put some of my things in new bins that I purchased and planned to re-store I guess. So enjoy the vlog. Okay, so this is what I wanted to do first was organize all the math manipulatives in the room. So basically everything up here is mine. Everything down here belongs to the school or district and same with these. So this is literally all math manipulatives. So I think what I'm gonna do is just keep this whole thing math and if I get any other math things, I'll put them in here like all my teacher, like my teacher additions and anything else, anything else that is math related is just gonna live in here and that'll work for me. I do have some other random little things like these are student books that are probably gonna get in and I don't know if I'm gonna use them. So like I said, for now I'll just keep everything that's math in this cabinet and then I know exactly where it is. Okay guys, so I just got back from my meeting and I wanted to show you what I've gotten done so far. So down here I have all of my paper, construction paper, lined paper, well, most of the lined paper anyway and then copy paper and then up here I have like other paper and some notebooks and then up there I have crayons, I think I already showed you. That's the rest of my lined paper up there.  So I'm gonna use all of these bins to store all of that supplies up here. So I'm gonna do two, two and two and then I don't really know what will go up there maybe like a decor piece or something and I've put all of my supplies at my students and I use in here so like glue, scissors, markers, all of these green bins. I don't really like the way they look so this is actually perfect for them. So this is where like the glue sponges and the scissors and everything, this is where this will be stored and then I have my whiteboards under here and these are gonna be student portfolios eventually. So those are just hanging out right there and so now I'm just kind of working on, I need to build my bookshelf so that I can put all of my library away but it's slowly coming around and I'm realizing now that I really do have a lot of storage so I'm just gonna start putting like these bins and these bins under here. I have not put anything under here yet. I went ahead and left the curriculum that was already here over here and I'm just gonna leave it there, it's fine. So this is all supplies that's gonna be like up for grabs and I actually take it to the office and yeah, so it's coming along. I think my next task is gonna be I need to peel the numbers off of these cubbies because I'm gonna put new numbers on them so I actually need like a razor blade and maybe some like, I don't know, it looks like it's coming off pretty easy so maybe I'll save that for like a project. So I'm gonna just add it to my to-do list but all the supplies that was here is now organized which is awesome. All right guys, so some more things have been done and changed. So I moved these over here. They were over there and I just flip-flopped them. I ended up putting my desk here and this little empty space is gonna be where my mini fridge goes. This is gonna be my class library. This is gonna be my small group area and then that space right there is left open for the computer cart. This is gonna be where the backpacks are hung and then all of this wall space is like bulletin board worthy. So I think we're gonna do that. I think I'm gonna put these down for the first week of school and just store them somewhere so that the kids don't fight over them or anything because these tend to be like a hot ticket number and they're actually just extra seats so I don't technically need them. They're just like extra. And then I've emptied out all of these black bins so now those are empty and I'm putting crop supplies in these one. I'm gonna put games and activities in this one so just like any games I have. I decided to put this back up front under the whiteboard like I always do, maybe under the smart board. I'm not probably not in the smart board because I'll be writing on that a lot but I put all the book bins and stuff over there because that's where I'm gonna keep like my group caddies and their book bins will be in the cubbies and stuff so I just moved all of that over there. And then I'm not positive about this yet but I'm pretty sure this is where my teacher toolbox will be and then I'm not gonna use this as an inbox this year, I'm actually use it as like a grading thing so once they've turned it in I will put them in the slots for grading. And then this is gonna be all my stem and steam materials, supplies, I have like straws and cups and like two of them are actually empty so that's great and those are gonna be stored under here. So I'm making a lot of progress most of the stuff that's still out and about is just decor so that will all be placed once everything else is like organized and put away. So this is empty. This is gonna be like projects, things I need to do so like I need to spray paint those, I need to like cut things and erase things just like random things I need to do. So I think I might take a break and go to lunch because I'm kind of at a, ooh do I have like sweaty bits? I don't think the air conditioning is on in this room cause it's hot. Oh I forgot to mention I put my little resource library right there and then this up here will be like professional things and my like picture books and chapter books that I like to keep really nice and like safe. And yeah, it's kind of what's going on in here. So yeah, I think I'm gonna stop because I'm kind of at a point where I'm like wandering and trying to like figure out what to do. So I think I'm gonna take a break, come back and just keep organizing, maybe get my desk area situated because that is a whole nother thing. I'm using these filing cabinets as like my desk like I'm putting all my supplies and like my things that I use in here just because it's like perfect and close. And then I will move this one up front. So I'll have that up there for like my teaching station stuff that I keep over there. Cause I have like two different teacher areas. I have my teacher teaching area which is up there and then I have like my area back here which is like really not purposeful. I guess I can sit there and like grade and whatever but yeah. So I think my friend Hannah and I are gonna go to Chipotle. Also I bought this bookshelf from Walmart. It was $25 and it's got five shelves. So I think that'll be perfect for my class library and like all the dictionaries and stuff like that. So yeah, super exciting. Okay so I'm starting to forget what I've shown you guys and what I haven't shown you guys. So I started putting all these things away. I don't know if this is all gonna stay here but I'm just putting it there for now because I'm ready to like start decorating and I wanna start doing that tomorrow. So the tables aren't where they're going to be. What I'm thinking is I'll do three round tables in the back. I'll do two floor tables on each side and then the tall one in the middle and then I think I'm gonna do my rectangular tables across the front like kind of like in a row I guess. Kind of like maker space with this one being a standing table option like maybe raising it once midget and this one's kind of smaller. So right now I'm able to sit four, eight, 12, 17, 22, 27 and I have right now 26 students. So that doesn't include my bar tables and then I also decided to use my little black coffee tables as my small group table. I'm gonna probably spray paint the top of these once I get the spray paint out because they look really bad.  It looks so like no good. So I think that's the plan and then I have a naughty desk over there. I do have another desk right here that I'm probably gonna put right by the door under the fire extinguisher is like, you know where the bathroom sign out and stuff is gonna be. So I'm not positive if that layout's gonna work for me. It might, I might put that smaller table over here by the window like diagonally just so that I don't know, I just feel like and I like the idea that there's gonna be four kids at these tables and then five here because I didn't wanna have like six. So I have one, two, three, four, five, six groups. And that's before using these and stuff like that. So I have six groups. Some groups have four, some groups have five. And then I have like lap desks and stuff still too. So yeah, I'm pretty excited. It's coming along well. Like I said, these are gonna be taken up to the office and you know, I'll get rid of those. I also moved this stuff up over here so that it's ready because it's gonna be like my teaching center. Just where I teach from will keep my stuff for teaching from because I don't just stand there. So that is the room so far. It is basically three o'clock and I feel like I've gotten a lot done today. And like I said, the bulk of tomorrow is probably gonna be starting to decorate and like put decor around.  But I don't know yet. I might just do bulletin boards and call it a day. I know a lot of people have been doing like the wood paper which I do have. I have two different kinds but I think I'm not gonna do an entire wall. I think that's just too much for me and I would probably do it terribly to be honest with you. So I think I'm just gonna do bulletin boards and call it a day but I might do an entire wall of black butcher paper just because I feel like that's endless and it's free. So, yep, tomorrow that's the plan. I ended up having some extra pencil sharpeners. So I have three pencil sharpeners and a crayon sharpener which is awesome. So I'll have those kind of all over the room. And yeah, super exciting. They did come and drop off our math program and that is currently in my teammate's room. All of these. But they have to come, each teammate has to come and pick up their students like enough for their class and then this won't be in here. So this is her room. She hasn't been here yet. She's coming tomorrow. So tomorrow is the official first day back for all the other teachers. So it'll be fun. We're gonna do some PD in the morning and then we'll have the rest of the afternoon after lunch to work in our rooms. So I think I'm gonna get here at seven again and work until eight and then go to the meetings and then I will come in here and finish. I'm hoping that this stuff will be gone tomorrow. That would be really awesome. And if it's not, I may push it over there to where the backpacks are gonna be just so that it's out of the way and I can place my tables where I want them. Cause I feel like that is why I'm not feeling like it's done, I guess. Well, not done, but like a lot is done, I guess. I don't really know what I'm trying to say. So yeah, that's my spiel. Happy first official day. Well, second official day. Setting up. Yay.


one and all present here. First of all, I would like to thank UNU wider for providing me this opportunity to present my work in this conference. The topic of my presentation is health shocks and intergenerational transmission of inequality. This is an empirical study based on the southern state of India called Andhra Pradesh. This will be the brief outline of my talk. Income shocks, the effect of income shocks on households in developing countries has been analyzed by a wide strand development economics literature. Now these shocks can be covariate in nature affecting all households in a particular community like droughts and floods, or they can be idiosyncratic in nature affecting that are specific only to individual households. Now in my study, I deal with the welfare impact of a particular type of idiosyncratic income shocks called the health shocks. Health shocks are most common idiosyncratic shocks and also the most important reasons for this distance of households into poverty in developing countries. Now why is this so? This is because health shocks entail economic costs to the households. These costs can be direct costs in terms of medical expenditure or indirect costs in terms of loss of productive labor time and thereby labor earnings. So in order to cope with the burden of these economic costs, households use a variety of formal and informal mechanisms like savings, transfers, credit sale of assets, taking extra work and so on. But whether the households are actually able to cope with the burden of these costs depends upon a variety of factors. These include our own resources possessed by the household like human capital, physical capital, social capital, financial capital and so on. Thus we might, one might expect that the poor of households in developing countries might be doubly disadvantaged to cope with the burden of health shocks. This is because they neither have access to own resources nor they have access to credit, well-developed credit and insurance markets. Now, hence these households might adopt costly strategies like withdrawing children from school, which in turn have implications for vulnerability to future shocks and intergenerational transmission of inequality and poverty. So in my study, I deal with the effect of parental health shocks on investments in children's human capital. This study will also throw some light on important dimensions like role of timing of the shocks, pathways through grease-free shocks affect human capital investment, the differential effects of maternal and paternal shocks and their differential effects on younger and older children and the importance of school quality. Now, coming to the theoretical background for this study, the main study, so this, the theory framework is drawn from the Becker and Tom's framework of rise and fall of families. So in this, according to this Becker and Tom's framework, when financial markets are complete, then the parents' investments in children will not depend on parental income because parents can always borrow against the future earnings of the children. But when financial markets are incomplete, then parental investments in children will depend upon the parental income. So when health shocks affect the households, then the resources are diverted to medical expenditure or the resources available are reduced itself. Hence, the financial resources devoted to schooling might reduce, but there might be other channels through which the health shocks can affect investments in children. For example, parental involvement in children's education and caregiving might reduce. Children's time itself might be devoted more to household and market production activities as the opportunity cost of children increases and there might also be psychological effects. So this diagram shows the different pathways through which investments in children can be affected. Now, coming to the empirical evidence, it is not possible to identify the specific pathways in an empirical framework. So the focus has always been on the cumulative effect on the children's educational attainment. Also, there are different measures of human capital accumulation used in the literature and these capture input, output and outcome indicators. Much of the empirical work has concentrated on Africa. This is because after the spread of AIDS epidemic, millions of children were orphaned in Africa. So the studies have investigated if there are significant differences in schooling between the orphans and the non-orphans. Now, most of the work have found that paternal health shocks, especially maternal deaths, affect children's enrollment in school and also reduce their completed years of schooling. But there are very few studies that have actually done the effect of parental health shocks on children's investments in schooling outside the countries where there is no epidemic done. And also there are some estimation challenges that has to be taken into account which I'll be detailing later. So in my study, I used the data from Young Life's Project which aims to study childhood poverty over a period of 15 years through household and child surveys. Now, this study, this project has been conducted in four countries and in India it is conducted in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Now, two cohorts, age groups of children are being followed. One is the Younger Cohort of 2011 children which were born in 2012. That is, they were one year old in 2012. And then in 2002, and then there are a group of 1,008 children which were eight years old in 2002. Three rounds of the survey have been completed and in my analysis I'm using all the three rounds. The attrition rate compared to other panels survey is very low at 3.6%. Now, in this study, particular study, I'm only using the Young Life's children are included in the analysis, the schooling outcome of other children in the household are not studied. This is mainly for two reasons. Young Life's is not a random sample of all the households in a particular community but it is a random sample of households with a one-year-old or an 80-year-old in a particular community. Also, important factors like child health and learning ability are available only for the Young Life's children. Coming to a profile of the Younger Cohort, this is a profile of the Younger Cohort. These children were one-year-old in 2002, that is in round one, and they were eight-year-old in round three. So in the round three, when they were eight-year-old, 99.2% of the children were enrolled in primary or pre-primary education. But you see that the minimum age of this cohort in the particular academic year is 6.95 years, that is around seven years, so when they are expected to be in grade two. But you find that 6.5% children were not enrolled or they were still enrolled in pre-primary and 12% were attending grade ones, so they were lagging behind. So is there a temporary delay in the initiation into primary school? For this, I use two outcome variables. The first variable is an indicator variable which takes value one. The child is enrolled in grade two and above or zero and it takes zero otherwise. The second is a continuous variable defined as follows. So this particular variable takes value one if the child has completed the grade appropriate for the age and it takes values more than one if the grade completed is higher than that expected of the age and vice versa. This is a profile of the grade, age-specific grade attained by the children by the parental health status. Coming to the older cohort, the older cohort where one year old, sorry, the older cohort were eight years old in the round one and they were 15 year old in the round three. In round one, 97% of them were enrolled in a primary school in R1. But when they moved to the round three, they only 75% of them were enrolled in school. So is there a termination of schooling due to parental health shocks? For this, again, I construct two outcome variables. One is an indicator variable that takes value one if the child continues to go to school and zero otherwise. But dropping out of school might not necessarily mean that there is lower educational attainment. If the child is able to go back to school after once the household recovers from shock. So I'm using another variable in terms of grades advance that is grade completed in R3 minus grade completed in R1. This is again a profile of the grade advancement by parental health status. Now, moving to the methodology, I use a conditional logic procedure here. Mainly for two reasons. Conditional logic procedure compass only those children from the same community. That is it retains communities where there are both enrolled and dropout children. And also it controls for community level factors like access to schools and health centers which might influence the children in a community. In the case of continuous variables, I use least square regression analysis with community fixed ethics. The main variable of my interest is self reported parental health shocks. These are defined as a serious illness or death of a father or a mother of a young lifestyle between the rounds. Now, the other independent variables may be classified into three categories. The child characteristics, household characteristics and school characteristics. The child characteristics include the age, gender, birth order and number of siblings. In the case of household characteristics, you have initial years of schooling of, sorry, includes years of schooling of mother and father, initial wealth quartile groups of the children, whether the household belongs to socially disadvantaged communities. And in the school characteristics, they are controlled for quality of nearest primary schooling. Before I go and estimate my model, I find that there might be factors that might bias the estimates. For example, there might be unobserved time invariant factors. Health shocks are itself not random events because households facing health shocks may display certain characteristics like social status and mobility that might also determine school attainment. So failure to control for these characteristics will generate bias estimate. Also, there might be unobserved time varying factors. For example, there might be incidents that happened during this period which have affected both the parent and health status as well as the schooling attainment of the children. Examples of this include the local weather shocks like droughts and floods, parental job loss, child morbidity, et cetera. So I take into account unobserved time varying factors by controlling for any other income shocks faced by the households. And I also take into account changes in child's health status and so on. In the case of the first unobserved, to check for the endogeneity issues, I perform two empirical tests. Firstly, I check whether health shocks are persistent. That is, health shocks are correlated over time using a dynamic panel model. So here I find that the lab health shock does not predict the present health shocks, which shows that the health shocks are not persistent over time. Because if they are persistent over time, there might be some unobserved characteristics that might be driving my results. Now, I also check if the children with low school participation are also more likely to have parents that face health shocks. That is, if lab non-school participants' participation predicts the future health shocks of the parents. And I also find this is not the case. So proceed to estimate the model. Here, the main results I find that the parental health shocks, in the case of younger cohort, reduces the age-specific enrollment as well as the grade attainment. Now, in many studies, which have not controlled for quality of primary schooling as well as the ability of the child, for example, here I have controlled for the initial learning abilities of the child. You find that the children who have low initial cognitive abilities are also the more, are also the ones who are more likely to drop out. If this is not controlled for, then this might give an over, you will give an over. The estimates might be upward biased. So I control for these factors as well, which are not done in the literature before. So the main conclusions of my study are higher the years of schooling. In the case of younger children, I find that there is a temporary delay in the enrollment in the primary education, while in the case of the older cohort, the schooling attainment is reduced by 0.26 years due to parental health shocks. I also find, which I've not shown here, in the early childhood, maternal shocks are more important than the paternal shocks, than paternal shocks, which mainly affects the child's human capital development to time devoted to childcare. But in the later stage, because for the older children, the opportunity costs are higher than for the younger children. So paternal shocks become more important because loss of income drives the children to be dropped from school and they are sent to work. So, and also other income shocks like child like job loss and parental job loss and child's initial cognitive ability are significant predictors of schooling attainment of children. The other factors are the mother's education and father's education in a significant contribute to the schooling attainment of children. In the case of older cohort, I found that the dropout rates are higher among the older children, among female children, and those who have larger number of siblings. Similarly, wealthier households have, children belonging to wealthier households have more likely to continue into education. And also migration of the household from a particular community into a different community, that negatively impacts the child's education. Now, I've also performed various robustness checks to sample selection, that is I conditioned on both the parents, Halai and Arun. This is just to see that the initial, the health shocks that might have occurred before Arun should not be having later on effects. The effect should not be continuing into later. And I also conditioned on no migration from the community. This is because most of the migration that I've observed from in my data set is distressed migration that is searching for a job outside their community and so on. So they might be affected, they might be affected by other income shocks as well. So I also conditioned on no migration. Then I use different indicators of child health in my analysis. For example, I use changes in BMI, changes in height for age, weight for age, Z scores. I also use indicators of self-reported health shocks, like health shocks reported by the parents to the children. For example, if the children face any serious illness or injury during the period and so on. And I also, in the literature, we find that the credit access to credit market is a very important factor that affects the investment of children's human capital. So I also use indicators for borrowing constraints faced by the households, like access to formal and informal credit markets, whether they are able to borrow, do they borrow at a very high interest rates or do they borrow from the money lenders and so on. Coming to the implications of my study, I find that in my earlier study, I found that households that are low on socioeconomic status are also more vulnerable to health shocks. Therefore, this in turn reduces the future economic well-being of the children through graduate school participation and therefore it perpetuates the poverty and inequality. Now, the state of Andhra Pradesh has a high enrollment rate of 100.76 in the primary education, but this drops to 79.12 in the upper primary education. So maybe policy interventions to retain children in school can be explored by the state. Also, there are studies that have proved that conditional cash transfer programs like Progress have actually retained children in school and they are able to mitigate the income shocks, income shocks faced by the households. So thank you.


Wonderful. Thank you all so much for joining us. This is an extremely exciting conversation, and we're very grateful to all of you for taking the time during your lunch hour or wherever you are to really hear from some of the leading practitioners, helping understand what it means to revitalize civic engagement in our democracy. This is a time of unprecedented change, divisiveness, effective polarization in the United States, low levels of trust in institutions, our politicians, our elections, and this is more important than ever that we rethink about what it means to be engaged in democracy, what it means to participate in our civic, social, and communal lives, how we think about, you know, the loneliness epidemic and the challenges that we're facing. So much of it requires people coming together in their communities and starting to talk to one another to build civic voice and civic power and to connect with their elected officials. Sometimes I call this hooks and levers in my most recent books, Civic Power with Seville Rahman. We talk about building these positive feedback loops so that everyday people have the ability to exercise their voice and political power in the process. This is essential for building a multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy that is inclusive, that is equitable, and people feel like their voice matters. This is not easy to do, and so we are so lucky today to be joined by three practitioners who are really leading cutting-edge examples of these models. Sometimes I think about Sherry Arnstein's latter of participation, how we move residents along, not just for tokenism or manipulation, but to have genuine voice and civic power. And looking at the field very broadly, there's a lot of actors, there's a lot of momentum, and I think about a spectrum of sort of, you know, bridging, pluralism, civic infrastructure, how we give people the pre-political skills to be active in their democracy, to be able to come together across lines of discourse, be okay with conflict. And then I think about how we channel that for more opportunities for people to engage in their democracy. I think we need to be asking more of everyday residents, not less. And if we're going to be asking more of people, we also need to have institutions that we can plug people into, where they feel energized, they feel excited about the practice of democracy, they feel like their voice matters. That's where we're going to hear from Marjan and all of the momentum around citizens assemblies and learn from people around the globe. And finally, we're going to hear about a very innovative model, people's assemblies that are happening in Newark, they're also happening in other parts of the country, including in Jackson, Mississippi, and they're a very powerful model for building civic voice and civic power. I could not be more honored to have our panelists here today. I want to give a quick thank you to all of them and also to the New America events team, Sarah, Mark, Marisa, our own team at Political Reform, and all of you out there. I think this is a very exciting topic and from the demand and the amount of people who have chosen to spend their hour with us, we want to be really thoughtful. Please put your questions in the chat and we're going to have a very rich conversation. So I want to turn it over to Emma to hear a little bit about the work that she is leading. She is the co-executive director for Mormon Women for Ethical Government. They have membership organization in over 49 states in the country. And I think it's a really powerful model on some of those pre-political skills of how you really train people sort of in the classic to Tocqueville laboratories of democracy. How do we give people those skills so that then we can move them along this conveyor belt or ladder, pick your metaphor of choice so that people have those civic muscles to engage in a citizen's assembly or a people's assembly. So Emma, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you so much, Holly. And thanks to everyone. That's wonderful to be here with you today. I'm just really excited about this topic. I think at our core, the mission of Mormon Women for Ethical Government or MWAG as our acronym is to empower women to be independent political actors. We do have a piece of our organization that does work directly on advocacy. And those two things really work well together because women come to our organization. Again, we have women as Holly said in 49 states, 7,000 members across the U.S. concentrated in the Intermountain West, but throughout. And they come to us because not only do they want to kind of advocate alongside us, but they want to learn all the skills and get kind of have a community in which to practice them. So I'm so glad that you mentioned conflict upfront because really at the heart of our work is what we call from a faith-based frame, peacemaking, and that's the frame that I think that works best for our women in our community. Most of our members, our members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, though we're not officially affiliated or endorsed by that organization. So we're working as independent actors and our women are interested in being peacemakers in their homes and their families and their communities and in their states and in the nation. And that frame is a motivating one for them. Now, if you're asking someone to be a peacemaker, you're assuming conflict. So therefore you're assuming difference. And so we're normalizing that conflict and we're normalizing the difference and we're actually inviting it in. So at every kind of layer of our work, we're acknowledging and inviting is perhaps a strong word for conflict. I don't know that any of us invite it in, but I think it's more that we're developing the skills and the courage to walk into spaces of conflict and then do our very best to help resolve it in a way that maximizes the positive impact for the most people. And so that kind of happens at a micro level. We do a lot of work around conversation building. We use living room conversations. We use in-person events. We do that sort of work. We have a lot of women who have family group text chats and they've put some of these skills into action there kind of all the way leading up into writing opinion pieces and meeting with legislators and involving themselves in conversations in the public sphere in which they can use these skills. So I think that in the context of this conversation, I think our women are doing exactly what Holly said in kind of learning those pre-political skills that then lead them, lots of metaphors here. I think we kind of look at it as a web of engagement. We're actually giving permission for women to step in and out in different ways as their time and circumstances permit. We're trying to build a model that's additive to their lives and not extractive. So they feel as though being involved in the civic sphere, being involved in the public conversation is meaningful. It brings richness to who they are, brings richness to their family and doesn't feel like they're constantly being pulled in directions they don't wanna go. And so at every layer of our organization from membership through volunteers through leadership, we've built in structures that actually invite diversity of opinions that push back and ask when we're choosing, for example, in a state legislative session, wouldn't it take a position on a bill? We have it built into our system. Well, why would someone else take a different position? And that is very much considered and discussed and we try to find someone who feels differently. And then internally, we build, we normalize conflict and disagreement and tension in our day-to-day practice. So I think that's, I'll stop there. That's kind of an introduction to how I think we fit into this conversation. I look forward to talking some more with the rest of you. That's fabulous, Emma. Thank you for joining us from very freezing Omaha. So we are lucky to have you. Marjan, I'm gonna turn it over to you. You are with Bregruen and also working on Fide and North America. I would love to hear from you and how you're seeing sort of citizens assemblies and play out in the US. Thank you so much, Holly. Hi, everyone. Thank you first of all to New America for hosting this. It is really an important time to be talking about civic muscle. Holly, as you mentioned, and also just how do we give our citizens more agency and that sense of consequential voice, which really is important and is lacking in our societies just generally. Thank you to Mark at New America. I also wanna thank Sarah, who's been very helpful and I'm really excited to be here and to hear more about Emma, the work that you're doing, which sounds fascinating and also, Serendia, hear from you about the great work that your organization is doing. So just to give a little context, I'm kind of new to the American scene, my work, just to provide a little background. I come to this work after 15 years of doing international development work, always in governance and rule of law work. I've worked for the World Bank and the National Democratic Institute kind of working on designing and implementing citizen engagement and participatory kind of models around the world. And for me, it was 2016. I really felt like I didn't want to invest my time abroad and I really wanted to turn my lens to the United States. And so I kind of did this pivot. And since then, for me, the problem statement and it really echoes what Emma, you were saying in Holly, your wonderful framing of our conversation today was really the issue of citizen disengagement and really stemming from what I think are sort of three themes that very much overlap, which is one, how do we help citizens hold government accountable in between elections? How do we create that space in between elections for citizens to be able to hold government accountable by providing them meaningful platforms to exercise their vote, their voice? And that really for me meant working around policy. How do we bridge that gap so that citizens don't feel so disconnected and that they feel slowly, hopefully, that policies are really sort of reflecting their preferences? I have had in the past five years since I've made this pivot the incredible privilege of really working on a number of citizens' assemblies around the world. I've been a researcher. I've been on the oversight committee, helped with the design of citizens' assemblies in France, in Belgium, in Canada, and also the researcher of one that we had in Petaluma, California, that was sort of a first of its kind for the United States. And I'm issue-agnostic, so I've worked on homelessness, democratic expression, we've worked on the end-of-life issues. So the issue is really not one that I'm focused on. I'm much more focused on how do we design these things for legitimacy? So what is a citizens' assembly? I'll just take a minute to just sort of maybe talk about some of the key features. And citizens' assemblies aren't for every situation, of course, but when they are sort of right for that context, they can truly be transformative if we're designing them well. I usually talk about some non-negotiable features of citizens' assemblies, what really makes them distinct, because I also believe in sort of those principles and I don't think that we should dilute them. If they're right for that framework, we should use them the way that I think they have been sort of used by practitioners who've been doing this for decades now. First is that we need to have a government partner. So these need to be led and championed by government. And it has to be a government body at the local level, at the village level, at the national level. It's intent on really involving citizens in solving a public problem. And so there has to be a sense that government is willing to move the needle on a policy issue, right? So that has to be the entry point. And then what we do, which is quite unique is the way we select citizens to participate. And so we usually use democratic lottery or sortition to sort of bring together what we call a broadly representative sampling of a population. Given that these are still voluntary, they're not perfectly representative, but we really try and make them as representative as possible. And that makes it really unique. And then the other pieces, there are three phases. There's learning phase, there's a deliberation phase, and then there's a writing of proposals phase. And the learning phase is really, really key, especially at a time when we're all dealing with such polarization in our societies. It really allows citizens to come and learn about an issue together. And it is absolutely formidable, the way that their opinions do change on those subjects when they sit together and they learn together. And then obviously the drafting of the proposals, which is a really important piece. So this is not about sort of giving your idea on programs. It's really co-writing a set of proposals and recommendations that then finally we ask that same government body to consider. And so here we kind of built in a sense of accountability as well as follow-up. So I am really, really a stickler for having really, really serious follow-up mechanisms that are in place so that citizens actually have a sense of what's expected of them and what they can expect of government. So I don't know if, should I, do you want me to stop there? I'm happy to stop there. That's a great, yeah, that's a great overview. And then I think, well, yeah, let's bring Serenthi in and then we'll get to all of this.  Thank you, Marjon, that is so helpful and it's just a great distillation of citizens' assemblies and why they matter. I want to introduce Serenthi, who's the manager of the Newark's People Assembly. I have been so intrigued about people's assemblies for many years now, working closely with folks in Jackson and really inspired by the model. And I'd love to hear sort of about the model and sort of how you all in Newark thought about doing this. I think it's very interesting for this conversation. Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me. My name is Serenthi McElroy. I'm the manager of the Newark People's Assembly. I'm new to the position, but I am ready to go and get things going. Newark People's Assembly may have a rocket created the office for the community to help them engage. The purpose of the office is bridging a gap in communication between the community and city hall and the departments and agencies. Also, it allows the communities to have input on decision-making based on what's in needs of the community. The mayor of Baraka feels like North has a voice and it needs to be heard. So we have community meetings throughout the city on decision-making that we have anything dealing with decision considering stakeholders, considering programming projects, initiatives, and development to inform the community of what's going on. So we work closely with our stakeholders, the individuals who will live, play, work in North and have a word, because their voice needs to be heard. So the goal is to bringing them all together and to work together as one and also communicate effectively and make, excuse me, have regular communication throughout the city. We have an office which is located in our city hall which the community can call, they can send emails and we pretty much act on what they need. If it's something that needs to be addressed to the mayor or the administration or either the departments, we act on it. So we are the voice of the people and we make sure that they feel, they know that we are there for them. We're trustworthy in them and we make sure we see whatever needs to be happened, gets done or their voice is heard and we're working on it. Pretty much, that's what we do. We host community meetings throughout the city and we also send out email blasts as well to make sure our community know what's going on. We wanna change the narrative and we wanna change this saying you live in our community, you don't know what's going on. So we want them to be aware of what's going on and share the information so whomever can use it. I think that's pretty much it. That's amazing, Cynthia. And it's so great to have someone from nonprofits and really thinking about the governance structure and then a government official. So we know there's a lot of pressing issues at Newark so we're very grateful to you. Maybe I'll just double click and we'll go the other way. If there's one example, sort of if there's a topic that you all recently held at People's Assembly on Newark, that was sort of very illustrative to you. I would be curious sort of if there is one that you think would be good to share with this group and then we'll kind of go back down the group. So I thought I had some notes together which I was gonna use but I'm just gonna kind of freestyle off it. So lately, an issue with the homelessness being in Newark and the residents, they were kind of resistance but Newark People's Assembly, we had different community meetings and let them know that we're here for the homeless, we wanna work to them. So we recently just opened up our Hope Village too. So we have Hope Village, One and Hope Village too and it's a transition for the homeless in the city of Newark where we bring them in and we give them resources and we work with them until they go to another level of care where they can live independently. So we had meetings throughout the city because we will be having more of those Hope Villages throughout the city. So it was good for the residents to know where we're at with our homeless rates and how we're working on to move them forward and also the resources that they can get. That is such a powerful example. And I think one of the things that I'm also excited to talk with all of you is like lessons for cross fertilization and cross learning. So many communities around the country are dealing with this homelessness crisis and it's so powerful Cynthia. Thank you so much for these words to hear the thoughtful, really community-centered approach that Newark is taking. I hope this can be a model that others can learn from. So we're really grateful to have you. Marjan, maybe I'll bring you in and we'll go back down. Is there's, you mentioned Petaluma as you're thinking about this moment in the US where there's a lot of attention on citizens assemblies if there's an example or something that is top of mind for you, that would be great. Sure, Holly. And yes, Petaluma was a great example and I'm really, really thrilled to hear already that we are likely going to have three or four at least as far as I am aware of citizens assemblies in the United States this year. And that's really exciting. But I think maybe just as a model and I understand that what I'm going to say is a national citizens assembly and hopefully we'll have one of these at some point in the United States. But it was a very interesting model and one that we can draw from lessons from at the local level as well. But the last citizens assembly that I was involved with last year was the French Citizens Convention on the End of Life. And that was a really, really powerful case. And again, it's at the national level. So it's a little bit different than having a citizens assembly at the local level. But the president of France in his second campaign had promised that he would address the issue around the end of life and assisted suicide to understand what citizens really felt about that and whether they wanted to change on the law. And so we over the course of nine weekends we had 185 and I say 185 because we started with 185, we lost one person and only one person over the course of nine weekends spread over four months, which was really extraordinary and remarkable because these were citizens who weren't in the same city. They were coming from all parts of the country and they were all so committed. And so over nine weekends, we brought them together for learning. They met with experts and then they deliberated and then they finally drafted and 76% of the 184 at the end of the day were in favor of some kind of a legal framework that would allow for assisted suicide and euthanasia. And 24% were against. And what was really remarkable and this is something that I'd love to highlight here is the social cohesion that was created. So what we did is we really started with issues where there was common conviction. So we tried to bring the group together and so the first sessions were really built around hospice care, palliative care, all of that that we knew they would really kind of coalesce around. And once they had built the trust that they needed to build we then got into issues that were more contentious. And the level of civility and the deliberation that was going on was just absolutely beyond this world. And one of the people who was part of the minority the very last session said we wanna thank the majority for giving us 50% of the time. And so it was just a really beautiful experience of how you can bring people together who have very different and a very emotional issue had very different opinions and just have them kind of come together and build a community. And they now have started an association. And the other last piece that I'll just talk about because policy is generally discussed and policy impact of citizens assemblies. So the president at the last session met with all of the citizens, 184 and he made a commitment that there would be a change in the law. The commitment initially was that there would be some framework introduced at the end of the summer then it became the end of the year but we understand that there will be a change. And if you think about it, policy changes generally very slow. So hopefully if we do have some change by the spring or the summer even I think that that will still be hugely successful. And so it's also, this was a consultative mandate that can still demonstrate that there is real consequential voice at the end of a citizens assembly. These are really powerful examples. Wow, Emma, I would love to hear from you if there's one or two illustrative examples. I mean, I think these points of sort of how do you find that right issue, the homelessness, pivotal issue, end of life. These are things that are very essential to people. And so I think that's something also I'm taking away from this. You're not shying away from going for the tough issues to ensure that this engagement is more than lip service but it's really tied to these core policy outcomes. So Emma, welcome any examples from you. Yeah, I think I'm gonna continue on with a real tough issue because I think sometimes those really tough issues can be vehicles for building relationships and kind of humanizing each other. I think sometimes if we go right in on the tough issues it gives us an opportunity to really kind of figure out how to work together.  Clearly within the US abortion is a very hot topic. Is one that is I think dividing us in extraordinary ways. And as an institution we have chosen not to take a position on it and in fact in the very beginning we didn't even allow women to talk about it because it was just so difficult for anyone to have a conversation about. So we kind of took it off the table completely. And our position was partly that it's being used as a political wedge issue and we wanted to remove it from the conversation. But over the last couple of years we felt clearly like we needed to use that issue as a way to build skills for conversation. So this past year did screenings of a movie called The Abortion Talks which is actually not a movie about abortion. No one believes that's because it has abortion in the title but it's a movie about growing to see people as fully human and understanding them. And so it's a very powerful movie about the aftermath of a shooting at a Boston abortion clinic where there was some death and there had been a great deal of escalation in the community before and after that. And the women from two sides from very pro-life, very pro-choice were gathered together in the basement of a church for years to talk to each other in secret until no one knew about it. It was such an issue that was so volatile that they couldn't even be known that they were having conversations with the enemy. And this documentary was made about those conversations. So we had in-person screenings in Utah and then we did a series of in-home screenings across the US where we would zoom it out and women could invite friends and family into their home to watch the movie and then followed by a session where we did kind of skills building and talked about what they had learned and again never really diving into the actual issue itself but focusing on building the skills to be able to have difficult conversations. And the beautiful thing about this event and about this movie is I hosted one in my home and I had friends there who were absolutely on polar opposite sides and I had a lot of trepidation about hosting them but they both were able to see themselves represented in the movie in a way that they felt seen and heard and that set the table for a conversation about how we need to kind of at minimum in order to have productive conversation be able to humanize one another. And as we did pre and post surveys across hundreds of women across the United States who attended these and we saw a significant decrease in an increase in humanization and pluralistic norms and a decrease in effective polarization and anger. So sometimes the actual process of putting something together in a structured setting as Marjan said so it can't just be a free for all. You can't just say, hey everyone go in a room and talk about this topic. There needs to be some sort of a guide, a framework, a methodology and honestly a setting of tone that is open and in our case full of peacemaking is the way we would phrase it. And so I use that example as one that I think is again back to my early introduction it's walking right into a complex zone. It's kind of having that identity of a peacemaker as one who sees a conflict that is entrenched seemingly impossible to resolve and is choosing to enter into it in order for the greater good and to kind of set aside personal animosity or kind of learn how to, to unlearn some of that to do it. And I would, from the examples that both Serentie and Marjan have given my guess is this is kind of a prerequisite and or a skill that is gained in the process. And so the beautiful thing about the topic that we're discussing is that certainly it can impact on policy and it can and should and meaningful pragmatic efforts and practical efforts should come out of it but there's also a change that occurs in the participants that extends far beyond any one event or any one interaction that I think is really representative of the spirit of this democratic republic that we're all seeking to grow and have flourished for all people. So that's I think why I feel so one of the reasons I feel so passionate about this and appreciate this conversation.  And I want to talk a little bit about the sort of dealing with the politics dealing with the conflict. Serentie, I would love to hear from you has there been any pushback to this? Has Mayor Baraka had to justify this approach or have there been moments that really surprised you in this process? I would say pushbacks. No, Mayor Baraka, he's really transparent and he's always at the meeting. So anything that's, you know, addressed to the meeting address at the meetings the concerns he's straight on for hands boots on the ground to answer questions. And it also helps the community and I see for myself the way they may have misunderstood something or wasn't clear on something it changed the narrative and it clearly understands so then they become in support. So it helps empower the people in their questions or concerns. So I think it's good. I think it's a good thing for us to have the community meetings and it's really helpful. So it's not a pushback because they have a clearer understanding by the time they leave the community meetings on what it is that the initiative is or the understanding or the policy. Yeah, I mean, I think it really underscores how important that leadership is, right? Like having that mayoral air cover is so essential. Just one other follow-up on that Cynthia. Yeah, is there something that has really surprised you? Sort of just, you know, it's always interesting when you come into a process and you see it like was there something kind of unexpected to you? The whole, so if I can be honest the whole position and how, you know we're working together, you know, usually you see like there's a lot of naysayers but then there's also a lot of people who are in support. So I think the surprising and understanding how many people really care about their city and they take North People's Assembly as a great opportunity to build a trust and engage and this is what we do and this is how we move in our city forward. So the surprise and the support and people embracing North People's Assembly. That's amazing. And do you all talk with the folks in Jackson working on this? Just curious, like the cross-pollination aspect. Since I've been here, I wanna say no but I'm sure the previous manager, Andrea she did a lot of, you know, visiting and talking in conversations. I'm sure there's conversations. I just didn't have my chance yet but I'm looking forward to it. So yes. Absolutely. And I think this is such a powerful model. Thank you so much for sharing. Marjan would love to hear from you and I wanna also tee up the audience. We're getting a lot of really good questions. I'm gonna be turning to the Q and A from the audience in a few minutes. How you've seen people navigate that opposition to citizen assemblies? Like if there's an example or just sort of one of the things that you've seen emerge that is useful for this conversation. I mean, when you say people do you mean leaders, electives? Yeah. I mean, I think like, you know one of the things we're seeing here, right? And you mentioned it as one of the five is like you need that government support. So how do you get over that hurdle to then get the government support? So I think there are a couple of things. First of all, I think it's really important the way that we message citizens assembly. So one of the things that we make sure that we do is so that it's less threatening because obviously we're asking officials to cede a little bit of their power to citizens. Is that message of this is not meant to replace our representative democracies it's really meant to strengthen. And I think that message really needs to be sent very clearly. The other pieces to be honest with you I mean, we're still relying even internationally we're relying on leaders as you mentioned Holly who have courage and who are bold and who have vision. Once they see it in action, they are sold. It is fascinating how just spending a couple of days at a citizens assembly changes the views of any elected official. And so, you know, I think that those things the more we can experiment, I mean, especially as they're hopefully we're going to have more in the United States being able to bring elected so that they can see and observe what's going on during a citizens assembly I think will be a huge seller as well. But I will say one of the things that I also think you know, the way that we talk about this and I really appreciated Emma's comments around sort of this transformative potential and the impact on participants is that, you know I think that, you know we talk about our democracies very often the strength of our democracies in terms of trust and I think the trust is really important but one of the things that I have really appreciated is in the course of all of my surveys there have been citizens assemblies where, you know as I mentioned before, government makes a promise and it doesn't keep its promise or it doesn't set expectations the way that citizens are expecting it to. And so we actually do see with citizens assembly sometimes trust in government drops. And that's okay because the other impact which is so important is that their sense of agency over their democracy is forever changed. And I think that is worth so much. And so I would love for us to actually start talking about the strength of our democracies more around the sense of empowerment that we're giving our citizens in being able to actually be involved in their democracy trust will always be important confidence in political institutions will always be important. But I think that those messages also and they do speak to good leaders. You know, it's so interesting because I feel like there's a big schism like should we be talking about the word democracy, right? I feel like there are many people I work with who say we can talk about other things that we want to get to those aims but actually the word democracy is alienating to people. Emma, it's really interesting that you could have trust go down but that would be a sign that people feel a sense of agency. That's very, very interesting. Yeah, so I think one way to look at it and is through the eyes of the lens of temperament of those who are involved. And I think one of the reasons that agency goes up and we've seen this experience with our women is that it gives a space and a way and a methodology for people to engage who otherwise might be hesitant to jump in because of the nature, the highly polarized nature of the public conversation. The reality that oftentimes it is the loudest, most extreme voices who are not just grabbing the mic but then holding it and using it and that those voices are the ones that have often the ear of those in power. And so I see this as a process of building up, supporting, providing community and support for those who would normally perhaps disengage but maybe their trust, we see this a lot, we do see this quite a bit, will encourage women to engage with elected officials meaning for the first time and they will see that they're not being heard and it's frustrating. And then we're there to push them over the hump and say, well, have you considered running for their seat? And so people who did not even see themselves in that role before are now feeling, I think the frustration can be harnessed into an energy for greater, more meaningful participation. And so if this does nothing else than to empower and energize a new group of citizens who felt left out of the conversation because they maybe weren't the loudest or the strongest voice, then this is I think worth the effort and this is a long-term play in that respect. Yeah. Cynthia, what do you think about the democracy frame? Just curious your thoughts. The democracy frame, I think when it comes to North People's Assembly, we really act on building trust in the community, the transparency and being consistent and reliable. We also get the community engaged. So it's saying, hey, we have community ambassadors. How about coming on our team and being a part of the community ambassadors? I see that you're really passionate about your community. So once you become a part, and they see that what we do and it helps change and it also builds further trust where they can go back and talk to their different neighbors and residents and say, hey, look, North People's Assembly is really trying to build a democracy and working with the community. So I think you should be a part of this or come out to more meetings, express what you have to say because if we don't know, you know, how do we act on it? And there may be a concern that you have, but other people, and they may be afraid to say it. So in these community meetings, we're opening it up to a larger scale to making sure and following up. It's fascinating. Can we just double click on the ambassadors? Like how that program works just would be curious about that. So we have community ambassadors in the city of North, which is, I wanna say right now, we have FEDD, but we're currently growing and people sign up and basically what they sign up for is helping engage in the community more help getting out the information. Also, their job is to actually let us know what we don't hear. What some people feel like they can't come to us and say, so they're comfortable with telling the neighbor. So then we come back and we meet on a larger scale to say, hey, this is a meeting that we need to have. We present it to the administration and the departments and then we have communities to address it and move forward to resolve in the problem. So we have community ambassadors, our residents in the community from the whole entire city of North and they work well with us. That's so interesting. That's such a fascinating example and thinking of that co-governance like the inside outside, right? How do we wield the power externally but do it in a way that has teeth, right? So you're building that connective tissue. There is that feedback mechanism. I think that's really powerful. We have a lot, oh, sorry, please. And I just add to also within a part of the community ambassadors, we also include the Senate associations and block associations as well. That's great. That's great. How many are there in New York? I'm just curious, probably a lot. There is a lot. Yeah, there is a lot. Sorry, I can't tell you a number. No, no, no, no, that's fantastic. Because we try to get away from breaking up in wars but we do have five wars in this large one. So we have so many. So they're really active and they're growing and you do so COVID, a lot of them are starting to regroup and get back into the swing of things. Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm going to turn to the Q&A and please audience, Sphere, we're so grateful to you for joining, I think, this riveting conversation. I could talk with you all experts all day long but in the interest of time, we won't. I'm going to synthesize and I'm actually going to pick up from what we were talking about, Sorenthea, on the sort of existing structures that are in place. A lot of the questions we're getting, I'm looking at Marjan, are about citizen assemblies. And so thinking about, I have one question here. If a citizen assembly is viewed as redundant to what the government is already doing, how do you make the case for it? And another question about, if the government agrees to sponsor a citizen assembly, do they also commit to implementing the recommended policy change? So I see a lot of questions that are around sort of, how do we get over that hump? And then there is the ever present question of the funding. We've talked about how the citizen assemblies model, it requires work. And so designing things right is expensive as so many of us know, stipends, childcare, accommodations, I think design really matters. That costs money. And so we have one of the questions about, they've hosted assemblies in rural Hawaii. It's exhausting and a lot of work. How do I get funding? So maybe we'll just, we'll take a few, Marjan, if you want to cluster some of those citizen assembly questions and then we're going to zoom out to some of the other questions for the rest of the panelists as well. Sure. I mean, I'm happy to answer the question. I think I'll put the sort of, are these redundant to what government's already doing and does government commit to then implementing the proposals? I think that we really need to be careful, right? I think we want to make sure that these are not seen as paying lip service to what government is already implementing. And I think that's really important. And so one of the things that I do talk about quite a bit is I think that, especially in Europe where we've had this experience, it's a much more, a longer experience where the OECD, I think there are about 600 citizens assemblies that they've recorded over the past, I think 15, 20 years maybe, and they're really exploding. I think it's time for us to really think about this as a true way to give more power to citizens, sort of following on the themes that we've talked about. So one of the things that I've often thought about is that we generally don't see, there are a few citizens assemblies that allow residents to choose the topic. So I think in a perfect world, we would have government, of course, as a champion, as an initiator say, these are the three areas that we're thinking about moving the needle off, right? Because you have to have that openness and policy because otherwise we're going to ask citizens to write policy and then there will be no change and that's a very frustrating experience. So asking government to give us two, three different topics and then have those topics be voted on by residents has a couple of different impacts. One, it gives power to residents at large and that's one of the things that we talk about with citizens assemblies is how can we make the connection between the select few that are chosen to be part of the citizens assembly? How do we make the connection sort of stronger with the broader public, right? So those are ways to kind of engage with the broader public that may not be sitting on that panel. So that's one way. In terms of commitment, though, and I just want to be really clear here. So my experience, my survey suggests that citizens don't necessarily want their proposals to be binding. They are so happy to be consulted with and in my in-depth interviews and my book will be published this summer, citizens actually say, we have not heard from government in years. We're just so excited to come to learn to sit with other residents. We are happy if our proposals are reviewed by the government. And so I think what we really need is to have a robust system of follow-up. So government commits to look at those proposals and come back in six months and say, we're adopting 5%, 10%, 20%, we're not adopting this many, we're rejecting these up and this is why. If we could build in an appeal process into that so that then residents can say, well, wait a second, I'm really curious about this proposal. I think that would be ideal. But so I'm not sure that we should criticize citizens' assemblies and that I hear this quite often because the proposals of citizens are not necessarily binding. I'm not sure that citizens themselves think of themselves as, they see this as one other source of information, if that makes sense. So, and then the other question about funding, I mean, that's a really big one, right? I will say a couple of things. I'm guessing that the audience is mostly US-based. Our colleagues in Europe are able to raise this funding for it. I'm not sure why a country like the United States were very resource rich. If we make a commitment to really bringing in more democratic platforms that engage citizens in a meaningful way, I'm not sure why we can't find the funding. I think it's pretty startling to me as I turn my attention to sort of the US to hear that between one and maybe 1.5% of the funding from philanthropy is going into democratic reform. I think that needs to change. So I push back on that. Yes, they are very kind of costly, but also the kind of the results that you get are phenomenal. So I do think that we can kind of try and figure things out. A colleague of mine and myself have also created this process called the Democratic Action Fund, which asks government to set aside a certain percentage of the money that's already being spent on elections to create a democratic action fund so that different levels of government from the local to the national can apply for funding to then be able to set up a citizen's assembly or another participatory sort of vehicle. So I do think that, yes, they're costly, they're incredibly labor intensive, but I think we can try and figure out the cost somehow as a country. That's so helpful. And I think it's really powerful to have the three of you in an election year, right? We know this is very powerful, but Emma, I think you were the one who told me that we can walk into gum at the same time. There's anything you wanna share on that topic about why we need to be laying down this infrastructure maybe more essentially during an election year. Yeah, I think it's important that we both be doing the short-term work of shoring up democratic guardrails or in some cases, soldering them back on as they've been shaken loose or torn off. It's important that we be responsive to anti-democratic moves by government at all level. It's important that we be preserving, for example, the citizen valid initiative process and be heavily involved in our legislative sessions as there are attempts in many places to kind of erode the citizen authority. That is all really important, but at the same time, I am very committed to the sort of long-term work that we're talking about here. And I don't see them as being in competition, kind of coming back to that idea of agency. That's something that we talk a lot about from a faith perspective. That's kind of, in many ways, that's why we see our purpose here on this earth is to learn how to make choices for ourselves and to be fully developed humans and have divine worth. And so the process that we're talking about through Citizens' Assemblies is a process that accrues, helps accrue greater goodness to the people who are participating in it. And I see a lot of frustration amongst our members and amongst our public with leadership in Washington, for example, a lot of frustration with the way that they're behaving, with the lack of movement on such. And I experienced that personal frustration myself, but I think what we have to do is use that frustration as a motivation to engage rather than a reason to disengage and complain. And so these long-term experiments that we're doing, we've always experimented in the United States. That's what it is. It is the American experiment. We've assumed from the beginning that we were trying something that no one else was able to do to build a pluralistic, multi-ethnic democracy. So just because something isn't working exactly how you hoped it would the first time, don't take that as a bad thing, take that as an iteration towards something better. And I think these Citizens' Assemblies are one more step in the direction. And I have no doubt that they will evolve. I have no doubt that some of the barriers that we're hearing about will be turned into actual points of tension that can be used for creative good. I believe in our ability as a people to care about these things and to wanna make the changes and to keep working at it. And so just, I guess, if anything, I feel a great deal of optimism despite the struggles that I think we all encounter right now in the field that we work in. But I see so much good. That was so powerful. I would be tempted to end right there where we have so many questions from the audience. So, Cynthia, there's one question. Has the mayor from New York seen more political support because of this outreach to the People's Assemblies? And are there any metrics that you're using? I don't know if this is something that you all are talking, but be curious your thoughts on this. So I would say yes, the mayor has received more support with North People's Assembly. He's out, he's communicating. He's getting pretty much understanding of what's going on in the community. Also, with him being really adamant in North People's Assembly as well about making your voice heard. So the community feels like their voice is being heard when we're having these meetings and this different gatherings and working on it. It's not just the mayor's, what he wants is what the people want. So working with the people, understanding and taking back their thoughts and putting it into how it can work for the whole city. So I think it's a good thing and the support is growing in our city. That's awesome. I'm gonna synthesize and also take the moderator, Lirudi, to ask you all one final big question because a lot of the questions we're getting are can these efforts be scaled? Is the ultimate vision to have public funding and actors organize assemblies? Is the ultimate vision, Marjon, you did mention there is sort of a lack of philanthropic funding that goes to democracy, quad democracy. I wanna ask all of you, I wanna answer that question but then I'll ask all of you in sort of closing remarks, what's your vision?  Or if you could wish one thing, I would just be curious to hear, is it everyone across the country is doing People's Assembly, Citizen Assembly is doing the kind of really innovative grassroots work that you all are doing, Emma. You know, what is your vision and who's funding that vision maybe is another question. Emma, why don't we start with you? I was hoping you would wait. Because that's okay. No, I'm good. Can you wait? Yeah, no, I think part of the work that I do is a lot of kind of building and riffing on what other people are saying and doing. So I was gonna add to whatever your other panelists have to say that's wonderful. I think that, I think that, I'll reiterate I think maybe the vision that I have expressed I think throughout this call. And it's not just a vision. I think that's maybe the best way to say it. It's actually the reality of the work that I am seeing happen with our women every single day. You know, someone had asked me a while ago, how do you feel help? How do you not get discouraged? And I said, it's just really hard to be discouraged when you wake up on a Tuesday morning and I check the Salt Lake Tribune or the Deseret News in Utah, for example, and one of our members has written a beautiful opinion piece about a topic that we had been discussing internally and weren't quite sure if we were gonna write on and we don't need to anymore because she has stepped in and just done it. You know, I see examples of women in family group text chats who are guiding their family members towards better sourcing in their news media. That they recognize that the kind of at the foundation of good policy decisions is good information that we can't work together to solve the problems we have unless it's based in facts. And so she's working to kind of help her children, her teenage children navigate TikTok. And then this child is now an 18 year old voter and he has through home conversations in the home learned how to navigate what's coming at him day to day. I have examples of women who never in their life ever considered them self, someone who could call up a legislator or interact with a person in power. And they now have their state legislator on speed dial and they're texting with them regularly. And not only that, they're bringing with, she is bringing with her to meetings other than her community.  It's very much something that is a community event. So I think that is, I think my vision that is occurring right now within our work and what I'm hearing from what Marjan and Serentia are doing is this empowerment of citizens collectively to do something wonderful. That's really powerful. I think it was me who asked you how you don't give up hope. Serentia and then Marjan. So my vision and my goal is for everyone to have people's assembly in their community because it's working in work. So we know it can work. Wherever it happens that we just have to make sure that the government or the administration is in support of the vision in the community and what the community wants. Every day I go to work and it's a good thing knowing that I can help people. Listen to their problems or their concerns. I try not to say problems but their concerns and knowing that I can assist them and help them and get some type of resolution for them. And it's not just because it's my job but it's knowing that there's people out there who really, they go through some things and they look forward to someone helping them and we can work together as a community to have a support system and also engage in other different community-based organizations, tenant associations, the community ambassadors and the block associations and we're all working together to move our city forward. So that's what it would be for me. That is so powerful and thank you. I'm always so impressed with any people I meet in New York City government, in New York, you all are amazing and such an inspiration. Marjahn, wanna close us out. Well, I was just gonna say, can we stop there because I'm feeling so scared after hearing Emma and Serentia both speak. I guess what I will add is, I mean, this has been an incredible conversation and I love to hear about everything and of course I am incredibly excited about Citizens' Assemblies but hearing about all the work that everybody else is doing is really inspiring. The one thing I will add is I think we're talking a lot about tools, right? The tools that we can use and the piece that I feel sometimes is missing and so if I step back and I say what my goal is, my goal is that, yes, we have access and sort of to all of these different tools and we find a way to fund them but ultimately my long-term goal and my hope and my dream for the United States is that the American experiment becomes a true democratic culture and a real practice. I feel like we've lost just our sense of process, our respect for democratic process and so I would love to see a place especially in this election year, when I speak to youth, it breaks my heart to see them so uninterested and so disengaged. I would love for us to be in a place in America where every person in this country feels like they can hold government accountable in between elections and that they really have voice. I think it better than all of you. We're so grateful to you for joining us and thank you to all of you for listening and to the events team and Mark, Sarah, Marisa. Thank you so much.


Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering AWS re-invent 2017, presented by AWS, Intel, and our ecosystem of partners. Can you hear that? That's the sound of a happy conference right now. 40,000 plus here gathered. We are live here in Las Vegas here at re-invent. AWS putting on its three-day event with great success, we might add, along with Justin Warren, I'm John Walls, we're now joined with a couple of folks who are from the Red Hat side of the fence. Let's start with Tim App now, who's a Senior Principal Product Manager at OpenShift. Tim, nice to have you here. Oh, with Ansible. Yeah, or Ansible. OpenShift, all right, all right. He's on the OpenShift side of the family. All right, so I knew I was going to get that confused. First, let's talk about OpenShift a little bit though, Eric, you had an announcement just about a week ago, getting a little more in line with AWS. Obviously, you're here with that announcement a week ago, but tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, certainly. So what we've actually done is we've had a long partnership with Amazon or AWS, and we're enabling the AWS services natively on OpenShift. So what that really means is you can go right from the, what we call as a service catalog, the user interface, and developers really don't need to know where their services are running. What they're able to do now is go into that service catalog, order AWS services alongside of their applications, and they really can deploy hybrid workloads. And really, it couldn't be any easier. You don't have to switch between consoles, you don't have to go to outside of OpenShift, it can all be done on the platform. And what was that response to? Because I'm sure you talk to customers, right? You hear what the workloads that they're trying to handle, they like the cloud environment, they like AWS, like what's going on there. But what were you trying to do for them? Yes. That solved the problem solving. Yeah, we're definitely listening to our customers and we have a lot of customers who run hybrid workloads. And really the goal of this was to make it easier, right? You know, we heard loud and clear, hybrid workloads are important. They're a part of most companies' business and they wanted a way that was really seamless and easy to reduce the overhead and complication on the developers. And by being able to pull those services into the user interface, it really makes it a lot easier to deploy all the popular services on AWS, again, right from the platform without having to ever leave that environment. So it makes it a lot more easier and comfortable for the developers and makes them a lot more efficient. Yeah. What are some of the services that you're hearing developers demand that you, like what are the ones that they really want to use on OpenShift? Yeah, yeah, there's quite a few. So we've enabled 10 initially, I'm not going to go through all 10, but things like RDS, right? So they're a relational database service, SQS, some queuing service, SNS, Athena, Route 53. I mean, the list goes on and on. So, you know, there's definitely a lot of services we have today, but what we're really doing is we're taking a lot of that feedback now that we've actually enabled this. We made it available as public and get the code today. And then we're starting to getting feedback and as we get that feedback, we're enabling more services. And the nice part about this is it's automatic. When you put a new service out there, their environment can immediately consume it, right? It doesn't have to do any special changes or enablements or reconfigurations. It's really just up to the administrator to decide which services they want to expose to their users. Yeah. So what is it about putting those services in an OpenShift that really amplifies the way that you develop with OpenShift? Because developing software on OpenShift is quite different from other forms of software development which is without that kind of platform. So what is it about putting these services that amplifies the ability of what you can do as a developer in OpenShift? Yeah. So that's kind of a multi-part question. Let me see if I can do it some justice. I think one of the nice things is we're based on Kubernetes. And Kubernetes is one of the de facto standards today for orchestrating workloads. So not only do a lot of these workloads, again, are hybrid-based, right? So they're both on-premise and in the cloud. But it pretty much adds that layer of flexibility there that you really don't have to kind of pick, right? You don't have to have it all in, you know, Amazon's AWS environment, EC2 environment, or on-prem, right? You can run it full. And the nice part about this enablement that we did, which makes it really flexible, is in an on-prem environment, you can actually enable the services there to be able to take advantage of deploying AWS services natively from on-premise.  Likewise, if you have an instance of OpenShift where you're doing development in the cloud, EC2, you can actually have it run it there and you still have access to it. So it's really flexible in how you want to do that. It's not just confined to, you know, in the cloud, it's also available on-prem. Yeah, it provides you with that flexibility without it being too complicated and having to go into the weeds and figure out exactly how you do it in 900 different ways. You can say, well, actually, we just standardize on this one OpenShift approach, but you get the access and the choice that developers really, really like. Yeah, it's one of the things that we're, again, we're based on the Kubernetes standard, so we have something called the OpenShift Service Catalog, and that's the Kubernetes upstream project. And what that is is that standardized interface and it's really meant to automate, to make things more efficient. Normally, you'd have a ticket queuing system, your order of service, you know, a number of days it takes IT operations person some time to get that implemented, and then you get the credentials, you get an endpoint, and then you could finally tie that into your service, right, and that stays wasted. With the service catalog, that really sort of enables self-service, right, for developers, so they can go in, not only that, all those services that they create, and they put in that catalog that they can deploy, again, that's sort of married with all the services that they may need for their Harvard workloads, so all the AWS services. So it really makes it a simple, easy way to deploy your workloads, deploy your applications without a lot of work. I don't know one of the ways that you're exposing those services is using the Ansible. The Ansible Service Broker, is that what it's called? Yes, yeah, it's, we're using Ansible, the OpenShift team has used Ansible Automation to make creating these services more easy to develop and deploy into their platform. So it's one of the ways that, you know, the flexibility of the Ansible tool in adapting. Tell us a bit more about how developers are using that Ansible, so I think, particularly around that service brokerage idea, but more around, Ansible is available as open source, Red Hat is famous for being really open and knowing that. Yes it is. But it also has enterprise capabilities. So could you walk us through a bit more about that, how are developers using this to access services and then what are some of the enterprise capabilities that they can get with Ansible? Well, specific to what the OpenShift team launched, they're able to develop these services and use the entire suite of Ansible bundle modules that are bundled together and then brought in as services so they're able to mount and provision different types of services, only knowing Ansible Automation, they don't need to know like Golang or some type of other sophisticated things, so it's bringing something more powerful in a more simple way to the OpenShift platform. More specifically or more broadly, I should say, Ansible's always been a highly flexible tool that can adapt to different workflows, different environments, whether that's on-prem legacy environments or pure cloud or hybrid cloud environments. So this is just one way that it's been used differently but we're seeing it used throughout the Red Hat portfolio and it's always been a strength with Amazon that we've always had a strong Amazon web services community within Ansible. Whether it's just traditional compute or even doing things in the serverless space, Lambda and moving beyond that, we're able to do that complete automation from end to end for them. As a Python guy, I've got a special place in my heart for Ansible, I quite like that thing. And I like being able to do things in a Python-y kind of way. So yeah, Golang, I hear people really like it but I like my Python. Yeah, but we try to keep that where users don't have to really know Python but that is what Ansible is underneath the hood and it is when you want to extend Ansible what you would use, but the vast majority of users don't really need programming skills. They're working with very human readable, declarative forms of defining the state they want their servers and their computing resources to be in. Yeah, Ansible is sort of historically is used for things like it's more of an infrastructure configuration tool but we've got service configuration now as well and something like OpenShift is much more application developer centric. So I'm seeing a real blending of those two kinds of people who are doing development. They're kind of two different forms of developers but now they're basically blending themselves together and becoming one team of like, do you see that as where development is going that pretty much everyone becomes a software developer? Well, I know from the Ansible standpoint we're continuing to explore and bringing that simplicity and power to all these different ways that we can adapt that and since we've joined the Red Hat family we're exploring all these different ways that we can work together and bring that type of value to its end users, to its customers, so. And what do you think at the end of the day when you say, we talked about customers and trying to meet demands and what have you, if you had to look down the road and say for the next six, nine months that this is what we're going to try to address or this is what we're hearing from our customers that they need attended to that you could provide help for, what would that be? Like what headache are people bringing to you right now to say to them? The headache? Give me a hand. Generally, the headache is a lot of people just trying to automate and make sense of all this legacy things that they've had and the issues where they've done things manually or before you had cloud native applications and how do they move it to a cloud native architecture like an open shift? So that's a lot of our focus. So it's, how do I wrestle some of these private clouds? How do I wrestle windows? How do I bring things into AWS? How do I do multi-cloud? Things of that nature. So it's how do I manage things that are when they're moving so fast and there's so many moving parts? And we give them that a single language that they can use for their automation. So you've got all this legacy work that's been done. You're trying to get them into the 21st or not even the 2018. And there's a lot of retroactivity that needs to be done there, right? But you've got to fix a lot of problems. The legacy hasn't gone away. They still need to automate and manage it. So we're very much a Swiss Army knife and it can cover a lot of ground in a lot of different environments. That's good to be handy. Yes. Nothing wrong with that. All right, gentlemen, from OpenShift, no, from OpenShift and from Ansible. Again, thanks for joining us. We appreciate the time. Thank you. Good guys, good having you here. We'll be back with more here from Reinvent, AWS, live in Las Vegas in just a moment here on theCUBE.