Hi, I'm Zor. Welcome to Indizor education. I would like to continue talking about electronic implementation of operations of mathematical logic and again, that's very important because it's used in all different computers, telephones, televisions, etc. Now last lecture was basically kind of a general lecture. I was talking about logical operations. Remember a few things from mathematical logic about true and false and operations of disjunction, conjunction, etc. Now this lecture will be about implementation only and implementation of only one operation, logical operation. It's a logical or or disjunction. And then the next lectures will be each one very short by the way about implementation of other logical operations. Now the implementation I'm I will be talking about is very sketchy. It's very I would say primitive. I mean, that's the beginning and again, that's my purpose to introduce you into the beginning of how all these thoughts about implementation of logical operations in electronics actually came about. I don't quite know who exactly was the first author of that particular model and there are other models. There are other implementations of the same ideas. But no matter what it is, it's definitely much more complex right now. But the idea is exactly the same and that's what I'm going to talk about today. This lecture is part of the course called Physics for Teens. It's implemented. It's presented on Unisor.com website. The website contains lectures, notes for each lecture, basically like a textbook broken into individual lectures and individual lessons if you wish. The website has a prerequisite course called Math for Teens and it's mandatory for learning physics to know mathematics quite well, including calculus, vector algebra, logic, like in this particular case. What else? Well, the site is totally free. There are no advertisement, no financial strings. You don't even have to look in if you don't want to. There are exams on the website and I do suggest you to take wherever they are available. So back to implementation of logical or disjunction. That's how it's called disjunction. First of all, again, let me remind you very briefly that the agreement among people who basically make all these devices which are using the mathematical logic is that the positive potential at one particular point indicates true or one and zero potential relative to the ground or relative to other, maybe, parts of the electronic schema is indicating false or zero. And right now we are talking about disjunction. So disjunction and that's basically I will use one and zero instead of true and false. It's just easier for me. So we are talking about zero vertical bar or arithmetic sign plus is used for disjunction. Should result in this, this should result in this, this should result in this and this should result in this. So these are rules of mathematical logic. So if, for instance, a true statement and a true statement, and now we're talking about statement like this or this, obviously if both of them are true, then both of this connected with an or sign will be true as well. Now if, for instance, one and zero, so one event is true and another event is false. And we are talking that's happened this or that. Well, yes, if one of them is true, then that's the result is obviously true. So in all cases where at least one of those components, this is the binary logical operation, when one of the arguments is true, then the result will be true. And only if both are false didn't happen event A and didn't happen event B. Now the question is whether A or B happened? Answer is no because neither of those happened. So this is the logic, this is the rules of disjunction. They came from logical operations from mathematics and they are used in decision making. Whenever we want to know actually what to do to go to left, to go to right, we have to make some kind of a decision and decision is based on logic. Now the schema which I suggested doesn't mean this is the only one, but this is one of the first ones which probably came to somebody's mind is which implements this electronically is the following. So you have two input contacts, call them A and B, and these contacts will have certain potential either positive which means the contact implements the idea of true or one and or zero neutral which means no excess or no deficiency of electrons at this contact and that represents false logical false or or zero. Now from these contacts we go to wires and we connect them to anodes of diodes. So these are diodes. Now you remember the diode is this is anode and this is cathode and this is heated. So we will put something like this some kind of a heat element. So cathode is heated and if there is there are some electrons here if there is no deficiency of electrons there is an electronic cloud because it's heated so electrons are just going out from the surface of the of the wire and if anode is positively charged these electrons will be attracted and there is a one directional movement of electrons from the hot cathode to cold positively charged anode and that's only in this direction because if anode is negative for instance and cathode is positive there is no electronic there is no electron cloud there is no thermionic emission as as it's called. So thermionic emission is only on the cathode which means electrons can go from cathode to atom and only in case anode is positive and cathode is negative or neutral not that way around. So the electric current goes only this way from hot cathode if it's at least neutral or even negatively charged too positively charged anode anode must be positively charged if it's if it's neutral there is no attraction and that's why electrons will just concentrate around the cathode even if there is a thermionic emission that will not go any further so this is the diode and this end is anode and this end is cathode now from this I will have a C contact these are my input input voltages if you wish and this is my output now what I have to do is I have to put some kind of a load resistance resistor and ground ground is neutral always it's a source of infinite number of electrons whenever we want it so let's just analyze what happens in each of these cases so this is my A and this is my B so ground is always neutral right so now in this case A and B both are neutral but the cathode is heated always that's true so there is some kind of electronic electrons cloud thermionic emission around the cathode however there is no difference in potential there is no positively charged anode here anode is zero which means neutral so electrons will not go there so they will just stay so whatever amount of electrons exist everywhere and initially we are assuming that everywhere there is a neutral nothing is basically charged in any way so this particular point and obviously output is also neutral well neutral means zero potential is neutral relatively to the ground it's connected to the ground but there is no current the electrons are not moving so there is this resistor which doesn't really play any kind of a resistance role there is no current electrons are not moving anywhere so zero and zero will give you zero so this actually is fine so this is C next case so this is one which means there is a positive charge and this is zero which means it's neutral now cathode is heated and there is an electrons cloud on the cathode there is a thermionic emission now this thing is positive right we're talking about this case it's true which means it's positive so electrons will move here from right to left in this particular case now what happens well there is a deficiency of electrons here developed right since electrons heat heated electrons from the electrons cloud goes this way and basically disappear because we are maintaining positive charge here right which means there is some some kind of a consumption of electrons on this side so this is always positively charged okay constant voltage let's say plus five plus five volt over them so electrons will go this way which means there will be deficiency of electrons in this wiring right well deficiency of electrons here neutral here so there is a difference in potential so electrons will go from ground to this sink and they will go and again they will be heated here well heat it here as well but from here it doesn't go anywhere because b is zero in this particular case it's neutral but in this case electrons will go so electrons will always flow this way which means that there is a current from here to here and considering this is a resistor there will be a difference in potential otherwise there is no there is no way so electrons from here go here and their deficiency of electrons will be still maintained all the time because no matter how many new electrons are coming from the ground to compensate this deficiency will immediately go out so obviously this point and this point and this and this so all this wiring will have deficiency of electrons because it will always go this way which means deficiency of electrons it's positively charged positively charged which means it's true or one in our logical lingo right great so this one is okay as well now this one is exactly similar there is no difference between a positively and b neutral or a neutral and b positively so we are not even talking about this it's very easy exactly the same logic electrons will go this way which means there is still deficiency of electrons here there is no movement here because even if there is a deficiency here there is no thermionic cloud on the anode so electrons will know but will not go this way so electrons will go from here from the ground to here and that means that that would be a deficiency of electrons here which means c will be positive and finally if both of them are positive so both anodes both anodes will be consuming electrons so the flow of electrons will be even greater and it exactly is it's exactly the same logic the deficiency of electrons here because there is a current here from neutral and there is a current so this should be less of a potential than zero which means it will be a deficiency of electrons because all of them will go this way deficiency of electrons is positive so that's why we have one here so this particular logic on a very simple level implements the logical operation of disjunction of logical or operation well basically that's it now as far as practical aspects now i'm explaining how anode is working on an old electronic vacuum tube technology doesn't matter right now it's a different technology it's semiconductors it's integrated scheme etc but the principle is exactly the same electrons are going from one end to another and not the other way around so this is basically the main principle of the diode as it it's implemented anywhere whether it's a vacuum tube or semiconductor or whatever so it's just simpler for me to explain it on the level of vacuum tubes because that's how it's all started and again my my idea is that to explain as everything started and the first coming to somebody's mind is better for general understanding because the details can be changed later on but the principle of implementation is more or less the same now what's the i would say deficiency of this particular implementation well think about this way if we are talking about positive as a constant voltage let's say plus five volt for instance then if this is positive five volts and this is negative there will be one kind of a current and we can work probably adjust this resistor so this will be also five volts but if both of them are then the current will be more intense and there is some mechanism which is not really here which is supposed to be adjust the voltage so it will be also five volts regardless if one or both are at five volts plus five volts right so there are certain deficiencies of of the of the implementation of this idea but idea is the same we obviously can think about what to do if this voltage is increasing and we can just reduce it somehow but these are details which i'm not going to go into this is for professionals whenever they are going into this for you i would like to really explain just the idea behind the logical implementation in electronics basically that's it you probably should be i do suggest you to read the notes for this lecture it's more or less exactly the same thing but again it's a description of how exactly electrons are flowing from one place to another in whatever case that's it thank you very much and good luck


My name is Dina Kafefi. I am an artist by training and social entrepreneur by passion. My social enterprise is named Sinauea, which means the Sinai Way. Sinauea is all about loving, cherishing, learning from and doing in terms of the Bedouin community, the culture, the nature there. So Sinauea basically has three main areas of work. One is ethnobotanical research where we collect information about the different plants, medicinal and cultivated plants that exist in St. Catherine. Our second area of work is about garden rehabilitation. We collect volunteers that want to be part of this re-greening of the mountains. And we work with the Bedouin families that own the gardens to rehabilitate them, plant more local plant species, and bring them back to life so they can become a productive garden for the Bedouin and for the landscape as well. And our third area of work involves our brand, which is called Bidu. It's about being and doing for the Bedouin. Bidu offers a product line of plant medicines and preserves and jams and foods that are all produced from the land.  And when you're part of a small community, you really, most relationships are based on one-to-one contact. So over time, I've been building relationships with different people, letting them know what it is that we're doing, building a friendship more than anything, understanding what it is that they make or produce. And through that, we're able to agree on different products, develop different products together. And from there, my job is to relay what it is that we agreed together, take it back to Cairo, package it with my team over there and distribute it to various sellers. And we're entering more organic shops, places that have a reach to the local community in Cairo that is more interested in healthy foods that understand what organic food is and are more of a conscious customer. So basically, I'm connected to people in St. Catherine, and while I'm there, I'm constantly in conversation with different people, what it is that they complain about, what struggles they face, what obstacles there are, what it is that they think is really important to conserve and so on. And this is actually an honour for me to be able to create a reach for people in a marginalised place, in a sense, and to be a trusted personality where people would actually hear what I have to say regarding the community with which I work. Basically, everything that we're building here is based on good intention, and I truly believe outside of business and so on that if you do good, good returns. I feel I have something to offer to the local community just as well as they do for me. We learn from each other and I can offer a structural way to work, to try to find a way to keep this project to continue, working with what you have, regenerating the spaces where food is produced, and producing unlimited supply to a small market until the areas which you are cultivating and growing grow enough to give you a larger produce that you can then expand in other markets. And this is really the awareness building that we're trying to do as we work with different people. It's a slow process and it requires a lot of patience as does anything in terms of cultivation and permaculture and so on, but I really believe that that's the way to self-sustenance.


Dr. David J. Shulkin was confirmed as the 9th Secretary of Veteran Affairs on February 13, 2017, after having served 18 months as VA's Undersecretary for Health, leading the nation's largest integrated healthcare system with over 1,700 sites of care serving 9 million veterans. Dr. Shulkin's priorities as Undersecretary were improving access, engaging employees, and building a high-performance healthcare network. He identifies and implements best practices and restores public trust in VA's healthcare. During his tenure, staffing grew, clinical workload increased, wait times for urgent care improved, and veterans' trust in VA rose. Before joining VA, Dr. Shulkin served in numerous chief executive roles at Beth Israel Medical Center, Morristown Medical Center, and Atlantic Health System Accountable Care Organization. He has also served in numerous academic, entrepreneurial, executive roles and he maintains an active practice of internal medicine in the VA system. A board-certified internist, Dr. Shulkin received his medical degree from the University of Medical College, Pennsylvania. He completed his internship at Yale University School of Medicine, a residency and fellowship in general medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Presbyterian Medical Center, and he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Shulkin has been named among the 50 most influential physician executives in the country, and among the 100 most influential people in American healthcare by Modern Healthcare Magazine. Ladies and gentlemen, the Secretary of Veteran Affairs, David J. Shulkin. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. It's great to see so many of you here, and thank you all for getting up early on a Sunday morning and being here, but I know this is your passion and this is your commitment, so it doesn't surprise me that all of you are here bright and early. Dave, I just wanted to thank you. You're really an inspiration not only to probably so many of us here, but certainly to me. Dave is, I don't need to tell you about him, but not only obviously stepped up to serve the country, but has never stopped serving and committed to serving all of you in the roles that he plays, so thank you very much. I want to thank Teresa. Where's Teresa? Right. Francis Costa, Mark Burgess, Pat Kemper, Barry Jezanowski, and of course Gary Augustine.  You know, when you're secretary, you can have favorites among VSOs, of course, so you have to love them all, but you guys are the first that I'm talking to as secretary, just so. But I have to tell you, not only are you represented by your leadership so well, but this is such an extraordinary organization that I really have tremendous admiration for, you know. And I will say this, I am absolutely convinced that you have the very, very best communications team and your videos are done in a way that every time I see one of your videos, I go back to my team at VA and I say, why can't you be like DAV?  They're done in a way that makes us extraordinarily proud, and it's a way that we partner together. And I just have to mention a couple other things. Your support and your leadership in the Winter Sports Clinic, how many of you have ever had a chance to go out to the Winter Sports Clinic? For me, it was life-changing when my family and I went out there last year. It's just an incredible event. And obviously the work that all of you do in your transportation services, so many ways that DAV is such an extraordinary partner and helps veterans. I'm very proud of it. So what I wanted to do this morning is just talk a little bit about the plans for the VA and my perspective on VA. I'm going to try to get through this in the next 25 minutes or so. And as I said, this is the first time that I've given a public address as Secretary. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about my hopes and plans for modernizing the VA healthcare system. As Secretary, it's really my greatest privilege to be able to help fulfill the mission that President Lincoln set out for us. And this is really the way that I wake up every day and make sure that we're going to make progress in the VA by committing to this type of mission. And one of the things that you get a lot and that you're hearing a lot in the news is, well, why do we need the VA healthcare system? And why can't we figure out ways that the private sector can just take over this role for us? And so it's important, and I think all of you know this, that the VA system is a very, very different system than what you would see in the private sector. And for me, as I begin to travel and I have been out and visiting VA systems and you see things like this, the final salute, where you can see how we honor and respect those who have served the country, you know that you wouldn't see things like this out in the private sector. So this is a veteran who had passed away and instead of just what private hospitals would do is sort of put a white sheet over them and sort of wheel them, you know, down the elevator to the morgue, you can see the type of respect that's given to people throughout the VA system in what's called the final salute. The VA system is clearly a different system. You can see when you go out into the private sector just one in five providers have any real type of military cultural competency. So if you're being treated in a behavioral health clinic in the private sector and you say, well, you know, I was injured with an IED blast and your psychologist says, well, what's an IED? You can see that's an example where there aren't high levels of cultural military competency. Only 13 percent of private sector mental health providers actually have proficiency in deployment issues and military issues. And as I came just about 19 months ago from the private sector, one of the things I began to realize is how so many of the things offered in the VA healthcare system are not readily available in the private sector. And so it became clear to me that why the VA is such a unique resource and why it's so important for us to be able to maintain a strong VA. So when you look at things like peer support, crisis lines, transportation, caregivers, our homelessness services and the list go on, these are things that the VA does every day but aren't readily available in the private sector. I had already mentioned our adaptive sports programs and the winter sports clinic, the DAV is so strong and leading. But we have seven other adaptive sports programs. This summer I was out in San Diego. Actually, I got to serve for the first time. It's not very easy. But the veterans who were out there showing me how to do it made it look easy. And these are just fantastic ways of getting people to feel good about their lives and getting that ability to challenge themselves. And this really is part of our definition of well-being. It's not just medications and surgical procedures. It's treating the whole spirit of a veteran. And adaptive sports is clearly something that VA excels in. Another area that VA excels in is technology. And nobody else in the country, in the entire country is using technology the way that the VA healthcare system is. We by far are using telehealth services in a way that no other system even begins to approach. Nine million episodes, 717,000 veterans having the chance to benefit from this technology. Even in mental health, 336,000 telemental health visits a year. And in our ICUs, if you're in a small city ICU where you don't have 24-hour intensivists, we can provide that for you. So there's a doctor who is critically, is trained in critical care medicine who is watching you and monitoring you from places around the country using telehealth. One of the things that I learned when I came to VA is how to use telehealth. I'd never done this before. But for my office in Washington, I actually take care of patients in Grants Pass Aragon, where they don't have many primary care doctors. That's the type of doctor I am. So I've begun to start using this technology and seeing how powerful it really is. Of course, you know that VA has four healthcare missions. The stool over there are the traditional three legs, all serving veterans. Our clinical care, our education, our research. But we also have a fourth mission of emergency preparedness. And I don't think many people in the country understand that with what's happened in the private sector, with hospitals gobbling up one another and decreasing bed size, if there is a national emergency, either a type that's a military emergency or a medical emergency, there's not much capacity left in our hospital systems to take care of the American public. Well, the VA healthcare system is that safety net. It is that backbone. We respond to national emergencies and we're prepared for it. We train for it every day. And that's a really important mission that you never think about until you need it. But if that system wasn't there, I know the country wouldn't be as safe. Now let's talk a little bit about modernization because that's really what I'm focused on as secretary to make sure that we have a modern VA healthcare system and that we invest in the right way. And when you start to think about modernization, it's often important to go back in history and understand the contributions that the VA healthcare system has had for America. So when you start in the very beginning, I actually go back to the civil war. And during the civil war is, you know, that was one of the bloodiest battles that ever occurred in America because the not only were so many people fighting in that war, but the types of injuries were so intense because they were bayonets and people were shot at very close ranges. And the doctors in the civil war were learning almost on a daily basis how to start treating these injuries and deal with the types of trauma that they were seeing. So they actually had a book where they were writing down how to treat these injuries. And it was on the battlefield and the book was growing so much as they were adding different ways of treatment that they would begin to start stuffing the book and the binding would break. And in order to keep the binding together, they would wrap it with red tape just to keep it together. So the VA was the one who invented red tape in government. But actually going back to more recent history, the VA in trying to modernize has had lots and lots of studies and assessments on what we need to do to improve. And you can see just starting back in the 2000s, we've had the VHA vision. We've had transformation documents. We've had more recently, of course, our strategic plans, the Commission on Care, the all the GAO reports. So we've had over, I can count, 140 different assessments on how we should improve and modernize the VA. We do not need any more assessments, any more commissions, or any more study groups. I think we've seen every recommendation written multiple ways. What we now need to do is just start executing. We need to actually take the recommendations that we know that we need to do and focus on actually getting them done. And that's what I'm going to be focusing on. So in terms of the structure of the VA, we have to make this system actually with a lot less red tape. We have to actually streamline the organization to make it work better for all of you. And our vision is to become a very highly integrated network of what works in the VA and what works in the community to make it work for veterans. And so we're going to be focusing on redesigning and the implementation is the big area. Now, the 10 priorities that I plan to focus on as the Secretary are, first of all, to work with our Congress on accountability legislation. What this means is that the employees in the VA, the 365,000 employees, the vast, vast majority of our employees, as you know, as you come into contact with, are really unbelievably dedicated, hardworking, patriotic employees. Many of them veterans themselves, as you know, and they do a great job every day. But there are, when you have a workforce that big, employees that deviate from the ethics and values that we all hold dear. And those employees should not be working in the VA. And we're going to make sure that the Secretary has the authority to make sure that those employees, when they deviate from those values, are leaving the VA system. The second priority I'm going to focus on is making sure that the resources that were made available from the choice program, the $10 billion that Congress authorized, are there so that we can continue to use them because we really need all the resources that we've been getting from Congress. And that program expires August 7th. So if we don't act, if Congress doesn't act, we will see essentially a significant amount of resources that are dedicated to caring for veterans be removed. And we can't let that happen. So we're working with Congress to make sure that we extend that deadline past August. And we hope in the next few weeks to be able to have successful legislation. After that, our focus is going to be on making sure that we redesign the choice program after it's reauthorized. We redesign the program. I'm calling it choice 2.0 until we find a better name for it. To make it work better for veterans. We know that this program, even though it was well-intentioned, was extremely complex and bureaucratic. And it was too hard to get the care that you all deserve to get when you need to go into the community. So we want to simplify it. We want to make it easier to use to work better for you. And we're going to work hard to do that. The next focus is going to be on improving our infrastructure. Our buildings are too old. Many of the facilities, frankly, should have been remodeled or even torn down and rebuilt. And we need to make sure that we have the very, very best types of facilities and equipment and people to care for our country's veterans. And so we're going to focus on reinvigorating our efforts to rebuild our infrastructure. The next priority I'm going to focus on is what I call enhancing our foundational services. These are services that are available for veterans that aren't available outside of the VA. Specialized programs that we have in areas like spinal cord injury, in areas like traumatic brain injury, in PTSD, and other types of conditions that are really important for veterans that don't exist in ways that are easily accessible to veterans outside of the VA. We're going to make sure that we are focusing on having those to be world-class. I believe it is important that VA and DOD and federal facilities work together in ways that are closer together. We have several great examples of this where VA and DOD are sharing facilities, sharing resources. I want to continue to expand those types of opportunities. Our electronic medical record and interoperability with the Department of Defense, we've made a lot of progress, but there's still much more work that we can do. And we are now focused on modernizing our information technology systems. And so you're going to see some new and bold proposals to be able to make sure that VA continues to have high-quality modern IT systems. Suicide prevention. This is an area we're going to talk about just in a second, but we have not been able to make the type of progress that we need to make on preventing suicides. And so this is our top clinical priority. You're going to see some bold programs. Appeals modernization. We know the appeals process is broken. We can only fix it through legislation. We're going to make sure that we work hard to get that done this year. And then in VBA, our benefits, we are not satisfied with our performance. Even though we've made terrific progress on bringing down our backlog, we think we can do a lot better. And Tom Murphy, who's here today, is going to lead us through those efforts to make progress in veterans' claims. The focus on the modernization then is really infrastructure, making sure that we work well with the private sector in an integrated format, improving quality, and investing in those services that continue to make VA a unique national resource. Now, one of the things that people who've worked with me in the past when I've worked in the private sector, I've been known to be impatient at the lack of progress or the speed at which we make progress. So I used to always say to my teams when I worked in the private sector, what's it going to take to get this done in active Congress? And now, of course, the irony is everything that I do takes an active Congress. So we're going to work hard as partners with Congress to get all these changes done. I mentioned infrastructure. I don't think people realize the differences that you see in the VA system. You can see the pictures of the 1895 house that still is an active VA building, as well as our 1932 outpost that's in Minneapolis. And then down in the bottom right, you can see what every VA should be looking like now. This is Palo Alto with the rooms that they have single rooms. And that's really where we need every VA to get to. So we're going to be working to do that. When you take a look at the DOD and VA, you can see we have maps where we know where our facilities are close together. We could be working closer together. I mentioned this integration of VA hospitals and community care. We've been working hard to get that done. 31 percent of care we deliver now is out in the community. We're looking to make that so it's actually a coordinated integrated system. This is not privatization. This is actually how do we get the veteran, the very best care in the VA and the very best care in the private sector and working to build that into an integrated system of care. So how am I going to track whether we're making progress? Well, these four areas, quality access, progress in the areas that we think are priorities and what veterans actually experience. On the quality side, we actually measure quality in a pretty sophisticated way. And I'm pleased to say that 82 percent of VA's last year made significant improvements in quality of care. That's a pretty good and significant statistic. It's actually confirmed by outside groups. This isn't just VA saying that we're making this progress. This is the RAND Corporation, which is a well respected national independent organization who released reports last year saying that the quality of care in VA is actually as good or better than what you find in the private sector setting. VA is continuing to lead in issues that are important not only to veterans but to all Americans in terms of the opioid crisis while the rest of America is seeing a large increase in opioid use. VA, because we started on this over five years ago, saw a 22 percent reduction in the use of opioids. In hepatitis C, I'm pleased to say we now have the resources to make sure that any veteran who wants to be treated for hepatitis C will and can be treated. So we hope to eliminate this essentially from all veterans that seek care in the VA within the next year, year and a half. We've made terrific progress on this. This is a condition that now, because of the drugs available, we can cure at a 95 percent cure rate. So overall, tracking our statistics and quality, when you take a look at it, we've seen a 20 percent reduction this past year in mortality rates in our hospitals. Our productivity is up 12 percent. So anybody who says VA workers aren't working hard, this is 12 percent increase in productivity is probably the best that I've seen in my years in the private sector. And in areas of service like VBA or benefits, where we used to have 59 percent of our calls into our call centers blocked today, people are going to be answering your phone calls less than one percent block rate. So significant improvements. Where we're heading to is to make it easier to compare VA quality to the private sector rather than having government systems that are hard to understand. We're going to start making this a lot easier for all of you to be able to say, this is the care you get in VA. This is the care I can get in the community. So you can make the decisions about what's best for you and have that easily understood. Our focus on access, when I arrived in VA, we had 57,000 veterans waiting more than 30 days for urgent consults, totally unacceptable. Today that number would be close to zero. We have really focused, if you have an urgent medical issue, whether it's a psychological issue or a physical issue, you shouldn't be waiting for care. And the way that we're doing this now is same day services. Every one of your VA medical centers has same day access to services for mental health and primary care.  Our progress in access you can see is pretty considerable. We've had a significant improvement in the amount of time that people are waiting for care. 96% of appointments are now within 30 days, 86% are within seven days. I don't think the private sector is doing that. 23% of our veterans are seen on the same day. And you can see our wait times in various areas are really getting much better. But most important is what veterans are saying about access. And you can see that about 90% of veterans say that they're satisfied with the ability to get the care that they want. Now we want that to be 100%, so we still have work to do. In homelessness, we've seen a 46% decline in veterans homelessness since we began our efforts under Secretary Shinseki several years ago. Last year we saw our biggest decline in veterans homelessness, a 17% reduction in homelessness throughout the country. And so we're going to continue to stick at that. I mentioned that suicide prevention is our top clinical priority right now. It's an area that we are not satisfied. Too many people are taking their lives every day. We are going to be refocusing and redoubling our efforts in this area and you're going to see some announcements coming out in the next couple weeks where once again, I think VA will be taking a leadership role in this across the country. I do want to just highlight this. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. But I have a story and I don't know where to start. I'm good. But I feel alone in a crowd. I'm good. But nobody understands. I'm good. But the past keeps coming back. But I can't get out of bed. But I can't sleep. I'm good. But I feel overwhelmed. I'm good. But I don't feel safe. But I don't even know who I am anymore. But I still have nightmares. But I don't need any help. I'm good. But I don't feel anything anymore. I'm good. But I can't live like this anymore. I'm really not so good. But are you ready to listen? In suicide, we need everyone's help. We need to work with the community. We need to get messages out to get people help. Our Veterans Crisis Line, we've added hundreds of new responders. We essentially do not have a rollover problem anymore. We are answering the phones. We're there. Same day access and mental health. We're hiring new mental health professionals, tele-mental health. But we need help in the community. And so we're going to be reaching out to all of you as partners to step up and to try to see what else we can do. VA continues to lead in innovation. Our research is cutting edge. We were named the 11th most innovative organization in the world as measured by the number of patents and research publications that are put out by an organization. Examples of our innovation are this mobile hearing aid app. So you may not have to go into your VA anymore to be able to get your hearing aid adjusted, but you can do it right at home from your phone if you want. Or of course, you could choose to still come into the VA. So we continue to work on these types of innovations to make sure that we're making contributions. Our research efforts in our Million Veterans Program now almost 550,000 veterans with their genomic material stored and combined with the electronic medical record is the largest data bank of its type in the country to be able to do new scientific discovery advances. And you'll begin to see the benefits of this over the next couple years as we come out with new types of research using genomics. We're working across the country to get our best practices from one VA spread to other VA's. That's an important part of our mission. So when you see something in one VA that's working, we hope to make sure that that's now seen in every VA across the country. And finally, our biggest measure, since we don't have a stock price, since we don't run like a for-profit corporation, our currency is your trust. And we know that that trust was eroded in the wait time crisis in April 2014.  We understand when you lose people's trust, it's hard to build it back up, but we're working hard to do that. We think that the actions that we're taking should help us in regaining trust. So we started about a year and a half ago at 47 percent of veterans felt that they could trust the VA. Now that number is actually 61 percent, not 60 percent. So we're seeing it move in the right direction. We are clearly working to get that up to be much higher levels, and we track that on a regular basis. We think VA can do that. There are examples, like in our drug dispensing, that VA rates number one from JD powers above commercial entities in terms of our service. Our national cemeteries actually ranks number one even when in customer satisfaction compared to private companies. So we know we can do it in parts of VA. We need to do it across VA. And to do that, we're partnering with corporations across the country to be able to say help us, serve veterans better, teach us ways, work with us to be able to get to that level of trust and service. And finally, you're part of that. You know, your leadership at DAV is so important to giving us the advice and feedback and to say, here's where we think you need to go to regain that trust. And so we rely on your leaders. You can see Gary's up there. That was actually, I think, my first day of work as Under Secretary. But I was told right from the beginning, you can't do this job without your VSO partners. And I certainly have taken that advice. And I believe that as strongly today as I did when I started. And so I just wanted to thank everybody and thank you for giving me this time this morning. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. On behalf of DAV, I would like to take this opportunity to present you with a special award. Before you were appointed secretary, you served for nearly two years as Under Secretary for Health, coming in at a very difficult and challenging time. As Under Secretary, you introduced a new leadership team, improved veterans health access to health, including same day access, and developed a plan to move VA forward into the 21st century. Throughout your tenure, you are closely with the DAV and have always put the needs of veterans first. So when it came time to us decide who should receive the award for Outstanding Federal Executive of the Year, it was an easy call. I'm pleased to present you with DAV's 2017 Outstanding Federal Executive of the Year Award in recognition of your achievements as Under Secretary for Health in support of injured and ill veterans, their families, and survivors. Congratulations.


We will see the former under 17 champion, Trinidad and Tobago's Kiran, Shrishkandaraja, Jamaican grandparent Sri Lankan mother, Sri Lankan father rather, and Trinidadian mother. Yeah, Cricklare Thomas of the US Virgin Islands, Shrishkandaraja of Trinidad and Tobago, Roberts of Guyana, Blackit of Grenada, Brandon Hines of Bombardos and Ispahan Radoni of French Guyana. Here he is, Shrishkandaraja, 1500 champion in Kingston at the under 17 level. Still only 18, based in the United Kingdom, runs with Hunhill Harriers. The Bombardian, Brandon Hines in the line-up as well, Javon Roberts of Guyana. Already three times a Carifter medalist won the under 17 title last year. And goes as fast as 153, should be a good test for Shrishkandaraja. Shrishkandaraja in three, Roberts in four, it's going to be another fabulous final. Can't wait to see that matchup by Grave and Shrishkandaraja and Roberts and all the others. The Roberts double medalist last year winning gold and the silver in the under 17 division stepping up now. So will be one of the younger athletes in this field. Yeah, twice a 1500 silver medalist at the under 17 level and he won the 800 title. The Guyanese last year. Looks like he wants to go to bed though. Away they go. It was written on the outside, it looked as if you wanted to go to bed as they are often running. For the third and final semifinal of the under 20 boys, 800 meters. Shrishkandaraja of Trinidad and Tobago, the under 17 1500 champion. 800 silver medalist from Kingston in 2022. He's in third position at this stage with the Borpaedian making the pace hot, Brandon Hines. He knows that's his best shot of getting into the final to make this race really quick. And give himself a chance of advancing as a non-automatic qualifier possibly if he can't hold on to an automatic qualifying spot. The Grenadian stepping forward to the delight of the crowd, that's Blackit. He's a 157 campaigner. Hines of Barbados in front, Shrishkandaraja alert to the danger and steps forward in second position. Roberts of Guyana is in third. The Borpaedian, Brandon Hines still holds the advantage 300 meters to go. Shrishkandaraja in second. Roberts of Guyana in third. The Grenadian, Blackit not out of it and he is rallying down the back stretch. They have 200 meters to go. It's still Hines of Barbados, only too short to be in the final. Blackit gets clipped from behind by Shrishkandaraja who steps up the tempo for Trinidad and Tobago. Shrishkandaraja sails into the lead. Roberts comes through for Guyana. Hines still there for Barbados. Only too short to be in the final. Shrishkandaraja goes clear. Hines follows him. The Trinidadian and the Barbadian will qualify automatically. Roberts gets third. I don't know if that will be quick enough for Roberts. We watched the time closely. He needs faster than 155.69. We'll find out shortly if he got it. But Shrishkandaraja clearly in fabulous form and ready to win his first career to 800 title, 1547-0. Just biding his time, the English schools champion and knowing exactly where he was, very well aware of his position, very well aware of what the man in front of him, Hines was doing. You saw Hines flagging down in that last 200 meters and here comes Shrishkandaraja just making that push. Stepping up, doing his course. James McDonnell very, very proud coming around into the home street and taking this final semi-final, this third and final semi-final. Very, very easily it looks like. Yes, Fabardus Rahn as well from Brandon Hines of Barbados to get through automatically in a tough semi-final. Stepping up big, that's what championship running is all about. Getting here in your best shape. And Brandon Hines has done that 155-05, 155-64 for Roberts. That gets him into the final along with D'Angelo Brown of Grenada. That means Aaron Morris of Barbados has been knocked out with his 155-69. Roberts does enough if only just. Well, that was a real treat in the 800 qualifying races. Semi-final round started with the girls on the 17s. Finished with the boys on the...


Hi, my name is Deborah Espinosa, and I am both an artist and an attorney. My preferred means of advocacy is through visual storytelling, multimedia storytelling. So today I'm going to share with you a bit about my work and about my project called Living with Conviction, Sentence to Debt for Life in Washington State. So before I do that, I'm going to also share with you a few examples of going back in time in which photography in particular has been used as examples for a variety of legal advocacy efforts. Okay, so I'm going to share my screen. I'm going to try to, and at one point I'm going to flip over to a really quick three-minute video, so hopefully that will be seamless. Okay, so hold that thought. I'm going to share my screen, and then I will get started. Thank you. Thank you for your patience. Okay, sharing screen. Here we go, share, and we'll start the, there we go. Okay, so like I said, my project is called Living with Conviction, Sentence to Debt for Life in Washington State. And I'm going to start out with this quote, which in my mind really sums up the overall purpose of the project really, and that is a quote from Mahatma Gandhi. And the quote is, An unjust law is itself a species of violence. A rest for its breach is more so. So you're going to hear about when I first heard about this particular issue and that I really needed to do something about it. So just a quick overview, we're going to focus on a few examples of the historical use of visual media for legal advocacy. And then I'm going to talk about the legal issue that I learned about and was frankly appalled by. And then I had to do some thing about it. And then I'll share with you what has done about it, and then we'll talk about what's next. Okay, okay. And like I said, in the middle of this, I'm going to try to flip over to a three minute video that's online. We'll see how that goes. Okay, so just bear with me. Okay, so first, my guess is there's people out there watching this who have recognized this image, or at least recognize what the image is of. And this is Yosemite Valley. This image was taken in 1864 by a gentleman named Carlton Watkins. And this image of Yosemite Valley and Half Dome made its way because Carlton Watkins really felt like this was a beautiful place that needed to preserve, be preserved. His images made their way via a California senator to president at the time, Abraham Lincoln. And as you can imagine, if you think about it, 1864, that's during the Civil War. And despite that, President Lincoln, when these images arrived on his desk in Washington, D.C., he was so moved by the imagery. He was the first president to set aside any land actually in the world for preservation and enjoyment by future populations. So that was the beginning. He didn't, in fact, establish the National Park at that point, but that was the precursor. It was basically a set aside. And then later on, the National Park was established, I think, by Roosevelt. But that was a really central example of the use of media impacting somebody who actually cannot be present to enjoy it or to do anything about it. Okay, another example. And this is, now we're going over to New York City. This is an image by Jacob Rees. And Jacob Rees was an immigrant to the United States to New York from Europe. And he basically was living in tenements. And he ended up, because he was so appalled by these conditions, tenement housing, which actually housed over two-thirds of New York City population, he started documenting it. And he actually created a book called How the Other Half Lives. And in this book, he documented the living conditions. And the living conditions were such that these enormous tenement housing was going up. And the only place where they had any windows was on the front side of the street side, right? But because the buildings were built less than an inch apart on the sides and in the back, there was no other window access except for the front to the street. They also, in addition to not having any windows in the vast majority of the apartments or the homes there inside, they also had a zero ventilation. And so the child infant mortality at the time was horrific because, you know, one germ in particular would just run rampant throughout these communities, these families who are living under extremely terrible circumstances. So Jacob Reese's work, his photography, got the attention of the mayor of New York City at the time, who was Theodore Roosevelt. And Theodore Roosevelt was appalled by the conditions that he had no idea because he's from the elite upper class. And so upon becoming governor of Washington, excuse me, governor of New York State, Theodore Roosevelt then was started and pushed for the Tenement Housing Act, which basically prohibited these types of housing, this inferior public housing for poor people, and basically required that every single new building going up had sunlight as well as air ventilation so that these conditions would go away. So that was an example really about a housing justice issue. OK, and next is where we are going to try to flip over to a three minute video. And so bear with me, I am going to unshare and then I'm going to share again, OK, to go to the video. And like I said, it's about three minutes, so it's not too bad. So this video we are going to share is about the photographer Jacob Reese, OK, and I am hoping that the volume you'll be able to hear the video. In the early 1900s, the general population in those years had very little understanding of what was meant by child labor and child exploitation. The kinds of jobs you would find children working in range from the mines, the factories, the cotton mills to working out on the streets selling newspapers, injuries, even deaths were very common among children. The parents would often say that they needed the income that their children brought in, that that was what allowed them to continue to survive. A number of parents were advocates for child labor and their children thought that that was the way life was. One of the first things the National Child Labor Committee did was to hire a photographer. They hired Lewis Hine, who was then their photographer for the next two decades. They sent him around the country to identify, find and photograph children in exploitative situations. He promoted himself as a Bible salesman. He said he was bringing his camera along so he could photograph kids reading Bibles. A boy would say he was 13 when in fact he was 11 or a girl would say she was 12 when in fact she might be nine. The photographs of a young girl, 10 or 11 years old, her name was Sadie Piper at a cotton mill in Lancaster, South Carolina. She's standing in front of a large loom on a long hallway, staring at and working hard on the job of selecting the quality products. She's probably worked most of the night. It's nearing the end of her shift. She stands there iconic as a representative of hundreds of other girls who are being treated just like her and who have no choice. That photograph raised the consciousness immediately. You see that photograph and you cannot look away from it. It doesn't say America. Lewis Hine's stark photographs influenced legislation over a period of roughly 35 years. This body of work on child labor represented how he thought and how he felt the children must not be exploited. He represents the most important photographer in terms of social advocacy and social change in the first half of the 20th century. OK, whoops. Oh, I got to stop that. Hold on. Sorry about that. OK, so now we're going to go back to my slide. And that is Lewis Hine. And so here we go from current slide. And oh, sorry. I'm not sharing my screen yet. I have to remember to share my screen, right? Share screen and now go back to my PowerPoint. Thank you for bearing with me. I got this down. And now I'm going to I want to go into slideshow and I want to. I don't want to hear current slide. There we go. OK, so that's Lewis Hine and I find these examples really inspiring, really compelling and that a long time ago, I to embrace the power of photography in order to change minds and for social change. And so as I said, I'm both an artist and a photographer. I'm an artist and an attorney. And so for a good portion of my career, I was working for an international NGO or international nonprofit organization as both staff attorney and staff photographer. And we were we advocated for poor people in the global south to have rights to land because in the global south, if you don't have a right to land, you are not going to survive and your children aren't going to survive. So this is an example of a photograph that my organization, former organization called Landesa, used hugely.  And Rwanda was the first country to undertake complete titling of all the land in the country. Most of the land in Africa is not titled at all. It's just undocumented land, but there are very there's informal claims to it. So Rwanda was the first country that basically titled all the land and here Bertha is standing there and she's showing the title to her land. Clearly she's really proud and what this image and and so I was interviewing a group of women about their experiences in this titling process. And I said, does anybody have their title with them? Or did anybody receive a title? And then does anybody have a copy of their title with them? And Bertha raised her hand and she was like, you know, I carried around with me in the pocket of my skirt. And that is an indication of how important to her it is. So after the meeting, I said, hey, let's go outside. Can I talk to you more? Can I photograph you? And in the end, this image has been used for fundraising. It has been used for advocacy. It has been used the New York Times.  And basically, through photography, you can show our common humanity, you know, someone on the other side of the planet who supposedly is very different from us, is in fact, completely the same and wants to just take care of the children, right, lead a good life. So anyway, so that's Bertha. Then move over to Brazil. I was also doing some work. This I did leave. So I started freelancing and consulting. And I did some work in Brazil. And Brazil has a constitutional right to housing. Despite that, in anticipation of the World Cup coming to Brazil, they were basically evicting, forcibly evicting people from their homes. These homes are primarily called flums or favelas. And so this is Jean-Paulo who shared with me, shared with our team that he had been forcibly evicted by gunpoint with no notice to vacate his home.  And you can see just above his left shoulder there that there's police officers holding a man on his knees at gunpoint. So this was a very forcible eviction contrary to the constitutional right. So these images were used and Jean-Paulo's story was used to kind of advocate for, wait, this isn't right. He's homeless. He's standing there with just some clothes. That was the extent to which he was able to grab him and his family's belongings and get out of the way before he and his family were harmed. Now ironically, Jean-Paulo had come to Fortaleza City on the northern coast of Brazil. He had come to Fortaleza because for construction job. So it's those construction jobs are coming up because of the tourism industry because the World Cup was coming. So it's kind of a vicious circle. So anyway, that's another example of, you bring to life an issue, you bring to life an injustice through photography, but also personalizing a legal issue, personalizing an injustice. Okay, so this slide is to remind me now to switch over. So as I mentioned, I am an attorney. I am licensed in the state of Washington. I do maintain that license just in case, right? Just in case it's a global pandemic and I can't travel or something. So anyway, so as an attorney, I'm required to maintain my license by taking continuing legal education courses or CLEs. So in August of 2014, I took a CLE by the ACLU. And in 2014, the ACLU was quite not very, I mean, not a lot going on. But I took a one hour CLE and it was on debtors prisons. And I thought, debtors prisons, there's no debtors prisons in this country. There's debtors prisons in Africa. There's debtors prisons in Latin American countries, but not where I have worked, but I was wrong.  So debtors prisons, this one hour CLE was all about what are called legal financial obligations and that's what my project is about. So I'm gonna give you really basic information about it so you know what we're talking about, okay? Okay, it's just gonna take a second. So legal financial obligations are the costs, fines, fees and victim restitution, which I will explain, but a variety of different types of debt that are imposed on a criminal defendant at the time of criminal sentencing. So for example, you might get a five year prison sentence. You also might get $5,000 in quote, legal financial obligations or LFOs, okay? Those are imposed at the time of sentencing. Nobody really pays attention to them, but some of them are mandatory. The average amount in Washington state, people receive is about $2,500 in LFOs, but significantly those LFOs accrue a 12% interest up until 2018, which we'll talk about. 12% interest, like who gets that, right? The state of Washington has been getting that for decades. 12% annual interest. Significantly, this interest would start accruing from the date that you're convicted. So those five years that you might be sitting in prison, you're also that $5,000 you've also been assessed is also accruing interest while you're sitting in prison and can't do much about it. Okay, and so, yep, accrues while we're in prison. So I wanna give you a couple examples. I hope you can see this couple examples. They take a DNA collect, whoops, that shouldn't happen. They take a DNA collection fee of $100. There's a mandatory victim penalty assessment and that is for $500. And that's regardless, regardless, $500 per felony. Then there's also in some counties, you are assessed $100 per day for every day that they have sentenced you to prison. So every day of incarceration. There's also user fees and sometimes many of these are mandatory. And these are user fees like court costs, public defender use of a criminal lab to run some chemical test. You might be charged if you have a six-person jury. You might be charged if you have a 12-person jury. You might be charged for a witness fee. Department of Corrections supervision, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, and then also there's crime-specific fees. And what the acronym there is the VUXA, the V-U-C-S-A, it's the violation of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act. So when you get a drug offense, you're likely to get a additional fee related to whatever that is. So like there's a whole, there's a very expensive meth cleanup fee, stuff like that. And then there's victim restitution. Victim restitution isn't always applied, but victim restitution is intended to make the victim whole if that's possible.  So those are just some examples. There's over like 150 of them. So don't get bogged down in the details, just know these LFOs come in a variety of different types and different reasons, et cetera, okay? So then for LFOs, once you get, okay, so while you're in prison and you know that interest is occurring, da-da-da-da, if you're making like 25 cents an hour doing something, the Department of Corrections is going to deduct a percentage from those prison wages. They also will deduct 80, 78% of any amount that your family member gives you if you're on the inside and they wanna give you $100 for your account so you can go to the commissary or you can go to get something inside, they will deduct that as well. Okay, so that's why you're in prison. Now, once you get out, you have 30 days to make the first monthly payments, okay? The monthly payments can vary hugely, but hopefully it's not more than $25 because usually when you, as you know, you likely know when you get out of prison, it's hard to find a job, it's hard to find housing, it's hard to get an ID, I mean, it's just like goes on and on, okay? So importantly, these LFOs or legal financial obligations, they cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, like credit card debt, right? They cannot defer them while you're in college so a lot of people after going to prison will go to college and they get no relief then.  They, I know people who they've taken as much as $500 per paycheck from them if they're making that much money. And lastly and importantly, if and when you miss monthly payments, which is quite common for this population with so many barriers to successful reentry, you can get arrested for failure to make those payments and that's because you're either held in contempt of court for not complying with the court order for you to pay or you are found in violation of your sentence. Either way they can issue an arrest warrant and arrest you for failure to pay your LFOs, okay? So this was my reaction, right? I'm like, wait a second, what? You've got to be kidding me. I was like, this was an hour and I'm like, what is wrong with this world? So in my mind, I've seen a lot of injustice in other parts of the world. I had no idea that this was happening here. Most people don't and that's one of the main reasons for the project is to educate the public and policymakers about the fact that these even exist and then the impacts of that legal debt on communities who are trying to rebuild their lives or individuals who are trying to rebuild their lives. So this LFO policy, which nobody knows about is both inequitable and unconscionable. And I use that, that is a really strong word and you don't really use that very often but that's in fact what this is.  And that's in part because 80 to 90% of criminal defendants are indigent. And what that means is their income is less than 125% of the federal poverty level. So these are low, low income people that are primarily criminal defendants. So as someone said, the state of Washington and trying to collect on these LFOs, they are spending dimes in order to collect pennies.  And I've known people and I've interviewed people who have criminal records and yet have no LFOs and that's because they hired a private attorney and were able to afford to pay that off before they went into prison and before that 12% started to crew. So because of that, this policy that is both inequitable and unconscionable, disproportionately impacts the poor and people of color. Those are the people who can't afford pay. Those are the people who are not gonna be able to get out from their criminal convictions because of it. Those are the people who are going to be under constant financial supervision from the criminal justice system. And with a 12% interest rate, they will not be able to pay it off, right? So studies also show for Washington state, the highest proportion of LFOs are imposed on Latino males. I have my own guesses as to why that's the case. We do know that rural counties tend to be county courts, tend to be more aggressive in imposing these LFOs and a great deal, a vast majority of Latinos live in rural areas being in the agricultural sector. So anyway, so yeah, that's LFOs. So here I am, I'm like, oh my gosh, I've been doing all this work on the other side of the world, and here I felt somewhat complicit in this. I don't practice law in the United States or in Washington state, but as a member of the state bar, I felt like I needed to do something about it. For some reason, it just flipped a switch in me. And so my skillset, I'm a lawyer, but I also, I photograph and interview people and generate stories about people's lives and also the injustices that are impacting individuals because the law is supposed to be there to serve us, it's not supposed to be there to hold us down and hold us back, but in this case it is. And I say us on purpose. So what I did is it took me three years, two years to gain access to this community and because there's a lot of trust that's needed in order to have very open conversations with people, for people who may feel a great deal of shame about their criminal history. And so this led to my project, Living with Conviction, Sentence to Debt for Life in Washington State. And what I do is I seek volunteers, volunteers who are willing to sit down with me and we do a pretty long interview and then multiple photo shoots depending on the person and depending on a variety of things. And so if you wanna take a look at the Living with Conviction website under Stories, each person you can click on and like this is Sabrina, Kashina and Michael, you can click on those and it'll bring up their story. It'll bring up personal narratives. Some of them have audio, some of them don't. But this way my goal is to have 100 people on the website and my goal is to really show the volume of the problem but also the various factors that went into the person entering the criminal justice system and now they can't get out. So that's the websites. I love for you to take a look at it. But what was happening is I wanted to create a short film because I've done some filmmaking while I was in my other work. But at this point, they're about to launch the next legislative session in Washington State and they're going to advocate for legal reform of their LFOs, of our LFO laws again. So all of a sudden I had to stop wanting to create a film and flip over and basically get the website going. And so I wanna give you an example. This is Michael. Michael when I met him was a 60-something year old Vietnam veteran who was living on his, he was living on his VA pension of $1,070. He has three criminal convictions and because of that, he makes a total of $75 payments to the county courts so that he won't get arrested. His $1,070 VA pension is his only source of income and every month he'll go and get money orders in order to make those payments. He says, when I took my guilty plea, I didn't think that I was going to be doing a life sentence. The interest on these fines makes it where a person with a limited income will never be able to get out from the wreckage of the past. And Michael is Native American as indicated by his tattoo. And you know, so anyway, I'll move on about Michael. And this is Breon. Breon is also in the short multimedia piece that I've prepared for you. Breon shares that these LFOs stop people from succeeding. Your whole objective is to keep people, the community safe. But you're trying to keep the community safe from people that you're forcing to be failures. And Breon is a father of two teenage girls. And at the time that I met him, he was commuting three hours to go to college and basically working two jobs, a father, et cetera, et cetera. And he was barely able to make his LFO payments. So because this legislative session was opening up, there was, I was part of a coalition that was advocating for LFO reform. So we generated a magazine of all these stories and photographs. We created postcards and a whole lot of different nonprofit organizations throughout the state were purchasing these postcards to share with their state legislators to advocate for the LFO reform. And in the fourth year I was involved in year three and four. In the fourth year, there in fact was LFO reform. And that LFO reform occurred in June, 2018. And what it did, it didn't go far enough, but it did do something. It basically removes the 12% interest for new convictions as of June 7th, 2018, but only the ones not related to restitution. Remember we talked about this victim restitution and that's where there's a victim who needs to be reimbursed, made whole again. So these are all those other, there's no interest right now on 12%, no 12% interest on these other, all these other categories, which is significant. It's absolutely significant for newly convicted individuals as of June 7th. It also significantly stopped accrual of 12% interest on existing LFOs. Again, excluding non-restitution interest or non-restitution. So that's really exciting, but it wasn't, I mean, it stopped the accrual, but that interest is still sitting there, right? So it's just not growing anymore except for restitution. Also removed a mandatory $100 DNA fee if your DNA is already in the system because you've reoffended, that's kind of minor, but a hundred bucks is on the box. And then it also granted a right to a waiver of non-restitution interest for people with LFOs, but only if you requested from the court, if you file a motion, which pretty much means nobody's gonna do it almost, okay? Let's just be clear about that. So it did make some progress, but not go far enough. So what it didn't do, this is the, it's a really long name, is what does the E2HSB, that's the Engrossed Second House Senate Bill 1783. It's not automatic waiver or reduction of LFOs. It has to be upon a motion. And it really illustrates the, if you guys have talked about rule of law issues or think about rule of law issues, it's really, here's a great law in the books, but it's not being implemented. A, because nobody knows about it. B, because nobody has any money to do it. And C, because you don't know about it, it's not gonna happen, right? So living with conviction also has a whole legal empowerment initiative now related to that. But I wanted to share this. This was an unsolicited email from a person that I've never met in person. And it basically is from a Washington state public defender who also was a lobbyist. And he said, congratulations on the asset success of living with conviction. It's clear that your project was instrumental in the Washington state legislature finally making real change to legal financial obligations. I can't thank you enough for telling me stories. So that was a really unexpected, very kind and very generous statement. And it's really about the people who are brave enough to share their stories. So to some extent, in some way, these stories have made an impact and we're continuing, I'm continuing to collect and share living with conviction stories. But I also wanna move into, there is somewhat like a theory of change around using storytelling, whether that's visual storytelling, literature, a variety of different artistic works. If you have a compelling story, you can use that story to raise awareness, right? You start at the top, you can then raise awareness. And when you start raising awareness, among my community, my family, my friends, they're like, you're kidding, what can I do to help, right? That engagement then generates a stronger movement and then which eventually can lead to social change. So I did not make this up. This is from the Fledgling Fund, which is a foundation that supports mission-driven visual storytelling. And it's from there, it's called Assessing Creative Media's Social Impact. So I just kind of wanted to give you kind of some theoretical underpinning around that. So I'm gonna stop there because we're gonna get together on June 2nd at 11 a.m. And it basically, this is a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. And it, he says, an individual has not started living until he or she can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And I wanna stop there because I want to encourage everybody who sees this, everybody who is even slightly interested in criminal justice in who's watching this is that there is a lot of, there's a lot of issues out there that needs our attention.  So I'm going to invite you to think about what issues really annoy you, really upset you and go do something about it.  So that's why living with conviction, the name of the project, yes, it is about living with a criminal conviction, a criminal record, but it's also about living in a way that honors your beliefs, living with conviction. What is it the courage of your convictions? So thank you for that. I do hope you'll watch the five minute multimedia piece created around LFOs and the project. And I look forward to seeing you along with a panel of storytellers on Tuesday, June 2nd. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye-bye. I'm going to unshare now. Unshare. Thank you. Bye-bye.


Let's study the use of yours and mine. Maria and James are putting their toys in their cabinet. Is this ball yours, James? Yes, it is mine. Are these dolls yours, Maria? Oh yes, they are mine. Notice that we use mine when we talk about things which belong to us. We use yours when we talk about things which belong to someone to whom we are talking. Let's have some more examples. This doll is mine. This toy car is mine. This doll is yours. This toy car is yours. Now let's have a short drill. Are we going to use yours or mine to complete the sentence? This pillow is mine, right? This mango is yours, correct? This ball is mine, right? These slippers are yours. This blouse is yours, right? This cane is mine, correct? What is the girl in each picture saying? This cap is mine or this bat is yours? This bat is yours, right? These cups are mine. These spoons are mine. Right, these cups are mine. Do not forget, we use mine when we talk about things which belong to us. We use yours when we talk about things which belong to someone to whom we are talking.