Good morning. How are you? Early in the morning for a superstar, all-star, really important panel in conversation. Thank you all for being here. My name's Felicia Wong. I am president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute. And I would not do my job if I didn't tell you 30 seconds about what Roosevelt does before we get into this. So the Roosevelt Institute works we are a New York-based think tank. And we work to make sure that our nation's most powerful people, senators, and presidential candidates understand what is at stake in the fight for our economy and are poised, ready to change the rules that have made our economy so deeply racialized. And that is a conversation we're going to have today. I am unbelievably pleased to be here with three amazing leaders in the fight for racial justice and the fight against the kind of racialized wealth we live with today. On my right is Alicia Garza. Alicia needs no introduction, but I'm going to do it anyway. She is one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter. And she is the principal of Black Futures Lab. Black Futures Lab has just conducted the Black Census, which is the largest survey of Black people in America for almost 200 years. So Alicia. Next, we have Rashad Robinson. Rashad is the president of Color of Change. And Color of Change with 1.7 million members is the largest online racial justice organization in America. And finally, to my far right, although not really politically, I don't think so, but nonetheless, to my far right, we have Rodney Foxworth. Rodney is CEO of Common Future, which is formerly known as Bali, but just rebranded. Got a Common Futures t-shirt on. It's all about brand, not really all about brand, but it's a lot about brand. So Rodney is the CEO of Common Future. And Common Future is based here in Oakland. And they work, they have, over the last five years, mobilized more than $150 million of capital into equitable community development and equitable wealth building. So as you can see, I was not lying when I said this as an all-star group. And we are also here to take on a very big topic, which is racialized wealth in America. So let me set up the conversation and then turn to my fellow panelists. So the title of today's conversation is Closing the Racial Wealth Gap, Essential Conversations for Impact Investors. And so let's start by saying just a little bit about racial wealth. Racial wealth, racialized wealth, is one of the most pernicious and terrible manifestations of today's inequality. The numbers are stark. White family median income is about 150, sorry, median wealth, not median income, median wealth, how much you hold, is about $150,000. For Black and Latinx families, that number is about $5,000. Those numbers have gotten worse, not better, worse over the last decade. And so the statistics are bad. But I would say that statistics are just one way to tell a story because really the reason we care about wealth is that wealth is crystallized history. Wealth is what has been passed down to us from our elders. And it is what we can pass on to our children. So wealth isn't just money. Wealth is a lot of things, including power relations that have been frozen in time. We're going to get into that today, too. And finally, we're also talking about racialized wealth at a moment in American history that is absolutely unprecedented in our lifetime, certainly in my political lifetime. I have never seen so much chaos, absolute chaos around American democracy, around the American economy, how to run it, how to structure it, who belongs in it. And finally, I've never seen so much conversation, so much agitation, so much realization about the central role of race and power in our ability to get where we want to be going, where we ought to be going in America. So I was talking to many of us, our friendly with friends, with colleagues of Dorian Warren, another leader in the movement for racial justice. I was talking to Dorian yesterday. And he said something that really stuck with me. He's a scholar in addition to a movement leader. And he said that one of his most powerful lessons from all of American history is that if you have no racial justice, you have no democracy. No racial justice, no democracy. I think Dorian's right. And I would add to that that if you have no equality of wealth, you also have no democracy. So let's just think about what that means in the context of where we sit today, even as Mark Zuckerberg testifies in front of Congress when we heard William Taylor yesterday, all of that is really important. But the bigger context here is that if we do not have the kind of justice that we're gonna be talking about today, we will not. And perhaps you would argue that in some ways we do not have a democracy. So with that, let's get into it. I'm gonna run the conversation in three parts. First part is gonna be visionary. We're gonna talk a little bit about transformation. I have a question for all of my fellow panelists. We were talking at breakfast about kind of the world we wanna get to, what true transformation really means. And Alicia, I'll kick it to you first. You said it's really important for all of us to understand the difference between empowerment and power. So we'll all take that question when I turn it to you first. Sure. How y'all doing? Good morning. Yes, thanks for being up early with us. So I talk a lot about the difference between empowerment and power because I think that this question is actually fundamental to the future that we're trying to build together. For me, empowerment is what happens when people feel really good about themselves. It's self-esteem. It's how I woke up this morning and I was like, yeah, I'm feeling excellent, right? But unfortunately, me feeling excellent doesn't change the conditions that I experience when I walk outside my front door, right? Power, on the other hand, is really about the ability to make decisions over your life and the lives of other people. Power is fundamentally about the ability to make the rules and change the rules. Power is about the ability to shape the story of who we are and who we can be together. Make America Great Again is a powerful story that is advanced by powerful people to really talk about who deserves and who doesn't in this country, right? So power is the ability to shape those kinds of stories and to have people believe them and act upon them. But power, as my friend and colleague, Rashad Robinson, says a lot, and I take this all over the place, but I always credit you. Power is really about whether or not people care about disappointing you. And I know you're gonna talk a little bit more about how this manifests, but I can say that for black communities in this country, while often we are kind of moving in efforts that make us feel good about ourselves, our relative level of political power, of economic power, right? Of social power has not changed. And so the question that I think I would love to kick us off with this morning for all of us to be thinking about is what does it mean to actually build power, not just making people feel good about themselves, but what does it mean to be able to bring people together in such a way where we can change the rules and we can transform how power operates itself? I think that it's really important for us to understand that it is important to put decision-making into people's hands, but to do that in an individual way does not change the structures that keep people away from being able to make those decisions consistently, from being able to participate in the decisions that are made about them, but also it doesn't change the way that power functions. We talk a lot at the Black Futures Lab about the need for black-owned businesses, but we know that black-owned businesses is not gonna transform the economic system that keeps black people poor. It's just not. Creating more black millionaires, creating more black billionaires, even creating more black middle-class folks is not going to change an economy that fundamentally is structured to keep some people out, to keep some people without, and to allow other people to extract from each other. The economic system that we function in right now is inherently extractive. It is inherently predatory, and we have to have an honest conversation about that if we really want to advance the kinds of solutions that change that.  So we're still on the topic of transformation, where we're trying to go, what we're trying to achieve. Rashad. Yeah, so empowerment and power. First of all, hello everyone, how are you doing? Excellent. So I want to talk a bit through the theme of sort of what we do at Color of Change and how we see power and how we work to build the type of power that changes structures and rules. And so Color of Change was founded a little over 14 years ago in the aftermath of a flood, which was Hurricane Katrina that was caused by bad decision makers, which is incredibly important to remember and turn into a life-altering disaster by those same bad decision makers. And it wasn't just the flood that overtook the Gulf Coast, but it was the flood of decisions afterwards, decisions about not only who would be taken care of, but who would get to be part of the rebuilding. And like so many of the issues that will be discussed at this conference, Katrina illustrated things that we already knew, geographic segregation, generational poverty, what we've done to this planet, all the ways in which structural racism undergirds all of those things. But at the heart of Katrina, no one was nervous about disappointing black people. Government, media, corporations. And when institutions are not nervous about disappointing your community, it doesn't matter what kind of research report you have that illustrates all the facts and figures, no matter how good that research is. It doesn't matter with all due respect to my friends out here on the West Coast, what kind of technology you build. The app is not gonna solve it. It oftentimes doesn't even matter what we do in the courts if we don't have the power to supercharge and implement those changes. And so an issue like the wealth gap or Katrina are so many of the issues that animate the disparities that we see in our society cannot be solved by simply researching our way or legaling our way or coding our way or even nonprofit executive directing our way out of those problems. We actually need people power and narrative change. And those are the two things that are really at the heart of how we see our work in color of change. It is about mobilizing everyday people to force systems to have to change, to force decision makers to have to do something different. And I wanna talk a little bit about why that's important because I do think that we sometimes have the wrong indicators for when changes happen. Far too often we mistake presence for power. Presence is visibility, retweets, it's awareness. It is our stories on the front page of the newspaper. It's people being able to talk about the racial wealth gap but not actually having to do anything about it. It's about going to a conference sometimes and leaving and then still making the same set of decisions after we leave the room. It's a black president and thinking that we've gotten post-racial.  All of those things are deeply important to sort of answering the question about what do we actually want to achieve? If what we want to achieve is ensuring that we get to some sort of diversity and inclusion, like we include more people inside of a broken, problematic, racist structure, then we're probably on the right path. If we fundamentally believe that the reason why some people are on the bottom and some people on the top is because it's been artificially manufactured that way. That a set of choices has been made that way and that some people are not inherently disposed to being on the bottom and some people are not inherently disposed to being on the top, if we actually believe that, then we have to focus on structures. Because that's the only solution to that problem. But if we believe that some people deserve to be on the bottom because that's who they are and some people deserve to be on the top, then we should keep going down the path that we're going down and tinkering on the outsides and saying, well, maybe we'll make a little bit more opening. And so those are the questions at hand, but at the end of the day, the work that we're trying to do with color of change is about translating presence to power. And for us, power is the ability to change the rules. Sometimes they are the written rules of policy, other times they are the written rules, the unwritten rules of culture, but always recognizing that you cannot change the rules simply with ideas. We need people and we need people in motion to be able to achieve that. Thanks. Okay. Rodney. Common future, what is your vision? What's transformation for you? For us. And so before I get into that, I'm sure many of you who signed up for this were not aware that you're gonna get this Wednesday morning sermon from Rashad. So thank you for that, brother. So I think so much of this conversation, particularly because we're at SoCAP and we're having a conversation that within this context, impact investing, doing well by doing good and all those sort of things, the reality is that within that context, power really is about capital, right? Who has it, who does not? And so the figures that Felicia spoke to in the introduction, think about this. When you're talking about white households in this country having 150,000 or so in median wealth compared to about 5,000 for Latinx and African-American households, well, then we know where the power sits, right? And so we see where the concentration of power within, when we're talking about capital, when we're talking about impact investing, where that is. And I think we have an opportunity though, when we're talking about transforming that nature, moving away from capital supremacy, right? And to having what we're just talking about, people power. So I just wanna set that grounding because as an assumption within even this context of doing well by doing good, that that is simply enough, right? And so when we're having a conversation about power, then that also means you have to think about what are you giving up, right, within this context? And so I challenge my colleagues and friends in the impact investing world to really think about that as well within this conversation. When we think about what a future looks like, I think we all have shared this belief. I mean, let's step back for a moment though and look at where we might be hitting to Rashad's point, where we might be going. You know, there's data in the case if we continue on this path of economic trajectory, 2053, African-American and median household wealth would drop to zero, right? So consider that for a moment. Just a few decades after this country is supposed to become majority people of color.   And so when I think about what the future holds for us, it's actually about making sure that does not occur no matter what your interests are, right? Now, from that perspective already, there's data that indicates that because of bias and racism within the capital markets and decision-making in terms of who gets invested into and whatnot that we're already losing $300 billion in national income, $300 billion. So there's an economic cost obviously that we see happening in communities of color and other marginalized groups that have been impacted by injustice and also that's impacting a broader set of stakeholders as well. That's impacting all of us, right? That means if we're losing out on that type of income as a nation, that's impacting local work, that's impacting New Orleans, right? That's impacting a number of communities to have access to the type of capital that's required to be successful and dignified. And so when I think about what that future might look like, it's actually a future in which we're not overly concerned about and I know there's a conversation later today about even investigating return on investment and looking at that as sort of a concept that is very much within anti-black racism, right? As for example, and so what are the opportunities for us to unpack and unravel those things? Because I know we're gonna get into a deeper conversation about this, but just kind of kicking it off. When you think about the future, you have to think about the past, right? And so the reason why some have more and some have less than others, those are a set of actions, policies, individual actions, institutional responses that allow for that to happen, Jim Crow, slavery, et cetera. So those are things that happened in the past and yet we're continually doing things today that also impact the economic livelihoods of individuals in this country and families in this country, right? So when we look toward the future, the question has to be, how do we actually unpack and unravel all of those historical contexts? How do we interrogate the things that we're doing today? So for example, it probably does not make a lot of sense if you're trying to impact racial equity to be overly concerned on having a 20% year-over-year return on investment for your institution. It's unlikely that you can actually pair those up, right? Because we know who is investing, who has the opportunity to invest and so it's likely that those resources will not trickle into African American, Latinx households. I wanna just quickly also point out, particularly in this conversation, because I know there's a lot of dialogue around opportunity zones and while I'm introducing this because it's a concept of power, right? And this is not a critique of overarching of opportunity zones, but I do wanna give a context. Although you could, you could make that quick. Not right now, we could get into it. But what I will say is that when you think about the context of how that occurred, I mean, that was a power conversation, right? It's not as though black and brown communities have not had ideas in which, you know, capital can come into the community and be owned by the community. There was a shaping for opportunity zones that came from a current of an idea. One, you have to have capital gains and so if you have capital gains, we already know what type of person you might be and they would have that. And secondly, just the policy itself was constructed within the context. I mean, Sean Parker and formerly of Facebook was a part of that conversation and I just named that because when we were talking about power, who has it and who can make those decisions, typically you're gonna have much more capital at the table. And so that whole framing for opportunity zones as an example, that did not come from black and brown communities and that's the reason for that, right? So for Sean's point, because folks do not care about, do not get nervous about the ideas that black and brown folks have in this country. And so it really makes it very visible, even within our own sector of impact investing, how decisions get made based on power. So I mean, one of the things that you had been saying at breakfast Rodney is like, we really need to think about, and I think you basically just said it again here, but I wanna put a point on it. We need to think about the return on investment to whiteness, to think what you're really pointing out. Okay, so I wanna turn now to the second part of the conversation, which is okay, these are a lot of big things on the table here. So how do we get there? How do we take real steps toward the transformation that you all have really talked about? And I think one path clearly has to be the path of power building through politics. So let's talk about politics and power just for a second.  You have written a lot about corporate power, the power of large firms as a major threat to racial justice, and you've said pretty bluntly that corporations profit from racial exclusion, from racism, so talk about that and talk about how you gotta fight that. Yeah, and so I do think that sometimes when you say corporations profit from racism, there's a thing that sometimes people bristle at it, or sometimes folks, even in a room like this, can say, oh wow, that's not me. I am not a big corporation, and so my idea about how to help people deal with bail reform through an app, and I'm helped to deal with the issue of bail, money bail, through an app is not actually profiting off of racism. And so every month I get someone to come to my office that has an idea about how they are going to, about how they are going to help us deal with, from a charitable perspective, one of a deep systemic issue that is rooted in racism. And I wanna say that I am not in any way against charity, but when charity is our only strategy, and we don't have a strategy for actually undoing the reasons why we need charity, then charity is about profiting off of racism. When we believe, when we stop at the sort of solutions of giving water bottles to Flint instead of cleaning up the pipes, or developing mentorship programs in inner city schools instead of changing public education, or stop at dealing with programs for reentry without ending mass incarceration, we don't actually have a vision for how do we undo the systems and structures, but to a larger extent, right? If we think about all the ways in which poverty is manufactured, and I say poverty is manufactured because far too often it's sort of talked about like it's a car accident, like it's sort of just happened and that people like are just poor. And some people are just rich. But when we talk about poverty as being manufactured, and then we think about all the folks that are involved in the manufacturing that also get to be involved in the sort of problem solving for dealing with it, everything from distributing benefits in major cities to tracking and lobbying to take away those benefits in major cities. We recognize that we have built all these systems that are rooted around keeping structures exactly the way they are right now. And I think that is the thing I just wanna invite all of you into, right? Invite all of you into this room about what does it mean to, yes, let's have our charity work, but what does it mean to fundamentally believe that this is not okay? What does it mean to believe, and then what do we do with it to believe that something else is possible? Then what type of decisions do we make about where we put our resources and our time and our energy? What does it mean in terms of who we vote for and who we support in elections? What does it mean in terms of who we hold accountable and who we push back on? If we believe that the systems and structures, the way they are, are good enough, then we just keep going on the road that we're on. So when I talk about corporations profiting from racism, of course they profit from racism because racism is baked into the DNA of our country. But the answer, right, is not for us to think about how we solve that by not talking about race or not centering race. Racial justice, in my opinion, is the only clear driver for actually solving that. You know, I hear a lot of questions, and I'll end here, a lot of questions about, you know, when we get a true democracy, we will end up with racial justice. We will end up with gender justice. We will end up with all of these sort of things because people will be able to participate, and I actually think that's the wrong sort of question, the wrong premise. The right premise is, what does it actually take to get a true democracy? And if we are going to undo all of the norms, all of the racial and gender norms that have gotten us into the position that we are in right now, then we actually have to center racial and gender justice as the driver for our work. We actually have to center it for the driver for our investments. We have to center it for the drivers of what we amplify and what we prioritize and what we center because then and only then can we actually build sort of new structures that undo the norms that created the old structures. Anything short of that is us doing work that legitimizes the structures that we already are, that tinkers around the systems and allows them to be strong up against people and projects that are working to undo them. In fact, in many ways, working against the movements of everyday people that are trying to fight those systems that have far too often held them back. And so the question for all of us in the room is what side do we wanna be on, right? Five, 10, 15, 30 years, 40 years from now, the world will look different one way or the other and we just have an opportunity to determine what does doing good and making money actually look like? Yeah. Well, it's my job to try to make segues between. There's no segues. And so there is a segue here. So Alicia, in your work with the Black Census project, you have learned a lot about what thousands and thousands of black people, black Americans think we need to do something about it. And so I think we need to do, to take more politics and to take more power and to make sure that we're on, as Rashad suggests, the right side of history. So what have we learned from all of that data? Oh yeah. So just for some quick context, the Black Futures Lab works to make black communities powerful in politics.  We conducted the largest survey of black people in America in 154 years. We surveyed more than 30,000 black people in all 50 states, asking folks what it is that we experience every day in the economy, in our democracy, in our society. And then we asked a really important question, which is what is it that you wanna see for your future? And if you're like me, you know that people are always talking about black people, talking at black people, but rarely are people actually asking us what it is that we experience and what it is that we want. And so what happens is that it leads to false narratives not only about what we experience, but also false narratives about the alternatives we envision for our futures. I can say that one of the things I found really, really interesting from the project is that by and large, black communities actually support raising taxes on people with wealth, knowing that we are locked out of it, and so understanding that to redistribute wealth, you gotta tax the people who got it. Black folks are largely in favor of raising taxes on corporations, and black folks are largely in favor of making sure that black people can participate actively in an economy that works not just for us, but for everybody. And the thing that I think is a little bit of a contradiction in that kind of discussion around black-owned businesses is that again, as we talked about earlier, we do have to do some work from moving people to, I just wanna be a part of what exists, and that's a hard conversation for black folks to have because we are structurally locked out, right, from access to wealth. And so wealth becomes one of the major things that keeps us up at night, but it's also a major part of our biggest dreams for ourselves, our families, and our futures, and yet at the same time, as I said earlier, nothing about this economic system as it's constructed right now has a pathway for black people to be powerful in it. And that's the hard conversation that we have to have together as we're talking about investing to do good. We can and we should invest in things that allow people to have, and black folks in particular, to have more access to wealth, but we also have to have a conversation about the ways in which wealth is attached to power and the ways in which wealth shapes the decisions that get made about us, our communities, our futures, and our families. And one of the things that I know Rashad and I talk a lot about that I just wanna put on the table is that one of the contradictions that we face as black communities is that we do look to black people with wealth as drivers of solutions for how to change the economy. And as successful, right? Like the epitome of success. Yeah, it's like I gotta get like Jay-Z. He's got a lot of money, and he obviously knows, right? He's got a path towards how to make my life better. He's doing it for himself, so if I can do what he's doing, then I could be better. But here's the thing, that's not actually how things function. We wouldn't have wealth if some people didn't have it, right? Like let's just kind of sit with that for a minute.  In our democracy, money makes decisions, based point blank, and so you cannot, right? Change people being locked out of the economy when people who have wealth are making all the decisions about the rules of the economy. And there is not an incentive for more people to be making decisions about how the rules happen. So I think it's important for us to understand and we learn this as a result of the data, it's important for us to do investing that does good, but we have to also understand that doing good is not the end goal, change is the end goal. And what change means, right, is that some of our companies and some of our entities probably wouldn't exist. That's a hard conversation for us to have. And it's not pie in the sky ideas, it's like actually think about it. If we are really changing the way that wealth is distributed, yes, we are investing in people so that they can have micro enterprises, that's important, right? But that in and of itself is not going to change how the rules are unfair for those varied communities. Are we investing in micro enterprises and also investing in people's ability to change the rules and make the rules? Oftentimes we just stop at the micro enterprises because not only do we think that it empowers people and it does on some level, but it's comfortable to stop there because we can say, okay, now that person can get up and feel really good about themselves today. But feeling good about yourself is not enough. Changing the rules has to be a part of changing people's everyday living conditions and you cannot have one without the other. Finally, I just wanna say in terms of the survey results, one of the top issues, 90% of the people that we surveyed said that what keeps them up at night is low wages that are not enough to support a family. And so how do we solve for that? Part of how we solve for that is making sure that people are in a position to make the rules about how the economy functions and to develop a new economy where nobody gets left behind. Our contradiction that we have to take on today and for the future if we really wanna see change is what are the consequences, right? What are the consequences of really making sure that people are powerful? If the people that we are doing good for are really powerful, it also means that some of us lose power, we lose access, we lose influence and that's not a bad thing, right? But we have to kind of solve for that. We have to solve for, if you're going to build power in communities that don't have it, it means that the communities that do have it right now and have a lock on it are fundamentally not going to be the ones who are making decisions about how structures happen. They're not going to be the ones who are making decisions about what happens in communities, for communities on behalf of communities. It means that power is going to be distributed differently and are we actually okay with that? One way to think about that on the wage side is very concrete, very concrete. Union power, labor power, working power, which as I know is something that Alicia in one of your past professional lives, you had worked a tremendous amount on but this is a very real thing. Union power, you see a 20% wage premium, no matter how much union density, no matter what sector we're talking about. Unions bring people 20% higher wages. That is a real thing and I think we are starting to see, it feels kind of not Bay Area, not San Francisco. I grew up here so I feel like I can say that. To really talk about labor, but here's the thing, labor power really, really, really matters and we got to figure out a way to do it for the very fishered and fractured economy that we live in today. Talk more about that after this if you want to. Got a lot of thoughts about it but let's now actually go to the investing side and Rodney I want to ask you. So we talked about the importance of politics, the importance of power straight up but this is also a conference about investing and the power of capital. This is another path for how we get there and part of what we are talking about here is how to invest in entrepreneurs of color and businesses that actually address racialized wealth. So what should we be looking for to see that our work in investing really does move that needle? And in particular you've talked a lot about being good with concessionary capital. So what's that mean, what's that about? So one of the things I was thinking about before this panel started, thinking about the even title of it, closing the wealth gap, racial wealth gap. And it made me think because that's really not what we're talking about. We're actually talking about undoing a racialized and extractive economy, right? Because there are a number of things that have been discussed that if we continue to do we might exacerbate things, right? So again, it's not about creating more black billionaires or Latinx billionaires. That's not actually what the goal is. And so just to reframe things to think about that context that's not the conversation we've been having. There's a conversation that we could have about closing the racial wealth gap in a different type of way but that's not the dialogue we're having. And so one of the things I think about and I'll start with again tying it back to power. So when we talk about concessionary returns and I know this is always a big topic at impact investing circles. But if we're talking about, even if we're talking about closing the racial wealth gap the reality is we have to be very cognizant of the past and the contemporary decisions that are getting made, right? And so even looking at it from that perspective I like to think about it as restorative capital, maybe reparative capital. I mean rather than concessionary. Rather than concessionary. The concessionary feels like ooh. Rather than concessionary. The normative feels like ah. Right? Yeah, okay. Because the reality of it is is that we are who we are today because of a set of actions that have been done and continued to happen. And so to me it seems like the math is a little fuzzy that you can both increase your own wealth and this was just discussed. You can both increase your own wealth in a substantial way and hoard that wealth over time and also build power in communities that have been unjustly impacted by systems. So that to me seems like a conversation we don't oftentimes have. And so to me I think about it as reparative, right? What set of capital is required to actually recognize all the things that have occurred? It reminds me of the Malcolm X quote, right? Stabbing the back, pull it out of six inches and call it progress, right? And have not worked to heal it, the wound. You haven't worked to heal the wound, but you're calling it progress because you took the knife out of my back. And so I think about that from this context and I think I know it's a challenging thing to wrestle with when you're saying, hey, I'm an investor. That's not my job, right? My job is to allocate and stewarded capital, whether for myself or for client institutions that have you. But the reality of it is is that in the long term, and Michelle was talking, the conversation was talking about corporations profiting off of racism. Well, you can't profit off it forever, right? And that's sort of, again, it's unsustainable at the end of the day. And so even again, just thinking about your own self-interest with those of your clients or whomever you're working for, making that connection is essential, right? And so I think about it from that context and also think about it from the perspective of, again, we were talking about where power is held in this entire dialogue. I think about it from the fact that if we were to look at, say, the venture capital industry, and I think venture capital is a great thing. I think venture capital industry has perverted itself. That said, we're looking at a $100 billion industry in the US alone. There's indication that about 75% of venture-back businesses don't even return capital back to their investors, right? We also know the makeup demographically of venture-backed companies, for the most part, are about 80% white men. Now, this is not a critique of white males, but at no point has anyone said we should stop investing in white men, right? That's never been said. And so on the other side of it, we think of, wow, it's too tricky investing in a black community in Boston or a black community in New Orleans or East Bay. It's really challenging. We can't think about it that way. There's so much risk at stake, right? And so I think about what is the risk that when you don't do it, what's an action occurs? So there's a lot of risk embedded into that. And so I think about it from that perspective as well, that we, even in terms of narrative, in terms of how we think about risk, you look at the VC numbers, you might say, maybe I shouldn't invest in white men, maybe I should give black women a chance. But that's not actually happening. If you look at the data, that's actually what you would do because black women are actually outperforming, among the highest performing entrepreneurs. And yet we don't see the capital going to black women, right? And so really rethinking that whole perspective of what is risk, who deserves capital. The other thing that I would think about as well is, you know, investors, and I brought up the example of opportunity zones, there's other types of power that can be leveraged, right? Because the reality of it is that if you're sitting on capital, there's opportunities for you to engage in policy conversations and political conversations that you're likely not doing right now, right? And so when I think about the folks in our network at Common Future and many folks outside that are at this conference right now, they really, I think, embody the type of things that we want to see in a deracialized economy. You think about like the Eugema Project in Boston, right? That's doing really remarkable work to center communities to ensure that one, that if you invest $10, you have as much power as a person investing $100,000. Remarkable. Why haven't we thought about that before? It's probably because we thought of capital as this key driver of power, right? But Eugema Project has been working very authentically and deliberately over several years building the kind of relationships to ensure that communities are actually centered and actually have control of their economy. And you can invest in that type of opportunity. You can do that today, all of us can do that today, right? It's something that exists already. You know, think about some of the work that's happened at Seed Commons, which is a national cooperative or cooperative of financial institutions that are really concerned about and advancing worker ownership in this country. And work cooperatively, so they have shared infrastructure, right? In which they can support each other and assume that someone in New York can't make a decision about something happening in Clarksdale, Mississippi. And so let's actually build the infrastructure and work in folks in Clarksdale or Cincinnati or have you in which they are empowered and have the power to actually make the decisions for what's best for them. And so those are kind of the examples. Which is why Common Future focuses so much on local and local decision-making, right? Local decision-making and also, I mean, local and community, right? Yeah, right. And ensuring that we're talking about really getting into and centering folks who are most directly impacted by decisions that have historically happened. So one of the things I hear you all saying then, if you imagined a grid of like 100 blocks, 98 of those blocks might actually be straight-up capital. One of those blocks might be kind of political rules, rule-making. Another one of those blocks might be philanthropy, actual charity. And one of the opportunities we have is to think about those two blocks, especially like the political power block as a lever for those other 98. And so how do we do that? Because political capital, literally, the amount of money spent is never gonna be as much as private capital, but political capital, how do you think about political capital making the rest of capital move in this direction? So, all right. So we're about eight minutes out from the end of our session. We're gonna do a kind of lightning round here. I want each of you to give us either, because this is a pragmatic crowd, right? Either one solution, one very concrete solution for getting farther down this path, or if you had some advice for the crowd, you could do that too. And I think, Rashad, I'm gonna start with you. Last words on solutions or advice? Yeah, so I'm gonna do a mix of both. And then quickly, the thing that I think is really important, the kind of loving advice for the room is that the world is changing, right? That things are changing and decisions that might seem expedient and right today will be wrong, you know, five, 10, 15 years from now. And if you just wanna look at this in the economic terms, I run a campaign, I run an organization that runs corporate accountability campaigns. And I am regularly in the room at the end of campaigns with leaders of corporations that were surprised about how the ground shifted underneath them and how society changed so quickly and how decisions that may have seemed expedient. I also wanna make a real plug for the work that we're doing at Color of Change and just invite you all in. For the last several years, we've been building very powerful work around dealing with consolidated power, around monopolies, around the issues that we have in this country, around the lack of antitrust. The framing that we're doing is not about some good old days when we had, you know, fair rules, because the fact of the matter is we've always had monopolies.  And the fact of the matter is, because we've always had those things, we actually have to build power to change that because that will unlock capital in a new way, unlock opportunities in a new way when a few people don't get to control everything and that our politics are not set up in ways. And so that is a project of both holding and dealing with the institutions that have been able to build this power, but also creating a new set of standards and narrative rules in our society, around our politics, about what we will accept from politicians and what is possible from politicians and political leaders in terms of the economic rules of the road. And we only have to recognize that right now Mark Zuckerberg is, you know, testifying in front of the banking committee in Congress right now. And he, and we have spent the last several years pushing him- In front of Maxine Waters, I think. In front of Maxine Waters and the chairwoman of that committee.  So if anything animates the conversation we've had today about power and power being the ability to change the rules, it's that you have the largest communications platform that the world has ever seen. 2.3 billion users, more followers than Christianity. So we just can't back out of it, right? It's impact on our economy and our democracy and our media information is clear. We just can't back out of it. The fact of the matter is, and that the CEO who has over 60% of control of the company, of the largest communications platform the world has ever seen, which played a deep role in our last election, goes before Congress and can't quite explain how they are dealing with political ads. Says everything about how we can't just have business as usual in terms of how we are investing and how we are moving capital. We also have to invest in the type of advocacy and political power building and people mobilization that will change the rules and force those in power to not only be nervous about disappointing us, but recognize they have to do something different or they'll be out of the game. Rodney and then Alicia, I'm gonna let you close it out. Yeah, how do I follow this guy? Thanks, Alicia. So one of the things I think about, and I say this all the time, I appreciate the framing of solutions, but I think part of it is that we have to understand that it's so much deeper than a single act or model or set of solutions. It's so much more than that, right? But we're talking about actionable things right now. So I'll pause on that. I was told to ask you about something actionable. So when I look around the room, it seems like it's a very friendly crowd in terms of like a particular segment I would say of the impact and investing universe. So I'm gonna note that because one of the things that I think that all of us can do within this sort of particular segment is consistently raise up the things that we see as positive examples of what we want to see in the world. I think that like these two are really great at being able to communicate and be able to get the stories out in a wonderful way. And I think that for those of us in this room who are in that particular, that aren't exactly bought into doing well by doing good but recognize the importance of leveraging capital, we have an obligation to actually continuously elevate and uplift those stories and narratives so that people can actually see with their eyes what it looks like for success, what it looks like to unravel this racialized economy that we have because the thing that I hear constantly is what are the things that you're talking about? Give me examples, give me models. And I know that they're in this room. So I think we can collectively do a much better job of that. And so that's one thing I would point out. The other thing I would point out just really quickly is that there's an existing infrastructure, community development financial institutions that many folks I recognize that impact investors are not even aware of that require, that are positioned specifically to actually work on these questions, right? And there's a lot of advancing into that. I know the next dialogue with Anthony Buglevine, Ellis Carr and a few others are going to actually get into that conversation. But I think really recognizing what already exists and what are the boundaries that can be pushed even with those infrastructure, what that existing infrastructure is, that's something that actionable that we can be doing. Particularly for the folks in this room who I know, I'm seeing a lot of my colleagues who are really sort of, I think are the boundary pushers. So one, continuously elevate what is possible and what we see on a day-to-day basis. And then two, continuously push the existing infrastructure that we have access to, to actually enable a direction in which we can kind of unpack that racialized economy. Thank you, Alicia. Final word. I think that one thing that we can do right now is for every dollar that you are investing in impact that is changing how people live every single day, you should also invest a dollar into an organization that is working to change the rules. That is something that you can do right now. You can match your investments. Match your investments when you are empowering people to start and own their own businesses. Every dollar you invest in that, you should invest in their ability to make the rules and to transform how the rules are made. Every dollar that you invest in somebody being able to profit from their own crafts, right? You should invest a dollar in making sure that those varied communities are the ones who are determining what their economies look like. It's a very simple equation. You've got to do both and. I could not ask for anything better to end, and I just want to thank, I said it was a superstar panel, I delivered what I promised. Thank you so much.


Good morning and welcome to this public meeting of the consumer product safety commission. This morning CPSC staff will be briefing the commission on a draft final rule on crib mattresses. Before we start, I want to acknowledge that today is Bob Adler's new day as CPSC commissioner. He's made an enormous mark on this agency and consumer product safety of his long tenure at CPSC, including the last 12 years commissioner and acting. Known as the agency's story in an ad bit at a supporter of your staff's work and an unwavering advocate for the most vulnerable consumers for contributions are numerous. Especially specifically because of your leadership and tenacity consumers purchase, you savor infants, sleep products and bedrails. But thanks to you and your team, Sarah Klein, Jen Feinberg, Joe Mardiak and Maureen Kentoff for your service to the American people. You'll be missed. And we wish you all the best as you do next chapter. Now, turning back to today, staff will be working us on the draft draft a rule to limit the risks to infants, babies from suffocation, crabmint or laceration mattresses. Excuse me. It addresses both standard size mattresses as well as aftermarket mattresses built to fit the plate. For the NPR, the commission cited 439 incidents, including 116 fatalities associated with crib mattresses from January 2010 to March of 2020. In the following year, another 23 fatalities were reported. These tragic deaths, injuries and driving CPSC's work on this rule. The draft rule incorporates existing ASTM standards and some places established standards are more stringent than those included in the voluntary standards. I know that we all have questions for staff, so I'm going to turn it over to them to brief us. I completed the briefing. Each commissioner will have up to 10 minutes to ask questions of staff with multiple rounds necessary. Following staff members will brief the commission. Hope Nesterook is program manager for children's products. Mary House, who's an attorney in the regulatory affairs division of the Office of General Counsel and also an attendance of Mary Boyle, CPSC Executive Director, Pamela Stone, Acting General Counsel, Alberta Middle CPSC's Secretary. One final question before I turn it over to staff. Any questions that staff have addressing the agency's legal authority should be withheld into the closed executive session, which the commission will hold directly following this public briefing. That, I turn the gavel over to Ms. Nesterook and Ms. House. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Chair and commissioners. Today, Mary House and I are here to discuss the final rule for crib mattresses. Mary will begin our discussion with an overview of the statutory authority. Next slide. Good morning, Mr. Chair and commissioners. The commission can issue the draft final rule pursuant to its authority under section 104 of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, or the CPSIA. Section 104 requires the commission to issue safety standards for durable infant or toddler products. Section 104F of the CPSA defines a durable infant or toddler product as a durable product intended for use, or that may be reasonably expected to be used by children under the age of five. The statute includes a list of durable infant or toddler product categories, and the commission can add to this list. The list already includes sleep products for infants, in which crib mattresses are used, such as full-sized cribs, non-full-sized cribs, and play art. Section 104 also requires that in consultation with consumer groups, product manufacturers, and independent child product engineers and experts, the commission examine and assess the effectiveness of any voluntary standards for durable infant or toddler products. Next slide. The commission must promulgate consumer product safety standards that are substantially the same as the voluntary standards, or more stringent than the voluntary standards if the commission determines that more stringent standards would further reduce the risk of injury associated with the product. Additionally, the commission can adopt voluntary standards either in whole or in part pursuant to Section 104B4. Finally, under Section 104B2, the commission must also periodically review and revise the standards issued under Section 104 to ensure that such standards provide the highest level of safety for such products that is feasible. Next slide. Now, Hope is going to discuss the staff's recommended draft final rule for crib mattresses. Thank you, Mary. I want to take a moment to further explain the products we are talking about.  In the top left, there's a full-sized crib and mattress. Full-sized cribs are designed with a regulated length and width so that the mattress must be sized to fit the crib. Non-full-sized cribs do not have a specific length and width. Therefore, the standard requires the OEM to provide a well-fitting mattress. Sorry. OEM, we used to refer to original equipment manufacturer, the people that built the original product. On the bottom left, there's an OEM or original equipment manufacturer play art. The regulations for play arts, 16 CFR 1221, require that all play arts are sold with the mattress that the original manufacturer has designed to fit the play art. Because these mattresses are covered by an existing standard, they are not included in the rule we are discussing today. On the right side of the slide, there are two aftermarket mattresses being used in play arts. On the top of the screen, the mattress is in a play art without an OEM mattress. Although the bottom of a play art is typically a flexible fabric covering support bars, some aftermarket mattresses have enough inherent CFR that they do not need the OEM mattress to provide support. But they would often lack a method of attaching the mattress to prevent anything, including a child from sub-raining below the mattress. In the lower photo, there's an example of a supplemental use pattern. The aftermarket mattress is in a foldable ... Sorry. In the lower photo, the aftermarket mattress is a foldable mattress topper that lacks the rigidity to lay flat, so it is placed on top of the OEM mattress, which provides the flat support. Explaining these two use patterns shows why staff promotes the term aftermarket rather than supplemental. A supplemental is the use pattern, not the product characterization. The key factor we are concerned about is, is it a mattress that is sold separately from the play art for use in a play art? Next slide. In 2015, the commission was petitioned by Keeping Baby Safe to ban supplemental mattresses used in play arts. Staff analysis concluded that a performance standard may be feasible, and in May 2017, the commission voted to grant the petition and initiate rulemaking under Section 104 to create a mandatory standard for crib mattresses that addresses crib mattresses as well as supplemental or aftermarket mattresses used in play arts and portable cribs. The voluntary standard for crib mattresses includes provisions for aftermarket mattresses for play arts and non-full-sized cribs, along with full-sized cribs. Next slide. In October 2020, the commission published a notice of proposed rulemaking to regulate crib mattresses, including aftermarket mattresses for play arts as a durable nursery product. The rule proposed incorporating by reference the then current ASTM F2933-19 with additional modifications to increase the stringency of the standard, including to address suffocation hazards, entrapment hazards, and laceration hazards, plus improvements in the warnings and instructions to improve the hazard communication to address consumer behavior. Next slide. The commission received 13 comments during the public comment period. In addition, one manufacturer of aftermarket mattresses submitted two late comments in July and again in September. Next slide. The comments fell into four main topic areas, testing, mattress fit, communications to caregivers, and procedural comments. Staff reviewed these comments, and while the recommendation is largely as proposed, we did make some minor modifications in the recommended final rule text as appropriate. Next slide. This slide shows the hazard pattern breakdown for the 494 total reports received between January 1, 2010 and April 30 of this year. Hazard patterns with reported fatalities are highlighted. One of the most common hazard patterns identified is coils and springs, which are addressed by the recommended cyclic test that exercises coil springs to identify weak springs that may break and poke through the mattress ticking. The second most common hazard pattern is fit issues, referring to the gaps between the mattress and the sides of the crib or player. Side and corner gaps may entrap infants in compromised positions resulting in fatal outcomes. Fit issues have been the focus of much of the work that went into staff's recommendations. Finally, there are the found prone fatalities and the 55 reports of excessively soft mattresses. To address these incidents, staff recommends incorporating a firmness test for mattresses to ensure that the mattresses are not too soft for young infants. Although soft mattresses are not the only factor in prone incidents, staff concluded that a firmness test may improve the safety by identifying excessively soft mattresses. Next slide. Next, I'll briefly discuss the voluntary standard and two recent revisions. Beginning with F2933-18, published in September 2018. Aftermarket mattresses for play yards and non-rectangular non-full size cribs have been addressed by the crib mattress voluntary standard by requiring these aftermarket mattresses to be tested to provide specific provisions of the play yard voluntary standard while the mattress is in the play yard model it is intended to fit while also having, and I quote, the same thickness floor support structure and attachment methods, unquote. This means that aftermarket mattresses were required to be virtually identical to OEM mattresses. In 2021, the subcommittee updated these requirements to expand the testing provisions from simply requiring, quote, the same thickness floor support and attachment methods to requiring the mattress to be tested to the appropriate provisions of the play yard standard, including stability, cord strap length mattresses for rigid side of products, crib side height, height of sides, floor strength, and mattress vertical displacement. This allowed manufacturers of aftermarket mattresses to produce mattresses up to the full 1.5 inch thickness limit that's in the play yard standard. Whereas the play yard standard limits mattresses to one inch of foam and one inch of hardboard. Task groups for the crib mattress voluntary standard continued to work on cyclic testing and mattress firmness test methods after CPSC issued the NBR. CPSC staff has been working with these task groups, but today neither of these task groups have completed their work. The task group working on warnings has also continued their work and recently validated a revision to the warnings label that passed. The revision was published as ASTM F2933-21A just after this package was sent to the commission in September. However, staff reviewed the revised warning language and concludes that these revisions do not address items that were in the NPR as such staff does not recommend incorporating this revision. Next slide. Therefore, the staff recommended draft final rule incorporates ASTM F2933-21 by reference and includes modifications to increase the stringency of the standard, largely as proposed in the NPR. They have made modifications based on public comments and the work with the ASTM task groups. Specifically, the modifications address overly soft mattresses and trap hazards related to mattress fit, coil springs breaking and improvements to marking labeling and instructional literature. The latter of which ASTM F2933-21A does not address at all. Next slide. Next, I want to discuss the modifications staff recommends to ASTM F2933-21 in the draft final rule. First is a firmness test to address overly soft mattresses. Worldwide, there are two test methods that address firmness of mattresses. One is from an Australian and New Zealand standard and one is in an ISO standard. Staff reviewed both of these test methods when developing the recommendations in the NPR and settled on the Australian test as the more robust test, although the tests were similar. We found that the Australian and New Zealand test identified one additional failure when compared to the ISO test. Now I'd like to show you a video that shows how to perform the test. Steve, if you could please play the mattress firmness video. The mattress firmness test is conducted on a fully aerated mattress that has been placed in the supplied product or on a flat rigid horizontal support. The mattress is tested along the longitudinal centerline in the middle and at two other points which divide the mattress into quarters. The test fixture is placed gently on each of the test locations with the bar extending over the centerline. The fixture is placed as horizontally as possible using the level to verify. The test is repeated one more time at the location away from the centerline most likely to fail, such as a very soft spot or raised portion. If the bar contacts the top of the mattress's sleep surface, the mattress is considered to have failed the test. The test should be repeated if the fixture is not resting in a nearly horizontal orientation. However, if the test produces a fail even with the device tilted away from the bar, then a fail can be recorded. Thank you. As you just saw, this test has a single point to check for the past fail. In comparison, the ISO test requires the test engineer to evaluate the entire perimeter of a four and a half inch sphere. CPSC received comments stating that the ISO test was preferable and that the ASTM group appears to be favoring this test saying it was easier to interpret. As seen in the video, the test and the draft rule requires evaluation at a single point on the fixture. Staff found one evaluation point easier to interpret than an entire perimeter. Staff also found the Australian and New Zealand test was slightly more stringent. Staff considered allowing either test but because the test did not produce identical results, we cannot conclude that the tests are equivalent only that they're similar. Next slide. The next modification addresses fit issues and entrapment due to poorly fitted sheets that allow the mattress corners to compress such that the gap is created where a child may be entrapped. The slide shows a reenactment from an IDI illustrating the hazard of this excessive compression of mattress corners creating a gap in the corner of the crib. In this test, we use an off-the-shelf crib sheet that has been washed and dried twice to maximize shrinkage. Place it on the mattress and check that the mattress does not allow the corner to compress excessively. To pass, the mattress must retain its dimensions when sheets are applied. We have a video of this test. The video also includes the overall mattress sizing test in the crib mattress voluntary standard. Steve, if you could play the mattress sizing video. Per the ASTM standard, the dimensions of the full-size crib mattress are measured using the mattress measuring box. The mattress is placed in the box such that it is touching the two walls. To position the mattress in the box, a 7-pound force is applied to panel A and then a 14-pound force is applied to panel B. Next, both forces are applied simultaneously beginning with the 7-pound load and followed shortly by the 14-pound load. These forces are applied for 60 seconds and then mattress dimensions are measured at the midpoint of the panels. The mattress shall measure at least 27.25 inches wide and 51.58 inches long. Following the mattress measurement, 100% cotton sheet is placed on the mattress. The test mattress sheet has been washed in hot water and dried a minimum of two times on the highest setting before testing. The mattress with the sheet is then placed and positioned in the measuring box using the same method as the ASTM measurement test. We've placed an outline representing the maximum full-size crib dimensions on the measuring box. This is used to verify that the mattress corner opposite the box walls is within 3.15 inches of the crib corner. This dimension is checked to verify that an infant's head would not fit in the corner gap between the mattress and the crib that is created by a fitted sheet. The mattress is then flipped 180 degrees and the test is repeated. Thank you. Next slide, please. Based on the public comments received, staff modified the proposal to measure the corner gap from the projected corner of the crib farthest from the mattress and to measure just the corner gap as depicted in the video. ASTM agrees that mattress compression created by corner gaps is a hazard that should be addressed, but would prefer to apply a set force along the corner, similar to the forces you saw applied to the sides of the mattress for fitting. However, staff has been unable to determine an appropriate force. The comments we received did not suggest a specific force, and ASTM has not provided a rationale for their proposal. As such, staff recommends finalizing the test with the twice-washed commercial sheet. We will continue working with ASTM to determine whether it is possible to develop a force requirement that is repeatable and provides similar test conditions. Should an appropriate test be developed through the ASTM process, the provisions of Public Law 112-28 allow the commission to update the standard to include a revised test method. Next slide. The next modification to the voluntary standard is to address non-full-size crib mattress fit and entrapment issues. The voluntary standard lacks dimensional requirements for aftermarket rectangular non-full-size cribs. These are rigid-sided cribs that are larger or smaller than the specified size of a full-size crib. ASTM includes dimensional requirements for non-rectangular non-full-size crib aftermarket mattresses. However, the other sizing requirements were only applicable to a mattress that is supplied with a non-full-size baby crib, meaning the OEM mattress. Next slide. This slide illustrates this gap in visual form. The draft final rule proposes to expand the dimensional requirements for rectangular non-full-size cribs to all mattresses, both OEM and aftermarket. Next slide. The NPR also proposed to add a cyclic impact test for mattresses that is similar to the cyclic impact test used on the crib itself. The purpose is to exercise coil springs and identify those that may be likely to break or poke through the mattress ticking during routine use. A broken spring may poke through the mattress ticking and pose elaceration hazards. Comments received on the NPR identified the potential for the cyclic test to destroy the sample being tested. So, SAF modified the sample requirements in the draft final rule to require that the cyclic testing be performed on each side of a mattress by using two different samples for testing. Next slide. The NPR proposed significant revisions to the required warnings on crib mattresses and proposed including instructional literature. We received a number of comments on the proposal and ASTM has since updated the standard regarding safety information. However, ASTM's revisions were inconsistent with the NPR and did not include instructional literature. Staff reiterated the NPR proposal during the ASTM balloting process, but the ASTM subcommittee found staff to be non-persuasive. The recommendations in the draft final rule considered the public comments and the work with ASTM and made several changes as a result, such as requiring the warning label for full size troops, a statement that side gaps between the mattress and the crib must be no greater than one half inch instead of one and three eighths inch, which was done for usability reasons. Next slide. The Directive for Economic Analysis identified 27 small manufacturers and importers of mattresses that fall within the scope of the draft final rule. About half are members of JPMA. Most mattresses already comply with the draft final rule, so staff assesses that it is unlikely that this rule will have significant impact. None of the comments expressed that additional time beyond six months is needed to come into compliance. However, the late filed comment requested that the commission defer finalizing a rule until work on the Playard subcommittee is complete. The final rule package was not submitted until after ASTM F2933-21 was published in July, which allowed for manufacturers to utilize the full 1.5 inches without requiring the mattress to have the exact same characteristics as the OEM mattress. Staff is addressing OEM Playard mattresses within the Playard standard, which is outside the scope of this rulemaking. Staff cannot predict if or when ASTM will complete these activities. Therefore, staff does not recommend delaying the final rule until work on the Playard voluntary standard is complete. Instead, allowing staff to address the safety of future revisions to either standard through the PL1-1228 process. Next slide. In summary, staff recommends the commission publish the draft final rule incorporating ASTM F2933-21 with modifications as explained previously, addressing suffocation, entrapment, and laceration hazards, plus improvements to the marking, labeling, and instructional literature. These modifications will increase the stringency of the voluntary standard for crib mattresses. In addition, staff recommends a six month effective date, amending parts 11-12 and 11-30 to include crib mattresses in a third party testing certification list and a list of product subject to the consumer registration requirements. Thank you very much for your time and attention to this briefing. We welcome your questions. Thank you, Ms. Nestrach. And thank you, Mary. So as well. Now, we're going to start around questions now. I'm going to start with myself. Nestrach, all commissioners received a couple of letters this week, both of which were focused on illustrations in the briefing. They explain the entrapment hazards in the play yards. The writers argue that the illustrations included in the briefing packet don't accurately depict the entrapment hazard. I believe that you have seen these letters and from staff's perspectives, do the illustrations in the briefing packet accurately portray the hazard? We think they do. The caption to the figure in the briefing package reads, and I quote, it's an illustration of gap expansion. The figure clearly shows staff concerns that the flexible side of the play yard may cause a simple linear measurement to be inadequate to capture the hazard. This is described in a greater detail in the accompanying text in the briefing package. They were not intended to represent specific scenarios from incidents, nor specific combinations of play arts and mattresses, merely the way the gap can expand. Thank you. With respect to aftermarket play yard mattresses, draft rule calls for the incorporation of ASTM's most recent voluntary standard without any changes. The standard requires aftermarket mattresses to meet the same specification or requirements for mattresses that are sold with the original play yards. Henderson, some commenters are urging a thicker mattress to be sold in the aftermarket. What was the thinking that was involved in the direction that was that's in the proposal? The crib mattress standard, the way it's written, requires aftermarket mattresses to be tested the same performance criteria as the original mattresses by pointing to the requirements for the original mattresses within the play yard standard. For the purposes of this rule, changes being considered within the play yard standard are out of scope of this rule. If the current work to change the requirements for play our for mattresses in the play yard standard is adopted by ASTM F406, then ASTM can present it to the standard for commission review. The staff will assess the standard and the commission makes the final assessment as to whether or not increasing play yard mattress thickness in any associated test methods will improve the safety of play yards. So because this rule points to the requirements for OEM mattresses within the play yard standard, any changes accepted by the commission in the play yard standard for OEM mattresses will be applicable for aftermarket mattresses. And so for the OEMs, the original ones, looking at a 1.5 inch thickness, is that something that staff has determined that there is adequate level of safety attached to that? And the thicker potentially, obviously we'll see what happens at ASTM, but is there any reason to think that the thicker mattresses will be as safe or less safe? I think that we don't really have evidence either way. The problem is, as you get thicker in the play yard, the sides of the play yard get more flexible. And the 1.5 inch requirement for play yards has been in existence for a number of years, 80s or 90s. So it's worked since then. And so I don't think we have the evidence that clearly says that thicker mattresses are okay. We do have some evidence that when you get too thick, or if there's too much of a gap that the expansion forms too deep of a pocket. Yeah, it's my understanding that thicker and softer potentially end up having more chance for suffocation risk and the rest, but be interested in looking more into this. I'm going to pause my questions there and turn it over to Commissioner Adler. Okay, can you hear me now? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mary and Hope, I just want to tell you what a terrific job of presenting you did with a lot of technical detail and a lot of attention to addressing every aspect of the standard. And so I'm just incredibly impressed by your work. So I have one quick question and then a short comment. I remember years ago reading about baby food. And the manufacturers were making baby food taste good to parents. And the problem was that babies don't have sophisticated pallets the way their parents do. And so they were adding, for example, excessive amounts of salt, which was not really needed for a child and I have the same sense when it comes to mattress firmness. Their parents want softer mattresses because they think it makes it easier for kids to sleep. But what I've read and I would like you to comment on that. Do we have any human factors studies that show that the difference in thickness between what we're requiring maybe a softer mattress will lead to more kids sleeping more quickly or longer. I wouldn't say we have human factors studies. We do have human factors analysis that was discussed in the. We did the petition package and NPR that discuss the fact that we have seen some anecdotal reports of. When you look at product reviews that parents say their babies slept better on the thicker mattresses, the aftermarket mattresses. I would also say that we're not completely convinced that thickness is the only answer here. We've looked at some, for example, bassinets have essentially the same type of requirement where it's only limited to an inch of mattress thickness. But if you a lot of bassinets and I won't say all of them, but many bassinets seem to have a denser foam in that one inch. So with the player mattress, a lot of them, and again, I'm not speaking for every product on the market, but a lot of the ones we've seen the foam is not very dense. And so if you basically if you touch it, you're hitting the bottom of the backer board and that's what I refer to as bottoming bottoming out. And you hit the bottom of that backer board, but I've seen player or bassinets, but again with similar requirements that don't have that same issue with you touch the bass net mattress and you're hitting the bottom. So, I'm thinking is evolving somewhat that thickness, it seems like it seems like something that would improve it, but you can have a thick mattress that's still just as opposite of density, that has the same qualities. Termite use is squishy but I was trying to come up with something not squishy. So I was just thinking, based on a data set of one, my son who never slept, but when he did sleep he could sleep anywhere. He was a champ and many is the time that I would be sitting with him on the floor and he would just pop off and of course once we put him in the crib he said oh playtime. At any rate, I really appreciate that answer and I did want to make a couple of very quick observations. First of all, I love the attention to detail that staff is given to criticism mattresses because it's consistent with the detail that we've given to cribs, and I remind everyone that we have probably the most stringent crib mattress crib standard in the world. And the statistics show it fatalities over the life of the crib standards, not just the most recent have led to when I last check over a 90% reduction in fatalities. It's a terrific standard and I'm glad to see you're dedicating the same devotion to crib mattresses as to the crib standard itself. I also think through fits and starts this is a classic example of private public participation. I think our work with a STM has just been exemplary we don't always agree, but there's been an ongoing dialogue and I one of the things that has impressed me is that when members of a STM, particularly some industry members have come in with concerns, staff has paid careful attention and some cases adjusted requirements to address the legitimate concerns of the industry I think that's really the way the system model work. And that leads me to my final point which is, we're writing this standard under section 104 of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. What a wonderful procedure it is, I wish that every standard that Commission wrote operated according to the way 104 operates because it involves all stakeholders. And it's done in an efficient and very careful way with lots of due process so that's my two cents on that and again I cannot thank you enough for an excellent presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Allard. Now turning to Commissioner Biacco. We're having a hard time hearing you, Commissioner. But now having a hard time talking to hope we don't have any data that shows that the two to three inch thickness on a crib mattress is dangerous. Correct. Correct. And in fact, what we do know is that, excuse me, that consumers specifically tend to add blankets and pillows under the babies because the mattresses are in fact pretty hard. Correct. I wouldn't say we necessarily know that that's the cause and effect effect. We don't have the that they're doing it because it's hard. We suspect it's probably because it's hard. Would you agree with me that putting pillows and blankets under babies is not a good thing for the baby? Yes. Okay. And we do have people putting pillows and blankets under babies in cribs which have five, six inch thick mattresses. But we don't have any entrapment deaths on after market play or mattresses that are two to three inches. Correct. We have. We don't. We don't, but I would say we have very limited data and we don't have all the data points within. We only have seven incidents and only four of them had the details on thickness gaps, etc. So if we don't, I mean, we've been looking at this for a couple, couple, actually a couple of decades, right? I can't speak to decades. I've been looking at it since 2016. Okay. But what you're telling me is we don't really have any data points for the rule then that we're trying to put in place. I, we, I'm not sure I followed the question because we presented data. And the, the one inch, one and a half inch thick mattress was based on data and incidents that were happening in. And again, don't quote beyond the year mid 80s or mid 90s. And we did have children that were getting underneath the mattress and suffocating in entrapments underneath the mattress. And that's where the limit on the mattress thickness came from. And it was developed based on the data that the scene then that it was happening with the mattresses thicker. So that's where that, let me go back to my question. I don't want to get into data from the 80s or 90s. I want to focus on what we have right here. We have millions and millions of aftermarket play yard mattresses sold. And we have no data of any deaths on the two to three inch thickness, correct? So yes or no, we either have it or we don't. No, we do have, there's one, there is an incident that was reported as a three inch thick mattress. But there are different reports arguing with it that it was actually stacked up more than our IDI suggests. But no specific entrapment. If I could jump in and try to help hope. So I think what this rule, this final rule proposes to do is basically incorporate largely incorporate the ASTM voluntary standards developed by that stakeholder community and largely looks to make sure that aftermarket mattresses meet the same requirements as the original equipment manufacturer. So while we, we don't have detailed data, you know, that flows by mattress thickness or mattress size or so forth. What we are leveraging is that history with that original equipment manufacturer mattress standard that we are merely aligning to here. But Dwayne, if I'm not mistaken, ASTM now has agreed to increase their standard to two inches, right? No, they have, they have, they are talking about validating it. It has not even been validated yet. We've expressed concerns with the fact that it's what they're doing is they're measuring only the linear measurement, which is the pictures that were the, they're measuring from the top of the mattress over to the side with the mattress at rest without any accounting for any flexibility. But again, that has not been validated. I think they are validating and I would, I would encourage you all to go back and check on that for sure because I did check on it and they are validating that. But in any event, your data still shows that in 16 years there hasn't been a single death in a two inch mattress. So I'm having trouble connecting a, we're going to, you know, we're going to follow this pattern or we're going to justify for this. But if it fits, we have no deaths. So I struggle all the time with a presentation of a rule that is based on zero data and with a, an assumption or speculation that there could be deaths. But after millions and millions of mattresses out there have been sold, we have zero deaths in our data. So I'm struggling with that. I don't have anything else. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Commissioner Bellman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize.  So I'm going to be on audio only, but it's nice to see everybody's face. I hope everybody had a nice Thanksgiving break. It's exciting to be back and working our way through to or more of the four public briefings that's on the commission's calendar. So it's, it's great to see the chairman working with his colleagues to free up this backlog of items and get the commission back to work. I appreciate the hard work that staff put into the briefing materials and I want to thank everybody. Hope Mary's Wayne for your efforts on the rulemaking and I also want to make a special note of thanks to staff for preparing the videos that we saw today. Those are helpful for presenting technical information to lay and non-technical audiences and visual learners, myself included, so we can understand the engineering that underpins the rule proposal here. I do have several questions for staff that are appropriate here in this session and a couple of others that I'd like to reserve for executive session dealing with matters of legal privilege. But I will note that it's important for our final rules not only to provide strong safety protections for consumers, but also that they're well crafted to withstand legal challenge if reviewed. And ideally that our final rules are crafted to avoid unnecessary litigation which draws on our agency resources, which we all know are limited. So, Mary and Hope, I'll start with you. I realize that the briefing materials that were submitted and the actual package here are comprehensive and do include this information. But because this meeting isn't just for our benefit, but is an opportunity for stakeholders and for the public to hear from staff as well. I want to ask about our section 104 requirements. So, CPSB, among other things, is charged with ensuring the safety of durable products for infants and toddlers. Under our statute, section 104 of our statute includes a definition that is somewhat circular when it comes with respect to durable products. But it also does provide some specific examples. The statutory language does not, however, explain the difference between a durable versus a non-durable product. Mary, I guess this question is probably more in your wheelhouse. But could you take a stab at explaining how staff classifies an infant and toddler product as durable versus non-durable? Some of that would be better reserved for the executive session. But in general, the way the commission has proceeded is to consider whether the types of products there are consistent with the types of products listed in the statute. So this particular product is intended to be used with products that the Congress said are durable infants and toddler products, cribs, and play yards. And so the commission, I think the staff's position here is that the commission can't fully address the hazards related to these products without including the crib mattress because part of the hazards are gap entrapments between the crib mattress and the products being used in. So the way we've done it is more applying the product by the definition by choosing the products that are intended to be used by or primarily used by children under the age of five years that are similar to the products already listed. Okay, I appreciate that. To the extent that a more wholesome answer here calls for discussion and privilege in closed session, I'll reserve it for them again. I'm not sure how definitional matters fall under privilege, but rather than getting into it here, why don't I revisit this when we break into executive session. But, you know, along those lines, could you walk through the analysis of how the draft final rule imposes the least burdensome requirements that prevent or adequately reduce the risk of injury for infant using crib mattresses and why is section, what was the 104 rule necessary? Well, the commission directed the staff to put together a section 104 rule for this product and said it was a durable infant or toddler product when we did the petition back in 2015 and 2017. The commission directed the staff to do a section 104 rule on crib mattresses and to add it as a durable infant or toddler product to, I think it's part 1120 that lists those, what are durable infant or toddler products. So it's appropriate for that reason because the commission made the determination. The staff has addressed this rule like any other section 104 rule. We consulted as soon as the commission told us to do that and 2018 staff presented data, I believe, to ASTM and they got to work deciding what the hazards were and how to address those hazards with the appropriate ASTM subcommittee. The subcommittee updated the voluntary standards, especially to include aftermarket mattresses, which was the primary objective of that petition. And the way they did that ASTM did this was to make sure that aftermarket mattresses meet the same requirements as the OEM mattress for play yards or the play yards in which they're intended to be used. And so at this point in the 21 version of the standard they're required. This crib mattress rule says play yard mattresses have to meet the same performance requirements as the OEM mattress. And so the final rule basically is codifying that part of the ASTM standard. Now we have added some more stringent tests for certain hazards that Hope has already gone over. So I feel like we've met the consultation requirement. I think the rule lays this out. We've met the consultation requirement. We are the draft final rule proposes to adopt the voluntary standard with more stringent requirements if the commission determines that those more stringent requirements are required to further reduce the risk of injury, which the incident data shows that they have the potential to do that. So that's what the final rule does. Okay. I appreciate that response, Mary. Thank you. My last question. It had to do with the letter that we all received from Ms. Nguyen about the graphics that were included. And the chairman asked that at the top. So it's probably, I thought that was a fine answer. So thank you. With that, I again, thank everybody for putting this together and for your work. I'll reserve my other questions for the executive session. Thank you very much. Thanks. I'll just go in and get a few questions. I'll go through your phone. With that, I believe we've gone through everybody at this point in time. Thanks for to staff for this briefing and to the commissioners for their participation. As I know, the start we're going to short break and read in a closed executive session now. Thank you again. Staff stroke. House. process.


The Treasury of Atreus, also known as the Tomb of Agamemnon, is an astonishing ancient structure found on the Paganica Hill, Mycena, Greece, which, according to academia, dates back a mere 3,000 years. However, the supposed accomplishments of its bronze-wielding builders is predictably yet to be explained by those who have supposedly accurately dated the structure. Undoubtedly, the most compelling and thus contradictory feature of this build is the lintel. Along with other lesser-known megalithic blocks, which still litter the site, the structure's lintel found within the build is currently known to be the biggest ancient stone lintel in the world. This weight-bearing block, which bridges the door's opening, is still, regardless of clear erosion, an incredible 120 metric tons. An inconceivable weight for our ancestors placed a mere century ago, let alone our well-studied bronze-age descendants, who are supposed to have been responsible for the quarrying and transportation of this ashlar stone, and then setting this enormous stone aloft more than two meters, perfectly placing it atop the structure's main opening. With an interior height of 13.5 meters and a diameter of 14.5 meters, it was the tallest and widest dome in the world for over a thousand years. The precision involved in the placement of these enormous stones once made the interior of the build appear polished smooth. Furthermore, above its astonishing lintel is another intriguing design feature in the shape of a pyramid, also used within modern-day rafters of house roofs. This opening was incorporated specifically to channel excess weight away from the lintel. This design feature was realized as essential for structural integrity, and was included to prevent the building from collapsing over time. This addition, we feel, could only have been made by members of a civilization who clearly had advanced technical knowledge of load-bearing architectural design, and as such, is indicative of techniques far too advanced for that of our bronze-age ancestors. This space, which is known as a relieving triangle, is meant to funnel the weight of the structure off the lintel and into the sides, preventing the lintel from cracking due to pressure. Furthermore, there have also long been rumors surrounding the site that it was originally found to have had an interior decorated with pure gold. Do these features sound like the work of our well-studied developing ancestors? Or perhaps, surviving work left by an accomplished group who were once part of an advanced technologically capable civilization? We believe that the evidence found at the structure is simply unexplainable when attributed to a primitive people. As such, it is highly likely that the currently attested opinions in regards to its construction are inaccurate and seemingly conspiratorial. How did an ancient people incorporate such enormous stone blocks into their long-lasting precision builds without the involvement of advanced weightlifting technologies? How can certain fields of authoritative study expect critical thinking individuals to believe a pervade account for the origins of such inexplicable ancient sites, and indeed the civilizations responsible, being that of a group just beginning to understand the science of producing smelted bronze? How were they capable of such precision with such gigantic weight-bearing architecture? It is, understandably, a highly controversial ruin, which is clearly highly compelling. Tokyo's Imperial Palace, home of the Japanese emperor and a place which holds many secrets. Some it seems hidden in plain sight for countless centuries. For many years, people have visited this marvelous building, and the perfectly kept grounds it is placed within. What is interesting regarding its historical history is the fact that much of it is hidden and yet to be told. The oldest historical accounts for the palace date back to 1457 AD, when a great warrior known as Edo Shigetsugu built the castle Edo on the site. Edo's clan would perish in the 15th century as a result of uprisings in the Kanto and Ota-Dokan regions of Japan. However, what is interesting regarding the palace's construction is its foundations, including the exterior wall, which many now believe was already in existence before the castle's construction, and also the reason the site was chosen all those years ago by the warrior Edo himself. The construction techniques visible in the original construction are clearly evidence of highly advanced building techniques, completed by a clearly highly advanced civilization. And these methods used within the foundations were not replicated throughout the more recent structure, as if forgotten between builds. Additionally, a piece of artifactual evidence was recently covered. A highly compelling building technique, which unquestionably links many ancient sites to one another, found all over the world, showing an intercontinental sharing of building knowledge many millennia ago. Known as the missing metal clamps, their carved seats still present upon many of the most ancient stonework at the palace, eroded away metal clamps used to keep the stones firmly in place as they settled over the following years after construction. Present at countless sites across the world, a technique somehow shared worldwide, only differing from country to country in their process of manufacture. The evidence to suggest that the palace of Japan is in fact built upon a far older and possibly once far more spectacular structure seems overwhelming. Yet questions remain, most obvious of which, who built the structure to begin with? When did they build it? And what was its purpose? Thankfully, the more we understand regarding the perplexing techniques used by this elusive, yet clearly once highly advanced civilization. The more of these ruins we are seemingly spotting, allowing for their study and subsequent preservation before lost forever. Thanks for watching guys, and until next time, take care.