matters here. Aloha and welcome to another talk story with John Waihe. As usual we have a very very interesting guest for all of you this afternoon and we're also trying a kind of a new process at least for me. Some of my other fellow hosts may have done this before but for me it's an exciting new experience and that is that our guests will be joining us via Skype from Kauai. I would like all of you to meet this afternoon consul well senator slash consulman Gary Hoosier and if you've heard that name before it's probably because it's been associated with some of the more progressive movements political movements in the state of Hawaii. Aloha Gary. Aloha Governor. Hello John how are you? Fine thank you. You know I invited you here well you know because you founded a very to me important important organization I guess or institution project which is to train young people who have a commitment to public service train them how to run for office and be successful but before we go into that why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself you know what it is that you how it is that you came about to do that. Well thank you and I'd be happy to you know I've I've graduated from high school in Honolulu Radford high school.  Yeah I've lived in Kauai raised my family here since 1980 have a background in small business and then in 96 or so I became really aware of what's going on and became very dissatisfied and I went looking to find other people that run for public office I went to the handful of friends that could get elected and say you know why don't you run right and they told me I was crazy and then said why don't I run and so I did I ran in 1996 and I lost my first race for the Kauai County Council but I hung in there and ran again in one served four years in the Kauai County Council then ran for the Hawaii State Center representing Kauai in the E how survey years there and then ran for Lieutenant Governor lost and then worked up for a short period for Governor Abercrombie as a director of the environmental quality and then I really loved serving in public office so I ran for the council again served four more years in the council and lost my last race well but tell us you know you were a very important part of the Senate I mean you were chair chairperson of the Consumer Protection Committee if I remember majority leader for four years I was a majority leader so you're in the leader and it was very involved with a lot of someone say controversial issues but I think very important issues marriage equality that kind of that kind of thing you know energy environmental protection economic justice issues well it's terrific so how does that background lead you I guess your programs called the Pono Initiative or I know it's connected to something called the Kuliana Academy so maybe there's several organizations that I helped start found you know I'm thinking and talking to my friends people like you and others in the community you know what's wrong with our government why isn't it working the way we needed to work and wanted to work and came to the conclusion was we needed to have better candidates running for office when I say better candidates I mean people that understand the process people that are electable and people that share our worldview of economic justice environmental justice and and so we decided I formed an organization called Hapa the Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action right and we have a statewide board I'm president of the board of volunteer and we've started this program that you spoke at yesterday thank you thank you and it's called the Kuliana Academy okay we bring in people from all over the state mostly young people but it's there's no age requirement people who want to run for public office or serve and don't know really how to do it and don't know where to start maybe they're a little afraid of doing it and we it's a competitive process people apply their interviews references are checked and then we put them through a very rigorous program training program and this is our third program we we've just started so how many how many people are in the in the I guess you would call them classes yes yes the core program of the one right now is around 15 people 15 and at the end of this year we will have graduated about 50 about 50 people from every single island and of those 50 I would guess 1515 will probably run for office either accounting office or state office in 2018 it's it's important that I point out that Hapa and the Kuliana Academy is a nonpartisan program so we don't endorse candidates and we don't support any particular party even though I'm a Democrat and the majority of people are we're nonpartisan and we train we identify recruit and train but we don't actually support the candidates as they run because we're a 501c3 okay I got it so tell me a little bit about the curriculum I mean how do you train some I mean you got like signholding 101 you know canvassing expertise and what what do you do we actually do signholding 101 the basic you know because it does take a certain experience you know to do it properly just like knocking on doors you know you got to watch out for the dogs as you know you've got a you don't want to trespass you know that has gotten worse over the years you know there was a time when the dogs were very friendly yeah so we have we have first class instructors that come in uh there's a gentleman John Bickel who you might know right John is the big award-winning speech and debate coach and he comes in and he speaks he teaches speech and debate uh another woman uh Don Webster she's a communications professional she has her own business she teaches messaging development uh Rebecca soon she's uh she's an experienced fundraiser she teaches people how to ask for money yeah and that's a core I mean you have to be able to ask and so that we teach the practical lessons like that what's interesting is that those people in their daily lives teach that will work in what they're teaching exactly but you don't get to learn about the practical application oftentimes of what being taught if you just take a college class or even a high school class you know you speaking is making for example but social media I assume that's got to be one of your courses it's big and we bring in social media experts you know when you knock on doors today in an election on your phone you will have who's registered to vote and who's not back in the old days you knock on every door but now you actually know who votes and so we teach those kinds of programs well we thought I thought I thought I was so progressive because I had cards you know and I'd flip it around you know but if I could have that information on my phone how much more effective that would be and you know that that's what we call the skills training you know public speaking fundraising how to knock on doors but we also bring in people people like yourself who have actually done it and we ask you we've had Representative Chris Lee Senator Ruderman Representative Beth Fukumoto Senator Schatz come in real real people that have are actually serving now or have served and and ask them to talk about how they first got elected you know and what it's like to really serve and what it's like what it takes to to uh to get elected the hard work to shoe leather as you mentioned it really takes shoe leather well you know as I said yesterday you know it this it's really interesting but if people are interested in developing or talking about public policies you know the entry is not some fancy classes it's shoe leather it's being willing to go out and go house to house meet your neighbors carry a sign and it's interesting to see that you've incorporated that but you also done something about I wouldn't say values but something about what good government looks like that's right that's right we bring in we focus on three areas when it comes to policy economic environmental and social justice kinds of issues and so we'll bring in people who work in these areas people from an organization called apple seeds you might know them they really know their the the numbers they know the policy and they sit down and talk about policy and talk about the realities of how of how those policies are passed or not passed criminal justice reform another big important issue so we combine the skills the issues and that motivation inspiration of people that are on the ground doing the work well I want to get back to the students again I guess I'll call them students yeah although they're you know as you say a diverse group of people but the students that participate seem to have a real commitment burden really for improving Hawaii are there for is that part of the selection process or do the development in the course of the the training how do you get that level of you know intensity that's a great question that's a great question I think it's a sign of the times actually you know with what's going on in the world and in our state there are a lot of people like the people in this class who are are concerned they feel that urgency and that need to make change happen and a belief in the system you know that's that's the dilemma they believe in the system but the system's not working and they realize a responsibility for themselves to step up and try to make it work and I think there's that urgency that's there and and again it's a competitive process so they apply they have to want to do this it's a sacrifice it's five weekends of their life that they have to spend with us in our program well you know that's all of that is great but it must cost some money it how is all this funded I mean how who who makes that possible the you know as a president of the board I have to brag on our board we've got a very strong board of directors it's a statewide board and the people in the community have stepped up and made donations so we we're out fundraising people go to hapahaihapa.org if they want to help but it takes it it's fundraising and we we fly people from the neighbor islands we put them in a hotel we feed them we you know there's a lot of expenses but we believe it's money that we're investing in the leadership of our community for the future what are we going to do you know we have to uh we what was a true chill who said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others yeah well it's the best when you compare it to the rest right yeah yeah and so what are we going to do we have to we have to make it work so you go to hapahaihapa.org you know what's interesting about all of that whether we like it or not and you both you and I have been in politics and it's not our favorite part of campaigning but one of the essential ingredients is being able to get people to give you the funds though the resources to run and what you seem to be what I get from conversations with some of the students is this this emphasis not only on getting big donors but getting your neighbors to share in your campaign absolutely I mean a fundamental principle of our fundraising is you have to believe in what you're doing and you have to be willing to ask people for help well we are going to come back in a minute and follow up on uh on this conversation but like everything else we need to put a what do we call this a commercial break no welcome to sister power I'm your host Sharon Thomas Yarbrough where we motivate educate and power and inspire all women we are live here every other Thursday at 4 p.m. and we welcome you to join us here at sister power aloha and thank you aloha I'm tim apachaw host for moving hawaii forward a show dedicated to transportation issues and traffic we identify those areas where we do have problems in the state but also the show is dedicated to trying to find solutions not just detail our problems so join me every other Tuesday on moving hawaii forward I'm tim apachaw thank you for every game day a sign a designated driver welcome back to talk story with john why hey by the way folks if you want to call in and have a chance to talk to gary directly or to myself our phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER> there's also an instagram kind of thing but that's for somebody younger and smarter than me call me if you want to talk again it's<PHONE_NUMBER> so here we are with my one of my favorite politicians gary hoosier gary you know I cannot believe that the only thing you're involved in would be actually non-partisan now I understand why you do that and I and I can see the the commitment and and and the dedication to training people for for participating in the system but you yourself must you know just haven't walked away from all the issues we have in hawaii you are very famous for example as part of the the movement I think to protect the aina in hawaii you know whether it's dumping of whether it's you know putting chemicals in our soil or gmo movements or anything like that I hope you haven't given up any of that absolutely not I mean you can take that to the bank I'm not walking away and that's what I love to do it I feel an obligation to be involved this one particular issue the chemical companies gmo pesticides we've been it's you know it's been really intense it's probably the most intense issue I've been involved with in the 18 years I've served in public office dealing with five major international companies some of the worst polluters in the world are here in hawaii and just trying to pass some real reasonable in my opinion legislation just disclose what you're using just disclose so people know who live nearby and don't do it next to schools and those companies have thought me too to nail you know I lost my last election to a large to a large extent because of that battle but in retrospect you know I'm okay I'm working on a lot of other good good things but we're going to continue pressing that it's kind of hard on a national level with the EPA being well the EPA now is I question whether it's even an EPA anymore you know environmental protection agency under our current president but you know Gary it seems to me like it's just good public policy not to destroy the soil that pleads you now I understand how and maybe I'm wrong you know but I understand how farmers have to put up with a lot of pests and the like but why why create why not create plants that grow well in an environment as opposed to plants that can take absolutely raunchy type poisoning and survive no absolutely and those poisons I mean the science is clear they permeate everywhere I mean they're in here they're in the food you eat oftentimes they're in the water and I equate it to smog in the old days we didn't just accept it right we we put some regulations to limit that and to reduce it to make our air cleaner and water so that's an ongoing battle that I'm not going to walk away from but I'm also involved in economic justice issues tax reform the minimum wage you know the people in Hawaii minimum wage minimum wage living wage that what yeah living wage minimum we call it minimum wage because it's you know in a sense I mean I hate to use this characterization but you know I'll go back to my long hair days you know or when I had here but anyway we you know minimum wage means the the smallest wage that you can get that the politicians would pass with a whole lot of with a lobbyist you know opposing it and so every time it's tried the the lobbyists come in and say the sky's falling bad stuff is going to happen and to my knowledge with all the increases have happened over the years there's never been any kind of economic uh downturn or any bad things ever happen uh yeah by the time people get a minimum wage it's no longer a living wage that right you know that it should it should tie to the cost of living you know what I remember when we were doing health care on the national level Hawaii had already established a um you know an employer mandate for health care and when you're trying to introduce that idea to in other states the same kind of arguments came up it was going to put people out of business blah blah and yet you got to ask yourself if you're not doing well enough to provide health care if you're not doing well enough to provide a living wage maybe you got to take a look at the business you're in you know absolutely absolutely and uh and people here are struggling as you know people they they can't find housing everything's too expensive and they're earning they're working two jobs and I I believe that our government needs to set an example regardless what the federal government's doing our state government and the counties need to start putting people first you know we've got luxury condo luxury apartments luxury homes all over the place we need to start putting our focus on working people in the community and uh that's that that's the kind of vision that i'm trying to talk about and put forward and that's the kind of vision that the kuleana academy participants the people running for office I think believe in also well I tell you when I was in the office one of my favorite uh projects you know to work on and was kakaako for example and and I thought of kakaako as being a place where young families beginning people beginning their careers would go and live and as you know I built the the state built most of the infrastructure not all of probably all of the infrastructure in kakaako and and what we what we said to developers was here's you know this is public money pain for your roads your sewers your everything else that you normally would have to pay for therefore you ought to think about providing housing for uh middle income or or um you know beginning family uh workers and and and we did I think I built like six different condominiums for aging and so forth I go there today Gary and I am dismayed to say I'm being nice to see condos that are being built for millionaires and hawaii millionaires are not going to live in those condos not exactly you know the concept of living working and playing for regular people in the area of kakaako I think is a great one but it's unfortunately been taken over to a large extent by these luxury developers and it's millionaires that don't even live there it's that they leave them empty half the time uh multi-millionaires and meanwhile we have homeless people in the same area you know I don't know the solution but there may be some of the part of the part of the solution may be providing jobs that pay well enough because they have a minimum wage that's a little meaningful no exactly exactly no I know of homeless people who have talked about why should they work all the time when they don't get nothing you know it's it's it's a desperate situation not to mention the mental health care that that is lacking in some of those situations as well we're also I'd be remiss the ponohawaii initiative is a separate from hawaii it's a separate organization right let's talk a little bit about supporting candidates it is supporting candidates okay so you train them as a non-partisan and then you hopefully support them when they decide that they don't like the the um policies of Donald Trump right and they're separate organizations with separate legal structures if you would and separate tax consequences I imagine that's right uh but yeah there's there's a lot going on I'm in it full bore you know every day this is what I do uh working on helping working in partnership with many other people uh you know it's not just Gary Hoosier by himself of course it's working with people like Appleseed or the Sierra Club or so it's a uh ponohawaii initiative going to be um ponohawaii initiative going to be active in the upcoming elections in 2000 it'll be absolutely are we're going to be endorsing candidates we're going to be helping them raise money we're going to be helping advise and support them as best we can around the state at the county council as well as at the state level you know what's interesting is that's the way that the people who now control legislators across this country what would they call I you know the um the tea party yeah like the tea party the tea party would be a good example they actually spent time getting into little offices not only big movements I mean you didn't the tea party obviously objected to some national politics and you know did their usual get out the march stuff you know we trained in the 20th century we trained a lot of people how to do that as a nation so but they actually went and did what you did and went out and elected mayors councilmen supervisors governors and and and worked from the bottom up and I hope that uh you know your your your effort is successful well thank you thank you very much and it feels really good it feels like it's moving in the right direction uh we had several people uh students participants in the program who were elected to neighborhood boards a few months ago and so they realized that that's that the real grassroots neighborhood boards community associations boards and commissions that's where you start yeah yeah if you get that I mean we're still a country that you know I look when Donald Trump got out of the uh Paris agreement or announced that he no longer was going to participate in the part Paris agreement dealing with global warming one of the things that happened is that all across the nation and the world millions of people protest and I thought in my myself was that that's such a 20th century solution as what happened next was it was in my mind more exciting when whole local governments said I don't care what Donald Trump does we're going to follow the agreement including California that seems like the 21st century solution and tell me if I'm wrong but it seems like that's what you're trying to do you're trying to do a 20th century 21st century response to some of these issues exactly you know it it's an old adage of think global and act local so I believe here in Hawaii that at the state level and at the county level we can manage our own affairs and we can set an example for the rest of the country actually and you're going to create local global citizens here we go I tell you thank you Gary I enjoyed it very much governor for for taking the time and invite me on today and good luck and uh you know you're creating some very exciting uh movements in the state right


Are you an Ubuntu user? If you are and maybe you're an Ubuntu user and you want to experiment with standalone window managers, such as standalone floating window managers, like OpenBox or JWM or FluxBox, or maybe you want to explore tiling window managers like Awesome or Qtile or DWM or Xmone. How do you go about setting up an Ubuntu system with a standalone window manager rather than one of these full desktop environments like GNOME or KDE Plasma? Maybe you don't want any of that stuff installed on your system because you're not going to use any of those GNOME utilities or KDE utilities. And you don't want all the bloat. You don't want all these extra packages installed on your system. Well, how do you go about doing that? Well, I was an Ubuntu user for many years and I've always been a standalone window manager user. I've never used any of the desktop environments, even when I was an Ubuntu user and typically the way I went about this was I installed Ubuntu server, which Ubuntu server is a very stripped down version of Ubuntu. Hardly anything at all is installed. Nothing for graphical environments is installed at all. You start with a seriously stripped down base Ubuntu system and then you build it from the ground up, much like you would do, for example, on an Arch install. So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to install a Ubuntu server and then I'm going to install a standalone window manager and a basic suite of utilities inside Ubuntu server just to show you how to get started along in this process. So let me switch over to my desktop here. So I've spun up a virtual machine here. So and this will be Ubuntu server 20204. I'm going to use the LTS version of Ubuntu because 99% of the people that use Ubuntu as a desktop operating system or a server operating system are probably using the LTS version. So that's what I'm going to stick to for this video. So I'm going to choose try or install a Ubuntu server and this should launch us directly into a live environment where we can run through an install.  No, no, no, this will be all text base. So this will be a text base installer. Those of you that are familiar with the incurses text base Debian installer, the Ubuntu version of this is very similar. So I'm just going to quickly run through the installation. English is chosen as the language already. So I'm just going to hit enter and we'll move on here. And then installer update is available. Do we want to go ahead and update to the latest version of the installer before actually running the installer? Sure, why not?  I guess it's the name of the incurses installer here. That's interesting to know. Then it says, please select your keyboard layout. English US is the default and that's correct for me. So all I need to do is click done here and then choose the base installation. So we're going to do Ubuntu server or are we going to do Ubuntu server? Minimize, I'm going to tab until I get up here. Now I could, you know, choose a different option here if I wanted to. But for me, I'm going to go back and choose the default option, which is the Ubuntu server option. And then tab down until I get to the done here at the bottom of the screen. And now it's configuring the network. I'm just going to click done here proxy address. I'm just going to leave empty. I don't need to enter anything for this mirror address. It's the default Ubuntu mirror. That's fine. I'm just going to click done on that. And then what kind of installation are we going to do? I'm just going to do the automatic installation, let Ubuntu automatically partition the drive here. We need to select a drive. Those we need to arrow down here to select a drive. Actually, the drive, I think it's automatically selected. But if I wanted to select, if I had multiple drives, I think I'd hit enter here and I would get a menu system. But because I only have one virtual drive in this virtual machine, there's really only the one drive to select. So if I tab down, will I get to the done at the bottom of the screen? Yes, I will. Let me hit enter. And then we get our summary. So everything looks good here. So I'm just going to go ahead and click done. And the installer is going to warn me that it's about to format the drive and write to the disk. I'm going to choose continue. Now we need to go ahead and create our username and password. So my name is DT, the server name, which is the host name of the computer. I'm going to name this Ubuntu-vert. And then we need to create our username. DT is the username. We need to create a strong and complicated password. And then one more time, confirm the strong and complicated password. And then tab down to done and hit enter. Now, do we want to install the open SSH server? I almost always have SSH installed on all of my machines because I like to be able to remote into all of my computers. But for sake of this video, I'm going to skip this because I'm never going to SSH into this virtual machine. So I'll skip installing SSH here. Next up is a lot of server related packages that we could install. And of course, we're not really setting up a server. So I don't need Kubernetes and Next Cloud and Docker. I don't need any of this stuff that is offering us. So we'll just skip installing all of this. This is really going to be a very stripped down version of Ubuntu that we're installing here. All right, and now the installation is running because we're not installing very much at all this installation really should just take probably a couple of minutes. And the installation has completed. That took about three or four minutes. You can tell the installation has completed because now at the center bottom of the screen you have the option reboot now. I tab, I can get to reboot now. And that of course will complete the installation. So that's what I'm going to do right now. And the machine has finished rebooting. So we're at a log in here. So let's go ahead and log in with our DT user. And now that we're logged in, we need to start installing some stuff. Let me clear the screen to get my prompt toward the top of the screen to make this a little easier to read. So obviously there's no graphical programs at all installed, XOR is not here. Nothing as far as GUI applications and fonts and themes, all of that stuff and none of that is here. But the good thing about Ubuntu is the app package manager does manage dependency. So if I just install anything pretty much that's a graphical program or a graphical environment, a window manager for example, it should pull in XOR and everything for us. So just to verify this, let's do a sudo app install. And for purposes of this video I'm going to choose a window manager that already includes a built in menu system and panel. So I don't need to install a lot of extra apps or do any hardcore configuration on this video because that's not the point of this video is me configuring a window manager. I want to show you how to install a window manager on a minimal Ubuntu server system. So let's choose ICWM because ICWM is a window manager with a panel and a menu system. It's almost like a desktop environment more than a window manager. So if I install this, you can see it's going to pull in 152 packages including of course XOR and a lot of the X11 utilities and that's what we want in this case. So I'm going to go ahead and install ICWM first. All right, now that we've got ICWM installed we need to install some other stuff. And just because I chose ICWM you could have installed your window manager of choice, JWM, Fluxbox or whatever it happens to be the awesome window manager. Whatever window manager you're installed though you're probably going to need some other utilities. If I can type I'm going to do a sudo app install and again we need a text editor on the system. Now the good thing about Ubuntu server unlike Ubuntu desktop is Ubuntu server does install Vim out of the box. It also installs Htop out of the box for a system monitor and a program where we can kill processes. So I don't need to install Vim or Htop like I typically would on Ubuntu desktop. But we do need a web browser because we're going to have to maybe look up documentation, right? So I'm going to install Firefox in this case. It's going to pull in Firefox by the way as a snap package on Ubuntu.  It really doesn't matter. I know I'm going to need a file manager. I like PCMan FM for a file manager on a window manager only systems. One thing be careful about file managers. If you're choosing a file manager that is typically part of a larger desktop environment make sure when you run the install that file manager command make sure it doesn't try to pull in an entire desktop environment such as GNOME or KDE because that's not obviously probably what you want. Now I want a program that gives me the ability to set wallpaper. So I like this program here called Nitrogen. And now that we have a program to set wallpaper we need to also install a wallpaper pack. Now Ubuntu has a bunch of wallpaper packs available for pretty much every release Ubuntu has ever had. And they're typically Ubuntu dash wallpapers dash and then the name, the code name of that particular release of Ubuntu. So Ubuntu 2204 was jammy jellyfish, right? So I'm going to do Ubuntu dash wallpapers dash jammy. Let me hit enter and it's going to install some dependencies of course but it doesn't look like it's pulling in anything crazy. I don't see it trying to pull in like the entire GNOME desktop environment or anything like that. So this looks good. And you can see it's trying to install Firefox as a snap. Again, if you really want to you could go find a dead pack for Firefox if you don't like snaps or you could probably find Firefox as a flat pack you'd have to install flat pack though. Or you could install Firefox probably as an app image or again, just choose a different free and open source web browser. I'm sure Chromium is available or a cute browser, LibreWolf. I know LibreWolf is available as a flat pack and an app image. And that is finished installing. I just remembered there was one thing we forgot to install. So we installed a web browser and our file manager. But what's the most important thing we need? We need a terminal emulator, right? And Alacrity is not available in the Ubuntu repos but regardless of whatever terminal emulator you end up using, typically go ahead and install Xterm because there's a lot of window managers standalone window managers especially standalone tiling window managers they kind of expect Xterm to be installed on the system. A lot of times their menu systems are hard coded to where they have a terminal entry and that terminal entry expects Xterm to be there. So install Xterm just in case. Now I would like a better terminal emulator to use other than Xterm. So let's see, LXterminal is one that I don't mind. It doesn't have a ton of dependencies I don't believe. So let's try to install Xterm and LXterm. Yeah, there's really not much dependencies at all to either one of these terminals. So those were good choices. And that's it. I mean really I could go ahead and log into ICWM right now with the basic utilities that I've already installed. Now we don't have a login manager installed. I could install a login manager such as light DM but if I'm only gonna have one window manager on a system I could always just use start X so I could just type the command start X all one word and it should launch us into our window manager which is the only window manager on the system in this case, ICWM, but it errors out because Xinit is not installed. That is a dependency for the start X command and it actually tells us the command line actually gives us the command. You might wanna sudo have to install Xinit. So let's go ahead and do that. There were some dependencies to that. So some X11 dependencies but we need these. We're gonna need most of the X11 stuff on the system obviously to have a proper graphical environment. So now let me start X and it launches us into ICWM. Now let me see if I can get a terminal emulator up and running that way I can change the screen resolution. So if I click terminal here, yeah, it defaults to Xterm and Xterm the text is really small. I know you guys are not gonna be able to read this. So let me see if I can find another terminal emulator. I know I installed LXterm. So if I go into utilities terminal emulators there's LXterm because I can zoom in LXterm and I'm gonna run the Xrander command. Well, assuming I can type it Xrander is not installed. And once again, the app package manager is really nice because it gives us exactly what we need to do to get the Xrander command. So I'm just gonna do a shift control C to copy here in the terminal and then shift control V to paste in the terminal. And let's run that sudo apt install X11 dash X server dash utils command. And now that we've run that let's go ahead and try to run the Xrander command now. And now we get a list here. This output lists all the available resolutions for my graphics driver here inside the VM. The one I want is Xrander space dash S for set 1920 by 1080. And now we have a proper screen resolution. We have the ISWM window manager up and running. We've got a menu system and a menu system that we don't have to manually full with like you do, for example, in something like open box or JWM. This is automatically populated with the programs that we've installed, right? So that's very nice. Now we installed nitrogen for our wallpaper setter. So let's see if I can find nitrogen. There it is under utility nitrogen. And what you need to do, go to preferences and then add a directory. Now the directory you wanna add on most Linux systems is slash user slash share slash background. So I'm gonna go into slash user slash share slash backgrounds. Yeah, and there are the Ubuntu, Jami, Jellyfish wallpapers. I'm just gonna select it okay. And now you'll see the previews of the wallpapers here. I'm just gonna pick one of them. I'll pick this Jellyfish here, hit apply. Yeah, I like that. I think that's the one I'm gonna go with for now. Now let me get back into the menu system and go back to system, terminal emulator, LX terminal. And once again, let me zoom in so you guys can see what I'm about to do here. Because I'm gonna install a few extra packages. I'm just going to save some of you guys a lot of heartache and pain because there are some packages that really should be installed that are not obvious until you start trying to install other programs and you need these dependencies. For example, if you're going to build any software from source, make and a lot of the build essentials, they're not here out of the box in Ubuntu server. For example, if you're a suckless kind of guy and you wanna build a D menu or ST, the suckless terminal, they won't build because the make command is not here. So let's go ahead and sudo apt install build dash essential. Give it your sudo password and you can see now it's going to install make and lib fake root and all the stuff that we need to actually do a proper configure make sudo make install. Now let me go ahead and clear the screen. Now some other things that I might install would include things like lib x11 dash dev. I'm also gonna install lib xft dash dev. I'm also gonna install lib half buzz dash dev. And the reason I typically install these are these are dependencies for things like the suckless terminal. They're also gonna be dependencies for other things. You're gonna need lib xft for a lot of things. And then also I'm gonna install lib Xenorama if I can spell it correctly dash dev. And I know that is needed for D menu to compile correctly. And even though I haven't installed the suckless terminal or D menu, again, I'm just saving myself some time in the future in case I do install those programs or other programs that will also depend on these very basic packages that on most Linux distributions they'd already be installed anyway, but because we installed such a minimal server distribution obviously these things are not here. And now that I have those basic dependencies installed what I could do, I could get clone some of my packages some of my suckless builds from my GitLab. So I could get clone HTTPS colon slash slash GitLab.com slash DWT1 slash. And let's go ahead and download my build of D menu which is a D menu dash distro two is the name of the package. Now if I do it in LS you see I have a directory here in my home directory D menu dash distro two. Let's go ahead and CD into that directory by doing LS. There is of course the source files. And now let's do sudo make install. Now this command would not have run had I not installed those build essentials earlier. So that's why I did that. And now it compiles correctly. So now D menu should be installed on our system. So if I did D menu underscore run here from the terminal you can see at the top of the screen there is D menu and I could search for a program for example, search for LX terminal just to open another instance of the terminal because we don't have much else installed. So yeah, so that is a very quick installation of Ubuntu server with a very minimal window manager and just a few basic applications just to get you started along the way. Now before I go I need to think a few special people. I need to think the producers of this episode. And of course I'm talking about Gabe James Matt Maxim, Mimic Mitchell Paul West. Why you bald homie Alex, Armored Dragon, Chuck, Commander Henry, Diokai, George Lee, Mars, Drum, Nate, Erion, Alexander Paul, Peace, Archimoudour, Polytech, Reality, Swirless, Red Prophet, Roland, Steven, Tools Devler and Willie, these guys. They're my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon. They are the producers of this episode. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen. All these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on Patreon. I don't have any corporate sponsors. I depend on you guys for support. If you like my work and want to see more videos about Linux and free and open source software subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. Peace guys. I forgot to install Emacs and ZeroAD.


All right Madam clerk Good evening. Mr. Rickerman mr. McDowell. Yes, mr. Duval mr. Badura. Hi, mr. Vine here mr. Davis President Do you all please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance and then? Red McDowell Yes, sir Red McDowell. Yes, sir. Please bless us with a word Let us pray Lord. We pray for this city of ours Even in the midst of chaos This past weekend Even in the midst of losing a student Lord, we thank you for This city who rallies and comes together as one Columbia as this family Continue to grieve over this Our sister Lord, we thank you for Persons in this city our CPD and our chief Who so gallantly led us in the investigation and Was able to find the person what this city hurts tonight Because of the loss Of a rising senior We would simply ask that you might cover this city the students the parents Members of this city of ours with your love and with your care We understand that even when it storms in our lives There is also peace That eventually comes So we ask your blessings upon us Who consider ourselves? Investors in this city and we pray for this city To be stable filled with compassion We ask it in your name. Amen. Thank you so much Reverend McDowell Reverend McDowell mentioned Samantha Josephson in his prayer And I can think of very few Weeks that have been as difficult as this one Samantha Josephson Renia white right Ten-year-old beating the death by a fellow student Young Jeffrey F. N. Gaines a standout student keen in the high school Senior at USC upstate murdered this past week just across this state this incredible cultural violence that seems to have engulfed American culture and Stealing our stealing our children from us We can do so much more and so much better I I think Rev. McDowell and all of you for the incredible spirit of unity the the constant prayers and the constant edification and that we give to each other the Time our colleagues are spent with our chief of police and our city leadership our staff on on Continuing to think of thoughtful solutions about more that we can do all that we can do together everyone working together To continue to manage the things that we can manage but more importantly we've got to do something more So much more about Not just the issue of compassion and love but but spending more time Dealing with this this disease Violence in our community and we're going to spend more time as a as a council as a city Building people together to discuss more that we can do as individual citizens We can't control every outcome, but there's always more that we can do if in fact we're going to be a More perfect union. I bet I bet ourselves I asked that all of us continue to pray for the Josephson family and and friends for the for the right family and friends for the Gaines family and friends and the number of young people that we that we lose In this still considered to be the most Prosperous and prominent democratic nation in the history of the world that we lose at a higher rate than every other developed nation in The world we've got to do more We've got to do more Chief thank you and in your team for your incredible leadership that you continue to provide and I know that with our collective support you'll be able to do even even more but Incredible leadership we're thankful for you and in your team Mr. Mayor if I could just say and and this wasn't due to a doubt a violent act but if we would also keep the family of Gianna Summers in our prayers the three-year-old who was killed riding her bike in North Columbia This city continues to be Dedicated to making sure that we have a city that is bicycle pedestrian friendly And although this was a tragic accident. I think it elevates The steps that we've been trying to make to make sure that young people young and old have places to to ride and that we have Safe streets to be on so I just asked that we elevate them in our prayers as well C manager At this time we will ask for any public input related to the items on the agenda as outlined Being none we would ask our council to adopt the agenda So move Second any discussion saying none to move the previous question court call the roll mr. Recommend I mr. McDowell mr. Duvall Mr. Divine hi mr. Davis Council is asked to approve consent agenda item 6 through 20 their motion so moved a second That discussion saying none move the previous question the court call a roll mr. Recommend Mr. McDowell mr. Duvall Mr. Badura mr. Vine. Hi mr. Davis Mayor Benjamin Moving into a period of presentations Mr.. Mayor we've asked that you recognize national public safety telecommunicator week Proclamation, thank you. I'm city manager in 1991 I believe it was the first year of Congress designated the second full week in April as national public safety Telecommunicators week to recognize nation's first first responses when you down 9-1-1 someone has to answer the phone And we're thankful. I have Incredible staff here in Richardson County in Columbia, and we depend on their skill the expertise and commitment To answer our 9-1-1 calls every day to recognize their hard work We want to proclaim the week of April 14th 2019 as national public safety telecommunicator week in Columbia. All right. Who's gonna accept this? The 9-1-1 We're so proud of miss rich burg and her team. They are some of our unsung heroes So we're very happy to recognize them during This month when they're celebrated We have some of the young people I know mr. Vine you probably want them to be here mr. Mayor for the sec the next Presentation if we if you don't mind we can hold this one until they arrive for the financial literacy piece I think they're in route and move on the item 23 the Envision Columbia second anniversary celebration Miss Alicia, you'd see public and media relations director Mayor city council and city manager Wilson Tonight we want to acknowledge the second anniversary of Envision Columbia, which is city council's vision statement We want to highlight accomplishments for 2018 And we also want to acknowledge the diligence and hard work and perseverance of our city leaders on city council But also our city staff and our city manager Because without them these programs projects and initiatives would not have come to fruition We are showing some photos right now and we showed these prior to the meeting We also have some on display of just a few of the projects programs and initiatives that launched during 2018 And that connect directly with our Envision Columbia focus areas of which we have seven Also, we want to make sure that the public is aware for those who are watching live streaming And we're reaching out to the public as well that we have a second anniversary report And we'll share a copy of this with the audience tonight we also have a second anniversary video and Justin if you will cue the video we're going to show a very short version of the video We have a much lengthier version that covers all of the highlights, but we just want to share this with you tonight Talk about being the most talented Educated entrepreneurial city in America showing people what that means As society adapts the different means of getting around from bikes and scooters to autonomous vehicles It's intriguing to see how cities that are that adapt are going to be the ones that prosper So what the city Columbia wants to do is help you guys get some money and save it up so that you can do some really great things in the future This will be the office of community services for us. So a lot of the units that are providing community services Will be housed right here. There'll be a lot of activity here It's one of the first times we've commingled ourselves with another city division being parking recreation This is the first time in our history and really the first that we're aware of at least in the region The that an entity and municipality has gone after green bond to support stormwater infrastructure So it's really leading the way in in in doing that and in funding these infrastructure improvement projects Justin again, none of these accomplishments would have been a possible without your leadership and the Dynamic and diligent team that we have here at the city of Columbia led by city manager Wilson At least this time we like to close the presentation. We want to acknowledge the visionary leadership of our city We have certificates to present to all of you for your visionary leadership including our city manager And since we rarely get a chance to get all of you together We would like to get a group photo of council and members of our Executive leadership team to stand with you behind you and get a group photograph to acknowledge our second anniversary Yes, our leadership team to join us. We're gonna come down front. Yeah Opportunity to get all of you together Thank You miss Uzi Our ordinance is second reading and we will definitely come back to the final presentation when the young people arrive All right, we have a second reading for a zoning text amendment amendment section 17401 to exempt signage associated with a motion and put weight-finding program is that motion Second second discussion saying under with the previous question part color all Mr. Rickerman. Hi, Mr. McDowell. Mr. Duvall. Hi, Mr. Badura. Hi, Mr. Vine. Hi, Mr. Davis Mayor Benjamin. Hi item 25 ordinance number 2019 021 granting an encroachment to experience Columbia SC For the use of right-of-way area of the 60 million block second In discussion saying unmoved the previous question correct color all Mr. Rickerman. Hi, Mr. McDowell. Mr. Duvall. Hi, Mr. Badura. Hi, Mr. Vine. Hi, Mr. Davis. Mayor Benjamin. Hi Ordinance is first reading number 26 ordinance number 2019 012 amending the 1998 I'm sorry is there a motion amendment I apologize I have an amendment mayor, okay On the back of your Hand out the night that there's an amendment that's got three amendments to it I'd like to we'll be the same they're the same ones we went over at last meeting it removes the exemption for hotel rooms it adds it makes all of the footage 25 feet from specific places that have non-smoking entries It cleans up some language about being prohibited to possess smoking materials and it's and it says you've got to be using it You got to have it smoke Smoking it or lighted smoking materials, and I'd like to move that we make these amendments to the Ordinance on first reading second moved by mr. Duvall second by mr. Badura in discussion Seeing none move the previous question Kurt color all mr. Rickman. Hi, mr. McDowell Mr. Duvall hi mr. Badura hi mr. Vine Mr. Davis Mayor Benjamin hi Ordinance number 2019 020 granting an encroachment of Vincent J. Deegan hard and Denise Deegan hard for the use of That motion so moved just second second any discussion saying on with a previous question clerk color all mr. Rickman Hi, mr. McDowell mr. Duvall hi Mr. Badura hi mr. Vine. Hi mr. Davis Hi item 28 ordinance number 2019 023 and that's a 120 sparkle Berry crossing road and motion Move in second any discussion Saying none will move the previous question clerk color all Mr. Rickman hi mr. McDowell Mr. Duvall hi mr. Badura hi mr. Vine. Yeah, hi Dave. Hi Hi Item 29 ordinance number 2019 024 813 supplemental ordinance providing for the issuance and sale of the city of Columbia, South Carolina water works and sewer system revenue bonds and one or more series in the aggregate principal amount of not exceeding 117 million dollars Move in second discussion Mr. Mayor, yes, mr. Rickman, maybe if mr. Pailin or someone would just for the public sake explain A rather large number So each year we have our capital project Plan the the capital project plan for this Current year was 120 million of that We are paying for roughly 22 million out of operating cash and another 98 million out of bomb proceeds That is this bond here the not to exceed amount of one million one hundred and seventeen would include any Possibilities of if we had to issue a debt service reserve fund Which would make up the biggest difference or there could be a premium or a discount along with issuance costs So that's why the amount's higher than the 98 million This goes it's part of our plan to get through all of the issues that we were required to Get completed This is this is part of our much larger plan to address water and sewer issues And I think we've had probably the most aggressive investment in infrastructure of any other city in the state maybe the southeast so Good work. Thank you all. Thank you Clinton your team Mr. Mayor if I can also maybe request for one of our work session meetings to maybe look over some of the Capital projects that we've done in the past to improve the system and what we're going to do in the future just for public Knowledge more than anything else will be and if if we can schedule that it'd be awesome and We'll be glad to forward the information to our residents the same town Before we put it to a vote I'd also like to just recognize again our incredible Staff at Columbia water for their work with the granite That that's a significant move forward for the environment for the entire Midlands and Congratulations on hard work Believe there's been a motion in the second are any I'm with the previous question. Kurt Colorado. Mr. Rickman. Hi, Mr. McDowell Mr. Duvall. Hi, Mr. Badura. Hi, Mr. Vang. Hi, Mr. Davis. Hi, Mayor Benjamin. Hi a period of resolutions item 30 resolution number R 2019 033 authorizing the city manager to execute an amended and restate at least agreement and amended and resated operation and maintenance Second discussion See none move the previous question. I've heard Colorado. Mr. Rickman. Hi, Mr. McDowell. Mr. Duvall. Hi, Mr. Badura. Hi, Mr. Vang. Hi, Mr. Davis. Hi, Mayor Benjamin. Hi Resolution number 2019 036 authorizing the city manager Execute a real estate purchase agreement between the city of Columbia Community Development Department and move approval second discussion Seeing none. We'll move the previous question. I'm Kurt Colorado. Mr. Rickman. Hi, Mr. McDowell. Mr. Duvall. Hi, Mr. Badura. Hi, Mr. Vang. Hi, Mr. Davis. Hi, Mayor Benjamin. Hi Miss Jenkins can assist counsel with any of the appointments as listed Beginning with the Board of Zoning Appeals form-based codes. All right, so Ashley We have how many and an attorney and a planner, right? What I was trying to determine is whether or not that the engineer would satisfy the Planner requirement. I know we'd had that on a previous Board, I think maybe DDRC and we were trying to find out if that would satisfy that or not It does not so we will have to repost for the planner position and Is there a motion on the appointment of Macaulay Mars Marson or no? Second The So today we have we have Boza form-based codes CMRT CMRT a comet tree and appearance commission food policy and The Midlands Authority for Convention Sports and Tourism Other than another some consensus around the Midlands Authority What's the sense of urgency around is there a sense of urgency or? A sense of the body on some of the other pointies I have I have checked with the Tree and appearance and I have a slate for that. All right, dude. I would like to hold one slot for an appointee We have three at large and one at Arborist and one reappointment I would like to suggest on the Columbia train appearance commission that we reappoint Regina Monteith Absolutely, they we appoint Andrew Cheatham to be the Arborist slot and I will We have three at large I would move Russ Jeter and Jim Irvin for two of the spots and leave one one spot available Second any discussion saying none move the previous question clerk color all mr. Rickerman. Hi, mr. McDowell Mr. Duvall. Hi, mr. Valdura. Hi, mr. Vine. Hi, mr. Davis. Hi, mr. Benjamin. Hi, I'll move the appointment of acts of When the skip down the agenda to the Midlands Authority for Convention Sports and Tourism move the appointment of Professor Rich Harrow With the previous question Mr. Rickerman Yes, mr. McDowell mr. Duvall. Hi, mr. Valdura Mr. Vine. Hi, mr. Davis. Hi, mr. Benjamin Can I just ask a question regarding the comment? So out of our three appointees Two terms are expired one actually Well, I did reading it is a term expired under Ron Anderson, but it also had an appointment Term that ends in 2020 I was right. I guess apparently he was reappointed From that period that began November 2017 that goes through 2020 So we just need to remove the term expired the actual expired term is Caroline Gliten And she's only served one term. She only served one term. I spoke to her. She's interested in reserving And I'm supposed to send in the application, but I haven't received it She is interested in reserving I Do just want to note for the record that in As terms come up that district three now has district two has four members on the Midland District one has one district two three has two district one four has one so in the future I think we need to make sure that we're spreading this Equally around the districts. Yes, sir. Really noted mr. Rickerman I Know we're just bouncing around a little bit Move the appointment of Macaulay Morrison to the Board of Zilling Appeals for basecoats attorney slot Second All right, any discussion saying none move the previous question court color all Mr. Rickman Daniel Yes Mr. McBowen, Mr. Wall. Yes, Mr. Badura. Hi, Mr. Vine. Hi, Mr. Davis. Hi, Mayor Benjamin We need to repost for the planner slot. Yes, okay, let's put that up one more time and Let's get back to Policy policy and the comet as well. All right Sorry, we're holding Well, I mean So you don't have an application for her, but she expressed to decide to be reappointed I spoke with her Caroline I saw an application or an email or something something indicating her her preference Yeah, I would look with her over the phone. I will move her reappointment. Okay I in discussion move the previous question of court color all Mr. Rickman. Hi, Mr. McBowen. Mr. Duvall. Hi, Mr. Badura Mr. Vine. Hi, Mr. Davis. Hi, Mayor Benjamin. Hi, and I mean I don't may check our files as well Ashley, I may actually have her application. It's been I know I spoke with her. She said she would send it So yeah, I've seen it. Okay. I don't have the food policy memo. I apologize. I Apologize actually because I forgot that it was being carried over to this agenda. Okay, otherwise you would have your print out Okay, we'll take it up next meeting Okay Do we have enough copies for everyone? I don't think we have enough applicants Let's uh, there's just three. Yeah, and you have four slots. We don't have enough. Yeah, so it does not read re-advertise what I would do, you know What do you have them suit you have just just these all new appointees That's a pretty quick. That's a pretty quick turn Already Do you have how many slots and how many Actually, can you send me the information that I posted? See if we can get some more interest Let's Yeah, let's do it next meeting comprehensive memo. Thank you. Thank you We'll just take that action. Mr. McDowell. All right So we're done. All right Our children here All right, moving back to our final presentation the national community development week national fair housing month and national financial literacy month proclamations miss gloria sy director of community development Good evening, mayor benjamin members of city council At city manager wilson. Thank you for moving us around on the agenda We really wanted to make sure that we had the principal from watkins nance elementary school And as many parents and children here as possible as we recognize cd week their housing month and financial literacy month Some of them got a little misdirected, but hey, we do have two of the children here So we would like to go ahead and ask that You all bear with us as we go through a few things So as you all know community development is going to celebrate Several things during the month of april I have given you all folders that have calendars of all the events that we're doing and we have quite a few plans I'm not going to read them all But I would like to highlight that some of the things that we're going to do We're going to do homeowner Homebuyer training classes, which actually some of our staff they're doing tonight. We're going to have a CD week Luncheon and on friday. We're going to end with CD week block party So we're hoping that your schedules will allow you to participate in some of the events that we have planned During the luncheon our very own miss tamika isa Divine pro tem would be one of our panelists. Um, we will have a discussion on poor credit and debt preventing Economic opportunities will also have a keynote speaker at our luncheon. Dr. Akira Ross, and he's the 2018 national principal of the year So mayor benjamin if you would like to go ahead and read the proclamations Let your honoree or super duper guest speaker Okay So whereas the month of april has been designated national fair housing month to recognize and celebrate the 1968 passage Of title seven of the civil rights No, yeah civil rights act No title eight, excuse me of the civil rights act into law which prohibited discrimination in the sale Rental and financing of dwellings and and in other housing related transactions based on race color national origin religion sex Familiar status and handicap continuing to help countless that countless thousands of americans Achieve the american dream of obtaining safe decent and affordable housing And whereas the week of april 22nd through 26 2019 has been designated as national community development week by the national community development association To celebrate the 45th anniversary of the community development block grant program and the 28th anniversary of home investment partnership program And whereas the cdbg program provides annual funding and flexibility to local communities To provide decent safe and sanitary housing a suitable living environment and economic opportunities Along with the home program that provides funding to local communities to create decent safe affordable housing opportunities for low income persons And whereas the u.s. Department of Housing and Urban Development the columbia field office of HUD The greater community relations council in the city of columbia Excuse me have made great strides in opening housing markets and providing fair housing Education to underserved groups thus giving many more americans an equal opportunity to live wherever they choose And whereas housing discrimination although less obvious and pervasive than in years past Still exists and the need to enforce fair housing laws remains just as urgent today Now therefore on behalf of the mayor steven k. Benjamin The city of columbia urges congress and the administration to recognize outstanding work being done locally and nationally By the community development block grant program and the home investment partnership program by supporting funding for both programs for fiscal year 2019 2020 and encourages all members of the middle east community to work together to step out housing discrimination All right, thank you now the financial literacy one absolutely and as you all can see there's no way in the world that someone with my Age can read this. So I had to give it to miss divine. No certainly consistent with Our focus on community development revitalization and investing in our citizens. We recognize the importance of april 2019 as financial literacy month this city Has made significant strides and want to really compliment miss divine for our leadership in this space On the importance of financial education Including the highlights of creating children's savings accounts columbia kids save Recognizing by recognizing incredible students from larkin's nance elementary that enrolled and representative from the richon school district one and With support from south state bank as uh as a partnership Participants we want to encourage the csa participants to continue their pursuit of financial literacy and sustainable assets Including through their post-secondary education. So we're also proud to recognize april 2019 as national Financial literacy month and thank you all parents and and educators for investing in these young people Are you boys going to speak? You got you have a speech. You have a speech ready. I said you're gonna speak. He started smiling Thank you All right You can do it. Not really Well, boys, can we can we take it? Can we take it? I'm sorry. Please go ahead. Do you want to say something change your mind? All right, can we take a picture with you? We would like to say on behalf of richon school district one and especially at Watkins nance for our babies Um, thank you so much to mr. Nate barber with south bank Thank you for Stephanie because she comes religiously so that our students can deposit their funds But also to our mayor pro temp miss divine. I don't know how she comes up with these ideas But we love the fact that you love the city of columbia and you love our children. Thank you so much Amen, you're gonna take a picture with us You Thank you all so much. We like to get a picture with the staff or the cd week in fair housing proclamation And also with with the bank and the Watkins nance elementary school and parents Thank you Nothing from work session Any reports or referrals to committee? All right, we only had um any other sheets Ian sign of the speak, but I think he's uh departed already You know the citizens are you guys are you guys j school students? They okay. All right. Good to have you all here You got lucky tonight. It could have been a four hour meeting. I think you did all right All right. Is there a non-debatable motion to adjourn In discussion with the previous question court colorole. Hey, we got we got more babies. You got more babies. You got more babies Is it good? Do you need do you want do you want to say good night to us and what's what's your name young man? Good night So good to see you my man. Thank you for the bacon program. All right Thank you Motion to adjourn. Mr. Rickerman. All right, mr. McDowell. Mr. Duvall. Hi, mr. Vadura. Hi, mr. Vine Mr. Von Mr. Davis mirror Benjamin. Have a good evening


We're gonna kick off our closing ceremonies. We're gonna kick it off for the talk and To enter that talk a little bit. It's important to remember that Ethereum. Ethereum is not just a technology It's a community. It's a movement and within those movements within this community We have values and one of those values is the importance of civil liberties civil rights and protecting those and for that I would like to introduce Kurt Opsol from the Electronic frontier front frontation the deputy executive director and general counsel so big round of applause to Kurt Opsol Thank you everybody. Thank you. It's so great to see so many people here today I've had a great time here at Devgon and I'm excited to talk at the closing ceremonies talking about some of the Value of cryptocurrencies in supporting human rights these civil liberties privacy free expression these rights that this whole community holds dear a little bit There we go back. Sorry about that. So a little bit about the electronic frontier foundation We are a nonprofit organization that has been around since 1990 Fighting to preserve your rights online fighting for free expression for privacy for innovation Trying to make a world that we would want to live in to make sure that the dystopias there possible won't happen The sci-fi we read is not going to be necessarily the future unless it's the cool sci-fi with the utopias All right, so let's talk about how we as a community can be supporting rights and liberty There are a number of ways that cryptocurrencies can help support these rights And I'm gonna just talk about a few of them today because we only have a few minutes But decentralized financial options can allow and support political social moral views can provide more options by taking away some of the centralized choke points which are often used as a point of failure a point where control can be put onto a system and impose Push put push back on unfavor or disfavored view points ideologies. So one of these Financial censorship This is when a centralized financial service is under pressure from political regimes from social movements to say that something that may be lawful that may be You know within the bounds of what the law has said society can have But it goes outside of their code of conduct or their review or just is subject to pressure and they forbid lawful activities another one which I know is very important to this community is the protection of privacy and I think we'd rather explore that a little bit. What do we mean by protecting private? What is it doing privacy? Of course has its own value, but it's also fundamental for protecting other rights other rights that we hold dear like freedom of expression freedom of association and Making sure that that your information is protected by due process that Governments can't get access to the information without going through the appropriate steps Necessary and proportionate steps to ensure that there's not government overreach And another way that we can help doing this is enabling the decentralized web moving away from chunk points have other options that people can choose enable competition and Allow it so that there's not a single point of failure That will enable people to choose things that reflect their values and allow for their values So let's dive a little bit deeper into this avoiding central financial censorship One of the ways that this first came to my attention was 2010 with wiki leaks where wiki leaks had engaged in Publishing some material about the Iraq war that upset a lot of people in the US government And they put a lot of pressure on MasterCard visa PayPal the sources of donations for wiki leaks How are you allowing these funds to go to this or organization? This wasn't a legal claim. They didn't pass a law to say that money could not go They just effectively made it extraordinarily difficult for people to fund wiki leaks And one of the ways that wiki leaks was able to get around that was by accepting Bitcoin accepting cryptocurrency as a form of donation because it didn't go through those mechanisms and This is an effective form of censorship or can be an effective form of censorship Because these financial institutions are necessary for most people to be able to complete transactions But it can have serious ramifications for free expression by taking away the funding that an organization needs in order to put His expression out there in the world They rely these organizations rely upon financial institutions in order to enable their sites their operations So the how does this affect people this comes up in a number of ways, you know membership and organizations You often reflect your values by joining an organization EFF is one does the ACLU and NAACP the NRA There are many organizations around the world where people band together to reflect their values And they want to join become members and show their financial support But if those organizations are cut off from the financial system It can be harmful the organizations and make it difficult for people to band together use their right of association to express their the right of expression Also, it's reflected in media that you purchase by supporting artists Video artists podcasters book writers who are giving you the information that one you want to read You have a right to read as part of your right of free expression And this is also essential for free expression so you can see the ideas see the discourse and participate it by consuming media But if you can't get access to that because of a financial censorship Then that cuts you off and inhibits both the freedom of expression of the site that you're going to the publisher And your own freedom of expression by using your right to read and get these ideas and information and it persists to this day You know I pointed out I you know saw this with WikiLeaks, but it continues persists often it comes up in the context of Erotic material which is lawful but disfavored and it gets cut off by some of the major Choke points in financial transactions and these would be things that if under US law and a lot of international principles of free expression it would be unconstitutional to say These things are not allowed. They are are constitutionally permitted to exist But by putting pressure outside of the legislative system outside of that process They can cut off funding and make it more difficult for those things to survive and the internet if it's going to achieve its Future as a global forum of expression as a way for people to exchange ideas. We cannot deputize Intermediaries to become the morality police and go outside of the legislative process go outside of the policy process Circumvent that and have a private entity become the morality police now also Protecting privacy and it's not take a moment here Why do we care about privacy? What is it doing to do? There's a number of ways of looking at it There's a Louis Brandeis quotes I put up here on the on the slides that I think capsules are very well the right to be left alone To that's not your business. That's my business. Just leave me alone and allow me to do my thing That is a core autonomy aspect Of the right to privacy, but it's also control over the flow of your information That where you give information, you know, what consents have you given? Have you consented to give it to one person, but then they're going to give it to another? Where does that go and having some ability to have it? I want this information about me to be available to my friends to my family another set of information I want to make available to colleagues a third set to the public But having some control over that flow of information can help bring about a a way you can express yourself and keep the things you want private to be private and Also privacy today making your information confidential today. It's a protection Against dystopian future a future in which what was normal what was okay What was not something that you felt endangered about forgetting out there and in the public today The rules might change a new government comes into power and what was previously no big deal now is a big deal By maintaining your privacy today You're providing a protection against a change in the environment where things that you thought were okay are no longer and Here's a sort of one Former board member of my organization wants for this protection against the robots from the future But we'll be able to look back data mine all the information from your past activities see what you were up to and Judge it by then the future standards, but if you have that information privacy protected you yourself are protected Also as I was mentioning before privacy is fundamental to lots of other rights and We're looking in this case Financial transactions in particular they can reveal deeply personal things Like we said, this is the this is the mirror image of the expression issue. We hit before so Financial censorship was preventing organizational organizations from receiving the funds to have your membership But also your transaction reveals something about you it affects your private information By giving money to that organization Just as the the supporting an organization or a media producer by purchasing their product helps them It also reveals something about you about your interests your your ideas that you are consuming Your medical expenses can reveal a lot about your conditions That you might want to keep private and we also live in an era where some medical information can be disfavored some medical treatments are politically or socially disfavored and The information that you're using your financial means to purchase these services can be used against you and using it for execution Shopping history shows a lot of what your interests are and often is used to make inferences about these interests What you're going to do what what intent do you have? Now anonymity can provide a lot of protection We were able to do things in an anonymous manner. It protects against the tyranny of the majority that allows for Views which are not a majority view not a popular view But you can have them and have protection from retribution for having these views by having anonymity or pseudonymity Allowing you to operate in the space without having to reveal Kitterle information about your identity So this comes up a little bit of a challenge and one of the things I want to focus on here Is when you have a public ledger and the public ledger is a list of a lot of transactions and Yeah, they're going to to a wallet and if you never connect that wallet in any public way with your identity that might be a form of protection But not everybody is able to do that Most people will be using a service or at some point will use a service that ties their identity To their wallet and if you ever do your whole history of transactions becomes revealed This is a a challenge and then with that revelation all your shopping history your interest and such also become revealed and This is a it's a challenging thing to have a situation in which you might be able to use anonymity But if you make a mistake You could have a whole history revealed, you know It's more sophisticated people can do things like have multiple wallets use them for very purpose, but you still need to have a high level of sophistication and accuracy to do it well, so One solution to this which has come up a lot at least so I want to hit on it exactly Mixers and in particular tornado cash The tornado I'm sure many of you are familiar, so I'll just go over very briefly what had happened back in August the Office of financial assets control olfactory part of the Department of Treasury They placed tornado cash on the specially designated Nationals list and they they put a number of wallet addresses and so on But they also put you know tornado cash by name on there and they had a parenthetical aka turner cash classic aka turner cash Nova and This was on the list and this struck everybody is kind of weird because this is a you know piece of software It is a smart contract on the blockchain There's also a DAO associated with it. There is the you know the open-source project But what do they really mean by tornado cash because this list is usually for entities It can also be about property if you look at the list You'll see some like oligarch boats that are on there But on the whole it is designed and and built up to be about entities particular people and They're listing tornado cash Without any further definition was it was vague perhaps deliberately vague So this led to some consequences one of the most immediate consequences was that github which had hosted the canonical tornado cash repository took it down they also took down the accounts of three of the primary developers and This really hit home for EFF because code being speech is one of the core Things that we've been fighting for we're fighting for this since the since the 90s coming up in the encryption wars And this was code being taken down for Well putting on a sanction list not even with a law about it, but just placed on this list Perhaps even mistakenly perhaps they didn't mean the code itself though if you'll notice in the way they defined it they aka's are Not easily confused like a tornado cash nova was a beta that they had issued It's not easily confused with an entity now I tend to think that it's more likely that this was they had no idea what they were doing more than you know malice or at least Malice in the sense that they they intended to take it down But they still had no idea what they're doing secretary of state blinkin tweeted out right after the OFAC listing saying that they had gone after the the North Koreans and and taken them down Reflecting a very strong misunderstanding of what tornado cash was that tweet was deleted Very shortly thereafter, but it might be a clue into some of the confusion that they had but nevertheless It was on the list. So one of the things that we did was to We represent professor Matt green. He's a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins has been involved in Zcash and zero knowledge proofs and he also teaches about the blockchain and he wanted to use tornado cash as part of his teaching But he also wanted to put it back up there in part to show that you can put it up there You do have a right to it. So we agreed to represent him in this. He made a fork. He put it up back up And OFAC well didn't do anything about this and this helped show people that The code could still be published believe that both github had the right to do it and Professor green had the right to get hub is a private entity as a private entity can choose what is on its platform But they had the right to keep it up and they had the right to keep up professor greens copy Which they have been doing But there still are a number of unanswered questions so Why why do we care about this? Well, I'm sure you all care about this, but I think it's good to Say, what are the principles behind the code of speech issue? So cryptocurrencies blockchain technologies, they're expressed in code and you Was saying this part of a community community has values you are expressing those values in the code that you write and Code has both function and expression But function is a part of his expression when you're making something which is a privacy enhancing technology You're expressing this through the source code saying how it works. That's a very clear expression, but also Having it be functional is part of what you're trying to express and part of that speech Recognizing code of speech as I was mentioning we've been fighting this since the the 1990s it came up in the encryption context in the first instance and in the Export control context was very similar to the sanction context. It was a program called snuffle open source encryption program During that time there were expert controls because encryption was being treated like a munition It was something that was a military technology It was a dual-use technology, but as a dual-use technology You had to get permission to export it and there was a silly time period where Netscape Navigator the prominent web browser of that day had an international version and a domestic version and the domestic version had Much stronger encryption than the international version with the idea that now the NSA can more easily break the communications of the international version and That you know make their job easier It was ridiculous because it was trivial for someone to get a copy of the domestic version outside of the United States It wasn't very effective, but also it was interfering with the free expression of The cypher punks who wanted to have a world which had lots of cryptography in it and expressed that by making freely available code So we had some parts the first case Bernstein versus the United States Recognize the code was a kind of language They likened it to German French like you know human languages But also music as a form of a language music has been done in notation as much for closer Mathematically to code and it is a way of expressing such and established that the source code that was put up by Dan Bernstein was speech Later there was a case younger versus daily that had another point which I think is very critical Recognizing that the fact that it course for it is not just speech. It's not just a poem but it is a Functionality it can be compiled and do things and that does not preclude the constitutional protection is still speech Now to be clear Disapplicing that something is speech is not the end of the story There then if it is speech in the United States the government has to pass a test if it is content based regulation on it has to go through strict scrutiny and there's intermediate scrutiny and You can look at the functionality as part of that scrutiny when trying to determine is the government doing You know the minimum necessary in order to achieve their function. They don't have collateral damage They are not going beyond their power the higher level of scrutiny the harder it is for the government to pass the test But it still has to have that protection and the government has to show Why this is the thing to do that is necessary to solve their problem and they are not hitting Untended consequences collateral damage along the way now. These are United States courts But I wanted to say this is not just a United States principle So a while back we did a white paper on the American Convention on Human Rights Which is an international treaty throughout Latin America? Most countries are our signatories to it also enshrines freedom of expression in it We developed the argument looking at cases looking at precedent that under the American Convention of Human Rights Code should also be considered speech. I think this is should be a universal understanding where you have free expression Which you have protected in many international human rights treaties That we need to make sure that people understand that code is a form of that expression and should likewise Be protected whether you're coding in Latin America in the United States or anywhere around the world which respects human rights So thank you. So the OFAC did have a response. They issued some frequently asked questions and answers They did clarify that mere publishing of the source code was okay. So that was great. Professor Green was was in the clear They said that there's some dusting that occurred after they did the sanctions and they said that was low priority They didn't say don't worry about it, but that it was a low priority prosecution And they provided people with a way to apply for a license to get their money out of the mixer Though you have to give up the reason you use the mixer the privacy rights You're trying to protect in order to apply for this license. So it's not a really great solution that way They also used this word saying it was okay to interact with the source code But that's pretty vague word in the examples. They were using like teaching a class about it publishing it studying it Well, those are good examples. They're right But our interact was too vague and I would like to have OFAC clarify or maybe we have to have the courts clarify That things like contributing to the code is also Okay that publishing the code Publishing a compiled version is also okay Now there's other questions that are open well Did they have jurisdiction to do this in the first place as we were mentioning it's super weird to have a piece of source code a piece of software on an entity list and The entity list is a power that is granted through through the statutes as it have they gone beyond that jurisdiction beyond what They are lawfully allowed to sanction So there have been a couple of legal challenges Coinbase is funding a lawsuit brought by a number of people who are challenging the Treasury Department's sanctions They're asking for a tornado cash to be removed from the sanction list This week coin center also filed a lawsuit They're getting together also a bunch of plaintiffs and then in themselves included Again to delist tornado cash and they're Raising a number of these issues some of their focal points are on the jurisdiction of OFAC to put software On this whether they have exceeded their authority whether they've acted arbitrarily and capriciously Outside of the scope of what their administrative authority is And they also raised some of the code of speech issues in the coinbase lawsuit It was talking about the ability to write the code to develop the code And brought that at issue in one of their claims and the coin center They're talking about receiving money anonymously as a nonprofit organization or member organization the ability to allow people To fund them in an anonymous and private manner the right of association, which is also under the First Amendment in the United States So these cases will be we'll be moving forward and You know, we may file on Mika's brief to help support them I think you should continue to follow them But now while we're depending let's take a moment to think about why this all matters Why do we care and a lot of it is about open source? there's a lot of open source is part of what this community builds and It is vital to be able to have lots of contributors adding the code be able to research develop the code make Poll request modify it find security holds fix them But if the contraders are going to be held responsible if later that software is used for something bad They shouldn't be held responsible merely because they contributed cold that would have a chilling effect on the development software that is vital to our future and Not only is this chilling effect going to be you know bad for innovation But even the very information that you know the people who want to prevent money from going to North Korea and ransomware might like to see the innovation that might be able to improve upon the code so it can be providing the privacy that we need and Allowing for a way of stopping money from going to ransomware so Privacy as we said it is a fundamental right and Take a moment to think not just about Tornado cash mixers as a privacy protective tool But all the other ones that are out there that could be used to protect the privacy of someone who's hiding from the law But nevertheless are important for a free society Encrypted messaging encrypted communications being able to encrypt your information when you store at our line Anonymous browsing anonymous servers file transfers all of these things Rely on being able to you protect your rights by providing encryption anonymity technical protections and They are vital for our society even if they could be misused So we want to avoid that chilling effect and I say that I think that this is Your rights to have and that the chilling effect should not dissuade you from writing the code But we want to establish that so hopefully in the courts or by OFAC Relenting but getting this clarified so we all know that we can go ahead and keep contributing to this code And so to wrap up I'm out of time here, but hopefully some time for some questions So saying together we can make a brighter future You can help chart this course you can do it through getting informed and getting involved talking to your representatives Getting involved in policy discussion trying to get your views known and acted upon and you can do it by building tools by building civil liberties Privacy into those tools making things safe making them usable making them so that they have privacy Built in from day one Make sure they're they're decentralized There's not a single point of failure that the government can go after can go to try and stop things and Together we can make that brighter future. Thank you Awesome incredible. We do have time. We do have time for some questions. So we have a couple runners in the audience Who has questions in a couple minutes? I see one back there one hand up one hand up for a yeah for a yeah Hi there. Hello. I Definitely agree with All that you've said except like then how does a criminal get caught if they're Using like the internet for nefarious purposes like There's been some recent cases like there's this documentary I saw on Netflix of like a sex cult that was in South Korea and they only caught them because they were able to find the chat rooms the secret chat rooms in telegram That the cult leaders were using No, a good question, right? So how how does the police able to do its job when we have all these technological? Protections well, I mean my first response to that is we live in a golden age of surveillance the law enforcement authorities have more ability to conduct surveillance at scale surveillance of People like records about where you go your phone It's constantly talking to cell towers giving your location They can get that information correlated with some other person's phone and see who's traveling together and get an idea of relationships the the ways in which the government has investigative tools at their disposal are legion and for going into a telegram chat room well Traditional investigative measures having someone undercover Pretending to be interested in that kind of thing and getting into the chat room That is the most often way in which they get inside encrypted chats Ops sec is hard and traditional investigative techniques continue to work and What privacy enhancing tools most protect you against is? Suspicionless surveillance where they want to do it at scale where they don't have a particular reason to go after you If they do have a particular reason to go after you there's other methods like trying to get a Network intrusion tool or a knit onto your phone and just look at the endpoint So it gets decrypted by your phone when you get that down there and they look at it at that point And if like the NSA or the Mossad or the GRU is interested in you in particular Then probably a lot of these privacy enhancing tools You're gonna have to up your upset game a lot and the tools alone won't do it So what I'm trying to protect against is suspicious mass surveillance The government has to have a reason and want to spend the resources to go after it and not doing it on millions of ordinary people Okay, hi It's me. It's Alex here. So first things for your work, and I definitely agree with everything you said Thank you I was just wondering about Something you didn't say right I missed seeing a name being talked on the tornado cash And that's of course it's Alex birdseve case and I wonder what an important are you are you do you do you want to Say something about the case or about him about like so. Yeah, you're talking about the case in the Netherlands Yes So one of the challenging things about the case in the Netherlands is that he was arrested but not yet charged So he's been held and he went to a hearing and asked Well, hey, am I free to go and they said no But he still hasn't been charged and I'd like to see what the charges are that they're trying to bring Before analyzing that situation because what I don't want to see is that he's been charged merely for Contributing to the code, but I also don't want to speculate as to what they might have against him that you know It is the government's job to say why someone is in jail Why someone has been charged and bring and then we can look at what they say and say what that's wrong Why you know what the defenses are so I try not to speculate on things that are not charged But that is not to say I'm not sympathetic for a situation. I'm not a Netherlands lawyer So I don't know the Netherlands law Particularly well, but I think as a policy matter it is unconscionable to arrest somebody criminally One and not charge them and let them know what the charges they can build a defense But also to create this chilling effect implication that because he contributed to some code That that's why he was charged and I wish they wouldn't have done that Okay, today most we have time for one more question one more question. Yeah, great. I'm on hi Kurt I had the pleasure of seeing you at the Z-cash convention in Las Vegas a few months ago And now you're here, so you're really making the rounds. I'm excited about that My question is with all of the ZK technology the privacy protecting Technology and Z-cash a theory in the competitions that are happening What's your general thoughts on that and also is there anything that's missing from a lot of them? Maybe philosophy or values perspective when they're building this So are they a good good good questions one is that like I think zero knowledge technologies are extraordinarily interesting and the way of being able to prove just one thing without sending extraneous data I think I've heard like while being here talk to various people and Ideas that are underway or being researched that if they come to fruition We'll be able to allow for a number of things that don't have this leakage of metadata around them that we often see so I'm very excited about the possibilities of these technologies the other part is what more could be done and I think one of the things that is going to make all of these kinds of Technologies goes on on the blockchain generally smart contracts, especially privacy enhancing ones to have the most value They must be able to be used by a wide range of people people who are not technically sophisticated who might not have the latest versions of software who are operating on a five-year-old smartphone that doesn't get updated all the time and still they can make a secure Transaction because they can do something in a manner that they feel comfortable Knowing what they're doing that they're not going to make mistake and you know lose what they're trying to do so usability security keep it secret keep it safe and I think I would be I mean people are all working on that but that's the area I want to be able to have it so that everyone can take advantage of it in an easy to understand and easy to use correctly way All right. Thank you everybody Awesome amazing. Let's give a big a round of applause for Kirk from the electronic frontier Amazing