Okay, here we are. Colossians 1. This is a very heavy portion of Scripture. You know, sometimes people talk about wanting the meat of the word and this and that, and that is what we're going to be looking at in the book of Colossians chapter 1.  It will take me several minutes to lay that foundation. I'm going to remind you of verse 23. I'm going to actually use verse 23 to deliver a few things in my introduction. And then we're going to move into verses 24 through 29 as we continue our journey through the book of Colossians. So let's begin reading together here in Colossians chapter 1 at verse 24. I'll read verses 24 through 29. And again, go back to verse 23, lay a foundation and then move into our study. That will be taken from verses 24 to the conclusion of the chapter. So beginning at verse 24, reading to verse 29, Colossians chapter 1, Paul writes, I now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body, which is the church of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God, which was given to me for you to fulfill the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to his saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end, I also labor, striving according to his working, which works in me, mightily. So in verse 23, let me read that to you. Paul had said, if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded instead fast and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven of which I, Paul became a minister. So in verse 23, Paul spoke of the gospel, which he preached, he says, as a minister of the Lord. So in saying this, he's exalting the gospel and he's reinforcing his apostolic authority. First T actually exalts the gospel because it's within the gospel that we discover how we can be transformed. It's the gospel that makes it clear that we can be saved and it's in the gospel that we are taught that we can be radically changed. If any man be in Christ, Paul says, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new. So the gospel teaches us how we can be in Christ. The gospel teaches us how we can be transformed. And so it's in the gospel that we actually understand that we can be saved and we can be changed. It's in the gospel that we discover that we can be completely new. And because of this, as Paul is saying in verse 23, we have hope, hope of the gospel. Now they could, they could have hope because they heard the message of salvation. The Colossians had heard the message because it had been brought to them. That's what you refer to when you speak of the Great Commission. You see, the gospel was first presented in Israel. But Jesus in Acts chapter one, verse eight, had said, you shall receive power. After that, the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and then he went on to say to the uttermost parts of the earth. Now, so Jesus had commanded the believers to take and share the gospel throughout the world in what is referred to as the Great Commission. And so he gave to them the message, which is the gospel, the message of salvation, the message that God took upon himself human flesh, dwelt amongst men, and that people could behold him. The message that God took upon himself the sin of the world as the Lamb of God died on a cross, was buried, but was resurrected. And so the gospel contains that, that message of salvation where God took upon himself my sin so he could give to me his righteousness. That's found in the gospel. So they were given the message of the gospel. And that message of the gospel was first and foremost the message from God. But secondly, he also gave to them the power through the Holy Spirit, because you might have the message, but you need God's power. And so you have the message of the gospel and on Pentecost, he supplied them with the power in the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So armed with the gospel and armed with God's power, the message is faithfully proclaimed. It was preached in Jerusalem, as proclaimed in Judea, Samaria. It began to go throughout the world. The gospel had made its way to this place called Colossae. That's what the book of Colossians is spoken of. It's, the place is called Colossae. It's there in, in modern Turkey. And the gospel was embraced by a man named Epaphorus who gave that message to the people there in Colossae. And many came to faith in Christ. So upon receiving Christ, the Colossians now had faith in Jesus Christ. Not only did they have faith in Christ, but when you have faith in Christ, you have other things. You also have love. You have love for God and you'll have love for other people. And you also have something called hope. And this hope that he's been speaking about, he said, is laid up for you in heaven. And so these Colossians, because they've received Christ and have been transformed, are now living with faith, hope and love. And the hope that they have is one day they're going to be with Jesus Christ. One day they're going to receive their heavenly rewards. And they're growing to understand the reality of the fact that heaven is their home. And so they especially look forward to being with Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is their blessed hope. It's even like what Jesus said in John 14 verses two and three, when he said, in my father's house are many mansions.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again and receive you unto myself that where I am, there you may be also. And so this is a promise that Christ gave, that heaven is our home, that he would one day come and take us to be with him where he is. In 2 Corinthians 5 verse 8, Paul said it like this. He said, we're confident, yes, well, please, rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. To the Philippians in chapter one, verse 23, Paul said, I am hard pressed between the two having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. So their hope was made possible because of the gospel, God's message of salvation. It's the message of the gospel, the power of salvation, resident in that message when we apply faith and receive that message for ourselves. In 1 Corinthians 1 18, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. But to us who are being saved, it's the power of God. In 1 Corinthians 2, 4, and 5, Paul said, my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. So the gospel has the power to transform anybody who receives it in faith. We can be new creations in Christ Jesus. So Paul is a minister of that gospel. So he establishes credentials. Why is he doing that? Well, Paul is establishing his ministry credentials because false teachers are challenging his authority, mysticism. And we'll see this as we go through Colossians. Jewish legalism, Greek philosophy has begun to seep in and is polluting the church. They had taken the gospel and these false teachers were changing it for their own profit. And that's something that when you read your Bible, when you read your New Testament, you're going to see is very common. There are letters that are written by Paul, especially to combat the false doctrine, the false teaching concerning Christ that was entering into the early church. And it's a very serious matter because eternity rests on the truth of the gospel. A lot of people don't understand that today. They think, well, if somebody says he believes in God, isn't that enough? Aren't all religions really the same? Don't all roads really lead to God? In any one sense, all roads lead to God, but it depends on how you want to be led to him because ultimately all men will stand before God, all people will stand before God. Everyone gives an account of themselves. So in one way, yeah, I guess roads will lead to him. But the road that we took is through Jesus Christ, the way, the truth and the life. And we have relationship with him. And so not all faith is the same and not all so called gods are the same. And these false teachers were entering in bringing false teaching, the mysticism, the legalism and things of that nature. And as they were doing that, they were undermining the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so when this happened, Paul would respond to it. He did so in the case of the church in Galatians. When you in Galatia, the book of Galatians, when you read the book of Galatians and you just open it up and you start reading from chapter one, verse one, you'll get to verse six. And Paul is already dealing in Galatians chapter one at verse six. He's already dealing with false teaching that's entered into the church there in Galatia. And he says in Galatians one, six through nine, he said to them, I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God who in his love and mercy called you to share the eternal life he gives through Christ. You are already following a different way that pretends to be the good news, but is not the good news at all. You are being fooled by those who twist and change the truth concerning Christ. Let God's curse fall on anyone, including myself, who preaches any other message than the one we told you about. Even if an angel comes from heaven and preaches any other message, let him be forever cursed.  That's a very serious charge. Let him be anathema that God's wrath be upon him. He said if an angel of God or even if I change this, may God's curse be on me. That's how serious this is, and that's how serious Christians ought to think about the message of the gospel. We need to understand it is truth that sets you free. Paul had a deal with that in the church of Galatia. He also had to deal with that in the church of Corinth. Now when you read 2 Corinthians, but you can see it in both 1 and 2. When you read 2 Corinthians, you'll see that infiltrators had entered the church and were presenting themselves as the most eminent apostles or super apostles. And their so-called teachings were intended to undermine the ministry of the apostle Paul. Challenging the minister's authority is a common tactic of false teachers. And in 2 Corinthians, Paul actually defended himself from no less than 24 charges that were lodged against him by false teachers. You need to know that when you're reading through 2 Corinthians because many of the things he's saying are actually in response to the things that people were saying about him. And if you look and you read the Bible and read the New Testament and read 2 Corinthians in that way, you'll understand that. You'll see that because they were making accusations and 24 different times he has to defend himself against those accusations. For example, the false teachers said that he was self-appointed. Paul made it clear this wasn't true, but God granted him spiritual authority. How do we know that? 2 Corinthians 1.21, he says it. He says, he who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God. In other words, I didn't appoint myself, but the false teachers are saying, oh, he's self-appointed. He said, that's not true.  His detractors also said that he wasn't equal to them because they were super apostles. They said he was a boring speaker. He was intellectually inferior to them. So in 2 Corinthians 11, verses 5 and 6, he said, I consider that I'm not at all inferior to the most eminent apostles, these super apostles. Even though I am untrained in speech, yet I am not in knowledge. They were saying he can't speak. He's boring to listen to, which is interesting because we have that take place in the church today. People will very often, not all people, but some and many, I have to be honest with you. We'll choose the place that they attend church if they're entertained. There are more desirous of having their ears tickled and to be entertained than to hear the truth. And that took place in the early church. That took place with the apostle Paul because they were saying, he's untrained in speech. What does that mean? Well, during that day, they had schools of eloquence. They had places they'd train you how to speak. Today we have those, by the way, we still have them. They're in seminaries. They're called homiletics. They teach you how to preach. And they'll say, speak this way. Don't speak that way. Use this illustration. Don't say that. They will teach you. Well, he was untrained. And so they say he's untrained in speech. And he said, well, I may be untrained in speech. I'm not like one of these people who've been trained how to speak. He says, but I'm not untrained in knowledge. I know what God's word says. But one of the other things that I didn't note, but they said he's also ugly. So he's an ugly, he's not an attractive man. He was an ugly, boring, intellectual, is what they were saying about him. They'll never say that about me, but they, well, Paul rejoiced. Paul rejoiced in the fact that he had been saved. And Paul rejoiced that he was called by God to ministry. Yet being a minister was not easy. It wasn't an easy life. And being in ministry was not what it might appear to others to be. In his life, ministry came at a great cost. He had deep trials. He had much suffering. And he knew that this is what he would endure for the gospel. Say, God had made it plain when he was first saved. Remember, in the book of Acts in chapter nine, God spoke to a prophet by the name of Ananias. And he said to him, Paul is a chosen vessel of mine to bear my name before Gentiles, kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake. And Paul did suffer. Paul suffered, but he didn't lose hope. And he didn't grow frustrated with God. Instead of bitterness, Paul had an attitude of joy because he knew who was in charge. In the book of Romans in chapter eight, verse 28, Paul wrote to them and said, we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. He said, we know this. We know that all things work together for good. We have absolute certainty of this one thing. God is in control of everything. Now, this is something that we can know, but not something all are willing to know. You see, sometimes we get caught up with the moment and we forget the future. We can begin to question how things occur in our lives. And as we're going through pressure, we cease trusting the Lord. But God causes everything we experience to produce good results in our lives. He says all things work together. God would not permit evil if he could not bring good results in spite of the evil. And whatever we encounter, God is able to redeem. No matter the situation, no matter the failure, the pain, or even our lack of faith, God is at work for our good. So we as believers need to learn to trust him to hold fast to his word. That's why we read his word daily. That's why we get ourselves immersed in it so that we might know his promises and guarantees because he loves us. And Psalm 46, 1 and 2, the Bible says it like this, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help and trouble. Therefore, we will not fear even though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. We won't be moved because God is in control. All things work together. All things combine to produce good. This is not good produced by the events, but the Lord uses these things to produce good. It's like what Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5, 18, and everything give thanks in everything, not for everything, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. You see the things that Paul went through and the things that we go through are actually refining us. They're helping us to go in our understanding about who God is because we have this idea of God, but we may not have a full idea of him. We have some, but not all knowledge. And so we grow slowly to see the grace of God and how refined it really is and the power of God and how he actually is working on our behalf because God's behind and works through the things that we endure very often shaping us into his image. It reminds me of what takes place in Genesis chapter 37 through 50. In those chapters, we have the story of a young man. We all know his name. His name was Joseph. Joseph was a son of Jacob and Rebecca. And when you read his story, you see that he went through many troubles. When you read about him, you see that Joseph was 17 years old, and he was sold into slavery by his brothers. He became a slave in the house of a man by the name of Potiphar.  So under a line accusation, he went to prison and he ended up spending years in confinement in an unfair way. In spite of all that went on, he ultimately was given great power. He had greater power in Egypt, the greatest power outside of Pharaoh. When he was 39, he was reunited with his brothers and they thought he would kill him. After all, they had sold him into slavery out of personal jealousy. And so we read how he finally disclosed himself to his brothers and when he said, I am Joseph, they were terrified. But in Genesis 45 verse 5, he says, now do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. In chapter 50 of Genesis, verse 20, after his father died, Joseph told his brothers, as for you, you meant evil against me. But God meant it for good in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. You intended it for evil. God intended it for good. All things work out for good to those who love God.  There's no guarantee that we won't. And sometimes it seems it's harder for us to endure. It can be terrible. But instead of bitterness, we learn to respond to suffering with faith and humility. Why? Because the things that work together produce the lasting fruit of faith. The suffering results in humility and attested and refined faith in God. The suffering gives us a platform enabling us to comfort those in need of comfort, to share with credibility God's love and power to those who don't know him yet. And Paul has given us this insight as he's given to us these verses before us. And that's why he says in verse 24, I now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body, which is the church. Serving God and others did not cause Paul to lose heart to give up. He didn't allow his walk with Jesus to be broken. He stayed in fellowship with him. See, Jesus taught his followers that following him was often a path of pain. He taught his leaders that true leadership is born of brokenness that's produced in pain and forged in the fire of suffering. So he didn't fall into the trap of thinking that God somehow owed him something. And sometimes we do. Sometimes we'll say to the Lord, I've been faithful. I've done so much. How did you allow this to go into my life? I don't understand it. We complain against God and we're angry with God. We even go so far as to say that I thought you were a good God. But how did you allow this? You knew how I would react and you allowed this anyway. And we can blame God, but Paul never did. You see, to emphasize the joy of serving, Paul speaks of the sufferings he's enduring. He's in prison, but he's enduring it because he's a prisoner of Jesus Christ. He's not a prisoner of Rome. In Ephesians 4, 1, he says, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord. In Philemon, verse 1, he started his letter by saying Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus. Rome had imprisoned his body, but could not take away his freedom. Paul was free in Christ, even though jailed in Rome. But that gave him opportunity to write to believers. In 2 Timothy 2, verse 9, he said, I suffered trouble as an evildoer, even to the point of chains, but the word of God is not chained. So he says in verse 24, I rejoice in my sufferings for you. Well, when you read that, what is he saying? I better phrase it this way. What is he not saying? He's not saying that Jesus' suffering was insufficient, so he's adding his to Jesus' suffering. You see, when you read your Bible, you'll see that Jesus paid the price and none of us can add to what he's already done for us. In Hebrews chapter 10, verses 11 through 14, the writer says, day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties. Again and again, he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest, speaking of Jesus, had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time, he waits for his enemies to be made his foot stool, because by one sacrifice, he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. Jesus doesn't have to be recrucified in that one sacrifice. It was sufficient. And so Jesus' suffering alone provides salvation for us. So if Paul's not referring to Christ suffering on the cross, what is he saying? He's saying, I'm enduring suffering, but I rejoice in it because I'm suffering for the sake of Jesus. Again, his attitude is suffering as part of the privilege of following Christ. It's interesting how he wrote to the Philippians in chapter one, verse 29, and listened to what he said. He said to them, to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake. It's been privilege, you've been granted. It's been gifted to you not only to go to heaven, but to suffer here on earth. Think about that for a minute. Say, Lord, I appreciate all your blessings, but that's one of them that I'd prefer you giving that to my wife because she really does. She wants to do that as for myself. No. No. He said, it's been privilege. It's been granted to you not only to believe, but to go through tough times, to actually suffer. Somebody once said, men will never become great in theology until they become great in suffering. Martin Luther once said, affliction is the best book in my library. Suffering has a way of getting our attention, refining our faith, and purifying our hearts. C.S. Lewis said, pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains.  Through suffering and afflictions, important life lessons are learned. We can draw closer to Jesus. We can be deepened by the fellowship of his sufferings. Our salvation is evidenced as those who reject Jesus begin to reject us. Suffering prepares us for heaven and the reward for faithful service to him, and it undermines Satan's attempt to destroy the work of God in our lives. And so he's speaking about, in verse 24, something that is lacking, he says, in the afflictions. The word afflictions speaks of distress, pressure, or trouble. It often refers to the trials that come to believers, the ordinary pressures of life.  On Easter Sunday, we see hundreds of people who died in terrorist activities towards Christians who are worshiping Jesus Christ. It's been said that there is more persecution in the world today against believers than almost anytime in history. And you will see this over and over and over again as you watch the news or read your newspapers. You will be reading about it through news feeds that there is a lot of persecution taking place right now. And the world hates the message of the gospel, guys, and don't forget that.  So the world has rejected the message of the gospel from beginning. Afflictions deepen us, though, in the Lord. Afflictions will give us the experiences to draw from. Paul, when he was writing to the Romans in chapter five, said it like this in verses three through five. He said, not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance, character and character, hope. And he goes on to say, now, hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. And so he says in verse 24, I rejoice in my sufferings for you, fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body, which is the church, verse 25, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God, which was given to me for you to fulfill the word of God. So he says according to the stewardship, a steward is someone who cares for somebody else's goods. So Paul knew that God had given him stewardship over the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was to faithfully carry out his duties, properly communicating the gospel to them. But false teachers were infiltrating the church. They were bringing in error clothed as Christian doctrine. So as a minister, Paul gave the word of God accurately without personal gain. But these people were actually taking them captive by their false teaching. And again, we have people today who think that whenever you present the gospel that it doesn't really matter. But the fact is that gospel does matter and the message needs to be presented accurately. We don't add to it or take from it. It has to be given to others as we receive it ourselves. It has to come in a pure form. And so teachers need to be careful as they prepare messages and as they communicate these messages because God has said that the teacher is going to suffer a stricter judgment. And we have to be careful like that. And Paul gave the word of God accurately and he did so without any kind of ego attached to it, without any personal gain financially. Again, in 2 Corinthians 2 verse 17, he said to them, we are not as so many peddling the word of God but as of sincerity. But as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ because they were saying he was changing the message in order to have personal gain. Again, this is one of the charges he dealt with. In verse 2 of chapter 4 in 2 Corinthians, this is another charge. He says, we have renounced secret and shameful ways. We do not use deception nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly, we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Again, they were saying he's transforming the message and again, he defended himself. And so he says, I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you to fulfill the word of God. I've been honorable as I've presented this to you. He says in verse 26, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations but now has been revealed to his saints to them, God will to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. This mystery, the word mystery in Greek means a secret that was once concealed but is now revealed. We use the word differently. We speak about mysteries as if it's, you know, these programs you can watch on TV or buy a book that is called a mystery. The mystery in the Greek mysterious speaks concerning something that was once hidden but is now revealed. And he's speaking in that way. And this mystery he's speaking about in verse 27 is that the Gentiles would be fellow heirs with believing Jews. Now the Jews didn't know that Gentiles would be given an equal place in God's kingdom. So the birth of the church reveals God's plan and the depth of his love not just for the Jewish nation but now for the entire world.  You see in Ephesians 3 verse 6 Paul said the mystery was that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs of the same body, partakers of his promise in Christ through the gospel. In Galatians 3 28 he said there's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither bond nor free, there's neither male nor female. You are all one in Christ Jesus. This was a great mystery. And he's presenting this to them because as believers and some of them being young believers when the false teachers were coming in and were disrupting the teaching that they were receiving they could be moved away from the hope that was found in the gospel that was intended to keep them solid because new believers and immature believers have a tendency of swallowing anything if it's clothed in Bible references.  It was not that difficult for you to be confused. I know when I first got saved people began to speak to me and give to me things that weren't found in Scripture and and I can still remember thinking well it says it that seems like they're quoting right but I don't I remember the confusion and over the years I began to want to know what the word actually says because young people have a tendency of believing something because it's presented to them it's kind of like like small children were like small children and small children will will swallow anything. They pick things up you know I've got four kids I've got nine grandchildren and I've seen it with my kids. I've seen that when they were small you had to take care you had to make sure that they didn't pick something up and just put it in their mouth. I've seen it with my my grandchildren and when they're learning to crawl that they might reach down to pick up a rock or something and you know any parent in here knows what I'm talking about. I can still remember my my nephew Patrick when he was between one and two that he was in the backyard with his with his mom my sister Madeline and and he was one of these kids who would put things in his mouth. My Patrick would do that and and Madeline was telling me how that she was in the back she was doing some work and and Patrick was next to her and he's a couple years old or so and and you know how their their little cheek gets real fat you know some things in their mouth it's just a little and she's looking at his little swollen cheek and she says Patrick Patrick what do you have in your mouth and he just kept his mouth closed he wouldn't open his mouth and she said show me what you have in your mouth and he wouldn't do it so like any good mom she stuck her finger in there and pulled out what it was it it was a snail he had she yeah we didn't know we were French but that's how we found out you know yeah he had put a snail in his mouth and she pulled she said Dave it was a snail a gross slimy snail babies will put anything in their mouths and guess what we're like babies sometimes and we'll get upset because we're hearing something said about what we have so surely believed was true and we can get upset because we've been swallowing snails from Satan's garden and we don't even realize it his truth important Jesus said it is he said it sets the captive free but what does the lie do it ensnares you and why does Paul get so upset that he says if someone comes to you and brings a different gospel other than the one you've received let him be anathema let he be cursed forever including myself that ought to tell the church something there is something called truth and we have been appointed by the Lord to hold fast to it and to present it to others and that's what Paul is doing why because the Jewish mystics the legalists are coming in they're bringing in things about Christ ensnaring and trapping the young believer's minds undermining what God's work is all about and Paul is very defensive for him because he says you need to understand that though you're going through affliction and you may be thinking that a good and just God wouldn't allow it and you definitely must have people there who are sharing with you that this isn't the way of God God is a blessing God you need to understand that all things work together for the good of those who love God to those who are the called according to his purpose you need to understand that because part of the way that God refines your faith and strengthens you and purifies your heart is by allowing these things into your life because it purifies you until it's just you and God and that by the way is what every believing Christian really wants isn't it to be like him but we need to remember that he was a suffering savior he died on a cross for us what makes me think that my life is going to be if a lane that is just covered with roses it can be tough it can be hard but the end is great because I have a great hope in Jesus because this world is not my home I'm just passing through and that's what we need to understand you see he says it in verse 27 to them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles which is Christ in you the hope of glory and him we preach warning every man teaching every man you know wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus and to this end I also labor striving according to his mighty to his working which works in me meddling mightily we have not only present hope we have a future hope and a hope of glory with him and as difficult as life can be with such suffering and affliction we have something waiting for us much better we have Jesus with us now and our future is to be with him forever and that makes whatever we endure worth the struggle though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me thy rod and thy staff they comfort me and you lead me beside the still waters you take me to the pastures I'm willing to go through it as long as you're with me I walk through the valley but I'm not alone you are with me I will never be forsaken I will never be left on my own and these things that I go through are refining my faith and strengthening me and purifying my heart I said God make me like you and this is the process and seeing that it is I am willing to go through it if the end result is that I will see you face to face and when I see you face to face I will never regret what I went through because it was worth it every step of the way and that's Paul's teaching us that the afflictions that we go through is light he says in 2nd Corinthians 4 17 our light affliction which is but for a moment is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory I live 60 years 70 years 80 years by reason of strength but I die we all do that's all right you know it's appointed unto men to die once but I close my eyes here and I open my eyes there you think I'm going to whine and cry to him about how hard life was you will not be thinking of that you will just look at him and you will behold that one who wept for you in that garden you will see that one who laid his life down for you and all you're going to do is say God thank you you opened up your arms to me that's what you're good let's see if you're a believer that's what you're going to do you're not going to say you know I have a list that I've been how come I didn't get that job I wanted that raise how come I wanted to go to Israel they never let me you're not going to do anything like that you're not the oldest passed away he wipes away our tears behold I make everything new in eternity you have a chance to see your mama who knew Jesus your dad who knew Jesus your grandma grandpa who knew Jesus your uncle your aunt a brother a sister a baby you lost and you'll see them and you'll join with them and you'll rejoice before the throne of god forever and ever and no matter what you go through it was worth it because if I'm with you doesn't matter it was worth it and Paul said be careful because you're going through afflictions yes but is a light affliction especially in comparison to that eternal weight of glory because Jesus Christ well he is the hope of our glory our hope is not in better things that are grounded in worldly systems our ultimate hope is found in christ and what you prepared for us and again in the world we have tribulation it's fallen it's filled with sin it's filled with filled with pain and and though this is true we still have hope because this world isn't our home in john 16 33 these things I've spoken to you that in me you have peace in the world you will have tribulation but be of good cheer I have overcome the world is what he says to us so he says him we preach in verse 28 warning every man teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man mature perfect in christ jesus we warn the word warning speaks of admonishing or exhorting we attempt to awaken people to their need for him we teach the word teaching speaks of new converts as well as maturing believers solid teaching prepares people to live for jesus and to one day see him that's what I do and to this end he said in verse 29 I labor striving according to his working which works in me mightily all my labor would be without fruit if god did not empower me to preach and to warn and false teachers labor in human effort and ability but paul labored in god's power and he says to this end I labor striving according to his working which works in me mightily he said I am relying on the strength of god to do the work of god and as an anointed minister paul was saying I rejoice in my sufferings I fill up in my flesh what it's lacking because it's all worth it I want you to be grounded in the things of god I want you to enter into the kingdom of god I want you to be warned against the false teachers that are creeping in and I want your hope to be settled in the glory that will be revealed when you see jesus face to face and that's the heart of a true minister of god not just blessings here on earth but eternity with jesus christ that's what matters to every true preacher of the gospel that you one day will be in heaven with jesus christ that's what I strive for for us and that's what I desire for me


So I've drawn here two layers of our homogenous middle part, and each of these layers has a transmitting velocity. Let's say that each of them is a little slower than the layer below it, like this. Now let's say we've got an earthquake up here, and when the ray pass comes down like this, it hits this layer. And since the lower layer is a little faster, you remember this, right? It's going to refract away from the normal, so it's going to go like that. And then it's going to do that same thing again because the third layer is even a little faster. So now it hits the underside of the layer and refracts back toward the normal and up. And this can be generalized to any sort of ray path that comes from this event. So here's another one, and it even works if you have some ray paths that don't ever get as deep as that bottom layer. So here's an example of some ray paths that go through this layered media, and remember the difference between what this looks like and what the ray paths looked like in the earlier sketch where the Earth was completely homogenous.


So just in terms of the way it works, there's a little office with a computer. And then basically, the drawing of the lines was delegated to a Republican Party official outside of the Capitol for sure. And this woman had had so much experience with the Voting Rights Act and what the courts had done in the future, that when the ACLU finally looked at the map that she drew, all they could say is it's a terrible map. But I don't think we have any standing in terms of suing. So it is a really difficult issue. And it's going to be really different the next time, I believe, because we're all paying attention. People are excited. People are mad. And what we're trying to do with our redistricting efforts is see how we can channel the effort to really pay attention to make a change for the future. So I'm just delighted that you're here, that you're paying attention. It is so important. I encourage you to get involved with the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, the ACLU, become part of a group which actually met this morning called the Georgia Redistricting Alliance. Your group can be a member of that alliance. So as we go forward, are we hopeful that our bills will pass in the legislature? We did have a hearing in the Senate. And then there was no more discussion. But we stopped a very aggressive, geriatric bill. Some folks here in the room worked on it. And a large contingency of advocacy groups formed a coalition. And some of the support that had already been shown earlier in the legislative session for the bills that Representative Gartner and I introduced with hundreds of people coming to the Capitol to voice their extremely strong support for an independent commission and against regained districts made them trepidatious, at least in the Senate, with shoving through this very bad, very blatant geriatric bill. In the end, that bill was not passed. But we are remaining very vigilant because they could theoretically try to jam it through really fast next year in the beginning of the session in time for the 2018 elections. A couple of really interesting things about that that I want to mention really quick. That effort, one of the districts that they were attempting to remove minority voters from in this bill this past year, they'd done the same thing two years ago. Actually, two of those. And they thought in 2015 when they did that, that they had removed enough minorities or rigged it enough that clearly would save the Republican hands. And then the margin, both of those incumbents did win in the last election. But the margins were small, really small. One was like 50.5%. And so they came, so they were coming back two years later, trying to redraw them again.  A huge change this year is that folks in the public have really risen up, gotten behind the bills that we are opposing, shown up at the Capitol and oppose this measure. And it died. In 2015, Neri Apeep was hurt by anybody. And then they just sailed on through and passed, even though it is the exact same thing, a blatant racial generator. So they just thought like, get away with it again. And so it really demonstrates the awakening that's happened in the public around this issue, the power of direct advocacy and showing up. And so our goal is obviously to play defense on any more audacious, unconstitutional efforts to redraw the maps within the next few months, but also have our long-term goal of putting into place a non-perksome independent commission that would draw fairer districts for Georgia. One of the things is we have the fewest in a country that has rapidly headed this way towards uncompetitive elections for Congress, House, and Senate at the state level, Georgia's are the least competitive in the country. I mean, we've got maybe, I mean, when they did the maps after 2010, there were maps among four competitive districts in a general election out of 236. The elections are all in the primary. The districts are so gerrymandered that like, no, I mean, and there are some districts that even if you drew fair maps are gonna skew heavily Republican or Democratic. And that's okay because there are pockets of populations and in the state that just heavily skew that way. But what they've done is made it so that we Democrats, and this is obviously was done in the past under Democrats, we Democrats win our primaries by these huge amounts. I mean, our general elections by these huge amounts where it's like 80%.  So that's how you get these skewed numbers. You pack like-minded voters into a smaller amount of districts. And- They have somebody that they think might lose the next time. They start fiddling with the map in that particular district and saying, well, this is a Democratic district. So let's give that to Sheila Jones and we'll give some others- Some of her bucket, well, the bucket people that they suspected would be more likely to be Republicans. So this is- It's another guy. Without checking with the other person and they couldn't do that before the section five of the Voting Rights Act was the pre-clearance section was struck down by the Supreme Court. So Georgia was under pre-clearance. You couldn't make voting changes until that was thrown out by the Supreme Court, which is unleashed all these photo ID and other voter suppression things that have been going on, including, you know, y'all maybe have seen the headlines that we kicked like 600,000 people off the rolls just in the last month. You know, so all these things are things that Georgia now has the ability to do without having to go through justice. Now, of course, who the justice would have a role play in that too. The Obama administration was obviously more aggressive about sort of policing some of that stuff than I think it would be under Jeff Sessions. But, you know, I don't mean to malign him. I'm just saying, you know, that would probably be the case. So, yeah, the bills that we introduced, one was to establish criteria for how you- what you needed to consider to draw the line. The other one, in addition to setting up the criteria, would have created independent commission. And it was- the commission idea is probably in 10 or, I don't know how many states have voting commissions. It's really hard to find independent commissions that can do this job. And frankly, I think the one that we came up with, I'm not sure it would have worked. I really don't think it would have worked anymore. But anyway, the issue was not what the commission would look like because we knew it wasn't gonna pass anyway, but the fact that we should be thinking about a way to create a more independent. There was one of the districts when the Republicans first took over about seven years ago, the court, they filed a suit and the courts threw out some of the districts. So they were redrawn, but they were drawn by the court as opposed to the legislators. And from my point of view, that was the most compact district I ever had. I really love that, right? But that disappeared with the last census. So are we hopeful these bills will pass? No, do we think that they can make a difference? It depends on you. It depends on the public and if the public will is really there to begin to have some serious change. It is gonna be really important to lost money. Well, let me mention them while you're thinking about that. So we've got lists that grew fairly robust during the last session with both citizens that were supporting our legislation and then also folks that were opposing the gerometer, the class of team. So my office has been keeping this whole data as a folks. So I really invite you, if you are interested, in sort of keeping up to date with egregious calls to action on egregious legislation or saying, hey, I wanna come show my support for returning power to the voters in Georgia. One of the, please email my office and we'll add you. Of course, I can give Scott copies of redistricting alliances hand out from the last session. So you can see who the members of the committee are. You can contact them at any point. Right. And you can probably distribute that to the members. Can you now? One of the terrible things about, there are a number of terrible things about the way these districts are so great. I mean, it dampens any sort of competition and also makes it so that basically you can't achieve legislative compromise because if you're from a really safe district one way or the other, you only care about your primary voters. And basically the primary voters in those parties to a bigger extent have views that are diametrically opposing one another. Whereas there's more of a broad spectrum across the entire electorate. But when you just nail it down to very committed democratic activists and very committed Republican activists, then you get these crazy things like us passing the campus carry bill. Or North Carolina getting themselves into the bathroom debate. The bathroom bill. These things are happening because there is an out of whack. There are not only out of whack districts that are creating sort of a discrepancy between the political viewpoints of the population as a whole and those who are elected. But then you make that even worse by having these very safe districts where people are just concerned that they'll be run out from the right in those cases. So you've got in Georgia a situation where no one supported the campus carry bill except for like the NRA. People at campuses didn't want it. The faculty didn't want it. The student body for passing resolutions opposing it. The parents don't want it. The board of regents really didn't want it. No one in Georgia wanted this thing and we passed it anyway because of gerrymandered districts. And in the way that gerrymandered districts and partisan primaries and the way they put all of these public policy thoughts and failure to compromise because you don't care about all those people.  In Second Amendment. So you can't have compromise and you have policies that make no sense that totally are not supported by the general public. So really it's so important to be passing these things. And people don't even care about voting when they know their vote doesn't matter. Which is why one of our turnout numbers are lower than many of their cryptorysis. When you've got four competitive elections out of 236 and zero in the congressional delegation, many more people just, why would they vote? So what is the strategy? I mean, the strategy that we have is to increase the public will, prepare better for the upcoming caucus and the next redistricting figure out all the ways we can make it more transparent. The states that have independent commissions have done so through a process which is a referendum. Referendums in Georgia are not binding. So that's not gonna work in Georgia. We need really good cases. And there are several cases right now in Georgia that are ongoing. And there are some cases around the country. Most of them based on minority participation or lack of. And you probably have been reading about those. There are probably seven or eight of those. There are two for the first time that are focusing on lack of fairness in participation by party affiliation. I think it's three. Maryland, right? North Carolina at Wisconsin. Okay, I thought the North Carolina was based on. Maryland. And it's got to be this. I'm Maryland at Wisconsin for sure. I don't know about Maryland. But anyway, it's clear things are gonna happen in the courts and that's what's gonna be really important. Right, and there are different theories that have been preceded on her. So that's really in the weeds legally. But you know, like the University of Chicago answer or do you like the Emmett Bonner and Common Cause answer? Whichever one works in the court is the one that we want. But those that are kind of behind the Emmett Bonner who's a very well-known lawyer here in Atlanta and has done this work for many years. He, so the Wisconsin will attend this report right now. And everyone's nervous. And so we're hoping that if they decide they don't like that theory or that model which relies on this sort of mathematical statistical formula developed by, is it the political scientist at University of Chicago? Right, the law professor. Okay, the efficiency gap. It's like you can just run the numbers and say, look, it's completely under his theory.  If the factor is like above seven or eight or something like that, his theory is, that means it's gone too far. You have now unconstitutionally silenced the other things. And then the other theory is more a, it's the same, but you can attack it by district instead of more like holistically by the statewide results, the way the Wisconsin efficiency gap does. It's more like you are discriminated based on viewpoint. You are treating different people differently based on their viewpoint, which is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause and the First Amendment. So what do you need to hear from you? Yeah, and then we all talk about those other issues a little bit, but since Pat'll have to go, let's get questions in on Jeremy entering. I've always had my hands up a lot. Oh, good, sorry. So I have, sorry, I was saying a couple of questions. How do, is it possible to change to my friend that's in your perspective by you? If it is possible, how do you get that done? My second question is regarding strategy. How do you see engagement, especially if the millennial rule, as they are here, not just noise leaders, how do you be able to get university students involved to that extent to the level of passion that they typically want to engage in? I'll answer the first one, and that is we have to pass a constitutional amendment that would take in the house of 180 would take 120 votes. Republicans right now have 119. And we find they're usually a democratic, or two, it seems to be willing to go along with the Republicans in order to get something else. Horse trade is, yeah. People get bought off. It's a really long shot in that. Right, it's just as long a shot as like what we're sort of doing. And so it's, for what just needs to be done too, for what you're saying, it is only possible at the national level. I know it would have to be a state, it would have to be a state initiative, yeah. But your second question is really the important one. Yes. Well, no, I don't know that we have tapped enough into the university and millennial communities on this issue, and welcome any connections. You know, personally, I'm gonna be speaking soon to a chapter at Georgia State and of American Constitution Society, which is interested in this issue. And I've spoken at MRE and some other, so I can't say that we haven't done anything, but honestly, everything was happening very quickly last session. And we were fortunate, and we're rarely in this position, we were fortunate to have hundreds of people ready to show up. We didn't really need to, at that time, dig really deep, but we want to, right, we want to grow, grow, grow, grow. So we need to- Most of the people who came were over. No, you're right, I have a group of, I mean, it was hilarious, y'all, sidebar. So they had security, you weren't at that one, that early morning one, or were you? Oh my gosh, they had all this security in the room, and so the chairman was like, I mean, let's please not get roundy.  They were all so confused. They were like, remember, there were all those police there. I was like, because these people are not- You guys are very good. Yeah, it's just really guilty. But anyway, I would say it's cute, older. But we have tapped into, because you know what, sometimes older people have a little more time on their hands to devote significant amounts of time to activism on a particular issue. So some of these individual groups that have launched around this topic are more like, I would say, middle-aged, but not exclusively. But we want to, so suggestions from you guys about tapping into the college communities, getting them excited, getting them engaged around this issue, absolutely welcomed and needed. And I hope you said, how are we going to do that? Yeah. Not how our, Elena and I are going to do it, but how are we as a community going to change the public will and let people pay attention? Including what? And I ask that because when the campus carry bill was being completed, I was actually at the end of the state and we had numerous conversations, but very anybody from your side of the coin showed up to actually purchase the conversation. And so even, you know, political science classes, the debates were really hard, so that would have been perfect. Now, looking forward, because you're talking about these gerrymandering bills coming up again in the next session, if you're looking to act this at that point, this is, what month are we at all? This is the beginning of the semester, so. Right, it's time to start. And we're going to be doing, first of all there's going to be a tour around the state. One is put together by the dialogue with groups that have been started to really work this issue, to talk to the public about it the way you know Pat and I are going to talk to you. One is going to be a call. So if you want to email me or we can otherwise connect, I can make sure you're aware of that because that might be a really good thing to direct some students to first, but we can come to universities. The university thing was a little bit tricky. There were, the faculty was sort of told to stand down a couple of times. They get very nervous because they're dependent on the general family for their funding. Right, and they were told. Yeah. They were told in no uncertain terms. Yeah. They stood up again because they killed them the year before. So they said, well, you like your budget this year. And they will pull money to punish people. So the idea to reflect political affiliation makes me a little bit nervous. I understand and support kind of the theory of it, but it seems like you practice that good, get abusive. I don't really want my voting director to know. Well, it's right. It's right across time. It's not. If it's aggravated, if there's some way of aggravating and anonymizing things, that would be preferable. And maybe it's not that way to be able to be made so that we're not being, right? I've seen districts that were drawn around somebody's house. They're that specific. And this is 1970. I mean, they. It's much worse now because of the sophistication of the electronics. You're bringing up a larger question. I mean, I know that, and maybe you have information on this. I know, you know how the voter commission fraud investigatory thing, Trump put together was like asking all the secretary of state for data.  But the thing is, is voter lists are available if you pay for them. And I don't know what the law around that is. If that breaks down by every state, like if the states can be like, we are not going to allow the political parties for anybody else to have the voter roll. I've never heard that being a thing. I don't know. Do you know? I mean, I mean, the survey, almost every state's voter lists are available at a minimum to the local parties that campaign. Right. They're available. That's a different question. Well, I just don't say that to you. You just have to count. To the parties that campaign. Yeah, that's right. But it's a, there are privacy issues. It's very challenging because these voter lists have to rely upon by activists for decades to get to that racist voter suppression. Because we have the data proof that the discriminating race, it's a non-easy system. No, it's, I mean, you're the experts. You're looking at how we create security for these civil rights. Right, and then that gets to the broader questions of security in our voting. And, you know, this accidental breach where our Secretary of State's office somehow released the data from every single person just into like the general public. So those are all, the cybersecurity piece is huge. That, I agree with you. What you're kind of asking for is something that, yeah, it's not in the current debate because it's been that way for so many years. But it's not everything. Like, if they don't get your Social Security report, you know, it's not like that. But it is like, don't know your voting history, your race. Which primary you voted in over the last 10 years or 20 years or down? They'll know all that. They know your address. They know a lot. I'm sure you know your phone number. Question? What, like you guys mentioned, groups showing up to lobby and assess what aspects groups have been getting involved in this, like where can we go in terms of that? So, send something to Elena. Get involved with, I mean, if your group is willing to join the Georgia Redistricting Alliance, then you'll all get the information when something is happening with us. I have a few, the sheets that were sort of the plan of action for the last session for the Georgia Respecting Alliance is which I'll leave in the back. So let us know you're out there. I'll let your leader know. And, I mean, join the ACLU or the Common Cause or the League of Women Voters. All the presidential organizations are working this. There's a whole lot of organizations working this issue and then I have to say the grassroots army right now is sort of launched by them because they all have memberships and people that are interested in their work, all these organizations, but also that all these individual groups that have just absolutely sprung up in the last, you know, 10 months. Many of them are grassroots. So they take the issues they want to work on. But many have been really interested in this issue. So the ACLU, I think they have a policy to name this as their number one issue. So it's a good time to help them. And those are national organizations but we have to find those chapters. So, yeah. More questions? I'm sorry that I have to go, but I... Yeah. I'll say one word. Well, you've been in commission. Is there any, what's that, interest in policy? I have a Republican co-sponsor for the bills. I did the first time. And then he got scared off by his buddies. But the truth is, the bill that was introduced that you introduced and Senator Jason Carver introduced was the bill that the Republicans had introduced five years earlier. So is this... And the governor had backed governor for you. So this is how to maintain the power, kind of. This is more of a national representative question. There's a podcast I've been listening to for a while called Default DC, which kind of talks about Washington inside information. And one of the topics to have, one of the first podcasts was around representation in America and the way that even though you have populations that are growing, you have set limits on the number of representatives you can have. Yes. And especially, this seems to be important for Georgia because we have a really growing population. So is there any way we can address that? Because it seems like also having more representatives you would have, you know, more chance of having people with different views. We have the second biggest house in the nation already. So 180 is a lot of people. But you're talking federal level. There's an argument that basically the congressional districts are far bigger than what the founders ever could have envisioned. And that they really wanted it to be more like your district size. And then so, but I don't know if that's a constitutional convention or if that's just a statute. I mean, believe me, it is a building with 180. So I can't even imagine what it's like in Congress or whatever they have for 25 order. I can't even imagine how you do that. But it's an interesting thing to consider. It probably would be that much crazier than it is now to be able to have such a big Washington if there were that many more people. You would get more and more extreme people. Parting note, I read a book that helped me understand how the cyber manipulation elections could actually work. I never could figure out in my mind how they'd do it. You know, the old days, they would just take a whole bunch of ballots and put them in the trunk and send them. They would never get to the place where they were counting the votes. They went and they went and they went and they went. This is called the people's house. And it's written by a guy who is the chairman of, you know this book? I saw it. It was, well, I mean, it's a novel, but it was just, it run too true to the kinds of stuff that we know and how the scheme created by the Russians and the Ohio governor ended up taking the hit for it. How he managed to change districts by fixing the computer. So I hope you're going to talk about our antiquated old days. I will talk about those. Yes, now. Thank you very much for having me. We look forward to you being active in the next few years. Thank you. I'm Kathleen Allen. Myself, my name's Kathleen Allen. I'm running for the U.S. House of Representatives in Georgia's seventh district, which is most of Gwinnett County and the little gerrymandered bit of South Forrest, like all the way over downtown. So the south side of Lake Lanier. I heard you were coming back. Yeah, you were. I was very quiet and running all the time. Thank you. And so I obviously care about redistricting as it affects federal candidates because I am in a district that is, if we looked at the sixth district, it was in R20. Republicans won by over 20 points in the last election. Don Ossoff brought it down to about R6. I could look forward to that. Rob Woodall is the incumbent in the seventh district. It was with R12 in November. It's down to about an R9. And I don't see Rob Woodall doing anything to make it get any higher in the Rs. between now and next November. Right, I think that that district is really heavily being looked at. This is more of a partisan side, but I'm glad. So glad that you're running. That district has had huge opportunities for swinging. And interesting notes to help the voters, especially Gwinnett County. Gwinnett County is now a minority-majority county. And so they are required to have all of their voter information in Spanish. So it was just on the news this morning that they're starting to do outreach and train poll workers. So if you have friends who speak Spanish and want to get involved in the elections in Gwinnett County. Yeah, it's an organization, Galeo, which is the Georgia Association of Latino elected officials. They're comparable organizations that work in the Asian-American community. For example, as they are all, they've been mighty but very small for years. So they need to step up and need help. And there's gonna be good work for them to do in 2018. Oh, times. And they've done it for a number of years. But from my perspective at the state legislature, these English-only things have been around a long time and we've had to kind of beat them back for a while, amazing, because there's been, it's been opposite. It's been very determined to not have Spanish or any other language on anything. So, yeah. The demographics forced Galeo County to do something about it. That doesn't parallel, a parallel. Yes, it's a kind of a bi-county. It didn't come from Georgia, yeah. It didn't come from our legislature, yeah. I know that it is shutting down or considering shutting down a lot of voting polling locations recently. Is there anything we've done about that effort? Well, the ones in Fulton County, is that what you're referencing, those are the ones I'm aware of. And I do think that some of that is getting revisited, I believe. So, the activist groups that are working on that and Pave It Blue is a big one, that's women-only, but largely, Facebook group, about 4,000 years now, big. And they are showing up at all of those commission initiatives and meetings. Yeah, so they're showing up being very active, raising their voices, and I think that's having an impact. It is, they're delaying or changing some of their plans. Yeah, yeah. So, I have a question. I know that you're not a technologist, but when we're talking about all this kind of redistricting, which would play maybe into the technology of voting, but she's also, I don't know that everybody really understands how technical it is and what's used for it to, maybe you don't actually know and cannot actually see a machine that makes it happen. But I'm curious, how is that appropriated in terms of funding? Like, who's responsible for that? What committee does that go to? Well, we have, at that capitol, we have the reapportionment office and they have the technology. Their technology isn't as good as it could be, and I don't know if, like I don't think it can break down into census sub-blocks as easily as some other technology that, for example, I'm aware of how county has, so it's a little bit antiquated, but they certainly have the capability of drawing these maps. However, as Pat was saying, the real drawing of our maps took place, sort of wholly within, they hired the lawyer who had been a Republican party lawyer and they did it all away from the capitol, you know? So they told someone what they wanted, basically. Oh yeah, really knew what they wanted. What they did is they drew these maps that we currently operate under to try to achieve legislative super majorities, Republican super majorities in the chambers, which means two thirds of each tax. That would like the goal, you know? Because if you have that, then you can pass constitutional amendments without having to buy off Democrats. So it was mostly done. So yes, we have a lot of technology and the ability to produce maps within the capitol. I can go to reapportionment and ask them to draw me maps. They certainly were a big part of that effort, but a lot of it also was happening elsewhere. And the decisions were all being made by these kind of higher hands referring back to party officials and then probably the leadership of those houses. Honestly, the people that they even have to be in charge of the reapportionment committees, those aren't club assignments. There's not, no, there's not a lot of power there. I don't know. There's not a lot of power. If you're chairman of reapportionment, it's all gonna be, you're gonna be told what to do. So the common cause on that type of rice rates activity would be those are those are the areas where we can have the most effect, not from even the technology standpoint, but asking people where it comes from, where the money is. I think it's important to ask those questions. I mean, the reality is the reason this has gotten so bad is with rigged districts is because the technology exists at such a level that you can move person by person. And that just is something our founding fathers never could have imagined. And when you think about it, it made sense back in the era of the launching of the country that the state legislature is kind of hat-fied necessity had to be the ones to draw the maps because they would sort of know the geographic lay of their state, you know, but I mean, obviously you couldn't do it from Washington. They could have come up with a better system, you know, obviously in retrospect. But what's made it so gastrically is the ability now through technology to slice a dice like crazy. First of all, you're a creative one, so I guess this year moving forward, we're going to go from the state level as a place of cybersecurity. Right. Particularly in the Washington incident that I've heard and maybe what some of your fans might be, the individual or the Democrats in general moving forward, so I'm just wondering if you know that. Right, I have not made it cybersecurity one of my like top issues, so I can't speak to you guys about it because you know, we all have to kind of change the organ and it's like limited bandwidth. Now I am on the science and technology, well, I'm kind of on the science and technology committee in the Senate, which does deal with some of that stuff. And actually, you know, Fort St. Gordon in Augusta is a big cybersecurity command center. Yes, out of DC and we as a state are putting a bunch of money into making it like really sort of the focal point for a lot of cybersecurity that's happening at the federal government level. As I understand it, it's we don't have nearly enough high school and college graduates who are well versed in the, have the skill set to work at those jobs. They are a lot of them and they are multiplying because of the need and we all see. As I understand it, the threats from, you know, I mean, there's Russia, but then there's also just, you know, any number of countries, people, whatever, hacker, regular hackers, going nuts at the systems at all times. So we need, I mean, the information and technology and security field is, you know, just scrambled and it's not changing, I'm saying it, you know. But George's, my big point on that is that work has to be done, work needs to be done, but Georgia is actually kind of big in that space. So people who know kids heading to college, we need a lot more folks who can work those jobs and will be good jobs because companies need them too. And let me mention a little bit about our voting machines. So they are very old. I think they're rolled out 2002. You've all voted on them, so you know what they do. If they're not calibrated properly, they will, they will not have the correct results. But there is no paper trail by which one to check that. So there are lots of documented cases of people going to their polling location, doing their, pressing the buttons, and at the end, very important to thoroughly check what it says you're about to, the vote you're about to cast because it'll ask you to review all your choices. Many, you know, a not insignificant number of people have said, whoa, wait a minute, I voted for X and it is telling me that I'm about to cast my vote for blah, blah. If you alert the poll officials, they will take that machine out of circulation because it's not calibrated properly because of the sensor behind it is not matching up with what the choice was. But that just, I mean, even that example shows you how easy it is for things to go awry with the voting machines that we have now. More importantly, they have no, no auditable paper trail. They, I mean, so when you- And they made it illegal to take a picture. They brought the voting machine. Right. To prove what you did or what you voted for. Yeah, exactly. People probably do want to know, like I want to show it, yeah, I know. I just thought of that, I was like take a screenshot right there.  But anyway, it's making the electorate very nervous. We, what we need to do is, there are lawsuits going on. It has gotten to the point where I have seen some of our top officials say, look, these machines are outdated in light of all the threats that we know are out there. A public would be a better idea to have machines that would be able to be audited that the public have confidence in. All it is is an appropriation. In the grand scheme of things, the numbers aren't even that large, but it is basically like the general assembly needs to appropriate the money in order for the general assembly to decide to make it a priority. The public, either the courts have to make them or the public is going to have to fuss and scream and make it so that they hear enough, like, okay, we don't want these 15-year-old machines that we have no confidence in anymore. So. Have any of you been aware of the hackathons that they're doing on the going machines? Okay. You're getting done. This is probably the hackathon crowd. I was just going to tell me, you know about this. Yeah. Because that's one of the things that the activist groups that have bubbled up here in Georgia are paying a lot of attention to it, putting money behind, getting more publicity and those hackathons. Yeah. Publicity really helps in that space. Because I did see KVK or somebody and then like, yeah, I think we might need to update them. Good. Yeah. So you just presented two options as far as the forces to make the machines have to be up there. One is public noise and then one of those, you know, you just go to the court. Or legal, legal order out of court. Right. So where are we at right now? Right now, I have some hope behind the public effort. We have to have sustained attention to it. Yeah. I can't just be like fired up and then, I don't know, I don't know. Yeah. We need sustained public interest in this and anybody who has anybody, any contacts in media just to continue to work with the nonprofits that are out there that are activated about this and keep up attention and reach out to the media and make a fuss. Well, the longer and lighter you make a fuss. Right. And the more you actually show up to vote in the meantime using the things that they've changed. It's not that much money. I feel like maybe we could achieve success. They sort of need to be embarrassed into it because all these experts, voting experts around the country have specifically called out our teams for being woeful. And isn't it Rod Gellkennig that's moving back to a paper mallet, taking a step in that direction of going back to a paper mallet? It's like, I think it's like 50 million bucks, which in our, I mean, our budget's like 22 billion. So it's not a, it's not a, it's not a lot of money now. No, it's like really not a lot of money. Because it's money that's in not many years because the last person did that, it was in 1922. Right. So it might be a little more than 50, but it's like not a lot of money. So there's two issues with the, my moment is with the outdated equipment, it's not audible and in fact it's running really well operating systems that aren't supported anymore. Oh, right, I forgot about that. Thank you for making that point. Yeah, yeah. I think it went out of support in 2014. They were only supposed to be machines in one market for about 10, maybe 15 years. Right, so it basically makes this look like totally backwards and absurd. So they don't like that. The state leaders won't want us to look back. And then the other thing too was the, they actually showed that Russians had been able to gain access to the voter rolls, which is equally important, because if you can change voter rolls then it would show up on polling day. If your name doesn't match with the voter roll, you can get the right vote. So that's another avenue that needs to be approached as well as setting access to the voter rolls. That's pretty terrifying and all true. And then meanwhile there's all these other lawsuits going on across the country and the state. So you may be aware that the way you clean up inactive voters is under litigation and a number of states has been under litigation in our state. The Justice Department had under the Obama administration been supporting litigants against what Ohio was doing that was like throwing people off the ballot and they had been turned inactive. But now they've reversed course. Oh, and the civil rights staff is not sending in these new briefs from the Justice Department. It's all the political appointees under the, so the session's political appointees are now siding with Ohio and saying they should be allowed to throw all these folks off for lack of voting activity. Now it is a legitimate, the rug comes in, what is a legitimate activity to try to maintain a somewhat accurate voter roll? People do move, people do die. We don't have a national database. We could talk about things like where states can more easily share information. That way if someone did move to another state, obviously not an uncommon thing. It would be more seamless. Same thing with moving to different counties. It needs to be within a state. That needs to be a little more seamless. You do want to be able to remove folks. It's like updating your own email addresses when someone, your friend changed the job. If someone's dead, fine. We probably do need to take them off. But how you do that and whether you're using it for nefarious purposes to kick off people because they haven't voted recently is a whole other matter entirely. Because they only manage a name and date of birth, right? Is that the only two criteria? It doesn't use social security numbers? No, it doesn't. It does not use social security. So I mean, it seems like there'll be a lot of overlap between states that we've named and date of birth for moving people from motorhomes. Yeah. There might be. Oh, there will be. Yeah. I don't know. I've been to D&D and then once you get here, no, I was not just here. Yeah, unless you have a really unique name. I mean, yeah, there will be. Yeah.  But people are busy. They think it's like junk mail. And there's not people who know nothing about this. When they tell candidates, you should reach out to your voter seven times to get their attention. Oh yeah, that's right. They're sending one postcard. Oh, that's gonna get a response. 100%. No, and what we send is candidates are like these, you know, you try to send out like an eight and a half by 11 glossy, get them to look at it.  It looks like one of those like inserts in a magazine that's not, you know, it's just like register a friend and get it your free. Like that's what it looks like. So, you know. They do in fact know what they're doing. Oh, they know what they're doing. It is quite deliberate and they know exactly what they're doing. Voting is a constitutional right. Why don't we have an automatic voter registration? Well, we should. I know. I've never heard of it. Right, we should. We, I mean, we introduced that legislation. It is not received dead in hearings. I mean, in our state. They don't want more people to vote. We've got to look every year. I mean, we definitely have one active right now. So it would have been introduced. Our sessions are in two years. So I'm sorry, our terms run two years. So you, you, we would have introduced it in 2017. It's alive again for the 2018 session. Then we would need to reintroduce it to have it still be active after 2018. So what's the deterrent? Why was it very important in the system, in the 2018, you guys should have a license or whatever for the petitioner session? Well, we don't have, I mean, we do have certain things, right? Obviously we have passports, we have birth certificate, but we have decentralized record keeping devolving down to the state level. So then that means the states are in charge of making the decision. And conservative states are utilizing, changing the electorate to try to win. You rig the district. You make it hard to register to vote. You kick people off if they haven't voted in a lot of time. You cope with all these things. Automatic voter registration makes it easier to get registered to vote. They don't want that. They want it to be hard. Because they don't want, they want the people that are, for whom it is more of a burden, because it costs money. Or you have to travel to get the right ID. They know, they feel that those people will be more likely to vote for their, the other party. So they don't really want them to vote. I mean, it's, it's like voter suppression. It is. Yes. Because if I didn't get a person to do that. Right, no, we don't, we don't do it that way. But it is interesting that other states are experimenting with some of these sort of voter support systems that make it easier to vote. So we'll be able to hopefully get data from that and look at some of the differential.  Also, like if you're not really in the know about the issue or you're really, you know, highly educated and determined, some of these things, like people just hear things and they get scared away. I shouldn't try to participate, you know. My family might get to, I'm a citizen, but my aunt might get deported if I try to register to vote. Or, okay, I know Trump's doing that commission. I don't want them to know anything about me. I'm just gonna unregister. And that's, I mean, like, I've talked to experts that are like, they don't even necessarily have to put into place the hurdles.  Because they're like, they think it's like this, just draconian thing, or they're scared that there's some negative repercussion. Yeah. Is there any, is there anyone right now who doesn't have, like, your- Yes. So this woman that I was on a panel with, she really was very well versed in all these issues. Gosh, what is her name? I actually think I have a card. She's opened up, she's now opened up chapters of her organization around the country. She lives in LA, but she just opened up our chapter here. Yes, spread the vote. Spread the vote.org. And she, you have to hear, she knew all these specific stories, but also just what you have to do in each state. And she, when she, I can't remember all of it myself, but when she walked through it, it was so fascinating. And she concluded with something like, it's a miracle that we have even the level of participation to do, without all the hurdles that really are in place. She, on her card, it says 21 million people do not have government IDs. The obstacle to obtaining voter ID or a new press. So, so they do education and they also help people. Spread the vote.org. Yeah. And her name is, she's the founder of Pat Cowley. She's got me, another thing you can do is post some of these links like spread the vote.org and the Georgia redistricting alliance. Yeah. Those things, I can probably send them out to the other action list. Send? I think you can put it on the phone though. Yeah, if you can send my email in Stephanie's, you know how you were working with my assistant. That would be good. And also links for the, to the redistricting pages on Common Cause, Common Cause's website and also Legal Women Voters' websites. There are a lot of really good tools on there and, cause the redistricting alliance doesn't have like its own website. But, if you get on in my list, then you will be aware of part of the campaign that we're forming. And Stephanie, you're kind of fighting on as far as the campaign is going to be. Yes, you come to this. As far as what? As far as the campaign is going to be. Okay. And then for the ladies in the room, if you're interested in joining Pave It Blue, because it's limited to only women, it's a Facebook page, but if you search for it and request membership. And then 259, Georgia together is another really big one. What are some of the others?  Indivisible GA7 has about 1,000 members. More on Facebook now. Awesome.  So I'm sure there's one in this area. Oh yeah, those Indivisible staff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, thank you so much everybody for having us and coming to learn about Lisa Porter.


Live from Seattle, Washington, it's theCUBE, covering Smart Sheet Engage 2019. Brought to you by Smart Sheet. Hello, everyone. We are wrapping up one day of coverage at Smart Sheet Engage here in Seattle. I'm Rebecca Knight, been co-hosting all day with Jeff Rick. It's been a pleasure sitting next to you all day. Yes, it's been a while since we hosted together. It has, it has, and it has just been so much fun. Yes. And it's a great show. And you've never been to Seattle before, so that looks good. First time in the Emerald City. Exactly. So you've covered this space, Rebecca, in your non-cube life for a very long time. Yes. So first off, kind of general impressions of New Way to Work. We hear about it at every show we go to, talks about New Way to Work. So, kind of your global perspective a little bit, and then kind of some takeaways from some of the conversations today. Well, we know that the situation is pretty bleak right now, that there are, the statistics are horrible, just in terms of the number of employees that are really checked out, totally disengaged, would love to quit, but they need the health insurance. And so we're already sort of starting from a pretty low place, we're in terms of people's engagement at work. And I think a lot of the things that drive people nuts about their work, of course it's a bad boss and not a great parking spot and everything, but it's the little things that get in your way of doing your job. And it's the things that just drive you nuts about some sort of process that takes forever. And oh, I have to keep doing this. And I just already sent you that email, and how can you're looking at this other version? And it's all those impediments that really drive people crazy, and that make people stressed out and unhappy in their jobs. So I do think that if you are a company like Smartsheet and you have, you realize this, and you can slowly chip away at those impediments and the aggravations that people feel, I think that's not a bad business model. I think they're onto something there. I think you know where those sometimes is just additive, right? This is just another thing we talked about to one of the interviews, and when I'm at work I have three big monitors, each one split into two screens I've got, mail open, calendar open, Salesforce open, Slack open, Asana open, YouTube, Twitter, there's probably a couple, and then if I have to like look something up. And you know there's this kind of constant confusion as to what is the screen that's open when you work? And it used to just be email, which is not a good solution at all. So I think if they can become the place that people do their work, right? And we talked about all the integrations, like is it integrate with Slack? So maybe the people that work primarily on Slack are primarily there, and maybe the people in some other department are primarily on Smartsheet, and somebody else is primarily on another tool. But it just seems still like keep adding tools and we're not necessarily taking a lot of them away. Well that will be the job for Anna Griffin, who is the first ever CMO of this company who just started in April. And she's got her work cut out for her because you're right, there are a lot of screens. That does not describe my work day, but I know it describes a lot of people's work day. But that will be what she needs to figure out is how to be your number one, your go-to, the one that you rely on to get your job done. The part that I took away from her interview was really, she talked a lot about engagement and you just talked about engagement and empowerment. Not only getting the obstacles out of the way, but making me feel like what I do matters. Matters to me, matters to my boss, matters to my clients and matters. And then I think that does finally drive to innovation, which is the holy grail that everyone talks about, but it's really not that easy to execute. Everyone wants more innovation, yeah, of course. And then the last thing was she talked about why part of the reason why she came here is leadership. And I think we really can't have this conversation around engagement without talking about leadership because it's such a critical piece to the puzzle for everyone to rally around a mission. So this is the execution details, but you also need some type of a mission that you can feel good about as well as feeling that you can contribute to. Absolutely, and I think that what you were just talking about with the ownership piece, and so these are these employees, as we said, they're removing the impediments to their job, but then they're also able to then focus on higher level tasks, assignments, thinking, strategy. They're able to use their brains for what they were hired for. Not thinking about certain tasks and other files that are old versions. And so if they can do those things, and then as you said, feel like they matter, feel like the work they matter is to their boss. However, you are right in that if you got a bad boss, all bets are off. It works still going to stink and there's nothing you can do about it. The other piece that came up, which I thought was interesting, is really about prioritization and what are you optimizing for? And my favorite part of Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma is the conversation about that you must prioritize. You cannot engineer for everything equally. And you have to force up that prioritization. I think what's interesting here about Smartsheet is for all the talk about digital transformation, most people talk about the products and services that they sell. They talk about the engagement with their customers. They don't talk about transforming the life of their employees and the way their employees get stuff done and the way the employees actually engage with the company through the applications. And I thought that was a really interesting and insightful take, especially in the day where everything is a service.  So I think spinning the digital transformation story into more of an employee enablement and engagement story is pretty powerful. I could not agree more because that is the critical piece.  So it really does start with happy workers. And I think that, I think Smartsheet really gets that. So that's what I am struck by today. It's just those other ones that we're going to have to bring along. I think Dion made a good point and said, some people don't want to be engaged workers. Some people don't want to do next level thinking. They like the route and the routine, gives them comfort, they come to work, they do the route and the routine and they go home. So it's going to be interesting time for those people. It's going to be interesting times for people to not necessarily have expertise in a broad range of categories, formerly siloed categories like product marketing, product management, finance, sales, biz dev, production, but you at least have to have, you know, kind of an inch deep, a mile wide. Yeah, mile wide, exactly. Right, so that you can engage with those teams so you put together a SWAT team, if you will, to accomplish the task. And that's what I'm curious to see, some of the 451 research to how he was pointing to kind of a restructuring of the silos of teams and organizations within a company. That we don't hear much about how that's going to restructure on kind of a dev ops, fast assembly, fast, complete, you know, kind of a symbol and disassemble around projects which is what dev ops is. We'll see how that impacts organizational structure. And I think that could be very cool and very different, particularly with different, I mean, we know that diverse groups make better decisions than lone geniuses. And so if we have a bunch of people who have different perspectives, different levels of expertise, and even if it's not expertise, it's just sort of a general knowledge about a lot of different things. We know that if we can get those people working together on a task, it's got a lot of potential. So I think you're right, I think you're right. The last thing that I think's really interesting here is the acknowledgement of team beyond even the company walls. So you've got your core team, you know, cross departmental collaboration, and then over and over here today, collaboration outside the walls to external teams. And it was Mark talking about putting on these big events. I mean, there's so many external stakeholders and placeholders and vendors involved in this humongous dance that becomes our enjoyment of a Final Four event. I think that's a really insightful kind of take that you have to have the ability to engage, collaborate with a large group or an extended group for any particular project. And that really changes the way you think about what the application is, how you share information. And that they all have to feel ownership in the process too. Yes, very important. All right, Rebecca, well.  Jeff, I had a great time working with you and we had a great team. We had Andrew and Jay and Brendan and Taylor. We welcome Taylor to the show. So it was great. I can't wait to come back and do it again. It'll be big next time. All right, thanks again. That is wrapping up our coverage of Engage 2019. I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. Thanks a lot for watching.