Hey Ellen, can you hear me okay? Hey, hold on a minute. Hey, Christina, how are you? I'm okay. Can you hear me okay? Yes, I can hear you very well. Beautiful. Welcome. We have there are 50, about 50 people registered for the webinar. OK, cool. A bunch of panelists, and only the panelists will be showing up on video. OK. So we're going to wait two minutes to late. I think we'll probably wait until about five after to begin. OK. For those participants who have signed in early, welcome. And we are going to get underway as soon as we have our full complement of panelists with us. OK. If, hey Rebecca, hi Lisa, if people wish to introduce themselves and maybe say what school you're from for the other registrants, that'd be great. Hey, Shira, welcome. How you doing? Hi, Shira. Hey, how's it going? Very good. Good, how are you? We're OK. You're good. Hi, Shira. We're very busy. Great. How's it going? We'll be back in a minute. It's a busy life. Yeah. So, Shira, I just explained to Christina there are 50 union members from Rochester, from the Newark caucus, registered for this webinar. Yes. And in addition to you and Christina, we're waiting for Jillian. And here comes Jillian. Yay, from Los Angeles, Arlene, Mary, and Barbara from Massachusetts, and humanism. Maybe that's it. Maybe Arlene, Mary, and Barbara. And we're up to, it looks like, 23 participants. And they are introducing themselves in the chat section by their school. These are all teachers in Rochester, members of the Rochester Teachers Association. And Shira, I'm sorry, we lost you just then. Oh, am I here now? Yeah, you're good. Jillian, how about you? Are you with us? Yes. Good. Excellent. Are you able to join with video, or would you prefer not to? Shortly. OK, we'll wait for you. Up, both Mary and Jimmy and Barbara Mataloni say they're both going to be a little bit late. So we will not wait for them. And let's give Arlene Inouye a moment or two more. And then we can end also waiting for the rest of the participants to show up. Are they going to see us on? They're going to see us. They are. But we are not going to see them. Yes, I understand. I've never actually been on this side of a Zoom call. Oh, OK. Yeah, the webinar structure is just a little bit different than a regular Zoom call. Arlene says she's coming on. Very good. Hey, Jillian, how are you? Finishing dinner? Or maybe breakfast, oh, I know. Hey, Arlene. Hey, sorry for the delay. No problem. No problem. I think because we expect this to be a long and serious discussion and also because we know that some people may have to leave exactly an hour from now, we're going to get going. Rochester teachers, Roar members, hi. It's wonderful to see you all on. There are currently 31 attendees. I'm sorry, let's see. It's 27 attendees who are on the call. You, unfortunately, are not able to see one another. We are not able to see you. The only visual on a webinar are the people that are acting as panelists. There are 50 people registered, so we expect people will be joining. Two of our panelists have sent me messages saying that they're going to be a little bit late, but we're going to get underway. First of all, I hope it goes without saying, and those of you who I've now met and begun to work within Rochester, I think you know the esteem with which I hold my sisters, who are appearing on this panel tonight. You will have heard from me already many times in our short acquaintanceship that I consider that the cutting-edge work being done by teacher unionists around the country who have form caucuses, who have established programs, radical programs for union democracy, for progressive issue positions both inside their union, inside their school districts, and their communities who have done the hard, tedious, non-glamorous, challenging work of building caucuses inside unions, which often have been moribund, which have been static spaces, is considered by many, many people in this country to be the most important work going on in our labor movement today. So it's a tremendous honor always for me to be together with outstanding activists in the system and to bring them to you. Briefly, Mary, welcome. Nice to see you. Hi. Hi. Just beginning to introduce the group that we are speaking to. So WAR, the Rochester Organization of Rankin File Educators, is a very young caucus. It is two or three weeks old. It was formed, as I think you know, in response to a cataclysmic imposition of austerity measures. They have been growing, as they have in every district in this country, slowly and steadily over some decades. But right before the Christmas holiday, the superintendent announced a $67 million shortfall that was going to necessitate the immediate laying off of a displacement of hundreds of educators midterm.  We began having meetings together. They threw up a web page that went in membership from 200 to 1,200 in a matter of days. They've been strategizing, moving positions, mapping their buildings, building out very, very quickly to try and respond. Both in the short term to this crisis and in the long term to reforming, democratizing, and powering their union ahead. I will mention, if you may be aware of this, but their president, Adam Urbansky, perhaps one of the longest-serving presidents in the NEA world. He's been in office for 38 years. This was, I did not greet the appearance of this caucus with a lot of excitement, as you can imagine. But they are pleased to say that the Roar members are negotiating that relationship with a lot of maturity and reflection. And we'll be meeting, actually, with him at the end of this week. With that introduction, what I'm going to do is just quickly introduce the people that we have here. And then I'm going to move this ahead by asking specific questions of people on the panel. Those of you who are registered, who are listening, there is a Q&A button on the bottom of your screen. You can write questions in there, and we will handle as many of those as we possibly can. So who we have on the call? We have Marina Jimmy, who is the current president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. She was the president of a local in Concord, Mass, a founding member of the Caucus of Massachusetts Educators for Democratic Union. Arlene Inouye is the current secretary of the United Teachers of Los Angeles. She was the chief negotiator during their historic strike last year. Gillian Russell is the co-chair of the Caucus in UTLA, which is called Union Power, a longtime, incredibly dedicated activist committed to both ranking file and community-based organizing. Shira Cohen is from the Caucus of Working Educators in Philadelphia. She is a candidate for office. They have a full slate from their caucus running for office. I think we will get to hear about that. Their campaign is just looking spectacular. And Christina Duncan Evans, we are so unbelievably proud and excited about what the Be More, the Baltimore movement of ranking file educators has done. They swept their elections this last year, this last spring. On the teacher side, they also have a full slate of power educator professional support personnel positions, which they did not take and are doing a great deal of power as they move into running the Baltimore Teachers Union, doing a lot of work, paying attention to that sector of their membership. And we have just been joined by Barbara Madalone. He was also a founding member of Educators for Democratic Union in Massachusetts and the former president of the Mass Teachers Association. Sisters, welcome. And thank you for taking this time. I'm going to start, Jillian, I'm going to start with a question to you. Could you just define for us what you think a caucus is? What is a caucus? Hey, everyone. So a caucus is a group of members within the union that share a vision for where the union should go. And so that is organized to move their union in that direction. And so for all of us, we experienced what that was like before we ran a slate for election. I don't know how much you want me to go into time wise. And when we built enough momentum and capacity and the moment was there to be able to run, to lead the union in that new direction, we've done that as well. So I mean, there are a variety of caucuses. A lot of unions don't have necessarily real active caucuses, but so it's just a group of union members who share a vision for where that union should go and organize on that basis. Great. Thank you. Christina, could I put you on the spot to try and explain to people what motivated educators in the Baltimore teachers union to form a caucus? What were some of the concerns that you had about your union that made you want to change it? And why was a caucus the right thing to do? Sure. So I think that we started our caucus around 2015, 2016. And at that point politically, we were seeing a lot of race to the top play out in ways that were disingenuous, hurting teachers. And we felt that our union wasn't really appropriately responding to those issues. I remember being in a room in like 2015 with our union president when she learned that the park tests were given on computers, which was something that the educators in the room had known for some time and were quite concerned about because we didn't have a lot of computers, certainly and not enough to give the level of standardized testing that was needed. And we weren't happy with the level of organizing that was coming out of the union. And so we, and in some ways, we felt really frustrated by a contract that was initially sold to us as like self-paced earnings. But in a lot of ways just kind of kept moving the goalposts further and further away in terms of like raising teacher salaries. And we wanted a bigger, stronger voice against our district. We wanted more democracy internally because it felt like the union ran like a club instead of like a democracy. And we wanted our union to take a stronger stance on a lot of things that were affecting our students like police brutality, like immigration issues. And we wanted a more active union that was touching our lives in more significant ways. That's great. Thank you. So I think, Christina, in your answer, you identified what I often think about in describing this kind of three-legged stool of caucuses, which is they want to address social issues in the classroom inside the union and inside their districts. They want to address the issue of member inclusion and empowerment. And they want to address issues of union democracy. So I think I'm actually going to turn to Murray and ask you, Murray, what were some of the concerns about union democracy in the MTA that made sort of EDU eager to get itself organized? Lack of union democracy, I mean. The negative of union democracy. Right. I'm listening to Christina. And it's almost the same story. It was mid-2000s. And the president of the MTA had his own neoliberal. He bought into the neoliberal agenda. It was all about making concessions and compromising. We used to hear the story. We can't fight because we can't win. We can't even get our members to send postcards. Well, the postcards that the MTA was asking us to send was a compromised vision and version of education. So very specifically, it was around the time of race to the top. The body, I had agitated with a small. This was pre-caucas days. I had been agitating with presidents. Our statewide president was in negotiations with the governor around race to the top. And we passed a new business item at annual meeting that said you can't accept a deal if it's going to tie test scores to teacher evaluations. And we actually knew that's what it was all about. So we figured we had killed it. It was voted on almost unanimously. He comes out of negotiations. He couldn't change that dynamic of test scores to teacher evaluation. So he asked the board to accept race to the top. He completely undermined the will of the body. And that was it. So we started organizing. And then he began capitulating with Stanford Children around getting rid of our seniority rights. And he was responsible for weakening our collective bargaining rights around health insurance.  And we started organizing, building the caucus. And a couple of years later, it turned into running Barbara. And Barbara came and the caucus put her into office and collectively. What Barbara brought was the analysis of neoliberalism and helped it connect it to people's experiences. And then we started hearing, when we fight, we win. And now five, five and a half years later, that is the common phrase, not only in the caucus, but across every MTA local where there's really good fights going on, be they EDU locals or EDU, locals that have EDU, members or not. It's really changed the context in Massachusetts. Mary, thank you. And it's an important point to raise and to remind us. And I know we've had this discussion in Rochester a number of times in the last couple of weeks, that the goal of the caucus is to transform the union. It's not to start a new union. It is certainly not anti-union, as you will be accused of. You're not splitting the union. You're trying to transform and liberate the powers that have been squandered by the union, in some cases, for decades. And Mary's point is well taken. Sometimes it will be caucus members moving a resolution, moving an issue, moving a campaign, or getting elected to office. But it is also about changing the culture of the union. And Shira, I wonder if you could pick up there because the weak caucus in Philly has done a wonderful, wonderful job about addressing kind of culture transformation issues. And take it wherever you want, but I certainly hope that at some point you will address the way in which the weak caucus became the center of helping educators to begin to work on an anti-racist program, not merely a racial justice program, but anti-racist. Please go ahead. Yes, so is the question, can you say the question again just so I'm clear? How did the weak caucus help to change what you think of as the culture inside the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers? Absolutely. So hi everybody, thank you all for, it's funny to not see all of your faces, but I know you're all there. So I've been a teacher in Philly for 10 years. I've been a member of the union for a little bit less than that. And the PFT is a service model top-down business union through and through. And I feel like the way that I've really been describing it to people recently is that it's really founded on the premise that a union is run by a few people for everybody else. It's a union that meets people's individual needs. And if it doesn't meet your needs, then you're probably doing something wrong or you just have to deal with it. That's kind of the spirit of our union. And so the caucus of working educators was founded on the premise that we are a union of many and not a few. That collective work is how we win. That organizing is really the only way that we're gonna get what our kids need and what we need and what our schools need and what our cities need. And that transformation is deeply possible. And that the only way that we're going to do that is by practicing what we say the union needs to be. We need to be the union. And so I think what I'll do is name three ways that we've done this. I'll talk about the anti-racism piece. I'll talk about our contract negotiations piece and I'll talk about our petition that we did last year about healthy schools. So in terms of the anti-racism work, the caucus has a racial justice committee. It has been in existence since 2015. Obviously our committee never had a racial justice committee of any kinds. The PFT pays a lot of lip service to racial justice, but in terms of actually getting anything done, it's incredibly limited. And what the racial justice committee has done over the last five years is has brought educators into of not just talking about race and not just talking about race in our schools and our own racism and our own biases, but really bringing that spirit to their classrooms and their buildings. And it's really interesting because what we're seeing with educators in schools has really taken off is that coworkers are following, people are having conversations and groups in their schools about ending racism and what it looks like to be an anti-racist educator. We had an organizing, basically an organizing training that was written by members of the racial justice committee last year where we've had trainings for people on how to bring that work to their schools. And I think the culture shift is what people see is that if we don't do that work, nobody is going to do it for us. I don't really think that it has pushed the PFT leadership right now to take on an anti-racist program. They've definitely paid increased lip service to the Black Lives Matter movement and to ending racism in our schools, et cetera. So the culture shift is it's coming from below. It's coming from our members. And I think the most important piece there is that people see that unions can take this on. It doesn't have to be one person in a building. It doesn't have to be a person or a few people working alone. They can be backed by the union. I think that's a piece there and we're seeing the Black Lives Matter week of action which is now I think entering its fourth year has grown exponentially every year and more union locals have taken it on every year since it started. And what I think that we've brought a culture shift to our union is around toxic school conditions. We have mold, asbestos, lead, rodent infestations in probably 80 to 90% of our buildings in Philly. And the way that our leadership takes that on is by saying that they're gonna ask for more money from the state and starting coalitions with politicians and talking about a lot of things on the internet and telling people that they're getting the work done. And I think that what we've shown in our work is that the only way that we're gonna get more money is by saying that people, everyone's asking for more money, not five people at the top of the union, not a coalition of elected officials. While we love elected, many elected officials, they're not gonna get the work done for us all together. But we have to show that everybody is fighting for that. And then back here, a building conditions petition that almost a quarter of our union membership signed. And when we presented it to city council and the school district, suddenly $15 million more came to us to fix building conditions issues. And then we had a huge win this fall around the tax abatements in Philly, where big property owners and developers don't have to pay taxes on their land for 10 years. And if we end that tax abatement, we could bring in $150 million more to our schools. And city council voted to shift the tax, so it's not completely gone, but it has shifted a little bit where people have to pay taxes earlier. And that's bringing $150 million more dollars to our buildings. And that was all because of the on the ground organizing. And so people are starting to see that it's not gonna be a few people who get this done.  When city council sees 3000 petition signatures on a petition, they see voters, they see educators who are willing to fight back and they see people who are not scared. And that's not how you need a union operating in a way that is gonna move people to action and move people to do a thing, even if it's one action of putting their name on a petition. I think the last way that we've shifted the culture of our union is one thing that the PFT has taken on, which is really exciting. Last year we had UTLA members, including Jillian come to Philly for a big meeting of 120 people. And we had people start to write our own contract language. So basically bringing the spirit of, we don't want a few people negotiating for us, we want everybody to be a part of negotiations. So we started doing that in April and our human leadership, low and behold, had six giant contract meetings in September and October because negotiations have started where 80, 90 people, which is a very big meeting for us in a union of 13,000, 80 to 90 people came to six meetings where people made proposals and made suggestions and our union leadership wrote them down and said that they're gonna bring them to negotiations when they start. And that I can say with absolute certainty is that they saw working educators and rank and file doing that in April. And they were like, oh, what a, we should really start doing that too. What a great idea. And so I think that that's an example of where our leadership saw what working educators is doing because 90 people could be so much more powerful, could be a lot better, but it's so much more powerful than six people writing up some proposals in the room. So those are three ways. Cheryl, that's great. Thank you so much. So I wanna go from there to this question and we're gonna move around over number of topics and certainly invite anybody who is participating in the call or is listening, feel free to put some questions into the Q&A box there and as they occur to you and we'll take them after we've finished a round of these questions that I'm posing. Cause I wanna go now to Barbara and Barbara ask you, the things that Shera just described, incredibly important moving of programs within the union when they don't have leadership. The weak caucus has run for internal union office previously and did not. I think you got about 30% of the vote in previous election, is that memory serves me, but they have continued to build their membership and build their program and they clearly are transforming the union in spite of the leaders, incumbent leaders fondest hopes of keeping it just as it was. So Barbara, the question I have for you is what was your experience? What was the EDU's experience in how you built the caucus? It started out as Mary mentioned before I don't know if you quoted the name, Mary, but the original group is called 12 Angry Presidents. These were local presidents who were pissed off at the state president for his sell out, but now it is a dominant caucus that has at least like half of a 72 member board of directors has a majority on the executive committee and has elected presidents, executive officers now and over a period of about six years. So Barbara, some things that you could share about how you grow the caucus, how do you broaden the membership base? What are some of the things you did in EDU? You're on mute Barbara, sorry. Got it, okay. I think it's important to understand that an EDU is a statewide caucus and so we're in a different position in terms of like we don't have one contract fight that we can organize around, but we do have statewide issues that we can organize around. And with that, we're a little bit like, what does it mean to have leadership is a little bit further away? Mary, when I was president, Mary being president, we're like another step away from the membership which complicates it. That being said, I think that we did it in two ways. One is that when I was elected, even though I had no support on the board, we didn't stop being the caucus that the others have talked about, that we still needed to be a caucus that was out building fights and supporting the fights that I as president was saying, let's go and take this on. So we had a big fight in 2016 where there's an attempt, we have a cap on charter schools in Massachusetts. There was an attempt that actually came right at us to say we're gonna raise, we're gonna lift the cap on charters in Massachusetts. It was a direct attack very much coming after Massachusetts to say if we can charterize Massachusetts, we can go for the whole country. And because we had leadership and because we had boots on the ground in EDU and like a committed platform that understood privatization that understood that it mattered to build coalitions with parents and talk to the community, we were able to mount a campaign. That was a successful campaign. And in order to mount that campaign, we had to both fight within the board and be strategic and so that we could get the funding to win. And then we had to have EDU members be active leaders within their locals in pushing the campaign. And that grew EDU in many ways. Like prior to that, we had been the red shirts at the annual meeting who passed resolutions and who people would say like, those are the smart people at the annual meeting. They're gonna stay with the red shirts.  But we would pass resolutions but they couldn't go anywhere because we were asking the leadership to do something really rather than saying what are we gonna do? And even when I was elected because I didn't have the board with me, we at least had somebody inside saying, okay, now we're gonna do this and figuring out ways to put resources from MTA into the membership to move the work. And then the other things that we've done was we brought labor notes in in ways that were really important. Labor notes is what I work for now for those of you on the call. It's a publication and education organization dedicated to what we're doing today, building democratic rank and file militant unions and labor notes worked both broadly to set up an open bargaining summit that Mary had introduced as a resolution. And that summit and every summit hereafter that we've had on open bargaining has completely transformed how members, how leadership thinks about bargaining. I mean, when I was elected, bargaining was something you did in secret. It was what the union president did with the superintendent and the field staff. That is, we've gone 180 degrees from that. And so we were able to use the union resources to bring people in and to have people see the union and be the union, a different kind of union. And then in all of that continues to, and I think maybe even more like we started out really running really important campaigns and pushing campaigns we're continue to do campaigns. We just won $1.5 billion for schools in Massachusetts. But also with the help of labor notes going out and helping people develop and build power at the local level. So that we are taking on fights that and people are winning fights in their buildings and now we're getting leaders elected to their locals that are EDU. I guess the thing I want to say about that is that like we've been really fortunate that we've had leadership and we've been able to address both running campaigns that are statewide campaigns that cast a big net and bring people into the fight even if they come into the fight because they were in a button or they're holding a sign somewhere. And because of EDU we've been able to build from that within that net to say here's a way you can be a stronger union activist. So we've been lucky that we've been able to do both. Alan, can I just add a little bit to that? Please, please go ahead, Mary. Back to what Barbara was saying about transforming bargaining because EDU maintained the presidency and won the vice presidency. It puts Max and I in a position where we can use as Barbara was saying the EDU resources to continue to transform the MTA in that every year that the bargaining summit is run I have become more and more insistent that fewer of the staff run the bargaining summit and more of the members, most of whom are EDU members who have democratized bargaining either via open bargaining strategies or what we're now saying coordinated or coalition bargaining strategies are in charge of planning the summit and running the summits. And what EDU activists are able to do then that just feeds right back into building the caucus is as we are all participating at MTA state level events, we're building more relationships with MTA members and then it's sort of creating a pipeline back to EDU. So we're saying, oh, I heard you're interested in or I think you would be interested why don't you come to an EDU meeting? So it's beginning to create sort of this cycle of how EDU relates to MTA and MTA helps channel people to EDU. Very helpful addition, Mary. And it leads me to the sort of last question in this round which brings us to Arlene. When you have begun to transform the processes in the union and turned from being a service union acting just like an insurance company to being a fighting organization it is actually taking on the critical issues at the heart of people's work lives, people's professional lives and also people's lives in society then you end up with an almost unstoppable force as we saw in the UTLI strike last year which won tremendous, tremendous victories both for members, for students in the community. So Arlene, I'd be interested in hearing from you about what were some of the, this is like for you Rochester teachers out there this is like throwing an anchor into the future when you decide to build a powerful union what were some of the things that you found it was possible to do as you were building up to the strike and during the strike with the transformed union, the union that had unleashed the power of the lack in file what difference did that make? Okay, thank you, Ellen to start out with just to describe a little bit of UTLI so you know the context is that we are 35,000 members the second largest teachers union after UFT and we have early at adult ed health and human service professionals as well as K through 12 educators as part of our bargaining union we don't have classified but we do have substitutes as well. So UTLI was known for a long time as being sort of dysfunctional or just individualistic or you know would by the whim of who was leading the president actually was the one who was leading it would be all over the place. So we had to come together as a caucus we've always had progressive membership and we had a caucus for many years since before 2007 but I think what was really important is to really make sure that we put people in office in every single position and to get a majority of the board and we built it around the schools LA students deserve. So like Gillian was saying that common vision was going to be for our students we were saying we're committed to social justice. We also said parent community, engagement, involvement, alliance building is what we are going to do. So we put out a platform and we told our members when we were running for office is that we're changing the culture instead of the individualism now we want you to vote for a team. And at first people didn't get it took a little while but once they got it, oh my gosh they elected all of us on the first round which had never been done in the history of the union and we were there and I just want to add that, you know Rochester my heart is with you I know it's so tough when you experience layoffs and especially the way that it happened with you and it's a part of what we're all dealing with is that austerity budget it's defunding disinvestment of public education over 40 years and that finally we are saying enough is enough and that's what we've been seeing through this movement the educational justice movement and for us we were the fifth richest economy in the world and yet we're at the bottom we were 44th in per people spending so that is outrageous and we've been exposing the inequality and the corporations who are dominating our privatization movement so we were exposing all that and once we took power your question is what were we able to do we were able to build an infrastructure based on our vision so for example we said, hey we wanna build parent community partnerships we don't even have anybody organizing that or focused on that so we hired a couple of parent community organizers we didn't have a research department we wanted to use data to cut right into the messaging and to frame it so we hired researchers and they also were able to give us accurate data lists of member contact information what a radical concept right the actual phone number is correct and we were able to give schools lists so that they were tools for organizing we built a structure so that we have a chapter instead of just a chapter chair at every school which we didn't always succeed in we're gonna have cat teams chapter action teams which we learned from a lot of this we learned from Chicago and their 2012 strike and the organizing that they've been doing so we built an infrastructure with staffing and we took bold moves and we just said, hey we're gonna fire this person and we're going and we're gonna hire organizers and it was really amazing to me how when you put forth a vision and you take it to the schools all of the officers we have seven full-time officers we visit over a hundred schools each you take it in dialogue with members it was astonishing to me how much everybody agreed they want a fighting union they even agreed to raise their own dues by 30% so we got members once you show that vision put it forward have an organizing plan build the infrastructure people are with you they want to fight they are tired of the way it is and they're looking for leadership Eileen, that's beautiful and true we just find this over and over and over again but it leads us to the next question which has come up Claire LaBrosa asked a question which Christina I think I'm gonna pose to you if that's okay I might pose it to several of you but yours is one of the newer caucuses represented on the call and the question is what obstacles were the most difficult to overcome when first starting your caucus? I think that one of the most difficult obstacles was really feeling like a caucus when you are five people who really like each other and you look at the scale of what you want to accomplish and it just seems like we're really gonna do this by having one-on-one conversations with our colleagues and calling people and texting people and we're really gonna do this through the power of building relationships I think that was definitely that was definitely a challenge but it was also like but in a way like that was also the work that was the most rewarding I think that in Baltimore there had been so much like city wide like so that one of the things that happened is that like the nonprofit industrial complex really liked us a lot really quickly because they had been waiting for someone to disrupt the teachers union for a long time and so we got pulled into we were in danger of like really being pulled into spaces that were not I'm sorry ultimately not very productive they didn't build the union they didn't those that we got pulled into we were in danger of being pulled into fights that really weren't like fights that were central to us that was a challenge and then I think that like one of the challenges that is really hard is just like getting critical mass like I think it's a little bit similar to like the statewide challenge of getting critical mass in a local for us a challenge was getting critical mass within a school because there's so much bullying and retaliation that affects the school culture in Baltimore but like as a citywide caucus it's super easy to have an impact on an issue that's district wide when like no one is showing up to a meeting and then you bring five people to a meeting and then like you run the meeting like you can really do something citywide it's much harder to push things in a school where everyone's really scared of getting surplus you know like that and for us that what that means is like you can't teachers have due process but you don't have a right to your school you can lose your school position really quickly if you stand up and you can get targeted really quickly to be moved to another school if you are vocal so and then I think I think we have like also some real difficulties like figuring out how to do racial justice work and develop black leadership in a way that was authentic and not like easily co-opted we didn't want to gentrify the union this was going back to my concern I earlier I mentioned that like the nonprofit industrial complex is really strong in Baltimore and the Baltimore teachers union has always been a real strong black run institution and a lot of the like like you know Teach for America funders were absolutely giddy at the idea of like disrupting that but we were like, no, we need to do it our way we can't we don't want to do this in a way that further displaces and gentrifies like people in Baltimore Christina, how many members have you got in the BTU? Around 7,000 Okay so I'm actually thinking it didn't occur to me before but I actually think that Rochester and Baltimore yet I'll have to talk about mm-hmm I definitely recognize just from the last couple of weeks again to know the folks in in Rochester that some of the issues that you've raised being pulled into fights by the nonprofit industrial complex getting distracted about your purpose too early prior to building a base issues of surfacing and raising up leadership people of color without that getting co-opted and distorted before you have any any real ability to control it I recognize some of these things so anyway mm-hmm I think we can talk about China set up a little summer joint retreat or something it's not that far away Yeah, it isn't so let me go on and sort of throw this question open to any of you that wish to take it because Christina raised the issue which all of you have dealt with the different times which certainly the Rochester sisters and brothers are dealing with which is fear of retaliation everybody is living in fear of retaliation from their management for speaking up about issues in their own schools and fear of retaliation also from union leadership so I wonder if there's anybody maybe several of you who would like to address the issue of what have you done and how have you been successful in helping people to either overcome fear or act through their fear anyone want to take that I'll start and Alina and then Cheryl please go ahead Yeah, it's it's a little bit different in our context because but I'll share the how we dealt with it in building up the strike and there was fear there were people telling us they weren't going to go out because they're single moms are near retirement they're new teachers you name it you know we heard every reason that they're not going to be participating in the strike so what we did is we gave out a lot of information so we clarified rumors and put that out in Q&As but we also framed the choice a lot and I feel like this is a really important technique or tool is that you say OK so you're not going to go on strike so then what happens you know what what do you expect from that choice or you know what are the choices and what are the results and you know just helping people think through that and then we work through we called it we call it FUD which is you know a technique fear uncertainty and doubt that we said the district is going to start implanting that they're going to try to scare us to not strike they're going to make us doubt and so whenever anything came out from the district sure enough they said that we couldn't talk to parents we said oh you know there we go with FUD and we show them a letter from our our lawyers the union lawyer saying what that we could talk to parents and except when we're giving instruction so we just had to keep using facts using clear information to counter the things that they to give them confidence and after a certain amount of time I think when you get that majority people on board the others just come on so we had every single school site involved in our strike 98% participation rate that's great Berlin thank you Cheryl go ahead so currently working educators is in our second election for leadership of the union as soon as we announced that we were running against our current leadership in 2015 I would actually argue before we people have experienced I feel like every level of pushback from our own members and from our leadership we have been barred from we have are from talking to our members we've been barred from mailboxes we have been barred from attending meetings I feel like they've tried everything and a few things have worked I think one thing is just affirming that it's happening and making it like not making it personal or like about the individual person it's an organizational problem and you have to have an organizational strategy and if we don't address it with each other and if we don't have clarity with each other then you know our leadership that's bullying us and creating a toxic organizing environment and toxic work environment is going to win and so we talk about it a lot and we talk about the difference between you know like responding to something you know depending on how you're feeling and also responding to something strategically and with clarity and that has evolved really deeply over the last five years we've received cease and desist letters leadership telling us to stop using our logo where they threaten to sue us that's happened to a couple of other caucuses I think across the country and these are all they're all just boss tactics they're all just tactics that management uses to come for employees Shira interestingly enough to get clarity on our opportunity to access buildings and to access mailboxes where in buildings where we were previously not allowed to enter we're allowed to go in and that's because we've just keep pushed like we keep pushing and we keep being super disciplined and like very clear like we are allowed to to people were allowed to be here we keep our messaging very positive even though it's like very it's I can't find the right word it like sometimes like we want like put online or put on our union page like this is what our leadership is doing we actually just maintain positivity and we say exactly what we need to be doing we like keep the message positive we keep the message clear Allen am I okay now or is it unstable it's pretty unstable I think the best thing would be go on mute call in keep the video open but call in and then we'll be able to get your voice okay let's see I'll call in very good thank you Jillian was interested in speaking and then Barbara and responding to this please go ahead yeah I mean I think what what Philly described is like in terms of before we had leadership I don't feel like we faced the same type of it turns out that UTLA has a fairly democratic culture and openings that allowed us to do a lot of what we did without you know being shut out but I just think like I actually think about a lot of what Philly is doing as as incredibly important I think the way in which they chose campaigns and very specific issues that spoke to just a deep feeling in the reality of teachers lives like the toxic schools or racial justice like picking very specific things that are really obviously missing from what your union is doing not necessarily organizing around a whole broad critique but like picking one thing that you think people care about a lot and then doing something that's not that scary at first like signing a petition that says hey we shouldn't have vermin in our schools we shouldn't have asbestos and lead in our schools right starting on that very basic level but look at the way now I'm part of a petition of 3,000 people that goes to city hall and gets them to do something that's very empowering but it didn't start with something extremely risky on the part of that individual member and I think that like we've talked a lot about elections and running for leadership but I think like I wish we had you know in some ways I wish we had the type of timeline of what Philly has because they really built on the basis of issues and campaigns before taking leadership and they built a broad rank and file base on that and I think that's what makes people feel empowered and then the other thing I would say that you know is just the climate and using the examples of what's happened with the red state revolt I know it's kind of obvious but the fact that there is now a completely different way of doing things in teachers unions that you can point to for us honestly it was the Chicago strike that created the foundation for us to say to our members because we've been saying the same critique for a long time we've been talking about racial justice we've been talking about parent organizing but people had been so passive for so long it was like yeah but you know what can we do but then when you have these other examples to point to of other cities creating incredibly inspiring social movements around education and places like West Virginia where people are breaking the law to do it I think that not that that helps with day-to-day issues with administrators necessarily but in terms of the legitimacy of like hey we really could be doing things differently in this union like it creates that sense of legitimacy for that type of struggle and yeah and it also creates a positive vision rather than just being like a negative critique of what our leadership is doing so those are just some ideas we're gonna go to Barbara and then Mary but I just want to mention quickly that I'm very glad to have heard both of you and not surprised dear you both say caucuses should not waste their times critiquing current leadership if you were not in leadership that that is not the way to build a caucus you have an analysis and a critique of the model of unionism that they are that they have imposed but no wasting of time trying to make them the problem that doesn't get you anywhere Barbara and then Mary please go ahead yeah I think that's a key piece and certainly a key piece to EDU success and we have to talk each other down from it a lot and say like that's not productive and let's talk about what's our vision of the union and bring people into a vision I'd really agree with everything people have said so I would just add in terms of overcoming fear like I think winning helps and by that I mean like giving people entry points into the struggle where they get to experience themselves as being a part of a movement that is taking something on and I think entry points I've come to understand are really really critical so whether it's a petition or we're in a sticker I think sometimes people are excited about strikes but they have to walk to the strike they don't run to the strike and are we thoughtful about how we're inviting people into the struggle and giving them opportunities to experience solidarity and I just want to point out back to the weak caucus again because I just really admire the way you all have been able to move to transform your union without having power which I know you're gonna have soon in this current election but I think you took on the toxic schools as a very concrete immediate issue and you took it on as a racial justice issue and I think that work actually needs to be raised up that racial justice is not something that we talk about and spend a lot of time naval gazing about even though understanding ourselves as white people as part of the work we go out and we make concrete changes in the lives of people and we name it as we're doing it as this is what racism looks like these racism and capitalism have produced these structures and we're fighting them and that's how we're winning this fight and I just think that's really important so that we don't spend our lives in abstractions about racial justice but we're actually living to change the concrete experiences that we're all having in a world that is racist and capitalist. Barbara, thank you. Let's coach him. Mary, you're on mute, Mary. I just want to add a couple more points. A lot of what we do is we help people unpack the boss's tactics, right? So we talk about who benefits when the boss does this to us, when the boss is telling us not to do these things and who loses. The other thing that's so critical is to bring people together to talk to each other so that they don't feel they're the only one who's experiencing it and there's power in knowing that I'm having the same experience as you're having and then back to the intentional conversations, getting people to actually recognize, ask the question, so what are we going to do about it? Because we can make change when we do it together and often if people don't want to go to that point of being ready to take an action, make a change, we connect it back to our purpose, like we came into education for a purpose and we are not able to be the educators we intended to be and our students are not able to have the education that they deserve and so the union is the vehicle through which we come together to fight for our own dignity and also to be able to just teach. I hear teachers all the time just say, I just want to teach, right? And then the last thing that I want to say is we are getting to the point where the principles are so outrageous, the superintendent and the principles discipline against us is so outrageous that it's transforming people. They're just deciding it's too outrageous to even let it happen to somebody else even if it's not happening to me. So there are these lots of little things. It's the combination of everything that everybody has said. One or more multiple things like that is going to help people move through their fear and act despite it. Great Mary, thank you so much. There is a question that's come up in the chat from Julia Lima. What role does social media have in mobilizing rancid file members? Is anybody inclined to address that? Many of us have a lot of feelings about that. Arlene, Arlene, please go ahead. Sure, yes, as we learned a lot from West Virginia when we saw their actions and then Kentucky and Arizona and social media is something new for us in terms of striking that hadn't, we haven't had that in the past. So it's definitely a tool that gets out to the masses, right? And it lets people know where things are happening, when things are happening. We were able to do like Facebook lives and walk people through what was coming up, some of the issues, some of the questions and also, we have a great communications department who are putting things out, whether by email, website, phone blasts, we used all modes of communication and we even have a, we also voted to have a paid media campaign. So we have things on benches, we have vans with our messaging, with members, faces of members. We care about our students, we dream for our students or whatever the message is, we are public schools. So all of it is important and I just wanna reinforce that it is though the one-on-one conversations. It is finding out where the barrier is, what the personal issues might be and to walk it through, work it through. And that's how I think is the most important, most important communication on the school site, those kinds of combos. I'm gonna take the liberty of recognizing myself to talk about the West Virginia experience with social media quickly, which is as I think most everybody probably knows, the strike there was really largely fueled by an amazing growth and membership in the Facebook page in which a decision was made quite almost spontaneously to go on strike. Although there had been a variety of kind of build up smaller actions before the big strike. What's important to note though is that after the strike ended and they did win a significant salary increase for themselves, for all school support staff in the state and also for all state employees. So significant wins. However, there was going to be no way to sustain that in a state with two very weak unions, the West Virginia AFT, the West Virginia NEA are both weak organizations, unless a caucus was born and became a stable force. It has made a great effort virtually. Certainly everybody on this call and many, many other people in the UCORI networks helped to nurture and support and engage and learn from the teachers in West Virginia. They have formed the first statewide cross union caucus. It's an NEA and AFT caucus and are running now for leadership in the West Virginia NEA. Those elections will be in April and they're running a slate. The point I want to make is that all the social media made them feel like they were connected to one another. And when it came to actually building out the caucus, it turned out that was very, very ephemeral. That was not substantial. And they actually had to go back into their buildings and start talking to each other. And then they had to start pulling names off of the Facebook page, people they'd never met before and have phone conversations and set up meetings and start to have small discussions and build relationships. So I encourage us not to ever think that that is a substitute. They're building our face-to-face relationships. Barbara, go ahead.  Like we can't get anybody to update our webpage. We'd better remember to share Facebook events. And we're managing. We're managing without it. I'm not saying you should go that way. I'm just saying we're managing without it. Okay. We have reached and exceeded one hour. And I see that it appears as if Jillian did have to to leave us. We didn't get to say goodbye to her.  If anybody, I'm going to ask whether there's anybody listening from Rochester who wants to post a question, now would be the time to do it. Otherwise, I'm not going to be able to do it. I think I'm going to do a round of asking the remaining the panelists to use the remaining few minutes to answer the question. I'm going to pose to you what Roar is doing, what their situation is and see if you have some thoughts for them. They have a steering committee that they put together. Again, this is all really in the last two or three weeks. We're with about 25 people. They've got an extremely lively thread, which as I'm speaking is just exploding. People are chatting endlessly. They have a Facebook page, as you know, which has 1400 people on it. I think 1400 union members. They've held several meetings, open meetings. I did an organizing training there yesterday. They are moving a petition around the buildings by hands, which is a no cuts, no concessions petition. So reinstate all of the laid off and displaced educators and no concessions because of course, their current president has negotiated a whole succession of concessionary contracts in the last few decades and appears probably poised to be willing to do that again. And there is discussion now about, and telling people that they're not going to submit those petitions until they have 3,000 names out of 3,500 teacher workforce. And when they do, when submit those petitions, presumably to the school board. So on the way to that, generate conversations in the schools about what's our enforcement action. We're going to present these petitions and they do this or what. So they're going to try and generate discussions about escalating tactics that educators can undertake. And that's about where they are. They're also meeting with the president and I guess the executive committee at the end of our weeks, at the end of this week. So curious whether anyone has advice or thoughts or suggestions about how they can both address this issue of these massive layoffs and also in doing so, continue to build the caucus. Anybody want to take a stab at that, Christina? So I think one of my suggestions would be a little bit of an infrastructure thing. And I don't know to what extent the steering committee knows each other or has worked with each other before. But I think one of the most helpful things that we did when we were starting out and very small, small enough to do this was to have one-on-ones with the entire steering committee. Like I had individual conversations and like I think that those form the basis for the deep relationships you're going to need to count on the people who are really going to like be, like between the seven of us, I think four of us have had like hair fall out and I'm not being facetious. Like I had to take a break because my hair was falling out at one point and without the relationships in the core of the group, like it can be really, really tough to power through. So that's something I think to do between crises. But I would start as soon as you can. Thank you, Christina. Any other thoughts? Please, Arlene. Yeah, thank you for that, Christina. And I was wondering, if you didn't mention an action, I heard you talk about the petitions, but are you coming together as a whole bunch of people together in one spot? Because I think these organizing actions really invigorate and draw people, you feel the power of the collective, you feel that you're fighting this together. If there was something planned to, with the layoff notices, are you going to do some kind of physical demonstration? At one point in UTLA, we had chairs, empty chairs when they did layoffs of our counselors and our nurses. We laid out all these empty chairs and we put the categories of people to just make a big statement that we were opposed to the layoffs and we all came together around that. Yes, Arlene, they are planning on but don't have it decided yet, but they definitely are and that's a great example. Mary, go ahead. I think the other thing to keep in mind is that we can't win alone. So who are other people who have an interest in what's happening? Parents, for example, depending on, we don't always have to start big, right? Everybody has to start with the one or two relationships that they already have. Are there, I don't quite understand the union structure in terms of what's the next union that's nearby, right? Do you have multiple unions? Is this affecting the whole state or is this affecting a particular local? What's happening in Massachusetts is one local is finding they can't settle their contract by themselves so they're reaching out to the local next door and other people are showing up. So think about how do you build out your relationships with other people who care and start building out those relationships and bringing people into whatever actions like Arlene is suggesting. Mary, very good. I'm gonna go to the couple of questions that have showed up now from participants from Michelle. It's up here. She says, for our first meeting with union elected officials, what advice would you give us to get into that in order to best get our points across the need for bottom-up unionism, knowing that this will be a threat to those that benefit from the current model? Why do you need them to understand you? That's right. Thank you. We went into that meeting with our former president and talked about how we believed in organizing and talked about how we believed in social justice and they were like, yeah, us too. And we're like, hmm, I mean, you don't need to understand them or they don't need to understand you. They still don't understand us. Like when they go into rooms, that's their comment that they just still don't understand us. But you need to leave that room understanding them better. Are they hard workers? Are they smart? Are their hearts in the right places? Do they like, what are they reading? Christina, I think you said it beautifully for everybody in the call. Thank you so much. From Mike Johnson, how quickly or subtly should we start using terms like strike, which have very strong connotations? Someone wanna take that. Let me just say, by the way, I'm sure most of you know, but New York State has something called the Taylor Law, which makes strikes for teachers illegal and can carry hefty penalties. Strikes are illegal for everyone in the call except for the Massachusetts teachers. Not except for the Massachusetts teachers. That's what I just said. Anyway, oh, okay. Yeah, that's what I just said. It is legal for everybody except the Massachusetts teachers. Oh, I thought you had the other way around. Yeah, and as I think people in Rochester know, there was a strike in Dedham, in Dedham Mass, that was incredibly successful, a one day strike. It was the first strike in a number of years and it was illegal. Okay, anybody wanna take this question? How quickly or subtly should we start using terms like strike, share or please? Okay, hopefully this will work because I'm on the phone. It sounds good, sounds good. So, Philly could not strike for 20 years. We recently regained the right to strike because we have local control now. We were under state control. We've been under state control since 2001 and it ended in 2018. And I think what we learned in terms of talking about strikes, the way that we would talk about it is not that we're gonna go on strike tomorrow. We just talked about it in ways that got people familiar with the idea that you can withhold your labor as a way to get your demands met. We are not ready to go on strike tomorrow. And on this election campaign, a lot of people just see us as the strike caucus. They're like, we is the strike caucus. We're not voting for you. And we use that as a way to talk to people about like, if we said that we were all, if the PFT leadership said we're gonna go on strike tomorrow, do you actually think that people would do that? And every room, people are like, no, of course not, why? And so then we use that as a way to start talking to folks about like, well actually strikes are about power and in order to have a strike, you have to build power. And that takes an incredibly long time. And so I think it's perfectly fine to talk about strikes. I think we have to reduce the stigma around them. And we have to talk about them in a way that allows people to make them not scary and talk about examples of strikes in other places that are successful. But I think that the way you talk about it is not that we need to do one right now. It's about building enough power so that the district and the city and the state whoever you're up against is listening to you. And I think that that allows people to see a strike as a very deep, bold action that takes so much work to make happen as opposed to just saying, well, I'm gonna go on strike tomorrow. Because when people say that, it is really scary.  They mean all sorts of things that people have been hearing about from their families and from their communities. It's like anybody who says experienced anti-union, anything hears about how strikes are bad. And the way that we move through that and organize through that is about talking about it, but it's about talking about it in a way that makes it something that's accessible and makes it something that we only get by transformation and building. Cause I know that if the PFT called for a strike tomorrow, even through all the work that we has done, we're not going out anytime soon. So yeah, I think it's good to talk about it. I think it's just about how that matters. Great, thank you, Shera. Christine Frederick asks, your advice to build coalitions through relationships and positive communication is very clear. Did anyone attend a training that was really helpful or do you have a text you use as a guide in organizing your caucus? Any good guides out there? Well, how about labeling? I'm looking for my book. It's about a second. Organizer. There's a bunch of, not pamphlets, but newspapers that Labor Notes is putting out about strikes, about organizing.  But yeah, how to jumpstart your union has always been, that's another Labor Notes publication, always been key to basics and how you build. We also have used Jay McAleevy's book on no shortcuts. And that's another helpful thing, but the Labor Notes is very easy to read. It really breaks things down. And I just wanna add that all these lovely women here, we've been connected through the struggle over the past years and we connect whenever we can, whether it's at a conference or at a meeting, we're at different places across the nation, but we have this movement going on, not only the educational justice movement, but the relationship building that we're doing and learning from each other, sharing best practices, come to the Labor Notes conference. All of these are tools and you'll hear so much from other people that you can call for yourselves. Harleen, thank you. I pitched it before, but Labor Notes conference, you gotta be there April 17th as a full day UCOR conference coming the night of the 16th. It will change your life. It will jet power your caucus development. Amy Shram says, I wanna thank you for doing this for us this evening. I feel that I personally, this is something I'm wrapping my head around. I wanted to point out that the petition that we're trying to collect signatures with, it's in regard to a demand to reinstate the positions that were eliminated. I remember hearing from Jillian that we should start with something simple. Is demanding this too soon? Anyone wanna respond to that? Is it premature to make demands to reinstate the 100 or so teachers that were laid off? No. No. No. No. No. All right, next. That's what we're fighting for, how we get there, the ways we escalate to get there, how you're assessing your capacity to use your power. Those are things you need to be talking to each other about within the context of how far are you willing to go when, when will you strike? But no. Those are your demands. I also, oh, I'm sorry, Barbara. I wanted to, I think, like the reason that we picked the toxic schools issue for our petition is because it was hitting, like it was all over the newspaper. It was incredibly relevant to our entire union. Everybody in Philly was talking about it and you win on issues that matter to people right now. It's like this very hard balance between like things that we wanna organize around and things that our members wanna organize around and you have to like find, and it sounds like this is the thing that should be happening right now. And so you wanna do the thing that's hitting. And so I never, I never think it's too early to organize around something that really matters to people. And our unions need to be fighting, for I was talking about this with someone on the phone tonight. Our unions have to fight for people's jobs. We didn't have a caucus when PFT laid off 3,500 people in the summer of 2013 because of these draconian budget cuts. And if we had had a caucus, that would have been the thing. Like when you, when people are losing their jobs, that's what our unions have to be doing. And if your leadership's not doing it, then the rank and file's gotta do it. So I feel like it's like the perfect thing. And no demand is to, I'm learning over and over again, you do not get what you don't ask for and so if you do not demand this thing, like there's no, there's no way you can win on it. So yeah, do it. Like the right thing right now. Agree on that, Shira. There's a followup from Michelle, Michelle.  All right. So we'll, we'll just take it.  Keep that meeting really short. Yeah. Here's a question from Amy Shram. We have a corrupted school board. I don't think anybody else here knows anything about that. Do you have any recommendations for how to approach them for how the caucus can approach them? Christina, you want to take that? Who's got the most corrupt school board? No, I'm mostly thinking that it's very similar to the answer about the union leadership that I... Yeah. I mean, they can be, you can find unlikely people will come out and be your allies on specific fights. Our board is basically puppets of the CEO. Like they're not going to like do much. But at the end of the day, like you can, you can win, you can make a lot of wins even if you don't get something past the school board. Like if it builds the union, if it builds the caucus, if you start a fight stronger than, oh, sorry, if you end a fight starter than, if you end a fight stronger than you started it, then you're better off and better prepared for the next fight. And it's not going to be like school board victories like I don't trust, I don't think we're going to get much beyond our school board just because they don't even conceptualize themselves as an oversight body. They don't think it's their job to say no to the CEO. But every time we go up against them, we have a public opportunity to say who we are and what we believe. And that is something that I consider a win. Excellent. Barbara, I see your hands up, but we're getting almost two and a hour and a half. I don't know how much longer people have. So I thought maybe I'd quickly go through these next questions if I can. And then we can come back, is that all right? Kyle Scavira says, as an untenured but vocal teacher, what suggestions do you have to galvanize younger union members to move through the sphere of participating in war conversations? Any thoughts on how to embolden untenured educators? Anyone with wisdom for that? Go ahead, Barbara. I think it's really important to respect that they are afraid, like not to try to tell them not to be afraid, but to give them opportunities to participate where they're not quite right out front. Right away. And think about ways they can do that. And I don't think it's gonna take much. Once you bring people in and they're experiencing, acting together as part of a movement, they will then decide for themselves the decision to go back to Arlene's point about sort of like, where do you wanna be in this? Like you have to give people the choice point. But I think if you can invite them in without asking them to do more than they're ready for and be conscious that you're giving them a place to come and talk and learn, they themselves will then know when they're ready to step over the line. But respect their anxiety about that. You bet. From Tracy Farmer, feeling your strength and your model that we are powerful when we come together. Thank you from Mike Johnson. How frequently would you recommend that our caucus meet? What is a realistic expectation? Or should it happen organically? Oh my. I don't think that's a question. We all have time for here. I believe that people on this call would probably say, you have to feel your way. You have to decide like, how far do people have to travel? Do you meet by phone? Do you meet in person? Do you have subcommittees? I really take to heart, Christina's suggestion before, which is get to know each other in the core group very well. You have got to form a really solid, loving, respectful, deep bond with one another in order to go through this work because the work is hard and it's long. And that's what's gonna carry you through. And the other questions, I think they do get answered. There is no formula for this. The caucus has all developed very, very differently. And the last question that I'm seeing, oh, there's another one though. We have many stakeholders encouraging visits. Oh my God, to Albany to talk to legislators and elected officials. Do you think that energy is well spent? Ladies, thumbs up or thumbs down? Okay, next question from Christine Frederick-Kanalis. Do you think that due to national teacher shortage, the teacher's voices will have more power? And is that what the privateers are afraid of? Anyone have a response to that? Mary, go ahead. I think a circumstance alone is not enough to make people fear you, right? It's the actions that you take and the power that you develop by building your relationships that make people fear you. And they come to, when they come to understand your power, that's when they, and when they experience your power, that's when they become afraid of you. Well said, and it's a wonderful note for us to end on. It is, we are an hour and a half into the call. I wanna thank all the Rochester participants. This was recorded. I should be able to get a link for you tomorrow. And I hope you can share it with others. Most importantly, I hope that there were some things here, either at the level of the mind and the intellect or the heart and especially the hands, that is to say, to take action based on what you heard tonight. Shira, Christina, Arlene, Mary, Barbara, I can't thank you enough. This was super valuable. And as always, every time we get together and talk, the wisdom just pours out. So thank you very much. Thank you, Roar comrades. Looking forward to our next time. And thank you, Ellen. Solidarity. Good luck, everybody. You too. Bye-bye.


Hai, selamat pagi. Sebelum saya mula memperkenalkan diri saya atau diri kita, ini adalah ketiga kali kita masuk ke penjualan Asia BIR, tetapi ini adalah kali pertama kita menerima penjualan dan penjualan dan dapat berkongsi apa yang kita lakukan di latar belakang atau bagaimana kita datang dan sebagainya. Tetapi saya rasa jika ada penjualan yang perlu diperkenalkan, saya akan bercakap pada penjualan terakhir yang terlalu lama.  Jadi itu adalah apa yang kita akan berkongsi hari ini. Jadi saya akan menerima penjualan kepada penjualan lain saya. Ya, jadi...hello, saya Carl dan basically I'm the tech behind the company. Right now it's just the four of us, myself, my co-founder, Faris, he'll introduce himself. There's another two guys in the audience, Terence and Sars. So basically it's just us, ya. Hello guys, my name is Faris and I am the co-founder of Oba VR, together with Carl. So about a year back, I will never expect that I will be doing this because I was on the Blackberry for seven years and I could not meet anyone to convince me to not go off the QT keyboard until I met Carl. So I met him, he's always messing around, he's a distant relative of mine. He's always messing around in his bedroom, marking around with his computer. Also he tells us. And so one day I've always been interested in properties. I'm a keen investor in property, I've got about five properties in Singapore. And so when I met Carl for the first time round, he actually made sense to me. So he showed me on his computer that he was building up a mock-up of a room. So I said, could you change the walls, could you change the colour, could you change the sofa, could you change the look on the rooms and what not. So he came back to me, it was about a week after Raya and he called me up and said, yeah, yeah, I managed to do so whatever you've done. So I said, okay, cool, come let's meet. So I met him up, then I was really blown away because I thought I've seen it all over in the property side on how they tried to market their properties. And then I told Carl, I said, this is, we could be onto something here. Why don't we take this further? So Carl said, no, I can't, I've got to feed my family. I've got to pay my mortgage and what not. So I said, okay, never mind, we'll pump some money into this and we'll take it further. So long story short, thereafter we had to finance ourselves so what we did was to prove our concept that VR could be used for today's marketplace for property, we entered the renovation space. So you'd think it was most simple for us to show people how the renovation is going to look like. So we had 100% closing ratio and our turnover in the space of less than 5 months was about 1.3 million. So we closed all the cases that we went to. But we were taken away from what we actually wanted to do because we were left all the way up to 3M and I kid you not, me and Carl. We were scrubbing the floors, washing the toilets of the client's completed property. So I'll tell him, we're not supposed to do this. This is not what we set out to do. It was a really tough job, money was good but we were not making strikes in delivering what we actually wanted to do which was to do VR for real estate developers. So thereafter, I told him let's just cancel all of this. We restart again, we tell our client we're not doing this anymore and we pass it over to someone else. And then so me and Carl started again reset into VR for real estate technologies and for real estate developers and we managed to convince a couple of developers to take us on board. So we got a few projects. Along the way, we realized that we are not just providing VR for just real estate developers because we were approached by a very large hospital over in Singapore to do up VR for MRI patients for kids under 12. So we can have them, the problem is kids under 12 wriggle a lot and it's very difficult for them to sit still because of the sound, they're scared and whatnot so they're unsure what to do so they go under GA general anesthesia so parents are not so keen on that but we have got to do that prior for the surgery to take place so we're supposed to come up with a solution for that and thereafter, PSA approached us to set up VR for the containers and delivery of the cranes that they're buying overseas. So we've got two international products that we're going to launch to market go to plant around 8-11 months but for now we're focused on the real estate space over in Singapore. These are some of the quality of our VR renderings that we have done fast far for WUBA VR. This is a property that we delivered over in Kuala Lumpur in Banza South for one real estate developer. He's switched over in July 26. This is a BTO built to order HDB space over in Singapore. It's a real house actually so this is a real house this is a real house over in Shalfa. It was during our Renault days there was our last contract that we closed so to answer your question who are we I'm not sure what we do actually so we've gone through really gone through the rollercoaster space of finding a technological company and it's not something that I can share in a space of just 20 minutes. But I think basically what Faris is trying to say because he's a business guy so he would have never imagined himself in a space like this and I mean everyday we're learning new things as far as business is concerned and what the market wants like for example the projects that you mentioned like other use cases apart from property because I think once people have seen what we can provide and the quality that we give they want to use it in many other use cases as well so whether it's medical space or like industrial space things like that people need things like visualisation like in the property space a lot of developers spend a lot of money on visualisation where they pay companies to do renderings and they're paying 5 figure sums for simple animations so how we provide and maybe we're going to go through as well how VR and how we apply VR actually saves businesses money at the same time providing a wider range of experience rather than just a canned animation that you see on an advertisement somewhere so maybe you want to go through the we provide VR for yet to build spaces so in Singapore when we buy properties we buy off the plans so what we see we go into the showroom we look at how the showroom is supposed to look like we look at the mock up of that physical display as well as the mock up of the rooms and then we buy it off that so basically we went to Abu Dhabi what they do they buy properties once the property is built up then they buy so it's a different thing altogether over in Singapore but actually to be honest yet to be built spaces for our kind of product that we provide we will be better off selling hubar over in Malaysia Indonesia Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and not in Singapore because real estate developers are afraid to take on to take this up because of the legalized legal problem because of the legal issues that renderings have for them now than previously so Faiz CT have got a lot of problems with clients who buy over the properties and then said that oh if your bay windows actually higher over in the showroom so we have such issues as well but anyway that's issue for us to face content with this is why we think hubar VR would be good for real estate developers if you increase confidence for off the plan you can actually know realistically speaking after you put on the headset how large 550 studio apartment actually is on paper on why you should buy simply because it's cheap so that's what it does it provides unparallel spatial awareness of the space and size that you are buying we can actually change the color of the tiling we've tied up with tile manufacturers over in Singapore for you to immediately change tiles over so you can have a look of how your tiles will look like in different laminate color in different vinyl color you can do that we have allowed we are trying to go to market via smartphones so the difference between us and other companies is that we are able to provide that VR expense just using your smartphones instead of just having you desk down to a noculus and you need like $3,000 or $4,000 PC it's available via android and iOS so that's greater marketing reach for the marketing departments for all the various developers it's a very interesting experience for potential buyers we are trying to sell it to clients over in Malaysia the marketing departments like it a lot because for sales or by doing at shopping centers we have not reached program for them to bring clients in and convert it from a very cold client to a potential lead you can change fixes and fittings in real time for furnishings companies we have signed up with Nuke & Penny for that so i just want to add as well i think from a technological standpoint as well most of the other VR companies out there especially the ones in mobile space most companies that handle real estate they use 360 images panoramas or you have like metapod for example where you need a physical space to capture so if you start a physical space they will render out the 360 panoramas and basically you're jumping from one panorama to the next so if you want the real time 3D a lot of times you have to go for the higher end VR systems you need the horsepower to render out large and complex scenes so what we have been able to do technologically is to optimize the scenes to a point where i'll go through a little bit about how we've improved the fidelity of our work as we've gone along so i think that having met a lot of the people in the real estate space developers, architects people in interior design one of the main things that i think a lot of companies can't get with VR right now at the moment is like proper high end renderings especially on mobile and in real time so if you want to have a real time experience you either spend a lot of money developing stand alone scene for an ocular system and a market rate for one panel render you're talking about $5,000-$8,000 or single render so what we do we build the whole space based off existing 3D files we use a lot of optimizations we have our own shaders and we have a lot of our own processes in place to make sure that you run smoothly so all our scenes running at basically 60 frames per second and ios or smartphone and i think one of the things that we want to do as well as target every sector every step along the way so you have your google cardboard experience which is what we offer and then you go up to the gear VR as well and then also right now we are looking into introducing it to WebGL so more open platforms so anyone if any device can actually so all the content will be just published onto all platforms and i think that's something that a lot of companies have difficulty with getting that parity between the platforms it's quite challenging in that sense so with a lot of the techniques that we put into place and what i'm going to go through in a bit is the biggest feedback is that we need to improve our fidelity and i think from a business standpoint it needs to look as good as the renders like those proper higher architectural renders that's how good it's got to look like at the end of the day they don't care about the technology behind it and i mean you're going to meetings and i think initially when we were presenting ourselves presenting our technology and what not we were very defensive in saying that oh no the technology is only this much so much we can do but we realised that as far as business goes as far as what needs to get to the consumer it doesn't really matter they don't care how you do it as long as you get the results out there so for myself it's always a challenge to try to achieve what people have asked us to achieve and we've gotten all kinds of funny requests which maybe i can mention bits and pieces later on but i think improving the fidelity and getting up to like your high end rendering that's quite a big focus so what we've been able to do is actually that's where we started on the left side that was an early render and all these scenes are real time and you can walk around them on your phone and then we have come to a point where we are on the right side and i don't think we have a photo of the actual property but we do actually show that to the client and we got the project and then after tech in asia so me and Carl we were raising capital for the company with all the investors in tech in asia and then there's always this one girl who was always the time keeper so at the end of the two days she came up to us and she said i've seen a lot of VR companies and we actually want to hire you for projects but we're building real estate development projects wanted to be a tech in asia time keeper whereas she's actually a daughter of a very wealthy real estate developer so she can see on hand all the companies for her father to invest in so she told us to improve on our fidelities and so it was from here this was what secured the project and we've improved it let's go back to our rendering this is the actual rendering and then go to the photo so what we want to do is we want to present as close to what you will get as possible as photo realistic as possible and that's been very tough especially with mobile and i'm sure you guys are familiar with the technologies basically you've got unity and you've got unreal engine unity is a bit cheaper to use unreal it's a bit more technical expensive to develop for so what we did is we met somewhere in the middle so we use a lot of our own techniques our own rendering techniques i hope close to unreal quality on unity so i think that one of the things that we've gotten very recently is when people see the projects they don't immediately think it's unity they actually have to ask us what are you actually using to render it and i think that to me an honour because a lot of unity projects end up looking like unity projects so when you go beyond that i think it's quite a feat and so this is they are just going through again and a lot of the time we get beat down when people say our quality is not good enough and it keeps you up for nights where you just need to nail it it keeps me up for nights i haven't slept because i'm solving now other issues but that's just a life of a developer and this is so this is an example of one of the properties that we are doing that i think Faris mention in KL and that's the render that was provided to us by the developer and this is what we came back with like a couple of weeks later and then i was a bit taken aback when they said but it's still not up to snuff but i suppose you always and the developers in the house you always kind of get tunnel and think that okay it's good enough and then when people say that you need to improve it you gotta take it in your stride and just move on from there so this is where we are at now if there is time later if you are interested you can come around you can do a demo and we've got it on Gear VR but basically this is exactly what you see in unity it's actually a render from unity itself and it's all interactable it's not a 360 panorama and stuff like that you can walk around, you can interact with the space and then we could also allow changing of furniture materials and all that but again that's always at the end what the client requires from us so just to give okay so this is an interesting project to bring you through because this is like really very early on and this is like what your typical unity render would look like you just use the basic lights and all that so it spent a lot of time and on the right i think we improved it a little bit but still you know we are using what's going to unity so next and so now what i shaped switch the focus to instead of trying to nail the unity lighting go into vray and extract the lighting info from vray and apply it into unity so that's what we've been able to do so you can see the vray render on the left that's straight out of 3d max and then on the right that's real time in unity which you can walk around, you can interact with the scene and you know i was mentioning it cuts a lot of the cost and time for companies to do rendering as well basically the rendering time it takes us to come to this is the rendering time of a single frame of a whole animation so if you have like a 5 minute animation even a 1 minute animation talking about hundreds thousands of frames so we are cutting down that time giving affordable cost for full VR experiences like this we had offers from 2 rendering companies to buy us over after we managed to crack the vray or rather Carl managed to crack the vray code from this to this but we are not selling out yet because we feel that we can get a higher valuation post all of this it's a different way of thinking altogether from the current rendering guys to how a gamer will actually develop such a technology the guy was really sketching his head now when we put him into the process so how a rendering company and how a rendering artist actually does his renderings it's actually totally different from how a developer and how a game engineer develop the technology altogether so i think one of the interesting things we found especially in the real estate space is that a lot of companies are sticking to very traditional methods you get your high resolution vray renders and then there's a lot of post work and all that and it's a large amount of money that's paid for stuff like that and from what i know in the industry i mean people are looking into VR but it's not their brain but they don't see it as something that they need to to get into yet so we are taking the opportunity to push the technology as far as we can especially on mobile because we believe there's still the most accessible form of VR everyone's still going to have a mobile phone and it's only going to get better in the next few generations of mobile VR it's probably going to come leap and bounce especially with Google putting a lot of time and investment into the day dream so yeah very interesting things in the mobile VR space that we we hope to develop i mean i'm always interested to take on challenges and also there's so many other interesting technologies and what are things i think for the developers here if you look at Unity for example it's so flexible because with the assets that you have with whatever you have there you can publish into any platform i think that's very very important especially when the marketplace is concerned you need to put your stuff out there you have to make sure it works on every device on the market so that's what we are striving for yeah so i maybe just give you a bit of feedback or story behind this so one of our recent meetings with some of our clients and these were a bunch of middle-aged chaps in the 50s they hadn't really tried out VR before and they were kind of skeptical and then one of the guys put it on and then i said yeah tap the button and you can walk and then he started walking and then he jumped out of his chair and then he said oh my god i'm falling out the window because i didn't put any collision so so that was exactly like something like what you see here so i mean you see reactions like that from regular people regular users i mean this is an exciting roller coaster scene it's just like an apartment building but to get that kind of feedback they really can sense i feel the space right i think that it's a good feeling to see the fact people in that way we entered a meeting we've got like 5 rails, skeptical businessman top and higher management and PSA so we're supposed to sell them VR and these guys are really really we've got something up to air so they're not going to listen to us at all so is there anyone from PSA so so the guy that jumped out he's the one that's slicing us right now to push this technology in PSA so we hope he's going to have a very happy and profitable ending so that's just basically our story for now and what we wanted to share a bit of the business, a bit of the tech challenges and i think one of the biggest things is to see how many people are actually interested in taking the technology further companies are interested in products they are interested in developers previously i was never a kind of person who set up on stage or go to events and things like that, i don't like social dude, i'm in my bedroom messing with my stuff but putting myself out there people are looking for for jobs, for work especially in this space so i think one of the lessons i've taken just put yourself out there you never know what will come it really is quite crazy so thanks for your time thank you for your attention once again thanks a lot to Varia for coming down