U.S. President Joe Biden has urged Iran not to attack Israel. Biden told reporters at the White House on Friday that he expects Iran will attack Israel sooner than later. Asked what message he had to Tehran, the U.S. president said don't. He reiterated his country's commitment to the defense of Israel. We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel, we will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed, the president said. Biden's statement comes after Israel was subjected to missile fires from the territory of Lebanon where Iran-affiliated Hezbollah is stationed. If an attack on Israel is from Iran, Mr. President. I want to get a situation. I have expectations sooner than later. Mr. President, Mr. President, are you ready to run right now? Mr. President, what is your message to Iran in this moment? Don't. Are American personnel left at that risk, Mr. President? Mr. President, are our American troops at risk as well? We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel, we will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed. Thank you very much. Well, we're sure you're a direct U.S. response, sir. Iran and Chinese drones are overwhelming U.S. warships. While America leads the way in high-end, exquisite military hardware, powers like Iran and China are churning out large numbers of low-cost attack drones to overwhelm these weapons. According to popular mechanics, America's opponents know that missiles are effective, but they simply aren't sustainable in the long run. Paul Shah, Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based defense think tank, has been warned that current weapons quickly become unaffordable against massed drones. Churning out a thousand-dollar drone with a million-dollar missile is not a cost-effective solution. Shah tells popular mechanics. Search drones force warships to expend munitions, which could leave them open to attacks from larger anti-ship missiles. But not shooting down the drones is not an option. The goal of our potential opponents is to send over large numbers of cheap drones to deplete our kinetic arsenals. Andrew Lowery, CEO of the Los Angeles California-based high-tech weapons maker Epirus, tells popular mechanics. That's why his company developed an alternate approach, a nearly unstoppable microwave weapon. The U.S. Navy's current long-range air defense missile is the SM-6 standard missile costs over $3 million. It's overkill against a 400-pound drone puttering along at 100 miles per hour, costing just a few thousand dollars. The next level of defense is the medium-range Evolved Sea Sparrow missile. This costs 1.5 million a shot. The high cost means the U.S. Navy only acquires these missiles in small numbers intended for defense against attack aircraft and anti-ship missiles. As such, the latest Navy budget includes just 125 SM-6 and 145 Sea Sparrow missiles. The Houthi rebels attack with basic low-cost drones imported from Iran and assembled locally in garage workshops. The Iranians are not the only threat. China has a formidable drone force and is developing swarming attack drones to aid in a possible invasion of Taiwan. Tens or hundreds of drones could attack simultaneously, far too many for existing defenses to cope with. Lowery says their technology has a proven publicly demonstrated ability to counter swarming drones. U.S. walls of imminent Iranian major missile or drone strike on Israel. The promised Iranian retaliation for the Israeli attack on Tehran's consulate in Damascus is likely in the next 24 to 48 hours. Anonymous U.S. officials told Bloomberg, two generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could's force were killed in the Israeli airstrikes on April 1, which for the first time targeted an internationally protected diplomatic mission. The Israeli military has been on heightened alert for possible attacks from Iran in the aftermath of the assassination, although it has not publicly claimed responsibility for the deadly Damascus strike. The Israeli defense forces have been preparing for a possible strike from Tehran by boosting air defenses, jamming GPS, and cancelling leave for soldiers in combat units. There has been a widespread expectation that Iran would refrain from reprisal until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Speaking, as Muslims celebrated the Feast of Eid al-Fitr, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hamani said that Israel must and shall be punished for what it did. Major missile or drone strikes are now imminent. Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the Israeli U.S. and allied intelligence reports, they will likely be carried out by either Iran directly or its allies such as the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, the anonymous source said, the U.S. is helping Israel with planning and sharing intelligence assessments. The sources said, West Jerusalem is reportedly waiting for the Iranian attack before it launches a ground offensive against the city of Rafa in Gaza. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel had said that West Jerusalem would respond in kind if the attack on Israel comes from Iranian territory. Several media outlets reported on Tuesday that Israel has been preparing to target Iran's nuclear facilities. The U.S. has publicly promised Israel support against an Iranian attack, including helping shoot down the incoming missiles. Washington has reportedly also floated the idea of taking part in any Israeli counter-strikes. We do not rule out launching joint retaliatory strikes with Israel if it is attacked by Iran or its agents, an unnamed U.S. official told Al Jazeera, Arabic.


We're going to close down 2022 down in the markets and what does that mean for existing investors staying the course is always the best but for new investors moving into 2023 perhaps maybe you're looking at these stock markets and you're thinking there's no way I want to be a participant in this. That might be a mistake. Remember why we invest, we invest for the long term and this is shaping up to be an opportunity to put some capital to work for your future. Now not promising that 2023 is going to be any better than 2022 but here's five things to think of if you're seeing this video and you're wanting to understand what it is that you could potentially do to set yourself up for a beginning program. We're going to rip through these the first thing you need to do is to start investing. I contend on the channel that people need to invest as a necessity not as a right okay there needs to be a sense of urgency to identify what you need to do to secure your financial future and to start investing is doing one of those things. Now you might be thinking Ryan isn't now a bad time to start investing absolutely not. I would say that the further down the market goes the more of a potential opportunity it provides for people to actually jump in this market and take advantage of the volatility rather than waiting for things to improve over time and then you're just buying the market at higher more elevated prices right now prices are recessing and they are recessed in value so you're getting kind of a multi-year discount right now if you're out there and you're wondering whether or not you should be stepping into markets absolutely you want to be doing what is contrary to the public opinion and public opinion right now is that the stock market will never go up again the stock market is going to zero we will inevitably enter into a recession and all these these thinking heads have failed to understand that it is absolutely close to impossible to forecast where markets will go what we have right now is a market in an s&p that will finish the year down and buying the markets down is usually the most opportune time to pick up stock now if you sit on it for the long term what does it matter what happens in 2023 so the first thing you need to do is assess whether or not you can start investing or whether or not you're an existing investor looking to take some strategic capital and put it to work here in financial markets number two is to define your investing philosophy i see this to be a theme across youtube and it's because there's a lot of inexperience out there talking about what it is that they do is investing they get a little bit of a little bit of success with that strategy and then they think that that's the strategy that's good for everybody else it couldn't be further from the truth i share on my channel 20 specifically and five alternate supplementary strategies that i use in stock market investing from anything from bond value bond dividend investing ETFs across the board the importance of having cash on the side and and really looking to exploit multiple opportunities in the market passive investing through index and etf investing dividend growth investing through dividend ETFs dividend growth investing through single stock ownership of those tried and true best companies out there that we've known and love your johnson and johnson's your your visor the you know your merc of the world home depot cosco companies like that and then you've got your growth companies out there as well and maybe even put a little strategic risk on the table i can satisfy a lot of different palettes out there as i typically don't like to adhere to one style of investing my comprehensive portfolio is just my access to the market and it makes sense for me and the idea is that you define your own philosophy and what it is that you want to get out of the stock market and then look to deploy that plan going forward moving into 2023 the third thing is to invest in a self-directed roth IRA the IRA contributions have went up by $500 for single it'd be a double that for a married couple here to $6500 you want to make sure that you're mass maximizing your Roth IRAs now i teach upon and introduce the self-directed investing um and because nobody knows about it okay self-directed Roth IRAs nobody knows about it you can avoid the annual fees that they'll charge you you can avoid all of the dollar cost averaging fees by just opting into this one program here number four is to start a funding strategy okay now for you guys that have dollar cost average strategies you might want to increase that funding but for you guys that are looking to start your account start investing identify and parlay those dollars start with $25 every couple of weeks every month that'll go into an investing program and buy the market low and buy the market high over time those averages will look to pay you and get you maximum exposure to the market during all markets and you don't have to try to pick you know your your opportune times you just introduce capital that you know is going to be surplus capital in your budget anyway and you introduce that constantly to flow into the market and the fifth thing that i want everybody to understand about investing and investing in 2023 and beyond is to lower your spending habits and potentially reduce debt we cannot talk about investing and the benefits that exist therein if you're being succumb to the negative effects of interest rates with high interest credit cards with those credit cards that just consume you while you're working so hard to try to get ahead on maybe the income side or maybe even the investment side of the house we want to make sure and we want to flip the script and we want to make sure that that positive interest rate is working for you on the positive side and that you don't have that consumption on the negative side you might be really running in a vacuum or running in quicksand to try to get ahead and find it awfully difficult to do so when you're just always being consumed by that interest debt that you're paying that just could easily be going toward your investment philosophy so guys i appreciate you tuning in make sure and subscribe to the channel and appreciate you kicking with me and we'll catch you in the next one thanks a lot


It's a great pleasure for me to be able to be able to introduce to you our colleague from Washington. It's today's video conference as a topic of all NGOs in the policy process, and we have an American expert, Emily Wardlin. She is the Vice President, Conservation Policy and Programs of Ocean Conservancy, which mobilizes citizen advocates to facilitate change and protect the ocean for future generations. She works at the Office of Management and Budget, and more recently she continued her work for the Ocean's Senior Policy Advisor to the Nature Conservancy's Marine Program. She's a graduate of the Master's degree from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, so she has a deep academic background. But one thing that I want to emphasize is that in the United States, in terms of universities, it's a much more interactive experience, so I encourage you to ask questions and to talk with her as she's proceeding through her presentation, because that's really what we're hoping for, is to establish a dialogue with all of you. Emily is engaged in the management of the issues of budgeting, in the issues of politics, in the field of management of natural resources. She has a rich experience. She graduated from the University of York. She received a Master's degree in the School of the Environment at Duke University in the United States, so we ask you to ask questions and to discuss the dialogue. And so with that, I'll let you go ahead. It's great, Emily. Thank you very much for joining us. Well, great. Thank you. Thank you for having me, and thank you to everyone who is here listening and participating. So I'm going to start in a minute giving a presentation. It's my understanding. We'll put it on the screen, so you'll see that. I want to give a quick overview of my organization and nonprofits in general, and then make sure that we leave room for you all to ask a lot of questions if you have them so that we can talk about more specific issues that are of specific interest to you. Well, in a minute I'll start my presentation. Before that, I want to briefly tell you that I hope that you have a lot of questions that we can answer or discuss together. So just call up the... I'm going to bring up the slides now. And this is my first time working with an interpreter, so forgive me if I go too fast.  So I was invited today to talk about the role of non-governmental organizations in policy and politics here in the U.S. I'm going to start by talking about my organization, Ocean Conservancy, as an example of a nonprofit and how we work in the policy process in the U.S. So to tell you a little bit about Ocean Conservancy, we are a nonprofit. We are also considered a charitable organization, which in the U.S. is often called a 501C3. Ocean Conservancy is a non-commercial organization. It exists in the U.S., in America, with a special name for such companies. That number, that designation, is really just represents the designation we have in the U.S. tax code. And what it means is that because we are a charitable organization, anyone who donates money to us or gives us contributions doesn't have to pay income tax on that funding. And in exchange, there are certain rules set by the federal government for what we can and can't do, which will come up at a later point in the presentation. A special name that is called non-commercial organization is a tax code, which means non-commercial organization, including donation. The peculiarity of such organizations is that people who pay, they don't pay income tax. That is, organizations that receive such donations don't pay income tax, but, nevertheless, they have their limits and their rights. So, our mission is to advance science-based policy for ocean conservation and to advocate for policy change to protect the ocean. We have an organization that has about 80 staff, most of them here in Washington, D.C. We are about a $20 million a year organization broadly. We're pretty focused on U.S. policy and U.S. politics and governments. But we do have a little bit of international programs as well. In our organization, about 80 people in Washington, D.C. are mostly working with the United States of America, but some of them are part of international activities with other countries. So, with that, our staff is made up of staff of scientists, of policy experts, of advocates and lobbyists, as well as lawyers, as well as support staff, communications professionals, IT folks, people who make the office work. We have scientists working here, specialists in the IT field, specialists in the communication field, lawyers, people of different profiles, different professions. And our organization focuses on six different program areas. These are the particular policy areas where we're trying to have an impact and create change. So, our six program areas are Ocean Trash, a program on ocean planning. We have six main working areas. The first one is the protection of the ocean from the mussel that hits it. Our other program areas include fisheries management, trying to make sure that there are sustainable fisheries for the future, there are enough fish to continue on. We also have a big program focused on restoration, ecosystem restoration in the Gulf of Mexico. You may remember that four years ago there was a very large oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We're working with the folks down in that region to try and make sure that the ecosystem and the ocean are fully restored from the damage that was done from the oil spill. Another direction is the protection of fisheries, fisheries industry in order to ensure the existence of fish for the future generations. Another direction is restoration of resources. For example, this is a work with the resources of the Mexican oil spill. If you remember, not so long ago there was a oil spill. And we have two other programs. One in the Arctic. The Arctic is a very sensitive environment that's going through a lot of change and our program focuses on trying to make sure that we protect sensitive habitat and sensitive areas and sensitive species, whales, fish, birds from the impacts of oil and gas drilling as well as from the increased traffic in shipping. The fourth direction is the Arctic. Because it's a very sensitive environment, it requires protection of different species of animals, whales, birds, fish and it's necessary to limit the movement of different ships in this region. And our final program focuses on ocean acidification which is about the changing chemistry of the ocean as a result of increasing absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the impacts that that has particularly on any organism that has a shell, any animal that like oysters or crabs or some of the smaller creatures that use calcium carbonate to build their shells. The change in the ocean chemistry is having an impact on those populations and the ecosystem as a whole. So that's what my organization is specifically focused on, but to talk about NGOs more broadly, in the US we really see the role of NGOs in a couple of different categories which I'll go through in a second. So one of the major areas where we provide service is making sure that we have policy expertise, making sure that we're providing some of the best thinking based on science of what the policy recommendations should be in our case for ocean conservation, but NGOs in general, that's one of their prime functions is to provide policy expertise. One of the key features of any non-governmental organization is the professional experience in the field of policy to determine the normative work. We use a scientific basis for such recommendations, but in general, it's about any non-commercial non-governmental organization. But in addition to just being substantive subject matter experts another key feature that another key role that we play is as organizers of the community of people who care about the issues that we care about. And that can mean a whole host of different people. That can mean individual citizens who care about the ocean. It can mean scientists. It can mean, in our case, fishermen, stakeholders which we think of as fishermen or surfers or shippers or people who use the ocean. And so our job in part is to bring those different people together who might share our values and share what we care about to make sure that their voice and their opinions are heard in the policy process as a collective, rather than just as individuals. And in addition to the fact that we are interested in our work of scientists, scientists and politicians, our task, in particular, is to connect with the life of the ocean, the seas, the people who come here, and to, so to speak, their interests when forming a policy with the United States, and to consider their relationship with the ocean. And so two of the words that you'll often hear in this context are grass roots and grass tops. Grass roots means connecting with individual citizens and getting people all over the country who care about an issue to voice their support for it. The opposite of that is grass tops, which is the idea of reaching out to some very high-level individuals who have relationships or access to important policymakers who can help get your issue to the top of someone's priority list or in front of a policymaker. And so the two photos you see on this page are examples of this. In the top photo, the gentleman with the gray hair is Senator Whitehouse, who's a senator from Rhode Island. And that's a picture from a set of meetings we did where we brought in some of his constituents and his voters from Rhode Island who care about the ocean to talk with him about funding ocean priorities and funding ocean conservation. And the picture on the bottom is former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who obviously has held a very important position in the U.S. government and has a lot of high-level relationships. He also happens to be a passionate advocate for the oceans and was the head of a blue ribbon panel of ocean experts about a decade ago making recommendations. And so we will often try and work with him so that if there's an important ocean issue before Congress or before the administration that he can help carry our message to the important decisions. There are also NGOs that do a lot of work on the ground where, for example, in the conservation world there are nonprofits that actually do buy up land that they want to preserve or will plant wetlands and do restoration and actually do boots on the ground, hands in the dirt on the ground work as well. And then the last two categories of what NGOs here do, legal action, we often in our country will, the NGO community will sometimes bring lawsuits against the government to hold them accountable and make sure that they are enforced and that they are protected and that they are protected and that they are protected. To hold them accountable and make sure that they are enforcing existing laws and policy. So, for example, we work a lot on fisheries management. The government is supposed to set limits for how much fish can be caught if they're not setting those limits or if they're not enforcing those limits. Ocean Conservancy could sue the government agency to try and make sure that they follow through and enforce their laws and policies. What distinguishes all the non-governmental organizations is the judicial investigation. For example, you have to deal with the government, you have to give the court to the government. In Ocean Conservancy, we have given such demands in relation to fishing industry that the restrictions set by the government to catch fish are sometimes not met. This is our goal through the court to achieve the rules and regulations that the government determines. In the last category, political action, Ocean Conservancy doesn't actually participate in. This goes back to what I said about our special tax code rules. Because we're a charitable organization, we're not allowed to participate in political action, but there are non-profits and NGOs that are. What I mean by that is that they directly engage in trying to influence elections, influence who gets elected to Congress, who gets elected to be president, who gets elected at the state level. Ocean Conservancy is not allowed to participate in that, but some of our partner organizations have that capability. That is a difference based on whether or not you're considered a charitable organization and therefore can get donations from people that they don't have to pay income tax on. One of the rules we have to live by. We... Sorry, I've lost a lot. So for Ocean Conservancy, most of the work that we do is directed at trying to influence policymakers in some of the federal agencies. The two seals that are up there. One is for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Commission. One is for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Commission. One is for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Commission. One is for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Commission. They do a lot of our science and management in the ocean. The other federal agency we try and influence a lot is the Department of the Interior, which manages a lot of our energy extraction. And we also do a lot of work focused on U.S. Congress. Again, other nonprofits may be focused on different targets, but those are the bodies that we are most directly trying to influence. We are most directly trying to influence. As far as Ocean Conservancy is concerned, we work with politicians in federal agencies. In particular, two organizations that are shown on the slide are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Commission. And the other is the Department of the U.S. for the Interior. Other non-governmental organizations can also work with the logical structures of the synagogical departments in three countries. So the picture here on the bottom is actually the gentleman on the far right is one of our senior staff testifying at a congressional hearing actually about the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In addition, we work with the U.S. Congress just on the picture on the bottom. The gentleman on the far right is our representative of Ocean Conservancy. He is present at a meeting dedicated to the Mexican spill due to the consequences of this spill. So a lot of our work is focused on trying to change people's behaviors, trying to change policy or trying to change politics. I thought I would just go through a couple of examples of the different tools and tactics that we use to try and achieve that. Our work is aimed at changing relations and changing politics, and we use different tools and tools that will tell you more in detail. So a lot of the ways that we're trying to influence policy is simply sometimes just by getting good science and good information out there, sort of educating people on what ocean acidification is, why it might matter to you, where you might see the impacts of it and trying to increase the awareness and education about both what the issues are and what the science is behind them. One of the easiest means that we use is information, education, scientific research, example of oxygen. How does it affect the process so that people have an understanding and awareness of the importance of the processes that are related to the world. So we can also sometimes, a lot of nonprofits will participate in public-facing or corporate campaigns where you're trying to get individual members of the public to change their behavior or corporations to change their behavior. So for example, in our ocean trash program, we might be trying to get the public in the US to recycle more or we might try to get corporate partners like Coca-Cola to change the way they make plastic bottles so that fewer of them end up in the ocean. We talked briefly and I'll go into some of these examples about legal action in terms of lawsuits so that we can file lobbying where we're trying to influence the agencies and the government. And then political engagement where we're trying to influence the government back and forth. That's what we're trying to do now. Okay, I hope that's zenith. Okay. Let's talk about legal action. and then political engagement where you're trying to actually influence who are the representatives in Congress and in the government agencies. These are just a couple of examples of what we've done. The group photo on the left is what we call a fly-in where we bring constituents and citizens from different states and towns to come to Washington, D.C., and in this case it was a group of fishermen and offshore wind energy developers and surfers and groups of people who care about the ocean. We bring them in and we take them to Congress to meet with their representatives to talk about, in this case we were talking about funding for government funding for ocean conservation and ocean science programs. The media also plays an important role, so what you see on the right is the Magnuson Act is the federal law that governs fisheries management and so the roll call is a publication that's read here in Washington, D.C., mostly by members of Congress and their staff and so trying to get our issues featured or get editorials written about issues that we care about so that members of Congress are reading about that. Here on the right is the Magnuson Act, a federal law that is related to the surrounding environment. We took part in this work and when we publish information about such laws, we try to publish information about our part so that people, specifically people who know how to rented a land were able to understand their needs and how to behave like that. And then the last photo here is something we call an Action Alert, which is if you are on our email list, we'll send you an email saying, hey, there's this issue that's happening, fill in this form and we'll help you send an email to your member of Congress, or in this case to the company BP to the president saying that you agree with us and that you think that the Congress should give more money for ocean research, or that BP should be held accountable for the oil spill, or that the president should advance ocean conservation policy priorities. Another tool that we use, the so-called action signals, shown at the bottom of the image, is the link of members of our organization and people who take part in the work. The link is connected with the activity of the British Petroleum or the activity of the Congress. It can be a letter to the president, it is connected with, for example, the effort to work on research, and all of this is based on the principle that our policy makers are elected and therefore they care about what their voters care about. And so we are simply trying to find all different ways to impress upon the policy makers that their voters care about the issues that we care about. The other example that I have up here is an example of some of the political action, and so I borrowed this from one of our partner NGOs, but the League of Conservation Voters is one of those non-profits that's able to engage in political action. And so what they do every year is they put out basically a report card for all the members of Congress, where over the course of the year they keep track of how everybody votes on different environmental issues, and at the end of the year they publish this report card saying who's voting the right way on environmental issues and who's voting the wrong way on environmental issues. And so if you look at the map, the states where you see green are where we have members of Congress that are voting for environmental issues, and the states where you have read are places where the members of Congress are voting against environmental issues. And so the idea is by publicizing how members of Congress vote on environmental issues. Citizens who care about environmental issues can look at that and it might influence who they vote for in the next election. And in addition, for the members of Congress, if they know that a vote that they're going to take on a law or a policy or a funding issue is going to matter and is going to show up in this scorecard, they might think about how that's going to look to their voters. The next thing I wanted to talk about was just that we do a lot of work in partnership and in collaboration with other nonprofits. They said Ocean Conservancy only has about 80 staff, so we'll often partner with other nonprofits just to have more people working on an issue. We also often partner a lot with other organizations because we can bring different strengths together. For example, Ocean Conservancy is very focused on work here in Washington, D.C. We have a very good team that works with the government here in Washington, D.C. But we might partner with an organization that has a lot of offices in New England if that's a particular region that we care about. Or we might partner with an organization called Surfrider where they have a membership that represents surfers around the country who might want to work with us on some of the issues that we care about. So I want to say one last thing about fundraising just to give you a sense of where our funding comes from. The revenue areas that I've put up are our major sources of funding. I would say about a third of our funding comes from foundations, government grants and corporations. About a third of our funding comes from our membership, which are people who send us money in the mail or online in small-dollar amounts, anything less than $1,000. And then the final third of our funding comes from individuals who give us larger donations, considered major gifts if it's above $1,000, or a planned giving where they leave us money in their will after they pass away. Another source of our funds is people who give us large amounts of money above $1,000. There are even people who give us money in their will after they pass away. And just to give you a sense in terms of foundations and government grants, for us it's mostly foundations. There are a number of foundations like the Packard Foundation, the Moore Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation that are big funders. And then on the corporate side, this is an example, Coca-Cola Bank of America of some of the corporate partners that support our work. As for the money provided by the funds, these are government grants, Walton Family and so on. And the corporate partnership of big companies, big corporations like Coca-Cola Bank of America, which also share their funds for our work. And with all of these partners, with the foundations, with the corporations, usually they're giving us funding for a specific project or a specific objective or goal. It's very focused on an outcome that they want us to achieve. As a rule, the task of such funds or corporations is to achieve certain goals, to achieve certain projects. One of us is expecting a certain task. A sense of appreciation for what our organization does and how we do it, that sort of fits with their sense, an individual sense of who they are and what they care about. So I have some examples I could walk, other examples I could walk through, but why don't we stop here and see if anybody has any questions or if there are any of those issues that I have talked about that you want some more specific information about? Dear colleagues, let's start with a simple protocol, raise your hand, speak in Russian and move on. Good afternoon. I have a question about the lobbying process. How does this institute work in America? So these are people who specially teach and become lobbyists. How do they interact with non-profit organizations? Do they pay the NPO? Do they pay the lobbyists? If suddenly the lobbyist couldn't do his job, do they return the money? Good afternoon. I have a question regarding the lobbying specialists, the people who are actually lobbying the interests of the non-commercial organizations. Are these people specially trained to become lobbyists or do they have contract agreements with non-governmental organizations? And are they paid for this work? In case the lobbying does not work out, do they have to return the money? So how are the procedures organized in the United States? Sure. So I was a lobbyist and there are different types of lobbyists. We sometimes have lobbyists who work in-house, like I did who are employees of the organization, but we can also contract with specialized lobbyists who work for lobbying firms. They are a lot more expensive. And I would say that almost all lobbyists don't have any specialized training in lobbying. They are a lobbyist because they come from or formerly held positions in Congress or in the agencies that they are then lobbying. So they understand the processes of Congress or the agencies, and they have a lot of relationships. And it's those understanding that process and knowing the people that you need to talk to that allows them to be effective. So I would say that I would say that they are a lot more expensive. So I would say that they are a lot more expensive. So I would say that they are a lot more expensive. That allows them to be effective. And all the lobbyists either are employees of the organization like I was, or they are paid on monthly retainers. So they get paid whether they achieve results or not. Good afternoon. I'm the representative of the student community. And it's interesting for me to know if you involve any young people, youth, especially students in your activities. That's a good question. The program area where I think we have the most connection with the youth community is that we run an operation called the International Coastal Cleanup, which is a series of beach cleanups that happen in September around the world. We don't do a lot of work with youth in the lobbying realm. But I know there are a number of our government agencies that have specific youth programs that are trying to connect with nonprofits that organize young people. There is a government organization that is trying to work with young people. Any more questions, please? What questions? How much does a member of the organization consider a charity from the trade center? It's interesting. And how much does a person with a desire respond to a person who doesn't know anything about it? Can I say it again? That is, they are going to the trade center. And how much does a person with a desire respond to a person who doesn't know anything about it? In addition to membership, do you have any more donations? The donations that people can give in large shopping centers, and is this money included in the overall membership that you consider as the source of the income? Interesting question. I think most of our membership funding comes from either online donations or through direct mail. I don't think we have... And those don't have to be large-dollar. They could be $5, $10 donations. I know that a lot of organizations are trying to take advantage of new mobile technology in terms of how you might be able to use those in fundraising. So, for example, people being able to donate by text message straight from their phone. But we currently aren't doing that. We just don't have the capacity yet. As for the German donations, either through online payments or through direct mail. As a rule, $5, $10 donations are not commercial organizations that use new technology, mobile technology, for example, donations through SMS. And part of the reason for that is also that once someone donates money to us, we want to be able to follow up with them. We want their email address or their mailing address so that we can ask them for more money. Or, in a lot of the work I do, if we have their email address, we can ask them to send one of our action alerts or to send an email to their member of Congress or to engage in a non-monetary way. Well, one more reason why we use the addresses, that is, online or via email, is that we can always turn to these people again for help, again, for money or for the actions of our parcels and the direction of letters to Congress, to the President, and so on. There was a question in the first row. Hello. Please tell us how you use social networks in your work and how effective social networks are and how effective and what is the use of this to attract attention, attract attention to volunteers. Please tell us about it. Regarding the social media, do you use social media in your work and is it efficient and how do you involve volunteers through social media and what is the feedback? Yes. We have an entire team of staff who are focused on our sort of digital communications channels which for us includes, I would say, the two biggest online tools that we use, our Facebook and Twitter. We have an entire team that deals with social networks specifically digital channels of communication on Facebook and Twitter two main social networks. And on Facebook, a lot of what we're doing is publicizing the work that we're doing but trying to put information out there that people want to engage with that will bring them into our website so that they will either donate money or take action and participate in one of our action alerts or online petitions. The purpose of Facebook, for example, is to attract people with posts in order to go to our website and there or participate in, let's say, a link in support of petitions and so on. And with Twitter, we actually are doing a lot of interesting work of trying to use Twitter to reach members of Congress and policy makers more directly. The members of Congress are always looking for ways to try and find out what's important and what's relevant to their members of, to their voters and so trying to get people to tweet at their members of Congress or tag members in tweets about ocean issues has actually been quite effective. As far as Twitter is concerned, this is a social network aimed at people who make decisions at members of Congress. That is, we either direct a person who holds and deals with politics or remember it in such a way that it's very important because they try to follow the interests of their voters. And we'll often use those strategies sort of in combination. So for example, if we're going to do a fly-in and bring a bunch of citizens to Washington D.C. to visit with members of Congress, we might also do a Facebook post about the fly-in and try and get other members of that state to send an email to a member of Congress. And during the meeting between the citizens and the senator, we might take a picture like the one I showed and we might tweet that out saying, hey, look, isn't it great that Senator Whitehouse met with his constituents about ocean conservation? As a rule, we use these social networks as a combination and as far as Twitter is concerned, it's a very effective tool to get information. For example, the fly-in that I was talking about. People came, wrote, published information on Facebook about the meeting with the senator. They mentioned his name on Twitter. They took pictures, posted photos, mentioned that this person is engaged in environmental issues. That's how it works. We still have time for several questions from any sphere. At the beginning of the meeting we said that NKO gives recommendations to the government. That's how effective it is. That is, the NKO gives recommendations. Do you collect any statistics about what recommendations the government performs? Or does NKO give government services and everyone is happy and excited? Regarding the very first introduction that you had regarding their policy expertise that is typical for all non-governmental organizations and especially for ocean conservancy is it really efficient to give recommendations as far as we understand their policy expertise? To give recommendations to the policy makers do they take these recommendations into consideration because you voiced out the actual opinion but no action is taken? That's why we paid the lobbyists. I'll let you translate that one.  If you have good policy recommendations that solve a problem that they that they are trying to solve, that they are trying to solve, that they are trying to solve, sometimes that's enough. It's only when there's controversy or disagreement about the policy direction that we actually have to which is common that we need to find other tools to try and convince people to adopt our policy recommendations. But there are plenty of problems out there that people agree are issues that need to be solved and if there are experts that can come together and suggest some creative and innovative solutions oftentimes that kind of help is very much appreciated by public officials and by the agencies. I have one more or two short questions. My name is Taksana and I'm the head of the public organization. How much in America is the practice of small local communities engaged in some local local projects such as ocean, cows and some internal we are engaged in, let's say, seeking historical heritage and propaganda of historical heritage in September. Is there in America any influence on the world? My name is Taksana and I'm the head of the non-governmental organization. My question is is it common for the United States to have local community non-governmental organizations with some local problems, not like environment, not like ocean protection, because these are very major issues. Specifically, our organization is dealing with the protection of historical heritage with the propaganda of historical heritage objects. So is it common for the United States to have such organizations and their role as well? Yeah, I think across the country we have different organizations that are focused at different scales. And so my organization is focused on a national scale but we partner with and often work with organizations that are focused in specific places on specific issues.  And often times they'll partner with groups like my group who might focus on making sure that there's federal funding that can flow down into the localities to support those kinds of efforts. We have a lot of different organizations in the United States. Some of them are dealing with the protection of a particular park or a particular piece of land or a species of animals. We also work with them, but it doesn't matter because the Ocean Conservatory is an organization that is focused on a national scale. Nevertheless, we are open to any form of cooperation and, for example, we provide this funding for such organizations or other projects to promote their interests. We have a short question. What is it? Hello, my name is Igor. On one slide there was an image of a red color in the States where congressmen didn't support or don't support any project in terms of logic and the blue one where they supported well. I just didn't understand whether it concerns a specific project or an initiative or whether it's a general situation or whether it's a negative picture. My name is Igor. One of the slides showed the map with the red and green States with the red meaning that the congressmen were against, as you said, against the specific environmental programs the green one for the environmental problems. Are we talking about the specific project, the specific program initiative just in general because the picture was negative overall? Right. That picture was a summary of a lot more detailed information and if you went to their website you would be able to look at each member and each state and see what they were being rated on. But specifically they are being evaluated not on projects but on any vote that comes before congress on an important environmental issue. So what the organization that runs that program does is they pick the series of votes over the course of the year that they're going to score and it could be a vote on funding for environmental programs. It could be a vote on addressing climate change. It could be a vote on protecting endangered species and then they look at how people voted and they keep track of those and add them all up and sort of say you know 90% of the time this person votes with the sort of pro-environment vote or this person only votes with the pro-environment vote 30% of the time and that's what the map is showing. So Emily, I believe our time has drawn to a close and so I want to thank you for taking part in this conference and time has drawn to a close and so I want to thank you for taking part in this conference and sharing your expertise with all of us here and I want to wish you well from this corner of Russia and great success in your future endeavors with your NGO and I know it was very interesting and useful information for me to hear and I hope that will be true for all of our participants here as well as they go forward and work that they do thank you very much for having me we had a request that last gentleman who speaking I'm sorry what's your name this is console general Otto von Marinsen indicator in Berg okay thank you so much for for hosting me and it was a pleasure speaking with you today thank you and we'll be hooking up now


Hello and let's talk about the flight of migrants from the big cities in India to their homes. Ever since the lockdown was imposed in India and the last week of March, we have been receiving reports of a mass exodus of migrants. A few days after the lockdown was imposed, we saw horrific pictures from the bus depot in Delhi where migrants were packed together trying to find a way home. We also saw pictures from the road across the country as without food or water they tried to somehow make their way to a place which they could call their own. However, this was not just a one-off reaction to the announcement of a lockdown. This flight of migrants has continued, people have died on the way, people have been struggling with hunger and starvation and the attitude of most of the state governments and definitely the central government has been one of apathy. There has hardly been any facilities provided and what is worse when finally trains were announced for them, these trains were provided with no amenities at all, there was no food, there was no water, the bathrooms were in a horrible condition and many of the trains even got lost. The migrants truly feel that they have been completely left to their own ways. We talked to Bhasha Singh who has been travelling through Delhi and Uttar Pradesh talking to migrants, talking about their situation, talking about what they expected from the government and what they finally got. Here is what she had to say. Thank you so much Bhasha for joining us. So you have been travelling in Uttar Pradesh for the past couple of days. You have talked to a lot of the migrants who are continuing to live, leave the big cities to their homes where they hope that they will be able to survive. You have also talked to migrants who have travelled by train. So could you tell us what is the overwhelming feeling among the people who are leaving the big cities? Basically it is very disheartening and it was across from Delhi to Lucknow or to the rest of the places, Aligarh, everywhere just in one line they were saying that there is no government. The government has left us. In Hindi they were saying that they have been offered by the government and the second thing which was very painful that they were crying and they were telling that they are workers. They went to have a better life. They are not beggars and they were forced to leave the capital, either it is Delhi or it is Surat or it is Bangalore everywhere because they were treated as beggars. There was no respect for them and the very important point they were making that they waited for the government. It is not like this that the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the lockdown, immediately they started moving back to their homes. It took 50 days, 40 days, 45 days, 55 days and still they are walking. So they said that they believe that something will be done for them and when they started feeling that these cities don't belong to them, they don't have Russian cards. Even those who have Russian cards, they were not getting it and the most horrible thing about the kids, everyone was traveling with their small children and they were saying that the government is just offering some rice, some dal but they are not thinking about the kids, how they are going to feed them and to all of them the fear of dying with starvation, dying from the hunger was the biggest challenge for them. They said that we will not die from the corona, I don't know but before that we will die from the hunger and the deaths have started and those who were traveling with their trains, they said that we spent so much money, we waited for the government and when they started, many in many cases they were saying that initially we started walking then the police stopped them and then they asked them to go back and there will be trains. So there were many cases where they went back, just believing in the promise of the government that the trains will be there and some facilities will be there and the narration of those people who traveled in the trains, if you just hear, you will not believe that India is in 2020 where they are saying that toilets were horrible, there was no water and there was no food, they traveled for more than 20 hours without any basic facility and they said that we survived, it's a miracle, otherwise the whole system was as if they were waiting that we should die and one lady said that basically it's a planning by the people in the park to kill us, they don't want to see us. So those were the very heartbreaking narrations which were coming out and they are entirely hopeless, the whole democratic setup and the government has made them that nobody is there, only there is some hope that they will go back to their village and they will get some support. When I ask them that there also you will have to face the quarantine for 14 days they are saying that they will be kept. So they will say they are saying that okay we have survived so long, we survived for the 50 days and even if we die in the quarantine it will be near our villages.  Nobody so far has come up to, so these are a different kind of reactions and responses which was overwhelmed everywhere it was, we can't measure the degree of their pain. And could you talk a bit about the situation especially of those migrants who are travelling by road or who are walking, so what is the, were there any kind of facilities at all, how would they manage in this summer heat, how could you talk a bit about how they were travelling? Yeah, so you see that now all the roads are highways, there are flyovers so and there's not a single tree on the highways, so it's so torturous for them to travel on the highways and there's no other way and so they opted to walk in the night. So generally they are walking throughout the night and whenever in the day they get some kind of a shade they are lying down there and in many places they started walking and then it was very difficult police was beating them, then they collected, then they had some kind of money and I've seen many flooded in autos in small trucks, they managed, they promised that whenever they reach to their villages they will be paying the money, so that's how it is going on because it's, we can't say in the daylight if you see you will not find them in the walking because it's almost impossible for them to walk but still in small groups and they are not now walking on the highways because they know that the police, only one work the Indian state is doing either it's a yogi government or the Delhi government, Delhi police, they don't want to see them on the roads, they want to avoid that they should not become visible, they should not become a news, so they themselves will tell that you go down, don't opt for the main road, you go by the lanes and people are opting for that, so a distance of 500 kilometers for a migrant worker has become a distance of 600 or 700 kilometers, so first thing that the Indian state is just visible in form of police which is beating them, which is taking a bribe also, I have seen from the truck drivers who are carrying the migrant workers and many truck drivers, the migrant workers were also saying that they came as a god, they helped them, they were beaten severely in UP, the police is beating the truck drivers, the auto drivers very mercilessly but still those truck drivers when I had a word with them they were not ready to talk on the camera because they were so afraid but they said that I can't see them dying on the road, so I thought that okay if I can carry you to the 50 kilometers I am able to carry you to the 100 kilometers then I will help you like that and from Delhi and other places also, this is one thing and the other phenomena which is very strange that you will find multiple private bus operators who are charging, I had a word with a few migrant workers who are staying in Delhi in Mayur Vihar area, they hired a bus for 1,030,000, 30 of them asked the money, taken money on the loan somehow they managed and then they traveled, they hired that bus and they were going to the Vihar, so this is a very strange situation, the government knows that the private buses are going, definitely those buses, many of them I had a word with the operators, they said that we are getting the e-passes, so my question is that when the private buses are operating why the hell the government buses are not operating, taking the migrants to their homes, so you will find that they are going by cycles, a lot of migrant workers are going by cycles, we had just one story of the Jyoti who traveled, she cycled from Gurgaon to Vihar and you will find that there are hundreds, hundreds of them going in groups, they are cycling in the night and everyone has taken loan, either second hand by cycle like the Jyoti or many other, which footage news click has also shown when I covered them, so you will find that everyone, it's almost they are desperate that they want to go back, so who if they are staying in group in the slums or in the busties, then they are hiring private buses and huge number of private buses throughout the highways flooded with the migrant workers with no food and with no water and the best part is that the villagers which are staying a little at a little distance from the highways, they saw for one or two days that these are going and it's in a very terrible condition, they themselves organized for the longers, they are making foodies, parathas, even providing milk to the children, kids, so that shows that finally those who are surviving is because of these Indian citizens who came for the help and the Indian state is completely out of the picture, they just left because they could have made on the way they have made the shelters for the police, police is staying in the shelters, they have discovered there's a water, but the migrant worker can't go there, they are not offering them anything, so this is the condition till now which I find. And what are many of these workers thinking about the future as in do they think that at some point they will be able to go back or do they fear that it's going to be staying at home for the next couple of months? I think right now they are thinking that they will manage somehow because they are very horrified with their experience in the cities, everyone is saying that there was no help in the cities, they would have died and what is the biggest irony is that they are saying that we have been working for the city, but when we were in the crisis the city has not come and they are saying that from last 50 days we have been offered only the rice and the dal, nothing else has been given us to eat, so they are saying that how we can survive like this, the Indian state has not started thinking anything and they are saying that you are saying that we should go back or we should stay, but there is no hope because and everybody was working in an organized sector, majority of them, they are saying that industries are shut and their owners are asking them to go back and the owners are continuously saying that we are not sure when they can come back. So you will find that they waited for Indian state, for the businessmen to respond for this crisis to come save them at least 40 days or 50 days, that's a huge long period for them and when they were completely out, there was nothing and they are saying that they don't have any hope now that the cities or the industries which where they were working, they are going to call them back and very interestingly they said that now Yogiji made a very strange comment, they have become our boss, so which industry will ask Yogiji to give us Yogi, that means the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Yogi Adityanath whose recent statement has come that the rest of the states have to take the nod of the UP government before they hire their laborers, so they were saying that that will make our movement much more complicated even if we want to go, so right now there is no hope for them and I think they are thinking that somehow they will adjust into the structure of the ruler economy, somehow they will be doing something and for next six months at least, I think unless and until something happens in there and the economy revives because it all depends on how the economy is going to revive and they are very particular about it, they are saying that at least the Indian state should have given them some cash, they are saying that how the everybody is saying that work from home, but how we can work from home, who is going to pay us, our owner is and many came honestly that our owner is also not so rich that he can offer us some kind of a help, so and in Jandhan account also only the 500 bugs have gone and that to their account generally is at the ruler area where they stay, there they have opened the Jandhan account, so according to them from next six to seven months, they are not ready to come back because this experience of Indian cities has been very horrifying for them and especially those who are coming from the Suras, if you just hear them, they will say that how they have been curtailed, they have been lati charge, they have been Gujarat state government did everything to stop them from going back, so they are saying that they have made us criminal, so how the Indian labor has been criminalized has been made as to the beggar, so two extremes this lockdown has shown to us that we treat Indian labor as a beggar and secondly we have criminalized them the way we have criminalized initially the corona COVID patient, so same treatment we have done to the Indian workers, the working class of India. Thank you so much Basha for talking to us. In our next segment we look at what happens to a locality after an encounter, the Navakadal area of Srinagar on May 19 saw an encounter between the CRPF and the JNK police on the one side and two Hizbul Bujahati militants, the militants were killed but what was also destroyed on that day were the houses and the livelihoods of a number of people. Take a look at this ground report from NewScape. $30,000 was given to us in the upstairs room and all of us were burnt to death. There is a marriage hall in front of us, we are living in a hut. At least 20-15 houses have been destroyed, all of them. All of them have been destroyed, 20-15 houses. No, there is no response from the government. We have now found that in the ground, if we send it, then no one will give us 10,000-20,000. There is no response from the government, we are thankful to the Mollay committee, if we give our lives to them, that is also less, because they have also given us a shelter, they have given us everything, they have given us everything, they must have kept nothing missing, but this was the duty of the government, they are nowhere to be found. The father takes care of the son, he doesn't kill, they have given us a way to save us, what happened to them? Yes, I had 200,000 rupees cash in my house, the dowry of my wife is more than that, she is crying, that too is over, we have to make everything new, we have to make everything new. What we wore last night, we left in that only, that is the only thing left, nothing else. That's all we have in this episode, let's talk, we will be back tomorrow with the latest news of the day, until then keep watching NewsClick.


Yeah, AJ, this game was obviously a tale of two halves. What, from your perspective, was the difference between the two? Second half, we just started playing better. Still, if you can't spot a really good team, 27 points. But definitely, we just started playing better. We started to keep them better. And you can start to influence out, and we got the ball rolling. AJ, did you think your TD changed the tide? And did you think that was going to be the moment to turn the game? I think it was just needing a big play. I think that fast strike, that score kind of gave us some boost. That's what we needed. I don't really know. Luke. AJ, do you think that when you start a season winning as many games as you did and on such a roll, having a loss like this can maybe serve as an opportunity to, I guess, see that, though you're a successful team, there are still things to improve? Most definitely. Regardless of who was winning every game with the one today, there's still always something to improve on. Getting a loss, it kind of magnifies what we didn't do well. So I think moving forward, I think this loss kind of helped us, to be honest. When you're winning, sometimes you sweep a lot of stuff under the rug. A lot of stuff go unnoticed because you're winning. But I think we came out, we played better than second half. We just got to play better than the whole game. Be more consistent. Terry. AJ, when the defense is struggling like it has, you guys on the offense kind of take it upon yourselves to take more of the low, more of the responsibility to try to help this team win? We try to focus on us. We try to let them do them. We don't try to get caught up in all of that. I mean, we try to do our job whenever we on the field. They got to play just like us. We got to hold our own just like they got to hold their own. So we don't get caught up in the off-ended defense. Whenever we out there, we expect us to score every drive. We're that confident in our offense that we can score every drive we play. So that's our mindset. It's not about just that deep in the stuff. And we'll wrap up with Jim. Hey, Jay, I obviously had a couple of undefeated teams heading into this one. How much of a measuring stick game was this for maybe both teams? And when you see them, how do you think this team compares to what they have? I mean, we're a player away. We're a player away. In this league, you just got to keep playing. You got to keep fighting. Going to the game, you don't know who's going to win. Regardless of the stats, say 5-0, 0-5, it don't matter. We're the NFL. These guys are really good. We're good. It's the competitive edge, the detail that's going to show up every single time. Going to give the winning edge. So comparing, to be honest, I think we're close. I think we've got to clean up some stuff, of course. But it's still early in the year. We weren't trying to get bought up into 5-0 and all this stuff, like undefeated. We just trying to win. Want to know every week. That's my mindset. That's our mindset. And today, we fell short. But it was a play away. That's a really good team. Like I said, you cannot spot a good team with 27 points. I expect to win. This is not a video game. So I think we're OK. We're going to go back and get to work, clean up the detail. We're going to keep moving forward.


particularly because of your directive about not making them the same. That said, we have a pretty big parade coming up at the end of this month, perhaps we could do a float. And on top of that, are there pieces of the 4th of July celebration that we can add on to that have something to do with the city? I feel like there's room there if the planners of the 4th of July party might wanna think about including a piece of that kind of celebration as well. So like Eddie Van Halen at Maple Street Park, would that be good? That's it. That would, Marcus, all right. Cause I have people in the last time. Cause that'd get things going. Part of the time capsule. All right. Eddie, by the way, I believe Eddie's dead. Well, I know, but I just said that in honor of Ambrose. I said that in honor of Ambrose Cat, who I know is listening. Okay, all right, good. Thank you, George. He appreciates that. And he is sitting here listening. Is Van Halen listening? He is sitting here listening. Yes. That's a lot, okay. Well, now that we've gone down this path, I think we are good. Looking forward to celebrating all of this with her. Yeah, they're mine. I'm not gonna keep that going. You need a trivia night based on the last couple of minutes. I think so. All right. Elaine Bridget, Elise, thank you. Appreciate your thoughts that one hour meeting is highly productive. Congratulations on that. So going into 5-H and to consider the approval of the ethics policy. That was skipped over. You skipped over the inclusion policy. Oh, wow. The declaration of inclusion. That is not very inclusive. Miss G. No, I did miss G. Let's go to 5-G to consider the approval of the declaration of inclusion. I wanted to bring this to you. It's something that was discussed on the February 8th meeting and the inclusion itself. Excuse my cat. This is the first, I guess, official week of inclusion stated by the Governor Scott signed a declaration last year, there's at least 40 towns that have signed onto it already. And Brad, if you can scroll down, I can read through it. That's one of the things that they ask so people can hear it out loud. The village of Essex Junction and or city of Essex Junction condemns racism and welcomes all persons regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression, age or disability and wants everyone to feel safe and welcome in our community. As a village and or city, we formally condemn all discrimination and all its forms commit to fair and equal treatment of everyone in our community and will strive to ensure all of our actions, policies and operating procedures reflect this commitment. The village of Essex Junction and or city of Essex Junction has and will continue to be a place where individuals can live freely and express their opinions. So this can be changed however you want or it can stay as is or you can pass and we could reconsider it in the future. Thank you, Wendy. I do appreciate you bringing this back onto our agenda. The timing of Inclusion Week is a great time to do this. So thank you. I remember when I first brought this up, I think I may have started off by over complicating things and having a fairly lengthy whereas and all that typical stuff. I like what this says. I think this gets to the point very succinctly and am I okay with it as it is? Yep. Yep, good. I appreciate the putting all the words together. Good job. I will move that we adopt the Declaration of Inclusion. George, thank you Dan for the discussion on this item. On that motion. Hearing none. Those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say nay. So that passed unanimously. Thank you all. Now we'll go into 5-H and the ethics policy. I would, Amber. Yep, I got it. So just some background on this. What I did was I took our current ethics policy and I used the VLCT like of interest in ethics policy as kind of a template to merge the two documents essentially and create kind of a little bit more of a streamlined policy that applies to all elected officials, appointed officials, staff regardless of what department that they're working for. And I think I hit, I did not include every single particular piece of the current ethics policy for the village, but where it seemed to, it seemed like we were really trying to emphasize things like those five principles that you see right there on the screen, I did include those. So that's kind of the process. And this did go, Colleen did review this as did the LCT. Thank you, Amber. Trustees, are there any questions? It looks stellar and there's no way I'm gonna mess with this, it looks excellent. It looks great. I don't have any edits at all. I assume this also will be significantly easier to oversee and maintain from the staffing side of things. Yeah, one of the biggest changes was implementing this. So a person that's hired or elected or appointed gets this at the time that there are any of those things. So they get it once, they sign off on it saying, hey, I've gotten a copy of this. We're doing it once, we're not doing it every single year. Colleen and I had a little bit of discussion about that, but I do think it's better to kind of like, I think most people understand as somebody who's been sitting on these committees for several years, I understand the policy's still there. It hasn't changed. So we can change it on a regular basis if we want to. But I think this is better from an administrative perspective and then you're just gonna keep the acknowledgement on file based on retention policies. The one other thing I will say is that I wanted to do a little bit of cleanup, grammatic, like what you're seeing right there, I want appendix A and acknowledgement, like that's the retentive part of me.  So along that line, how would you recommend that the motion be worded? Yes, I would say that the trustees approve the conflict of interest in ethics policy effective July 1st, 2022, as presented. So do you feel that that gives you then the latitude to add a period or make some of those grammatical changes that you wanted to make? I would hope so. Okay. I really don't think you guys are gonna, it's not, I'm not gonna say any, yeah, I mean, it's literally. Substantive change, I think it's just grammatical. I don't see any issue. If anybody's good with it, somebody could move Ambrose. I will make that motion using Ambrose precise wording. I appreciate the technicality they're doing. Second. Thank you, Dan. Trustee, is there any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say nay. That was really excellent work, Amber. Good job. Thank you. And that passed unanimously just for a minute. Thank you. That was after I lost the entire first draft. That was after you what? That was after I lost the entire first draft and had to retype the entire thing. Oh, that was the thing? Yeah. Punishing for your good works. I was. I don't think I could have finished it. You couldn't have, it's gone. It's all good though. Good. So our next item is one for executive session, but we had an agenda addition at the beginning. Great, Brad, thank you for having that ready because I do not. So we will go into this new agenda item out and about in Essex. Yeah, so you all heard a presentation back in December from Annie about our report from the out and about committee and a second successful event. This event was spawned out of the original open outside, which was a village only event and then got expanded to be include the village and the town. So, you know, the planning committee actually was supposed to have their first meeting last month, but we had a few people absent. And so the first meeting was supposed to be today and a lot has changed since December. And I just wanted to make sure that the trustees, there was kind of a consensus, although no vote taken back in December to proceed and continue this event as is as a joint event. And I just, before we started planning again, wanted to make sure that that truly is the druthers of the trustees. I've tried to present, you know, both sides to this. One is, I think this has been a successful event over the last couple of years. It's grown, it's been refined. It has good energy. The other side is that, you know, we've really backed off, you know, from the start of these conversations with the town in terms of sharing certain departments for a amount of time, sharing committees. We've really backed off a lot of those things and really gone our separate ways. And so I think it's worthy of asking the question, what is the value to our residents, to our businesses, to continue doing this event and partnering with the town? And I just think it's a worthy question of asking. And there certainly are some areas of value, I think that you all can point out. There probably are also ways that this event could more directly impact and affect our citizens and businesses if it was just the city-wide business, city-wide event. So that's kind of the lay of the land. And hopefully you all can have a conversation and figure out where you'd like us to go. Thank you, Brad. Dan, your hands up first. Well, I hear what Brad's saying. And certainly if it was confined to the city, we could focus, you know, the dense geographic area on events and keep it so you don't have to travel so far from event to event. And you can see a lot more in a short span of time. But I also don't want to be in a competition, per se, with the town, you know, who's got the better mousetrap, who's got the better priority? You know, competing with them basically under the same concept. I mean, that, I don't know. Yep. Doesn't feel good. My thoughts are not, you know, maybe we, the way to resolve this, and Brad, that's great. Yeah, I could see either way, but let's look at it from the point of view of the citizens and how do the citizens benefit most? Do they benefit most from having this one day of sort of collaboration and events and you can go up to the town center and down to the city center? You know, maybe that's a nice tradition to continue. I mean, it's not for our benefit necessarily. It really, I know originally it was to benefit, we did it to benefit local businesses because they were hurting from the pandemic. But I think now it has more of a flavor of a community, you know, a dual community event. So maybe it has some value, it kind of gives it a kind of unique flavor doing it that way. But I don't have really strong, powerful feelings either way to be convinced. Go ahead, Raj. Yeah, I guess I'll agree with George. I think, you know, I think people want to, want to continue this. Couple of things I wanted to mention, if we decide to do some branding on this as our first year of out and about as a city, is the town going to have a problem with that. When vouchers are turned in, I don't want to be funding any vouchers that are turned in the town outside the village and not in the city. So I only want to pay for any vouchers that are handed out and redeemed to city businesses. Other than that, you know, as I guess, as long as there's staff bandwidth within the city and that, you know, there's not any kind of overshadowing with events being stacked in the town, I'm good with it, let's do it. Amber, was there anything you wanted to add? Nope, I'm good. I also don't have a strong opinion. I can see both sides of this. The village started this fantastic event. Would love to see it continue. Ideally, yes, if we, if our city puts forward money, it would be great to have the city money stay here and have it continue to stay here. Although I'm not sure how that would be able to happen if we do it collaboratively with the, with the town. So I think that's the trade-off is we then, in a partnership, we put up some funds and where they get spent, they get spent, not just as part of what it is. I mean, obviously, both communities would have a separate voucher that you hand out.  I don't know if there's maybe a, some other way to work it, but it just seems like you can't. You're like, right, Roche, I don't want to see that. So I don't, I don't know how, so if a city resident gets a city out and about dollar and they go up to Mad Taco, well, and if it's not accepted there, go ahead, Dan. What you could, what you're saying, I'm just thinking about it. We could do a break even. They go up to an event up there. You have a city voucher. You have a town voucher. The town vouchers are good here up to the point that that's even where we can swap. So those businesses up there, the town swaps, we get those city dollars for every dollar we get or voucher we get from the town. We give it back to the town and for every city voucher they get to give it back to us, it's even swap. So we reverse only the same amount. As long as we value the same amount, it's going to be the same amount of vouchers. You know what I'm saying? If it's a city dollar voucher or town dollar voucher, but it all washes out when you exchange them and then whatever excess, then that's we'll work that out. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I think it could work. See why they couldn't work. Yeah, I think it could. I think there's absolutely a ways like that. Balance it out somehow. Go ahead, Brad. Yeah, I think I would just add, I think if it's a joint committee, they could figure out those details. I think what you're recognizing though is there are a lot of conversations that need to happen in order to partner with another organization to do this when both are concerned about who's being impacted and who's spending money and how money's being spent and where it's being spent. So I have full confidence that the staff that are involved and community members that are involved in that committee can sort those details out if that's our directive. But I think what you're recognizing is there are now added layers of complications. And so if you want us to go through those, we can do that. And if you want to remove that barrier, then we can do that as well. There's definitely staff capacity and interest in working on our own event. If that's where we're headed. So I'd have to say, I think that really it comes down to either we do it in a true partnership, like we did in the previous year, or we just go our separate ways and do it our own way. And I think that that's really, because otherwise trying to basically put staff in the position of trying to figure out the logistics of this in all honesty, I think are more work and more time than really are necessary. So I admit I'm a little unclear as to the general direction at this point of are we looking to do the status quo? We contribute half.  Or are we good with separating this effort from the town, having our own version of a city out and about, and we just do our own thing? You know, I think it's so fresh that I look back to what I brought up at a prior meeting about communities that had separated in the past, Winooski and Burlington, become two separate communities, Colchester and South Burlington and Burlington and Winooski. Anyways, that during this separation now, it's still so fresh and that we haven't really totally we're still in that transition. And it feels like we want to continue that relationship, but ultimately it's going to be totally separate as it is with those communities I just mentioned. They don't share events like this. They don't do anything like that. And it's down the road. I don't know how you, the steps, is it something you just sever those, all those things immediately? Or do we transition slowly phase out anything that we did as a group community? You know, that's the ultimate question here. By liking it back to something that I heard before from Marcus about really wanting to celebrate that passion, that energy, to me in all honesty, I am leaning towards let's just separate these, let's have our own event. That would allow us to do what we want, when we want to. It would allow the town to do what they want, not have to worry about the band distribution. Do we have too few in the five corners compared to up at the Essex experience and would just allow us to not compete against each other because they don't need to happen on the same day. They don't need to happen the same weekend. They can happen on their own times. So for me, I'll just name that's where I'm leaning towards. I'm fine with that. I don't say that I'm on defense. The board wants to go with that. And it's not like something can't bring back if we decide that maybe we should think about that. I think we've got a lot, the thing is we've got a lot going on right now and we've got a lot going on in terms of community events. On that note, George, I was wondering if maybe this wasn't something that could be on the list of that Elaine was presenting, not, this could be sort of tied into that community celebration that we're doing throughout the year and not completely rebranded as it were, but maybe there's other elements that we can introduce to this that are more trying to reach populations that don't normally show up at these, putting more effort into that and treating it more as an introduction to your community and your businesses that are there and really focus on reintroducing the city through this, one way would be through this event. So that could be one way to approach it and that group that has yet to be formed is amenable to it and we don't know that, but I mean that is one way to approach it. Thank you, Raj. Okay. Trustees, any other comments on this or I do see a hand up from the public? Harlan, go ahead. Floor is yours. Hi. Tough decision. I'd be curious to know what the town's thoughts are on it because we've worked together for so long and I for one was on the merger train I've got a lot of friends out in the town. I think there's a lot of great people out there so on and so forth. Separation happened to take care of our community to be able to focus solely on our community. We wouldn't do out and about with Williston, we're attached to Colchester, we're not doing out and about with them as uncomfortable as it makes me to say this. I feel like we just became our own community and that's where I think that charge tells us that we're to focus on our own community and that's not saying we don't care about the town and like I said, I would definitely love to know what the town's thought process is on this but I really think my personal opinion is we just became an independent city out and about as if I remember correctly as a brainchild that we had started and I think we should focus it on our community. I think that's what separation was all about is to focus on our community. So I can't reiterate there enough where it's uncomfortable to say it because there's a lot of great people in the town and I'm not looking to insult anybody but moving forward, I'm hoping that we are focusing on our community and I think out and about would be just that that it would be the city. So my two cents. Thank you, Harlan, appreciate that and just for clarity and for any other ears that may be listening, this absolutely is not at all a judgment statement or anything like that towards our friends, neighbors and family that live in the town after separation. Instead, the way I really think about this is that 88% of the community of the village soon to be city that said yes, let's separate from the town of Essex to form our own independent community and as such, we shall share only the police department and while we've worked on those MLUs, those agreements to expand it just a little bit for a short period of time besides just the police department, I do think that as we're creating that the city, we do need to have those uncomfortable feelings of sometimes it is just best to go our separate ways and do what the community has asked us to do. So I think we have the consensus at this point. Brad, is there anything else you need? Sorry, no, I'm all set. Thank you. Great, thank you. Trustees, thank you. Thank you, Brad. So yeah, that's the second session. We are now on to the agenda. I move that we approve the consent agenda. I think Dan beat you to that one, Raj. All those, any further discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, please say nay. Great, so pass unanimously. And into the reading file, any board member comments? One board member comment here. The green update was past Saturday. It was phenomenal.  We had one of the village trucks there. And I actually was down outside of the village, but down by Woodside, 68 acres over down that area. The entrance and there's a tremendous amount of trash. But all over I saw people doing it. It was fabulous. Oh, good for you, Dan. Weather helpful. Good job. Good job. Great. Yeah, I appreciate you acknowledging it. There were a lot of people out. Oh, it was tremendous people. Yeah. Thank you. The only other thing I just wanted to mention, Raj, thanks for covering last meeting. Really appreciate your leadership and being the VP. So thank you. Yeah, I just want to point out we got out of there a lot quicker than tonight. But wow. Yeah, it is true. Yeah, yeah. It was like 58 minutes. But you know, nobody's counting. No, I think Dan still has a record though. I think that might have been 13 minutes. Eight minutes. It was. Yeah. Yep. There we go. He predates his. It's all good though, Raj.  How's that next meeting looking? Anyway, any other comments from board members? Staff, any comments? You want to make sure we hear? Great. So then the only executive session is a right. Yep. Thanks for putting that out there, Brad. I'll go ahead and make the motion that the Village of Essex Junction Board of Trustees go into executive session to discuss negotiating or securing real estate purchase or lease options under the provisions of Title I, Section 313A, two of the Vermont statutes, and include the interim co-managers. I'll second. Thank you, George. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say nay. Great. Pass unanimously. Thank you all. Trustees, give us like five minutes to the transition.