Hi, Fuffa Ray. Hi. Finally made it. I think it's been just over a year since we adopted Bunny, our rescue greyhound. And I wanted to give you guys a one-year update because a year ago I promised you that I would do this. And it's been an amazing process and time. As you can see, she's a much different dog now. She's very happy. We're so happy and so lucky to have her. But for those of you watching these videos, like in a row when we got her to the next week of having her to fast forward a year later, I did want to, you know, give you a summary, I guess, of our experience and Bunny's progress. So yeah, it might be a little long-winded. It might be, you know, not what some of you guys are interested in. But I did just want to make this. So here we go. Here's Bunny's one-year update. I think she's just gonna sleep here. She's not gonna look at you. So first and foremost, the biggest change for Bunny over the course of a year has been her general decrease in anxiety. She used to be afraid of everything, the kitchen, the TV, overhead lights, her water dish, everything outside. And now she will gladly almost come all the way into the kitchen if we're in there cooking. And she will always be in the kitchen if there are treats. So she has greatly decreased her fear of the kitchen and kitchen noises, as well as overhead lights in general. A year ago, she did not want to be around the TV at all. She didn't like the sound of it. She wasn't a super fan of there were like crazy visuals.   We would try it with the sound on, but the visuals off. She didn't really respond to the training at all. Then one time we took her to Big Bear and the TVs there were much smaller and much older and she was in a new environment and decided that suddenly TVs were kind of okay. Then by the time we came home, she sort of decided that the TVs were not that bad. And she started coming in there on her own terms, little by little and spending more and more time in the living room. Now she's in love with Seinfeld. She will sit on the couch or the little beanbag chair in there and watch Seinfeld for hours. She is allowed on the couch. A year ago, we were not sure if we're going to let her on the couch. We didn't know how she would do with the other dogs on the couch altogether. She is allowed on the couch with Julian and I and the other dogs and still under some supervision. She's not allowed on the couch when we have guests over, even though sometimes she thinks she is and she'll jump up there and try to claim dibs. But she's very respectful when we ask her to get off Julian, started doing it, slap his leg and say bunny come. And she's very respectful of the rules of the couch, which I know to her might be a little gray. Like what do you mean sometimes I'm allowed on the couch and other times I'm not. But she's a very good girl about it and will always go lay in her bed or on the beanbag chair in there when we ask her to. One of my favorite times of the entire day is breakfast and dinner because sometimes she used to get scared to eat. At first she might pick at her food if she was feeling stressed. But now she gets so, so excited to eat. I know eventually we should probably calm this down a little bit. But when you have a really shy dog that you're trying to get come out of their shell, it's just the absolute best thing to see. So we definitely encouraged her getting excited at feeding time. Now it's probably a little overkill but it is just it's really cute. She is incredibly respectful of our rules that we have set for her which is a nice change from the Italian Greyhounds which for some reason are just made of pure mischief. But he doesn't have that like streak of mischief in her. We have a baby gate for example when we're in the game room and we're working and it's a short gate. Like she could easily step over it or knock it over. But because it's there she's incredibly respectful that it's time to stay in this room. And the reason that we have that there is that because although Bunny is really good about going potty outside she doesn't still at this point always know if she's in a different part of the house that she should come tell us that she has to go outside you know. So we do let all of them out like on a regular schedule but on times when we would just let her sit in the living room while we were in here sometimes she would just be like I gotta pee and she would get up and pee on the floor and it would be like Bunny. She's a very big girl it's a lot of pee. But I would say she's like what 95% good about going to the bathroom outside. A year ago when we got her uh if you watch any of our Twitch streams we had to make like a whole thing that says it's flashing and Julian would have to mute his mic and it says Bunny is barking. We would get her so exhausted like multiple walks a day tons of play time tons of just getting her as tired as we could and then right every night at like 10 30 or 11 it was like Bunny party time she would get up she would get rowdy she would bark she would insist that it's like Bunny time and we just did not know what to do but that slowly stopped as she started getting more and more accustomed to our schedule so now when we're in here at night streaming or gaming she just chills and that is so much better than 10 p.m. Bunny barking time. Also the same thing with the podcast though she's always been really good with the podcast she likes to just run right up there it's a room that she goes in once a week when we're filming that and she gets really excited that the door is open and we bring her bed in there and she just sits there and chills the entire time. She's a very compatible dog for us and that she likes you know walks and energy out and playing a little bit but for the most part she's a couch potato and we work from home and we just we're always chilling so it's nice to have a dog that likes to chill. Also in our bedroom at night she used to sleep in a crate really happily she liked it it was her safe place she really enjoyed that then slowly after a few months out of nowhere she would just start barking at night at like 11, 12, one in the morning like she would get up she would get unsettled and she would just bark really loudly like a let me out kind of bark we had the idea you know let's just open the door and see what happens and she would walk out of her crate walk around like look at the tv go in her crate get kind of scared and then settle so we started sleeping with the crate door open at night and every night she would sort of like get up and walk around for a minute and then go back in but it seemed like to me she was sort of showing interest that she wanted to sleep outside of a crate at night that's just what felt safe to her but that she was like building up her bravery to you know maybe sleep somewhere else and then eventually I started putting beds and blankets around the bedroom to see if she would ever choose a different place to sleep and sure enough you know she might spend like 30 minutes in her bed and then back to the crate and then over time she just decided that she didn't want to sleep in her crate anymore and it was really cute because you know when she's downstairs she's not in the crate she's sleeping on couches and beds and blankets although she will almost always choose a blanket sprawled out on the ground over a dog bed or even the little couch we have upstairs or this couch I don't know if she gets hot or uncomfortable but if I had known in the beginning that she wanted to sit on blankets as much as she does I would have saved a lot of money on dog beds like she just prefers them she also figured out all on her own when she started sleeping outside of her crate that if everyone else is on the bed I wouldn't be on the bed so one time we did invite her into the bed not to sleep but to sit and have some cuddles see how the other dogs did much to marble's horror at first he was like what are you doing up here you're too big the rule is for her which she's again incredibly respectful of no going on the bed at night no going on the bed if you're not invited and it's only in the morning pretty much so right when she wakes up she's really cute depending what time we wake up she might bark at us she wants us to get up or she'll walk over the side of your bed and sniff you and then she wants to get invited into the bed so we ask her nicely because she'd like to come up in the bed she usually jumps up there and she just has like I don't know 10 15 minutes of just really sweet morning cuddles and she just wants her belly pet and just to spend some quality time and she really enjoys that I think it really makes her feel like one of the other dogs like she's part of the pack I don't really care what anyone thinks it's just so sweet and I wouldn't trade that time for anything in the world I just think it's so nice I know there's a lot of people out there that sleep with their big dogs I mean there's already three small dogs in our bed I don't think that we will ever allow her to sleep with us in our bed A because she doesn't really like being touched while she's sleeping and bothered completely understandable but especially by the other dogs when she's sleeping she doesn't want to get stepped on and walked on and they walk around the bed and walk over each other constantly also a year ago you might remember how we had to teach her how to walk up and down the stairs that's not a problem anymore she's really good at it and sometimes she likes to be first up the stairs and first down the stairs first out the door gate means go if you're a greyhound so anytime there's like a possibility of a door opening her face is like smushed up against it she's ready to go you might also remember we had a hard time with her resource guarding toys and reminder with that is that's a dog's resources so if a dog is really attached to their food or their bed or a toy they could you know show signs of aggression or growl at you snappy you bite at you depending what you were trying to do I don't know she would growl at us like really nasty open mouth growl at us like this is my toy and you're not going to take that from me and we did work a lot with her on drop it or leave it teaching her that if I take the toy first of all I'm giving you the toy but second of all if I take the toy it's not gonna disappear I'm gonna play with you at first that was really hard and it was a difficult thing to work on but I think that the biggest change actually came from building a relationship with her and building trust with her more so than the actual training of drop it or leave it and that she knows now that she can trust us I'm not gonna take your toy and make it go somewhere that you don't want it to go the worst thing that's gonna happen to it is it's gonna get thrown across the room so you can chase it and it's even more fun now or especially if she takes something that is not hers she no longer resource guards that she listens well we do like a leg slap or bunny drop it whereas some of you guys might remember the very first command that we had to teach her was watch me because she didn't understand that I was trying to communicate with her Gray save the adoption agency that we got her from did warn us that they get really attached to their people and anything that smells like you they might be interested in taking and we've heard that you know remote controls or even cell phones is something that if your dog smells it and it smells like you they might take that and destroy it she's not really a destructive dog she doesn't really want to destroy stuff but she will steal your things and horn them so for her she will take any shirt or socks or hat or anything that you've left somewhere in the house and hoard it usually either in her bed or in the living room on the floor where she likes to play with it and toss it to herself and I know that we can stop this by stop leaving our clothes places but I mean if that's really the worst she's gonna do and she's not gonna eat it or destroy it it's very cute and she does respond to drop it and leave it but you know every once in a while you'll find like a whole sweatshirt in her bed and you're like where did you get this you might also remember us not being able to leave the house for more than 20 minutes at a time and she would go in her crate we do crate her when we leave the house the very first time that we left the house with her in her crate she barked so loudly that she set off the alarm in our house and it was really difficult for a while for us to be able to crate her and leave her I did watch a bunch of youtube videos on how to you know ease some of the separation anxiety you know because we're home all the time even an hour a day you know to go to the gym or to go to the grocery store was a long time for her and we had to work up to that so it was like 15 minutes and 20 minutes then 30 minutes then 40 you know we really worked low and slow and long on building up that time with us leaving the house right now we haven't really crated her in a while which I'm sure she's not upset about at all we would put a Kong toy with some of her kibble you know subtracted from her meals with some peanut butter on it and leave her in there with that and at first she was not interested she was upset and over time that sort of became her routine and she was excited to have some peanut butter and would happily sit there for you know an hour and a half two hours while we went to the gym grocery store that kind of stuff since then we've built up that time so much longer and we feel much better and she feels much better about being her crate if we're not here which I'm proud of that's a hard work in terms of her relationships with the other dogs I would definitely say that she's interested in Peach the most they're both girls they're both very similar in age and Peach is really sweet so anytime Peach is in one of our laps and Bunny brings her head up to us Peach will give her kisses and she I think she's still a little afraid of Bunny's size when they're like running and playing she will chase Peach and Peach will chase her back a little bit I think that they're still working on their relationship but that's the one that will probably happen the first and the fastest she's not interested in the boys and the boys aren't interested in her the boys are only interested in me and sitting in my lap and getting the most attention from me she's just not interested in them and I doubt that they will ever like be buddies but I do think that Peach and Bunny have the potential to be buddy someday in terms of her relationship with us Bunny loves me plenty like she's very affectionate very sweet she loves me I'm her mommy but she thinks Julian is just the best person in the whole world they have probably the cutest relationship she always wants to play with Julian like Julian is her play buddy if she could pick someone in this house to play with it's not Peach it's Julian it's not a toy it's Julian she will let him do just about anything like when he picks her up I don't know why she lets him do this or or any of the things that she lets him do to her but she just thinks he is the best she wasn't super interested in affection when we got her she just didn't really respond to it she didn't really make eye contact with you or give you any indication that she was enjoying it if she wasn't she wouldn't really give you any indication that she would like you to stop either so we taught her a thing that I called more which was I would pet her and then take my hand away and then shake her hand and then pet her somewhere they knew she really liked and then take my hand away shake her hand and then pet her somewhere I knew she really liked again and over time that turned into more and I would say you want more and if she wanted more pets she would reach out her hand and ask for more and then that way I could know when she was done getting attention you know she could just lay her head down or stop pawing and then I could leave her alone and if she wanted more I'm happy to give her more I mean most of the time when you're petting her now the answer is more but you know it's a good thing for me to know and for other people to know if she would like to be done with the attention I'm just I'm gonna let you know I'm done overall though I would say that adopting bunny was one of the best decisions we've ever made the first few months were really hard they were a lot of work it's not a lot of the fun dog time that you're hoping to get eventually now all of our days really feel like those days that we were hoping would exist someday now we get them every day you know we're not people that have had big dogs in the past and I've certainly never had a greyhound I've certainly never worked with a dog that didn't have like a previous experience you know just being a dog it was a lot of work desensitizing her to everything and you know we still have a lot of work to do like she's good with people she's good with dogs she always has been since day one even with strangers people coming in the house we haven't had to worry about that and it's been so wonderful but she does need some desensitizing to you know the rest of the world she's great on walks she still doesn't like trucks you know something she hasn't seen yet so we just need some more time with her unfortunately we're quarantined right now so we're not currently working on that but I don't think she cares right now I think she's having a great time if you just adopted a greyhound like I said even that that first week that we got her you know if it was just her it's really not too bad but because half of the work comes from retraining your other dogs how to coexist with a new dog a big dog and a dog that has uneven energy sometimes was very difficult but this has been I would say one of my proudest accomplishments and I know Julianne you agree with me at this point we we couldn't imagine our life without her like she's become so much joy and so much fun and I know I'm biased because she's my dog but I just think that she is one of the funniest dogs she looks funny sometimes and I just think that greyhounds in general have just the sweetest most delightful personalities once they get a chance to really let that shine and come out when they feel safe and they're very sweet they're very sensitive I just I couldn't make sure my life without her since we've done this and you know there were so many days a year ago when Julianne and I would look at each other and just really celebrate our small victories and be like I can't believe that she did that I can't believe that it's getting better you know and now looking back on it it's hard to remember how difficult it was because she's so much better and all she really needed was just some love and patience and she did the rest you know because I don't think it was all of our training I think that helps but it's just a testament to how incredible dogs are and greyhounds are and all of the change that happened really came because she wanted to and she felt safe enough to and she did the work you know we worked hard taking care of her and trying to give her a safe home but you know she really came all this way I guess if you guys have any other questions or anything I can answer I'm gonna try my best to get back to some comments or stuff or tweet me and I'm always happy to give any advice that I could although this was just my experience and I'm not a dog trainer nor am I a dog professional but this has been one of the most positive experiences for us and I'm just overwhelmed with happiness like we have so much love and joy that did not exist until we got her and now we have all of this like she's just great I can't imagine not having her and I think all of the organizations that adopt dogs like Bunny or really any dog I mean they did a great job helping us get a dog that was really good for us and we were good for her and we were a very good match I want to say thank you to GreySafe thank you guys for being patient well some of our content was a little different for a while and you know it's even different now but thank you for being supportive thank you for your advice when I was really struggling for the first couple months a lot of you guys gave me some really great advice we did it we wanted to adopt a greyhound and she is just the most wonderful dog we could have ever asked for and this definitely made us better people and better dog owners and I don't know it's just there's no process like this you can't really describe it it's just like it's incredible are you baby you're baby we love you Bunny we love you so much honey yeah we're so lucky to have you and thank you for being in our lives and thank you for being willing to learn how to just be a dog I couldn't be happier and proud of us because we really we really did that yeah you want to get in on this we did it yeah thank you guys for being patient and for coming on this journey with us and I know looking back a year ago it was hard to imagine and sometimes you know I cried a lot but it was hard to imagine sometimes if this was even possible that maybe she would just be a an afraid dog for a lot of her life and that that was okay but you know it's really hoping that she would come around and feel more comfortable than she did that's the one-year bunny update she's just a regular dog now almost regular still kind of funny looking yeah thanks for watching and I hope this gave you some closure from the year-long journey that we've been on yeah now she's just a regular dog whatever I'll see you guys next week bye bye


Hi, good afternoon, I'm Naomi Walker and I'm the director of economic analysis and research network or earn at the Economic Policy Institute and just earn it's made up of close to 60 policy research and advocacy groups around the country who are working to win and calmly that works for all of us, whether we're black, brown or white. Welcome to today's panel discussion about education and union power and a new age of labor activism. We're going to talk about online organizing anti austerity movements and pushing for racial justice and equity in the classroom. Two years ago in the midst of a cold February in West Virginia, 35,000 teachers and school staff walked off the job. More than 100,000 teachers and other states followed them over the next year. From Arizona, Kentucky and Oklahoma to Colorado and California, teachers stood up for themselves and their students and told state legislators that they weren't taking it anymore. They had reached a breaking point as teachers were forced to take on second and third jobs to make ends meet and to spend money out of their own pockets to supply classrooms. They told legislators that there are austerity policies that led to low wages, terrible working conditions, lack of education funding, racial inequity and crumbling public school infrastructure was completely unacceptable. So today we're going to hear from three people involved with a new book that helped tell that story about those strikes strike for the common good, fighting for the future of public education. There was edited by one of our speakers today Rebecca Collins given and her colleague Amy Shriver Lang. And the book tells the story of the strikes from the viewpoints of the teachers, the parents, the students involved as well as outside academics and analysts. So first up we'll hear from Rebecca Collins given associate professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University. And as I mentioned one of the co co editors of strike for the common good. And then we're going to hear from Sylvia Allegretto and API research associate and economist at the University of California Berkeley, who will discuss what workers can learn from teacher organizing. And then we're going to close out the panel. And here from Jesse Hagopian who's an educator and co advisor of the black student union at Garfield High School who'll share his story of direct action and organizing in Seattle and why it is so critical for teachers to incorporate racial justice advocacy and their organizing efforts. And before I turn it over to our speakers I just want to give a quick note on today's format we're going to hear from all of our speakers and then we're going to open it up to take questions that you all have placed in the chat. So at any point during the discussion go ahead and type in your questions to the chat box and then we'll take as many of them as we can before we wrap up so Rebecca I'm going to kick it over to you to get us started. Thank you. Thank you Naomi and thank you to the Economic Policy Institute for hosting us today. I will talk about a few sort of key points or highlights from the book which I have to hold up partly because I love Joe brusky's beautiful photograph of the United Teachers of Los Angeles strike. What I wanted to do Amy trigger laying and I in strike for the common good was answer one of the questions that I think is on many people's minds which is sort of where did teacher strikes go and why are they back and what do they look like now so what they look like and what strikes for the common good that center education funding and racial justice and all kinds of demands that people didn't necessarily think of as part of teachers strikes teachers unions demands in previous decades. The book has some historical context. We touch on some of the battles in the 60s and 70s where teachers unions were tended to be pivot against movements for social progress and racial justice so the famous Ocean Hill Brownsville strike where teachers essentially struck against the interests and demands of the local black community and one of the things I think is exciting about the book is to see how far we've come from that that point where teachers weren't able to see a shared vision for public education for proper funding of public education and for racial justice. One of the key turning points and I won't talk about it that much now is the Chicago teachers union strike of 2012 which I think really changed our understanding of what teachers would do how they had to organize to go on strike and how they organized with the community that teachers in Chicago went on strike for what they said was the schools Chicago students deserve they organized with parents they had massive community support and they also showed they were willing to take on democratic leaders so they were willing to take on Mayor Michael and other Democrats who had become key to this sort of anti teacher anti union consensus that meant massive massive cuts to school funding and school funding. As we know from Sylvia Alegrado's work never recovered from the 2008 recession by design not by accident. What we what we what we did in the book was we really tried to let teachers and other educators and other education workers tell their own stories. And so we also have accounts from community members from activist students from a bus driver, as well as the perhaps more typical scholarly accounts. And I think it's really important to have all these perspectives one of the things that's essential to show is that strikes don't just happen strikes come out of organizing, even strikes that seem to happen quickly there's quick organizing but they're not spontaneous eruptions they're not. They're not natural occurrences there's something that take take a lot of work and a lot of organizing. Many people are probably familiar with the West Virginia strike of 2018 and so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that I'm going to talk a little bit more about the Arizona strike which followed a few weeks after the West Virginia strike in West Virginia and teachers went out statewide to battle for better education funding, and they were wildly successful they closed the schools in their in their whole state and teachers in other states started to pay very close attention. Their success was was somewhat mixed and we try to be really clear eyed in the book so in places like Oklahoma and Kentucky these strikes were not unequivocal successes they often revealed divisions between active teachers who are active in their unions who weren't in some cases teachers who wanted to emphasize and center racial justice demands and those that were more interested in things like pensions so we try to be really open about about some of those differences. In Arizona, the, the strikes were notable for a few things one is just the scale of the organizing and the magnitude of participation. Education funding was extremely low in Arizona, including very very low teachers pay education funding had was dramatically depressed. It never ticked back up after the recession. There are huge layered inequity issues in Arizona about 45% of public school students are Latino more than half are from communities of color. So there are huge racial justice and tax fairness issues at play. What we saw in Arizona and Rebecca Garelli an amazing organizer contributed a chapter to the book which really lays this out is this very deep organizing that was a combination of traditional organizing methods and digital online organizing so much of the organizing happened initially on Facebook and then moved into other tools so that they could organize statewide across hundreds of schools so even though they were organizing online, they were organizing school by school person by person. The, the organizing happened just about 10 days after the West Virginia strike the teachers were paying attention and the key organizers the handful of leaders in this movement all met online they didn't know each other they didn't work together. They started a Facebook group and within about four days 1500 Arizona educators were in the in the in the group and we're starting to strategize and what they did really elegantly and successfully is that they combined online and offline organizing strategy so they would do escalating actions like encouraging the the teachers and other educators to wear red to school on coordinated days but also post a photo on social media so that people could could see that they were getting involved that they were speaking up and they were willing to sort of engage their own social media communities in these conversations. The Arizona teachers had five key demands and you can see how directly the stem from Sylvia Alegrato's work on the teacher pay penalty and the underfunding of education because education funding was so so low in Arizona. So their demands were a 20% salary increase for teachers which seems like a lot until you understand just how much they were struggling and how poorly paid these, you know, teachers mostly with a graduate degree were. They also demanded competitive wages for all classified staff so other workers in the schools this is essential to these common good strikes many of them were also centering the demands of not just low paid teachers but even lower paid other school staff whether cafeteria bus drivers support staff aids paraprofessionals all of whom are struggling in these states. Their demand was no more tax cuts so the leader the elected leaders in Arizona were very very into tax cuts and they said no more tax cuts until school spending reaches the national average so they just wanted to keep up with the average. They also demanded a return to 2008 funding level so again benchmarking to the pre recession level of funding on public education. And then they also demanded annual raises for Arizona teachers again until their salaries reached the national average so they just wanted to benchmark to something sort of in the middle of the playing field instead of at the very very bottom which is where they've been. They took a number of different actions they had actions at the state capital that drew 50,000 people which is remarkable I think those are the biggest protests that Arizona has ever seen. They also really use utilized an innovative tactic, which is the walk in where teachers and other school employees met with supportive parents and community members at the start of the school day, and walked into school together as a show of solidarity so it's a job action they're not not working they're not withdrawing their labor yet at that point, but they're building with their community and showing that their demands for education justice for proper education funding are actually shared demands and so they fought with their communities and the manifestation of that was was these walk ins. They, they had over 100,000 people participating in walk ins which is remarkable. And at that point the governor actually announced a 20% raise for teachers so he started to cave to their demands, but it didn't include any increased overall funding any sense of moving to tax increases and so the teacher said, that's not sufficient. It's time for a strike and they struck for six days. They finally won their strike when the legislature passed a budget with increased school spending overall as well as raises for their further for their educators, but this also wasn't sufficient so they then moved to a ballot initiative campaign to make sure that they could implement a wealth tax that would explicitly fund education and that that ballot initiative is sometimes known as invest in Ed and through some legal trouble with the state Supreme court which was sort of beholden to the governor, they weren't able to get that in 2018 but they remarkably kept their organizing going and were able to successfully win that about initiative this year just last month. And then the Arizona strikes were the biggest teacher walkouts that were prolonged 5757 thousand teachers on strikes so bigger than the utl a strikes bigger than Chicago bigger than all the ones that you might think about and this online to the online aspect of it I think is really crucial as well as the focus on funding and understanding that both strikes and legislative action and ballot box action, all come together to potentially increase funding and move towards education justice in their schools and I'll stop there. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much for Becca. Next, we're going to turn to Sylvia Allegretto. Naomi and thank you team EPI for for putting this together and I just got to say, you know, Becky and Amy did a bang up job and putting this job together. Not just the diversity of the chapters and the thought and the approaches from the campaigns but the eclectic group of authors. I mean, you have high school students along writing alongside their teachers and university students and academic professors and rank and file union organizers and those that are in national positions it's really a great accomplishment. And I'm humbled to have my name alongside these folks. The chapter is about teacher pay which has been mentioned here a couple times and it certainly documents what I've been writing about for 16 years, the long term erosion of teacher pay. And you know how it's important for recruiting and retention and, and the future of the profession. But the chapter also homes in on the intersection of what you know teacher pay and public education employment more generally and the great recession period. And once to and the aftermath of the great recession was critical to the red for Ed and all the movements across the US, which is what I'm going to comment mostly on here today. By the way, I think EPI is going to put a link up to a panel that we did just a couple weeks ago, a whole panel on teacher pay and teacher compensation. If you really want to get a deep dive into that first of all you can get the book and you can also watch the video from EPI.  We have a pandemic led recession. It had immediate and serious consequences for school funding and much more given the nature of the crisis the health crisis. And recessions are used as an opportunity for those long working to dismantle public goods. And then there are the education privatizers. They look at this as their opportunity, perhaps as never before that up and and cash in, especially when we're talking about new systems like online education. I've actually heard people say, do we even need schools. I mean, most folks know or some are just learning that the public school systems are the backbone of our communities and our economy. We're learning through this pandemic led recession. So here we are we're mired in another vicious cycle of tax cuts for the rich austerity for the rest tax cuts for the rich austerity for the rest. We actually balance depleted budgets on the backs of our kids. Think about that. It's unconscionable given our vast wealth and resources. And now, right, we're, we're still holding out for further relief relief that has been passed long ago, all bit dried up. Today they're discussing a bill that's less than a trillion dollars when we actually need that much alone to go to state and local governments. That's based on some research by EPI or Josh Bivens and David Cooper. Well today that their discussion they can't that they probably can't even get through is like 160 billion for state and local governments, it's just not going to be enough. But again, we know that temporary recessions are used to institute permanent changes to public education and other public goods. So what can we expect. We can expect the same and more of what went on around the great recession. When funding cuts to public education were still in effect, a decade later in many states as public education struggled, long after economic recovery, long after Wall Street was booming. After many states were instituting tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Yeah, I'm talking to you Oklahoma. Teacher pay eroded school buildings crumble staff shortages shortages persisted and other critical needs went on met the whole of public education suffered. And that's when we saw 10s of 1000s of teachers, students, staff, entire communities hit the streets and say enough is enough. Now we were all watching this with great admiration and excitement. It was amazing or the biggest strikes we've had in this country for over 35 years. But importantly, we have to understand that that didn't just happen. Right. And that's what the book highlights the groundwork, the diversity of thought and approaches to organizing that took place all across the US. They planned, innovated, built relationships and fostered broad support. A powerful modern movement was born, one that included racial justice and highlighted inequities. So yes, here we are again, where recession meets austerity. And we will definitely have to fight like hell to hold on to one of our highest ideals that should never be compromised public education. There's no good reason, except greed that we actually don't have the best and most resilient public school system in the world. Importantly, when I was reading this book, and what we talk a lot about through my connections with EPI and all the work I've done with them and what they have done over many decades is the rest of the American workforce needs to take a lesson from the teachers. The healing of the country from this pandemic, the healing of the assault on workers over the last 40 years, and the necessity to unwind. The pandemic America can only be realized with worker voice, worker power and collective bargaining that must have the full backing of policies and a Department of Labor that advocates for a more balanced, fair and a reasonable economic system that we don't have right now. In the book, it's fascinating, it's informative, and will help lead us as we move forward. So now I want to pass it over to to, because I'm very excited to hear from Jesse, who has written brilliant and fascinating account of the intersection of black lives matter meets the Seattle education system. Jesse take it away. Thank you both for those wonderful presentations thank you Naomi for hosting this and Rebecca and Amy you did a wonderful job with this book there's so many important lessons that we need our educators to read about to really discover the power that they have to not only our education system, but our broader society in a society that's as inequitable and deeply racist as ours, we have to reclaim and transform our unions and use them as a vehicle for social change and that really is what my chapter is is the intersection of social justice unionism and the black lives matter at school movement and the joining together of that social justice unionism approach with the new iteration of the black freedom struggle that's happening right now. And I just want to start with how I got into this work I started teaching in 2001. And, you know the same year the no child left behind acts came online, and I was teaching in Washington DC. I was in a completely segregated school. I think we actually got one white student my third year of teaching there. It really highlighted just how segregated it was in a, in a totally impoverished neighborhood and I would drive by the White House on my way to work and then 10 minutes later, I was in a forsaken land that was a complete food and the only public service that was there was the school buildings that were crumbling and the overfunded police that were there to brutalize my students and my students families and, you know, the first assignment I ever assigned to my students the first research project. They were researching someone they admired from history that had helped create social change and they came in and these beautiful posters that they produced and we were going to celebrate their posters on Monday and have them present them in class. And when we got back to school on Monday, all of the posters were destroyed, because there was a hole in the ceiling I didn't know about, and it had just rained in our classroom over the weekend, and flooded the room with like a inch of standing and so they were never able to present that poster. And you remember 2001 is also the year of the attacks of 9-11. And we could see the smoke rising from the Pentagon from my classroom window on that terrifying day. But there was something else that was terrifying that happened, and that I learned from that experience, which was that our government could mobilize untold billions of dollars to go bomb in the modern in the Middle East, but couldn't fix the hole in the ceiling of my classroom, just minutes away from the halls of government. And that experience was deeply troubling to me and set me on a path of wanting to figure out how can I not only bring social justice and anti-racist pedagogy in the classroom but how can I be part of collective efforts to transform those egregious conditions in our country. And in my time teaching in D.C., our union had negotiated a 9% raise, and then inexplicably, the D.C. Public schools announced that our 9% raise was going to be canceled, that there just wasn't the budget to do that, and so we would no longer have that. And our union organized a rally at City Hall. And there were speakers enchanting, and the union was, you know, having its usual lineup of speakers, and then all of a sudden the teachers just broke free and took the streets unplanned and just outraged that we could have worked that hard for a contract that could just be ripped up. And then they not only blocked traffic but then poured into City Hall, and we marched up to the mayor's office where somebody quickly ran in and locked the door so we couldn't get to his actual physical space. But as we walked up the stairs to his office, everyone was chanting, no 9% October 1, no work October 2. And that chant really filled me with energy and I think launched me on a whole path of my life, because it was only a week later after that rally that all of a sudden, lo and behold, they found the money for our race. And I learned the power of collective struggle and the power of unionism to create change. So I want to talk about the Black Lives Matter at school movement and how it got started and its intersection with social justice unionism but I don't think you can really tell that story without first acknowledging the story of enslaved black people who snuck off plantations to teach each other how to read and write even though it was illegal and the punishment could be maiming or death. Right. And I don't, I want to tell this story about Black Lives Matter at school but I don't think you can tell it without first acknowledging the struggle during reconstruction, where black people created public schooling in the south. And that incredible effort of the Freedman's Bureau and so many black educators found finally founding public schools in the south after the Civil War also benefited poor white people who hadn't had access to education. And I, you know, I think we have to acknowledge all before we can talk about Black Lives Matter at school, let's look at the teachers union in the 1930s in New York that formed it was largely the impetus of the Communist Party at the time, and they wanted to create a social justice union approach to organizing and, you know, they partnered with the NAACP and they worked to fight to get racist textbooks out of the curriculum that we're glorifying the Ku Klux Klan. Before we can talk about Black Lives Matter at school, we have to talk about the freedom schools during the Civil Rights Movement in the south, where the final exam wasn't a high stake standardized test but going to register to vote. Right. And, or the Panther Liberation Schools and the whole history of Afrocentric schools in the late 60s and 70s that flourished across this country and that's really the legacy of what this, this movement stands in that tradition. And I think we also have to talk about the conditions that created the need to organize a campaign for Black Lives in schools. And that was painfully brought home to me last night, when I saw a story here in Seattle where I teach about a kid named Jaleel. And he goes to an elementary school, a second grader here in Seattle, and it was revealed by investigative journalism in our local NPR station that Jaleel was locked in what they called the cage at his school, because they said he had disruptive behavior. And this is a kid who was suffering from PTSD from an abusive father. And instead of figuring out how to nurture this student, how to mentor him, how to heal his psychological wounds, this principal ordered that he be locked in the cage, an enclosed area that was fenced off outside. And he was brought his meals where he had to sit on the cold concrete and at some point didn't even have shoes on just sitting out there with kids walking by pointing and laughing. This is the conditions that Black children face in this school system across America. Black students are four times more likely to be suspended for the same infractions, and Black girls are the most disproportionately disciplined at seven times the rate of white girls. You have a situation in the US public school system where 1.6 million children go to a school that has a police officer, but doesn't have a counselor. And if you want to talk about all the other resources our kids need, there are 14 million kids that go to a school that have a police officer, but are missing one of the following. A school nurse, a school counselor, a school psychologist, a school librarian, these vital services for our youth. And you can see the priorities of the system that's building a school to prison pipeline. And it ends up the situations like a six year old girl last year in a Florida school was having a temper tantrum which is a developmentally appropriate behavior for a six year old. And instead of figuring out how to nurture and support her, the police officer handcuffs her and there's a heartbreaking video of her being dragged to his cop car where she's screaming please give me a second chance. But in this country, second chances are reserved for hedge fund managers, billionaires who sabotage the global economy in the great recession, and then float to the ground with golden parachutes. But for six year old black girls, they get driven to the police precinct she was taken to the youth jail where she was fingerprinted and had her mugshot taken. Right and her grandma came and picked her up and explained that the reason why she was having a hard time in schools because she suffered from sleep apnea. Right. So we need to understand that in this country we don't have an achievement gap. We have an education debt. There is a great debt that is owed to our nation's youth, especially the black youth of this nation. And that debt looks like the fact that according to a recent report, the formula authorized for title one should have appropriated $48 billion to title one schools but instead Congress appropriated $15 billion. So there's a shortfall of $33 billion that are supposed to be going to our neediest schools and as well NPR recently reported that $23 billion more dollars go to predominantly white school districts compared with districts that serve mostly students of color. And that is really why black lives matter at school erupted across this country. And it started in Seattle, and it's really an incredible story and I just want to tell that story and end with some conclusions about how black lives matter at school and social justice unionism can help transform this country. I think before I tell you the specific origin of black lives matter at school people should know that I helped to found a union caucus called the social equity educators. And this was when I moved back to Seattle, and the school district was getting ready to close 10 schools in Seattle. And of course they were all predominantly black and brown students of color schools and so I helped to organize a coalition to oppose those school closures because unfortunately our union voted to support the school closure saying that if the district save money on these schools then there would be less teacher layoffs and I thought that was extremely backwards and that we should join together with the communities and fight to keep all the schools open in the city as rich as ours. And we got five of the schools off the list, but they went forward with closing five schools. And it was out of that we founded the social equity educators and went on to help lead the map test boycott and at my high school. And I was able to vote unanimously to refuse to give a high stake standardized test the map test and we were, you know, the tested subject teachers were threatened with a 10 day suspension without pay, and not a single one of them back down. And it started an international campaign that put so much pressure with rallies and letters and speakouts on the school district that by the end of the year, not only did they not suspend any teacher but they actually got rid of the map test for all of Seattle's high schools and it was just a resounding victory for our struggle and it was those past victories that helped us lay the groundwork for what happened with BLM at school and so it really started at John Muir elementary school with a group of educators that wanted to celebrate their black youth in the wake of the murders of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling in 2016 they wanted to start the school year off, supporting the black youth and nurturing them letting them know they were cared for. And so they organized an event with a group called black men united to change the narrative and the school PTA, where they were going to have all the black families, and everybody else and the educators come and high five all the youth that were coming in the school that morning, and then hold an assembly on black culture and history at the school, and the art teacher, a wonderful woman named Julie trout designed a shirt that said black lives matter we stand together with the picture of a tree with the many branches coming down into the trunk. And when that image of the t shirt went to the media far right organizations like bright Bart and blue lives matter started publicizing this and the school was bombarded with hate mail. And then one particularly hateful person made a bomb threat against john Muir elementary school just for the audacity of the educators to claim that their black students lives have value. And so the school district officially canceled that event and they brought in bomb sniffing dogs that morning to see if the threat was credible to the great credit of the educators and families they carried through at the event but it was much smaller than it would have been. So, I was deeply troubled by that and I reached out to them, and we brought them to the caucus of the social equity educators and we came up with a plan to have our union support them and we said if we really support you we won't just pass a resolution saying that we'll actually all wear the shirts to school and so we picked October 19 as black lives matter at school day. And we called on every educator to come to school with the shirts and we and our union passed the resolution overwhelmingly, and then our caucus, working with the union helped to organize the day of action. And we got together with the local NAACP and the black student unions and the p and the pta and the t short order started coming in. First the ones and twos then the dozens then the hundreds and then we had some 3000 teachers out of the 5000 teachers in Seattle 5000 educators in Seattle come to school wearing those shirts. The eruption of struggle that caught the eye of the teachers in Philadelphia, and they continued the movement and took it to the next level by taking it from a day of action to entire week of action. And now every year, we have the first week of February as black lives matter at school. So I'm going to go to black lives matter at school calm and learn how to participate in the week of action and now the year of purpose. So I know I need to wrap up here. Looks like about at time but if I can have a couple minutes to just conclude. Thank you. I just want to say that. I think the fundamental problem with our education system is this fundamental problem we have with all of our systems and institutions in this country and that is that they are a product of an economic and political structure. We have built on profit, racism, oppression and inequality, namely capitalism, and you see that the, when the eight richest people have as much wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion people. We're going to have severe problems in healthcare and education and housing and all the rest of it. And I just want to say that these numbers don't run parallel it's not just that there simply happened to be eight people with that much wealth and and the rest of us. At the bottom, it's that there are rich people as a consequence of of mass poverty. And so I think occupy movement was right that we have to figure out how to organize the 99% against the richest 1% but we will never be able to unite that 99% in a struggle for the resources we need to survive. If we don't make the fight against racism central to our to our movements right and so that's how we can unite us and that's the important role that the unions can play in this struggle. Because I think that when you look at the history of social movement unionism you can see a mechanism a lever that can actually exercise power in in support of our movements. You can see that really where the term emerged out of South Africa in the struggle against apartheid when the Union, the Kasatu Union of mine workers joined together with the student movement in the streets against apartheid and when the economy was shut down because of the striking workers then the movement that youth were leading across South Africa had a new power. And I think that we need to learn that lesson and apply it here today. When you look at the strike wave of educators that that Rebecca was talking about over the last few years it's demonstrated that the captains of industry aren't the only people who have the power and in Chicago and in LA and in the red state revolts. We saw how collective struggle can transform the world not only winning better pay and benefits for for our teachers but also like in LA winning a million to help support undocumented youth in in legal fees, or, or stopping the random quote unquote random searches of youth by the police. It's the power of our striking educators and I think it underscores the old saying that teachers on strike are still teaching. And that's the struggle that that I want to be a part of for racial and social justice so thank you all for having me as part of this panel today. Great. Thank you so much Jesse for that really compelling and frankly heartbreaking overview of what is happening for black and brown students in schools. And I also the point that you just raised that even teachers on strike are still teaching I thought is a is a really good one. So thank you for that and Sylvia and of course Rebecca for all the work and putting putting such an important book together. Now I'd like to move on to some questions that have been posted in the chat if you hadn't had a chance to put your question I'm sorry I keep saying the chat not the chat the Q&A section at the bottom of your screen. And so I'm just going to get started with some of these, some of these questions that have come up here. Just give me one second. And there were a couple of several questions that came across in the Q&A about the links to both Jaleel story and some of the statistics on discrimination against black students. Those you can find those in the answered tab, Rebecca's posted some links and the Garcia who is on the webinar as well it was API education. Economist also included link to another set of stats that might be useful for you all who are interested in digging into this work. Sure. A question came across from one participant I've been hoping in this time of common collective difficulty, we could all come together, all teachers across the nation to threaten a nationwide teacher strike to demand improved equity funding etc. What are the panelists thoughts on this. And will just to any of you who want to tackle that. Yeah, I'll jump in and then I'd love to hear especially what Jesse thinks Sylvia may have thoughts too. I'll just say that strikes are very very hard Jane McLevy who's perhaps our foremost strike thinker these days has contributed a great chapter that really talks about how hard super majority strikes are. The idea of organizing nationally for a super majority of teachers to walk out on strike is is very daunting, but it doesn't it doesn't mean it's not possible but it happens you know person by person workplace by workplace. There is a movement again using this sort of combination of online and offline organizing called National Educators United which Rebecca Garelli who wrote the Arizona chapter that I referred to a lot. It is a leader in and I think there are really really deepening links between activist teachers whether unionized or non unionized whether they have bargaining or not. I think that's the country so I do think that the movement is building. I wouldn't go out on a limb and say they'll be a nationwide walk out but I think they'll continue to be more actions and also more coordination. Yeah. Thank you for that question I think it's a great one. And I think we do need nationwide strikes. I think it would be incredible to see that kind of power. And I think we've had opportunities that could have galvanized educators across the country to take that kind of bold action when you look at the children being caged on the border and being separated from their parents. And I think we broke the heart of most educators in this country and I think if we'd had leadership that it said this is illegal. This is immoral. This is despicable and we educators are charged with defending youth in this country and we will shut down this nation school system until those youth are returned to their parents. This is an opportunity to show the kind of strength that our unions could have him and social justice movement unionism, but of course, there would be massive political pushback from both from both parties, and the common orientation of our unions about how do we get Democrats elected as the main strategy for creating social change and so that's what our unions invest millions and millions of dollars in doing and that would have that kind of national strike would have upset. And I think that the Democratic candidates that are our unions have helped get into office, because they like unions, and so far as they're helping to support them getting elected but when it comes to building social struggles to demand a fundamental country or challenging those in power, it makes powerful neoliberal Democrats very uncomfortable. And so I think that our unions weren't yet ready to take on a challenge like that because they haven't broken from an ideology of unions being in partnership with our bosses and in collaboration with wealthy elites rather than in struggle against and unequivocally supporting educators and youth and that's the real challenge we have we have to make a paradigm shift in what the purpose of unions are for and return to some of the incredible examples of the 1930s of mass general strikes, when there were like, when, you know, Minneapolis, Toledo and San Francisco shut down completely and mass general strikes of every worker in those cities like, I think we're reaching the levels of polarization, again, where we could see things like that happening again but it will take, as Rebecca said, these don't just happen, right, they have to be organized. And so that's really what we're what we're trying to do. Great. Thank you. So we have 10 minutes left and I'm going to try to move us quickly. There are a bunch of good questions in the Q&A and so let's try to plow through a bunch. One, I want to direct at Rebecca I know there's a chapter in the book a question came in would love to know more about corporations and tech companies preying on K through 12 students and teachers through standardized testing. And how does it relate to exploitation. Thank you. Thank you for that question it's a great it's a great question and I'm going to expand it out a little bit and say not just standardized testing but technology software profiteering from all kinds of selling of ideas about innovation that are couched in tech and data and possibly surveillance in schools and there's a chapter by Roxana mirachi and Robert carpenter and I'm reading the title because it sums it up a lot which is Silicon Valley philanthropy capitalism and policy shifts from teachers to tech. The chapter really covers the way that especially Silicon Valley software companies, but in partnership with the philanthropic arms of those same individuals and companies have really pushed everything from charterization to the rise of so called virtual schools to massive standardized testing to you know displacing much of the work of skilled teachers into into software that that claims to provide for example personalized instruction but actually is really about screen time and data collection and getting districts hooked on these contracts with for profit companies so extracting profit from public education and what we see with remote schooling during the pandemic is a rapid acceleration of that. My colleague Naomi Klein has called it the screen new deal right which is what we're seeing so we don't know what the recovery is going to be like when we return to in person instruction but we can only imagine that these big software contracts these big sales pitches this idea that that students need these tools to succeed, rather than you know other ways where education places where education funding could be spent. We, that's massively accelerated during the pandemic and we can only expect to see much more of that as we go forward. Great. Thank you. Next up. Let's see, can speak the speakers discuss a little the process of coalition formation when unions and communities come together how did it happen. What were some of the challenges and how are they overcome to build solidarity for the common good. I have to hear I can weigh in on that and speak from some of the contributors but maybe Jesse wants to take it first I'm sure he has some, some good thoughts on that. I think you're muted just started off. Um, yeah, we see a lot of different versions of coalition buildings so we have some pretty deep discussion of what happened in an LA where when the descent caucus came to leadership in the United Angeles they hired organizers from their communities to work with their community so parent organizers they work with some deeply embedded long standing grassroots organizations that had that had been doing the work for some time and they also just worked with you know their students and their parents was a great organization called students deserve which is some of the leaders contributed to the book and it's they just did fabulous work making common cause with their teachers which shouldn't be that hard right students and teachers want properly funded high quality schools. The organizing that is required is very very deep and part of the challenge is that teachers unions were posed as in opposition to their communities as greedy as not wanting high quality schools is only wanting selfish things and so, and this was a really consensus sort of from the political class a consensus view of things and so this deep organizing had a really really challenging starting point, even though there's great logic and consistency to communities wanting good schools wanting proper investment in public education. So, it took a lot of time it took visionary leadership and many of these unions that were able to do it successfully it wasn't it wasn't easy and it often involved turnover of leadership rather than long standing leaders sort of changing their mind or their approach. It took work with existing community organizations to really understand what the communities want. So in the case of LA and then I'll stop, they actually made. They worked with these community groups to generate the common good demands that were part of the strike demands they said you know, we shouldn't decide all of the demands you the community should, you know, think through what is most important to you so I think one of the demands that came out of this process was making sure that there was no more so called random which nobody believed was random searching of students, especially in the high school which only fell on black and brown students immigrant students. And that was a community generated demand and they were able to win that demand for the strike. Yeah, and I'll just add very briefly that I think the key to that process is not waiting until you're on strike to then ask for the community to support you, but actually forging relationships over the years. So I think, in the example of utl a and the Chicago teachers union that year in and year out. They are working with black families to generate demands around issues that they're struggling for, and then when they're on strike families know that they're actually part of their struggles for what their families need right and that it's not when they hear when they read in the newspaper that the strike is selfish for teachers to get more for them. They don't believe it because they've seen it firsthand over the years and you know it when you build that kind of relationship then at moments of strikes or other social issues you can come together and have immense influence to overcome, you know, the press that's controlled by by billionaires. Great. So we are in our last two questions. I am going to ask a final question of all three panelists to give sort of lightning responses to about what are the key takeaways that should inform current organizing or efforts by policymakers but before we get to that. There was another question that came in this one's for Jesse about the school bus drivers janitors nutrition workers and most school systems are not typically considered part of this discussion and they are usually more BIPOC, then educators. Have you had success at incorporating those workers into your movements. Well I think that question is really important and the question hasn't been answered by our unions but but it's the right question that all of our unions need to ask and we have to fight to get more black teachers in the classroom there we've lost 26,000 black teachers across the country since 2002, mostly because of neoliberal school closure policies and black and brown neighborhoods. We have a lot of black educators in our school buildings that are mostly instructional assistants and office professionals and school lunch and bus drivers and all the rest of those and absolutely they need to be centered in this struggles to make black lives matter in the school and empowered in our unions and that's a challenge that our unions, some unions do better than others but where we're going to be successful is when we can all come together and to do that you have to fight racism in the union. Thank you Jesse. Unfortunately we are not going to get to a whole list of other questions we could do a whole nother webinar to get to those because there were some really pointed and very good questions but so our last question though is going to be for all the panelists starting with Sylvia. What is one key takeaway from recent or historical teacher uprisings that should inform current organizing work that's going on or efforts by policymakers. Well, I mean, I think just in general, and now that we're in another recession that we just always have to keep in mind because it always comes down to money. And you even have good folks saying I don't know if we can afford this right you're hearing it now with the pandemic relief but you know in this country, it's not resources and wealth. That's the problem. Right. It is simply will.  You should really think that every kid in the country should go to a really good school. And that is not without our out of our reach and part of the issue is what has been touched on a lot is now everybody wants to take some kind of profit. Away from the public schools were dismantled them all together. And so I think it's just really good to keep in mind that when I say tax cuts for the rich, another round of tax cuts for the rich austerity for the rest. That's been happening for 40 years which has really concentrated wealth, which Jesse had talked about. It has really been a redistribution of a massive amount of income and wealth from those in the broad middle class to those at the top. It ends up starving everybody else so I just think the whole, the whole, the whole book and the whole narrative of what's going on now with coven this idea that we're not passing relief has to be kept in the perspective of us having enormous resources and wealth in this country. Great thanks Sylvia Rebecca Jesse. Sure. I guess a couple lessons one would be that organizing is essential even if the situation is unjust or untenable, or providing a much lower quality education than our students deserve because of under investment. It won't change without organizing and for policymakers I would say listen to educators listen to teachers listen to people who work in schools and understand what the situation is on the ground every day by the people from the people who know best what is going on. Great. Thank you and Jesse to close this out. Yes, I would just say that we need to understand that the decisive factor and improving our lives in this country is not about who's in power but about understanding our own power and the red state revolts to me really underlined that because it was in states with governors that said that ran on platforms that they would never raise taxes for any reason, especially to help schools or you know something public good like that. And yet the same governors and state after state who had promised to never raise taxes did so to support the public school system not because they suddenly cared about kids or teachers but because the entire state school system was shut down, and the governor said they will be closed until we get the resources we need. And you know that is a critical lesson that the entire labor movement needs to relearn that we have more power than they do when we organize it collectively and the last thing I'd say is a lesson from Chicago. They put forward a demand in their strike that the city create affordable housing and they actually lost that demand. But I think there's a great lesson in that defeat that they put forward a really bold demand that captured the imagination of the city and the families and help them win so many other demands. And I think that when we start raising demands that go beyond just our narrow contract needs but speak to the broader social good. We can draw in large numbers of people around us that can help support these strikes and see them as a vehicle for creating social change and equity in our communities beyond just the education system. Great. Thank you so much. So I want to thank our speakers for giving us such thought provoking remarks today and really recentering us on the principles of direct action and collective action racial equity and this notion of having a bold vision that we're willing to throw down for So I hope that all the participants will visit us at epi.org backslash sign up to sign up for epi's newsletters. That way you'll be the first to know about our new research and any upcoming events like this. And I also hope that you'll follow epi on Twitter and our Twitter handle is at economic policy. So thank you again. I hope everyone gets a little rest and respite at the end of what has been a brutal brutal here. So thanks again to our speakers and thanks to all of you for joining us. Take care. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks much.


Rivers have been the lifelines of this nation and of every nation in a way.  All rivers in India are at a dangerous level of depletion. That means in another fifteen to twenty years time, most of our rivers will be seasonal, they will not be perennial. If you just fly over India, you look down, you will see entire India looks like brown desert. All rivers are drying up like this. Krishna is not touching the ocean almost four months. Kaveri, two-and-a-half months to three months, it doesn't touch the ocean. When rain comes it floods, otherwise there is nothing. A river which has flown for million years in one generation if we kill it. Kaveri has been here for 60 years. It doesn't look like a river in a day, there is a lot of water here. It looks like a river in a day. And water scarcity in parts of Bihar, Zaghi Sarai district, is forcing people to literally dig up a river in search of water. In the last four to five years, the river has been almost drying up. With dams, wells, as well as rivers drying up in Charkhan to Chamtara. A time has come where how to exploit the water is gone. We need to see how to regenerate the river. The rivers in this nation are essentially forest fed. Forest fed river means precipitation happens. Because of vegetation, it is held and dropped by drop. It is let off, it becomes small rivulets. And rivulets become streams, streams become rivers. So what do we have to do for this is very simple. For every major river, one kilometer on either side, there must be plantation. If it's government land, forest, if it's farm land, from regular farming to horticulture. Very easily, we can enhance the farmer's income three to eight times. In a matter of four to six years time, the farmer will need support, economic and material support to go through this period and come out as a prosperous farmer. If this has to happen, we must make a policy, we must give them subsidy. It needs resolute political action, executive action is needed, policy. In the month of September, we are planning a river rally, that is, I'm personally driving, covering sixteen states having major events to create a very strong awareness in the country that the rivers of this nation are dying. This has to be done in a very organized way. Madhya Pradesh is the first state which responded to my call. If our rivers deplete in our own lifetime, we are clearly making a statement that we are not interested in the future of our children. It is heartening to see today that all of you in great enthusiasm participating in this movement gives us confidence that we are not going to destroy this nation. For thousands of years, these rivers have embraced us and nourished us. A time has come when we have to embrace the river and nourish the river because the greatness of our nation depends upon the great rivers in our country. Those in central India have to walk for miles to get their glass of water. We have a population of 1.3 billion people. I want you to just look at this possibility. No water, 1.3 billion people, the civil strife that will happen. What will happen to human beings when there is no water to drink, you can forget about humanity. Something else will take force. Every human being consumes water, air, everything else, food, land. All of us consume. There's no choice about it. But when it comes to doing compensatory action, very few people are doing it. This is the disaster on the planet. Something so fundamental as water, if rivers stop flowing, large tracts of India will turn into graveyards. If we don't do the right things in the next 10 years, 15 years time, it could be too late. If we successfully make this into a policy, this will be a landmark thing that's happened in the history of independent India. So this needs to be done right in such a way there's no ambiguity about whether it'll happen or not, it has to happen. This is once in a lifetime, not in our lives. Once in a lifetime in a nation's life. I've besieged all of you to participate in this in whatever way you can. When I say all of you, I mean everyone who consumes water to have our rivers flowing, to leave this land rich and well is the best gift we can offer to the future generations of this nation. This is not a protest. This is not an agitation. This is a campaign to create awareness that our rivers are depleting. Everyone who consumes water must rally for rivers.


Hi everyone Dr. Saul here in Beverly Hills. Today we're going to have a little discussion between us about ratio and changing someone's body. I have some examples here. We're going to go over it and I can show you how your proportionality can totally change by having some lipo contouring. Let's take a look at our first patient. Here's our first patient. She's in her late 20s, no kids, healthy, but she has some proportionality differences. You could see here ready? Okay so on this patient here you could see how her triangle and how her proportions are. She's wide up top and narrow in her bottom so you could see she has an inverted triangle. So her proportionality, she's wider up top as she comes down she gets narrow and when she comes to the buttock she's getting very super narrow. Let's look at her after lipo contouring and DBL. Look at her triangle. She's wider here and as you go up she has her triangle is inverted now. Look at the difference in the body shape just by lipo contouring and redistributing the fat.  You could see this area up here and here. You could see this was taken out.  So this is our first example. This is one of my favorite ones actually that I'm sharing with you is because it changed the whole dynamics of her body. Let's look at the next one. Okay here's another patient again. Look at the proportionality and the body change over time. First the big first thing I see with her lipo contouring and stuff is the rolls are gone. There's no rolls on the after pictures. Number two the hip and the waist different ratios. This is the waist. This is the hip and look at the waist and hip here. You could see that the hip is wider here. This would be our hip and this is our waist. Look at the difference. We like this ratio to be somewhere between 0.6 to 0.7. Here it's more almost like 0.8 to 0.9. One being equal. You could see it's almost equal but in this one you could see the nice proportionality. The other thing you could see is the width here. Look at the width compared to after. It's much shorter. She looks smaller. The contouring of doing the lipo of the lateral chest wall, the back and the flanks have given her a whole different proportionality. Then to make it even better is that her c-dips that's what we call these the c-dip right there. You could see they're filled in and they look more congruent with the rest of her. She has a nice flow coming in all the way and then coming out. Here it goes in. It comes out. It goes in. It comes out. Then it becomes when you're looking at something and there's a break to it, it throws off the eye. That's why this looks better. It's because there's no disruption when you're looking at it. Let's look at our third one. Here's our third picture. Although she's in a clothing, but look at the difference in her clothing. Again, you could see where we done on this one. I have it all marked up. This is her day of procedure pictures. We did the flanks.  Look at the difference. Number one, even with the bra on, I could see how the contour was before. Look at how it is after it comes in and then comes out. Comes in and then comes out. The contour, that's why our eyes like to see smooth curvy lines, not breaks in out, in out wavy lines. Number two, I know you have to take my word for it, but you could see in her dress, her roles are gone. Number three, her waist. Look at all this, all this, all this is gone. So that's why her waist looks so much smaller compared to this. Then for her buttock, her buttock, look at how the ratio, this one is even bigger on her waistline than her buttock. Right now, this would be more than one. This would be 1.1 to one ratio, because the waist is longer than the hips. Here, you could see we've achieved, again, a 0.6 to 0.7 ratio because she's much smaller in the waist than the hips. That's what the problem is on this one is that her waist is bigger than her hip distance. Here, again, look at how nice her hip is and look at the roundness we've achieved and look at how small the waist is. This is how important lipocontoring is. It's not just taking out fat in a certain area. When you go to a doctor, I get patients that come and say, oh, I just want the roles gone. Well, that's not going to work well because the body is a unit and you want the smoothness throughout. You don't want to be interrupted by just taking this out. It almost looks like someone took a bite out of you and you're missing the area. You want smoothness. You want curves. Thank you for listening.


I would ask and ask, let's say you have the body of Hitler and the mind you have right now.  What are you doing differently to get Germany out of economic ruin? Wow, that's a bizarre question. I mean, I wouldn't be, none of that could have happened, right? All of that isn't a possibility because if I had my mind, it doesn't matter what body I have, I wouldn't be taking power. I wouldn't have taken power, I wouldn't be taking power, I wouldn't give those speeches, I wouldn't be popular, I, you know, nothing would have happened, right? Action Jackson says, I would resign, right? But I think your question is, can you get the economy going without becoming a fascist and the answer is absolutely yes. I mean, you do exactly what I would do with any country and I don't know in detail the structure of the German economy in 1933. But basically I would put the German currency on a gold standard. I would, you know, cut, do you remember Germany is the original welfare state, Germany is the first welfare state, Germany, you know, had a lot of controls over its business, controls over its industry, I would get rid of all controls. I would start phasing out all welfare and I would encourage entrepreneurship. Not encourage them, but encourage them in my speeches and my, you know, I would encourage people to become entrepreneurs, to create jobs, to build businesses, to hire people. So I would do the exact opposite of Hitler, which was to increase controls, increase regulations and build up a war machine. I would take apart whatever war machine I had producing, producing weapons is counterproductive. You know, once I made Germany rich, I would build weapons to protect myself from the Soviets. But 1933, I don't think the Soviets were a threat. So don't build weapons, just allow markets to work. I would basically free up the German economy, just like I would have freed up the U.S. economy when, you know, in 1933 to get out of the Great Depression, the exact opposite of what FDR did. James Taylor says, one of the reasons the Germans got as far as they did was because they were motivated by national pride after losing World War I. So badly, they wanted to make it come back, whereas the Russian army is invading their little brother. Yeah, but Germany didn't get very far. I mean, very fine what? In conquest that then got beaten back, in taking over a few countries for a few years, but in the vast scope of history, you know, Germany was beaten into pulp in, you know, five years, a little bit more than that, five and a half years, it was beaten into a pulp. It lost massively. There's no question that, so Germany wasn't a success in any respect. It was not dementia in which you could say Nazi Germany was a success. Now they succeeded militarily for a while, for lots of reasons. They had, at the time, at the beginning of the war, they had the best equipment, military equipment in the world. The Russians at the beginning of the war have some of the worst military equipment in the world. The Germans at the time, there was a certain nationalistic, you know, motivation and winning feeds and winnings, so if Germany had not succeeded with the Blitzkrieg, if they had actually failed in their initial attempts, they would have collapsed immediately. They would not have been, they would have been like Russia today. They would have not. They couldn't sustain a war long term, morale would have sustained. What sustained morale was that they looked like they were winning for a long time. The Germans had good generals. Some good generals anyway, like the guy from North Africa who later was in France. But I don't know, you know, how much the soldier in the tank, you know, there was a certain nationalist pride that was drilled into them, that drove them to success. Ramel, thank you, that drove them to be motivated. But, you know, the motivation was shallow in the end because they didn't really believe in what Hitler believed in, at least a lot of them didn't. And to the extent that they did, that belief was irrational and didn't sustain them. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Brook show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to IranBookShow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.