Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today, and we're so honored and excited to be here in conversation with Cynthia Miller Idris from American University. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Jabid Ali, and I'm currently an associate professor of practice here at the Ford School at the University of Michigan. And this conversation today is supported by the Ford School. So our conversation will explore the key topics of radicalization, recruitment, and domestic terrorism, and we're really excited to have Cynthia's perspective on that. And let me just get into Cynthia's background for those who may not be as familiar with her work. So Cynthia is currently a professor in the School of Public Affairs and in the School of Education and runs the polarization and extremism research in an innovation lab known as PERL and the Center of Excellence at the American University. Before her move into the School of Public Affairs in the fall of 2020, she was a professor of education and sociology at American University. Professor Miller Idris is a well-known expert, has testified before Congress regularly briefs policy, security, education, and intelligence agencies in the United States and other stakeholders around the world. She's also the author of several books, the most recent being Hate in the Homeland, The New Global Far Right from Princeton University in 2020, and she's also authored a few books before that. She's got a great background, academic background in sociology and education and has used that to leverage those insights now into the world of domestic extremism and domestic terrorism. She also is a proud graduate of the University of Michigan and has her master's degree and PhD from the School of Sociology, but also her master's degree from the Ford School of Public Policy here. So always great to see another Ford alum prospering outside the University. So Cynthia, welcome so much. Great to be here with you. And just in terms of the run of show for today, we're going to cover several backgrounds in our, cover several issues in our conversation. We're going to dive in a little bit about more into your background and how you started initially into the field you did look at academically and then how that has translated over into the world of domestic extremism and terrorism. Then we'll have some questions and conversation about your insights on domestic terrorism and how we're doing, especially relative to other countries. We'll also look at the role of social media and you've done a lot of research and analysis on that. And then we'll hopefully wrap up our conversation with some discussion on policy solutions and then hopefully the last 10-15 minutes we'll take some questions and answers from the crowd. So a lot to get through, but with that Cynthia again, welcome. And let me just ask you quickly. So you started your career initially on the academic front in a very different sort of field of sociology and education and then it over the last few years that's shifted over into more of the national security world. So can you just share with our listeners and viewers how that started and what lessons you've learned along the way now that you've moved in these different issues and areas of expertise? Sure. Well, first of all, thank you for having me, Java. Thanks for hosting this. And as you know, personally also as a U of M alum, there's nothing better than coming back home to a place where you were a student. And I also had the opportunity to speak with students in a class today in person.  So really enjoying my visit back to Ann Arbor and to campus. So my background, as you said, is unconventional in the national security space. I think that's probably an asset and one of the reasons why I'm busy right now is because it's unconventional. But what I mean by that is I consider myself an accidental expert. Essentially, I did not seek out, it was not a strategic decision to pursue a path in national security. I was a German studies undergraduate major, I double majored in sociology. And then I went into my PhD and policy background degree programs here in order to study alternatives to college for young people. And I was really interested in the German vocational system. So that's what I was studying. I was doing a dissertation on transitions to adulthood and trying to understand how young people transition in an alternative time, an alternative structure, the way they have in Germany, where two thirds of young people go through not a college bound track, but through a vocational track. But when I landed to do my dissertation, there was an upsurge in right wing extremism. I ended up spending 18 months as an ethnographer embedded in schools where teachers were really struggling to deal with the issue of resurgent right wing extremism. And so I became a kind of expert on school based responses to hate. And after another book, you know, two or three books that related to those issues, one of them was really tracking the mainstreaming of extremism, aesthetically, the changing encoded symbols, the way that iconography was being used to draw people in. And that got turned in just two months before Charlottesville happened. So that's when things really changed for me, where people in this country started asking me to explain what was happening with the global and interconnected kind of resurgent far right. So that's that's what happened. It's been a little bit like whiplash. And I keep saying I wish my expertise were irrelevant again. I'd like it to go back to being irrelevant. But as long as it's not, I'm happy to continue to try to explain what I what I've learned. Thanks, Cynthia, for sharing that. And again, you've got a really interesting background instead of skills that I would argue makes you really unique in this in the space. So let's dive into the domestic terrorism landscape, the way you see it. And again, you've been looking at this or different features of it for for several decades now. So kind of first question. What do you think is most striking about it now in in the context of what we're seeing in the United States versus when you started even if you're the lens you were looking at may not have been as focused on the national security side going back? Yeah, I think the biggest change over the past couple of decades for me on the on the domestic extremism front is the what I what I and other colleagues in the field now call a shift to post organizational forms of extremism, which means that although groups do still matter, they do produce a lot of propaganda, they sometimes get involved in plotting, you know, bad actor plots, militias, for example, unlawful militias. And there are white supremacist groups, including lots that are on trial right now in Charlottesville. So groups matter. But the vast majority of exposure and radicalization to extremist content in the US and globally right now is not happening through groups itself, but rather through online kind of radicalization within networks. So it's not just totally lone actors all by themselves either. But they're working in networks, they're exposed in networks, they are exposed through a broad range of platforms. And I know we're going to talk about social media later. So I won't I won't go totally down that pathway. But it's, you know, I can't emphasize enough how different that is from 20 years ago, or even 15 years ago, when in order to get engaged with extremist ideas, you had to seek them out, or you had to be invited to come join it. Now it's just much more coincidental that people will likely encounter them when online gaming or in other kind of hobby sites online, where those ideas come to them. So it's no longer a destination to be sought out. It's just something you encounter in your everyday lives, whether that's on a paper flyer on your college campus or in an online game. And so that changes the way that people can be drawn in and recruited the gateways through which they access these groups. And I think that's been the biggest, the single biggest change that I would, I would say has really transformed the landscape of how extremism has emerged. So we will pick up on that topic of social media, but I wanted to further get into sort of the landscape now and what may continue to drive it in different ways going forward. So as you've already noted, social media is a big one. And we've got some additional questions on that. But can you also provide some insights on other, what I would call key drivers that you think fueled this threat to the degree that it exists right now? Yeah. I think one major thing that's happening is demographic change. And demographic change is a reality. So there are these sort of things that are happening. The country is becoming less white, it's becoming more diverse. It's changing in lots of other demographic ways. And the way that propaganda and disinformation is using that fact to present a sense of threat, a sense of existential threat to many Americans who might not otherwise be encouraged to see it that way, but then are receiving it that way. And so this is a global issue. And there's a global conspiracy theory called the Great Replacement. I mean, the idea that that demographic change is being orchestrated for some nefarious purposes, power grabbing purposes by somebody else, some elites or some ethnic minority group, for example. So that's a major change. A major driver is that there is actually factual things happening, but then the spread of disinformation can exploit those, those facts and those changes. But we also have, and this is really important, I'm going to use, I'm going to be very careful about my terms here, but there is a sense of precariousness that is bigger than there was 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. And by that, I don't mean economic security exactly, although there is some economic insecurity and changing economic outlooks for people. But it's a sense of precariousness, which is the sense that something could be taken away from you and or that you could lose something. So for example, one, one really important study that I often cite in the European context shows that people are not more likely to join the far right if they grew up unemployed, sorry, if they are unemployed, they are not more likely to join the far right if they are actually unemployed, but they are more likely if they grew up with an unemployed parent. So there's an emotional sense of something could be lost, you know, the fear that the knowledge. And so we have been seeing that often it's a sense that whether that's a sense that a white majority country will be taken away or it's propaganda about Second Amendment rights, or it's disinformation about an election, right, there's there's often a through line there that something could be taken away from you. And I think that's playing on this sense of precariousness. And then the third thing I think is just the changing landscape of how easy it is to disseminate propaganda and disinformation in ways that make it harder for people to understand what's real and what isn't real. And so we have just seen a broader range of belief in conspiracy theories over the past few years, even that it's hard to believe that people, you know, that that many people might believe some of these conspiracy theories, but we've seen it. And so we know that people are encountering them more often, and that there's more of it circulating than there was before. And so those it's not just, you know, again, the paper mailings that had to go out through list serves or something from extremist groups in the 80s and 90s, but it comes across and really sophisticated iconographic representations that look pretty legitimate, and then people start to believe them. And so those are I think the sort of three things a sense of precariousness, the reality of demographic change that gets weaponized by propaganda, and then just the changing amount, the actual amount of disinformation and propaganda that people get confronted with in their everyday lives. Thanks, Cynthia, for sharing those observations. Let me ask you a relatively provocative question. Do you think that January 6th was the culmination of this rising tide of anger and grievances and discontent and this broad and fragmented movement? Or do you, because of the drivers you laid out and other ones, do you see this threat enduring for quite some time? And is there a way to put some boundary on how long you think that heightened threat period will last? Well, I wish I had a more optimistic answer for you, but I don't think it was a culmination of something. I think it is more like the beginning of something, the beginning of a moment. It's just that what that moment becomes is evolving even as I speak. We're seeing such transformations, and I would say in the willingness to use political violence, even in tremendously spontaneous ways. And that I think is what we're at the beginning of. So I do think it was a moment in which a lot of different groups and individuals motivated by completely different things in ordinary circumstances came together. I think of it as a kind of lowest common denominator moment where they normally would never agree in real life or be able to unite across those boundaries. And as we know, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville tried to unite the right in 2017. They failed. It didn't work. They ended up more disintegrated after Charlottesville, organizationally speaking than they were before. I think this showed that actually you can get united across a spectrum of conspiracy theories and white supremacists and unlawful militias and QAnon and Proud Boys and a toxic mix of groups and a whole lot of people who were just ordinary voters, Trump voters who were mobilized, who all believed something about a sort of disinformation about the election and really felt compelled and called upon to thwart what they believed was a real threat to democracy. So I think that's where I think we're at the beginning of something. And we have been continuing to see the kind of spontaneous political violence and willingness of just ordinary individuals to be violent in strange and unexpected ways. And I expect that that's going to continue for several years. I think that we're not, you know, there's a kind of genie out of the bottle situation now where it's going to be difficult to work purely on the preventative side to stop it. But I'm also an optimist at heart. And I don't think that this is, you know, we're not headed toward the end times. I don't believe that this is irreparable. I do think that we can pull it back. And I think focusing on democracy itself and on how to strengthen and protect democracy from the threats that come at us from the fringes is one strategy that can lead us into a better path. Thanks for that, Cynthia. And again, it's a tough question, but I figured you'd have a really good answer on that. Let's let's shift gears a little bit to the role of social media. And this is something that is absolutely an area of strength for you. So much of your recent work is focused on the impact of social media and fueling far right extremism within youth subcultures in the United States and abroad. And your 2020 book, Kate in the Homeland that I talked about before dives into this in some really unique ways. So can you provide some of the key findings from the book and how from what you assessed and studied how social media driven radicalization in the US compares and contrasts with other countries like Germany and elsewhere in Europe? Yeah, great question. So the way I think of this is that social media is part of the story, but it's it's part of a broader online ecosystem of platforms, of places and spaces where you spend time online and ways that you engage online, all of which get exploited and weaponized by extremist groups. And they've been really effectively weaponized on the far right on the especially on the white supremacist side, because they're so youth centered, and they've been used in a way that is what I often call the weaponization of youth culture. So there are several different things going on here. One is the just the vast number of places and spaces where it happens. And so that's from online gaming platforms to the live streaming of certain kinds of combat sports tournaments that that are set up by people with extremist intentions to draw people into the street fighting that they believe has to be, you know, proceed the race wars that they think are coming. I mean, so there's online gaming platforms, there's there's YouTube channels that are dedicated or used by extremist groups or propaganda that's created by individuals to on cooking shows or on makeup tutorials, right, sort of everyday places where you could be in there on a platform looking up a DIY, you know, do it yourself kind of channel and then stumble because it gets recommended to you by an algorithm, somebody else watched it stumble accidentally into extremist content that's embedded into something else. So it's not just like, oh, I have to go looking for this dark video, you know, that is promoting an extremist message. It's it's very it's almost like grooming as we think of it. It's it's introduced in really gradual and seductive ways through other types of places and spaces where people might spend time. So that's that's one of the things. But it's also we have amplification of messages. So the live streaming functions are being used to turn a local terrorist or violent acts into a kind of global performance. And we've seen that repeatedly with the terrorist actors who have live streamed their attacks, including in Christchurch, New Zealand, for example, we see extremist groups using the online ecosystems to crowd source and fundraise and support sell merchandise, but also get donations on ordinary donation platforms that then find out it gets reported and they shut them down. But it's like a constant whack-a-mole kind of a thing. So there's just a wide range of ways. And then the last one I'll say is is that they through the use of online culture. And I talked to a class about this earlier, the use of humor and irony and wit and satire often through means and through jokes that get told, even through emoji or other kinds of jokes and things online that then get evolve very organically into offline violence. And so we've seen this with the so-called boogaloo scenes, which are it's a code for civil war that started as a joke among teenagers online. We've seen it with the Pepe the Frog co-opting of a Pepe the Frog cartoon that evolves through complicated ways into a fantastical mythical white ethno state called Kekistan. And there's a flag which then waved at Charlottesville and waved on January 6th. So we see this offline and offline intersection in important ways. And I think the online world can mobilize, can radicalize, can introduce people, can recruit and livestream and amplify. But ultimately, it still translates into violence in the real world, in the physical world, in the offline world. Because it's not just trolling and harassment, it's also mass shootings and plots that we're worried about and seeing interrupted. So it's that intersection, I think, that is really important to understand. So on this issue of the different aspects of extremism that are either supported or fueled via social media platforms, what can you say about, again, from the context of your own research and study, what seems to be similar to dynamics playing out in the US and Europe? And where are their key differences in this social media? Great, great question. So I would say, first of all, it's global. This is happening almost everywhere. It's not just a US problem. But the US has an outsized proportion of the terrorist violence, the incidents and the deaths. So when you look at something like the Global Terrorism Index, which has shown, I think, a 250% increase in far-right terror over the past five years across Western Europe, North America and Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, about half of those incidents and half the deaths or so are in the US, even though there's a lot of other countries represented. So the US has a bigger problem than most. Some of that is due to gun control issues and the easy accessibility of weapons, which leads to greater lethality. But the problems of social media of online interconnection not only exist everywhere, but they're related to each other. So two of the last terrorist attacks in Germany were either their manifestos were either written in English or they were live streaming in English for a global audience, even though they're attacking immigrants or people deemed not to belong to their version of what constitutes Germanness within their own nationalist context.  So there's direct inspiration and sharing of kind of tactics and procedures and bomb-making strategies. And I'll say, and I know this will be of interest to you with your work on jihadism, it's not only even just globally among white supremacists, but sometimes we see the sharing of those of those bomb-making intact equipment across extremist ideological domains. So we've seen, you know, some very little but limited white supremacist extremist engagement on jihadi telegram channels, for example, and vice versa. So hopefully, you know, that doesn't continue and that I have reason to believe I'm not that don't think that's a huge threat, but globally those connections can be made in different ways. Other countries, there are two things that most other countries are doing that we're not doing one, and which we might not want to do, right? One of which is more restrictions on speech and more restrictions on expression. So not just speech, but symbols and nonverbal speech, nonverbal expressions, like means or something like that or video. That, you know, we have very, very strong free speech protections here, so we probably are not going to see the kinds of restrictions that you see in a place like Germany where you cannot legally display the swastika. Most other countries outside of the US have much stronger restrictions on speech and there's more criminal penalty for expressions of hate speech than we do. And that's true for social media regulation as well. There's just more regulation, more government regulation of those things, more monitoring, more monitoring and reporting more transparency to the public, more data collection. And then finally, of course, because this is, I know we'll get into this, but there's also a lot more investment in the prevention side and not just on the security and militarization sort of side of it. So, you know, not seeing this just as a hammer, but really investing much more deeply with much bigger resources on the very early, what we even call pre-prevention, just strengthening of democracy and democratic values side of things. Great. Thanks for that, Cynthia. So, we spent the last, roughly the last 20, 25 minutes talking about different features of the threat, the role of social media and different, other different radicalization pathways. But turning to the policy front now, and you've already hinted at this, but I really want to get into some of your thoughts because we are a School of Public Policy. Where do you think the US needs to do more on that front and what are some possible approaches and you can tackle these from the legal aspect, the governmental structure aspect, how the non-governmental sort of options that are there. But I think there's a lot to talk about from the solutions side of things. Yeah. Well, great questions. On the federal side, I think there already are some really big strides being made to address some of the things I'm about to say, which is, you know, we need to approach this more as a public health crisis and not just the security one. So, what that means is addressing it in a way that situates the problem within communities and intervenes in a way that roots solutions in local and state and regional needs, right? So, meeting people where they are and understanding how to invest in some of the prevention. I can talk about kind of what that means, but that's, that is a public health approach to how you intervene. You can't just create policy top down and see change on the local level. There's also, I think, more of an emphasis on these community-based solutions and on trying to expand this beyond the security agencies and law enforcement agencies and intelligence side and see this not just as a monitoring and surveillance and arrest, you know, and prosecution problem, but also one of how do you prevent radicalization and that involves, you know, health and human services and Department of Education and other agencies beyond. And that is something that other countries do a lot of, right? So, they have a dozen agencies involved in these issues rather than just a couple. And we've already seen some of those strides, I think, in Biden administrations, the Biden administration's new domestic, the strategy on domestic extremism or terrorism. We're already seeing a lot of that language at least and in the renaming of the Department of Homeland Security's prevention, you know, office around community issues and moving into regional locations as they've been doing. We are seeing some of those changes. But I think that ultimately the real solutions are going to lie on the local and in the community levels. I mean, we need this work to be happening in schools. We need it to be happening in municipalities, within offices and local unions and employers offices. We need it in faith communities, you know, where, you know, just the kind of lab that I run on where we work on prevention every day. We get just over the last month, probably 30 different inquiries from local partners asking us to help. We cannot do it, right? We need more people like us testing and designing interventions and scaling them up to local communities. But parents need help. Mental health counselors need help. How do you recognize the problem? How do you prevent people from being susceptible to the propaganda? How do you help them understand what online manipulation looks like? These are things that we have done very well for a generation. Now, understanding how online predators work, how to protect your digital privacy, we've invested in digital communications work for kids in schools, for example, but they really don't get enough about source integrity or what propaganda looks like. And that's true for fifth graders, and it's true for 50-year-olds. I mean, we need more help to help people be less susceptible. And so that's that's at the early end of this, you know, rather than seeing this just as, you know, even in the best case scenario, leaving all the problems to law enforcement to solve. There was a terrorist in Ireland and Northern Ireland many years ago, who after the after a failed attempt on the royal family to assassinate someone, he said, that's all right, you know, they have to get it right every time. We only have to get it right once. And I think that's, you know, ideally, you want more investments early on, so fewer people go into the pipeline, because even in the best case scenario, we're expecting on the intelligence and security law enforcement side perfection. And we know that that's impossible. From your previous sort of grounding on the academic side in sociology and education, is there a parallel program that exists in at least modern U.S. history that the at least the security side of the of the fence could look at as something that delivered similar results, even if the output or the intended, you know, focus was was different? Or is this something that's going to have to be completely designed from whole cloth? And as you and I have discussed before we met today, that this is something that government struggled with for quite a long time post 9 11 on the jotties terrorism front. But I wonder if this is just requires a completely new paradigm approach for what we're dealing with now. Or if there is something in the historical record or archives that that would at least again give a more kind of focused direction for folks. So the good news is there are models, I think, but the bad news is I don't think they're in the U.S. So meaning that I think other countries, both say Norway, Germany, New Zealand, who have all really grappled with resurgent far right extremism, particularly in the white supremacist side in recent years with awful attacks have put forward really interesting national plans that integrate much earlier intervention and prevention and community based work. Sometimes that relies on a lot of trust with law enforcement in ways that are going to be more challenging in the U.S. I mean, there are cultural differences. But for example, in Germany where they just invested a billion euro in their prevention national plan, which is inconceivable to us, it's called the 80 there are 89 specific measures in the plan. And it's called the 89 measures to combat racism and right wing extremism. In New Zealand, their Christ church plan includes a national center of excellence on social diversity, inclusion, and the prevention of violent extremism. So what these countries are doing, I think, is understanding that you cannot when one of the drivers is the factual changes on demographically that are being weaponized by extremist content and propaganda into a sense of threat, that you cannot really effectively address some of these issues with rising white supremacist extremism and domestic terror without also thinking about how are we going to live together in communities and as a nation with greater social cohesion with greater sense of inclusion and belonging. And I think the U.S., we saw that in the Biden administration's plan in their fourth pillar of that plan. If anyone has read it, they do actually, they recognize that you can't really address some of these issues without addressing polarization and racism and gun control issues. I mean, there are other issues that have to be addressed. But we haven't as a country really grappled with how do you address these issues of social inclusion at the same time as you address these issues of rising violent extremism. And I think they basically have been divided up into different compartments in most of the agencies that for resource reasons and expertise reasons. And I think one of the things that has to happen is to find a way to have those conversations. We do have experts on social inclusion. And we also have experts on extremism and radicalization and the more we can bring people like that together to think about it. Ultimately, in the last chapter of this book, I opened with a question from a German politician who asked about diversity curriculum. He said, why do we always talk about this as something that has to be strategic or instrumental or these different reasons? What if instead we just ask the question of what would it take for everyone who lives in a country to feel at home there? What would it take for everyone to feel at home in the country where they live? And that's a surprisingly hard question to answer. And it means talking about social cohesion and social inclusion while you're also talking about the violent fringe and how those things interact. So that is a hard conversation to have in a security space. It's not a typical conversation to have in a security space. And so I don't know the answer. I mean, you've spent your career in that world and maybe it's not. And that's why maybe the federal level is not the place to have those conversations. Maybe it is the local level, community level. I don't know. I know we need to have it. I'm not sure how you make it happen. Yeah, thanks for that, Cynthia. And I know you and I could probably talk for a long time about a lot of these topics. I'm going to ask you one more question and then we're going to start getting to audience Q&A and I start to see some popping up in the chat box here. So my last question for you, another one of these ones where you may not have a good answer, but I'll ask it anyways. So again, if January 6th, then your opinion was not sort of the culmination of all these different factors and drivers and you don't see the threat sort of diminishing anytime soon. Do you think, if that's indeed the case, that do you think that now is the time for some deeper kind of governmental reform, at least at the federal level or restructuring? Because in the aftermath of 9-11, in my own careers, you hinted at sort of rode that post 9-11 wave of governmental reform and change and counterterrorism and intelligence and homeland security. Do you think we're at that moment now and there's the need for that deep structural reform or that is just it's a different type of issue here in the United States. And this may not, again, all the solutions may not speak park on the federal side. Yeah. I mean, you know, what's interesting is I think, yes, I think we do need some reform and there is a moment for deep structural reform and for rethinking the kinds of expertise that are needed to be in the room for these kinds of conversations and for policy solutions. But I also think this is a much trickier moment. You know, after 9-11, again, I wasn't on the side of the conversations at that point, but my sense is there was a much more consensus, bipartisan consensus and agreement and it was much less politicized. There was a universal agreement about a sense of threat and people moved forward as a nation, kind of, whether there was problematic or not civil rights violation. There were a lot of problems with the way we actually moved forward, but, you know, right now we're in, it's very difficult, I think, even to reach agreement about how to describe the threat, the vocabulary that we're using. We don't even have the same words in use across our own agencies to describe the phenomenon. So we've got, you know, the State Department of Justice using racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism. We've got Homeland Security and Congress using white supremacist extremism, just as one example. Now we've got this broader umbrella, domestic violent extremism, DVE being used, but we are, we are still so much, even in the, and then global, you know, other countries use totally different words like right wing extremism or right wing radicalism in Germany. So there's a lot of work to be done. I feel like before we can even think about how you would restructure the government level to address it. I feel like we have to form some consensus about how do we define the problem and what are some strategies to address it. And one of the reasons why I like the focus on pre-preventative stuff is because usually we can all agree that it's easier to get agreement actually on the idea that we need to make people less susceptible to online manipulation. Whether people will agree with what that online manipulation looks like, you know, so it's not, it's ideologically neutral. In other words, it's about manipulative persuasive tactics, regardless of the extremist group that are putting them forward. So yes, I do think we need it. I think I'm not super optimistic right now, just based on that kind of, it's a very difficult time, I think, to find consensus. Well, your comments that are a little more sort of, not, I wouldn't say pessimistic, but sort of sober and clear-eyed, then you'd be a perfect government counter-terrorist, because that's pretty much the line we take all the time. But anyways, all kidding aside, thanks for sharing your insights, Cynthia, with me. And now we've got several questions in the chat box. Hopefully we'll have time to get through all of them, but I'll start with the ones that my colleague Daniel Ripken has put in the chat. So the first one is, is the prevalence of these myriad groups due to people looking for intersectional support for issue combinations, or do they tend to be one-issue groups and have, and have they to, and they have to join as many to get covered? I don't know if I've, yeah, I think I understand that one. Yeah, I think I understand the question. So, you know, I'll say, and I said this in the class earlier today too, so sorry, you're hearing this again, but I, you know, I think a lot of people think about these groups as being, and movements and scenes as just being fueled by people who are really angry and full of hate. And what what I find actually is that people are usually drawn into them for more positive or aspirational kinds of qualities.  And so, you know, I find that people often what we often see happen is people are looking for something. They're looking for meaning, they're looking for a sense of purpose, they are depressed, they're online, they're anxious, you know, they're going sometimes to self-help forums and that those are targeted. We know that those are targeted in times with extremist groups, they're playing games online, they're trying to find a sense of community and connect with others. And during that process, they sometimes encounter people who have deliberately put out or sharing extremist content, whether those come from groups or from individuals who are sharing that propaganda. And it often meets them in a really gradual way and shows them, gives them a sense of purpose. We've heard this from former extremists who say things like, I found a sense of family there. Those guys were my brothers, I would never let them down. We see real parallels with a lot of gang violence as well, where people often feel, you know, really deeply a part of something. So I'm not saying that it is a positive thing, I'm saying they're attracted for positive things. With veterans, we often see that they are attracted to the language of defense, of protection, of being patriotic or being a hero. And all of that language is there from extremist groups who say, you're coming here to defend the Constitution from tyranny. It's just being twisted, right? So it's a twisting of something that has actually, you know, drew them into the military in the first place for positive reasons or positive qualities that is being then manipulated by others with real propaganda. So, you know, I don't know that my view generally has been, and what I found in research from both lots of interviews over the years and long study of the iconography and propaganda, is that people are emotionally drawn in before they are drawn into the ideology in most cases. The ideology comes second after they're drawn in for these other reasons. And that's true, that has some parallels with some of the jihadi and ISIS foreign fighter recruitment as well. The idea that you're restoring a caliphate, the idea that you're restoring, you know, a fantastical white ethno-state. I mean, a lot of these things are territorial and based on a sense of purity, but they're also calling on people to heroically engage, to protect and defend and support their communities. So, that's my experience and my research and the evidence that I've drawn on is shown that that's how people are drawn in. But, you know, we're also seeing really rapidly changing dynamics and who radicalizes much older right now, more women being brought into it. And so, these things are changing as we speak too. So, I would say stay tuned for more research. And even from the number of people arrested and or charged in the aftermath of January 6th, I think that that pool sort of underscores some of those findings that you just mentioned. So, I think that's pretty interesting. Yeah, and actually when you were interviews with them, too, people who were interviewed by the media, they, I think almost everybody I've heard and interviewed with, they really believed really deeply that they were the ones who were acting courageously, you know, to save democracy from tyranny. So, they were deep believers and believed this was their patriotic duty. So, it doesn't mean it's not illegal, right? Like, belief and disinformation doesn't excuse a criminal act. But it means that they were drawn into it for reasons that we might be able to understand a little bit and direct in an earlier way toward a more positive outcome. Great. Thanks for that, Cynthia. Okay, next question. And I'll try not to, I'll try to read this one properly. How do we communicate to someone that they may be on the path to hate or radicalization? Oh, this is a really tough one.  It is far easier to prevent somebody from getting engaged with extremism than it is to de-radicalize them. De-radicalization, in fact, I think is extremely difficult, takes years typically, and there's no evidence or very, there's no evidence that can be scaled up, essentially. So, you know, there's a very individual kind of process that requires a lot of one-on-one intervention, particularly if there are conspiracy theories involved, with someone who they know and trust, right? Because they're not going to trust an outsider who is often then seen as part of the conspiracy. So, it's really difficult. What we usually do when we get these queries is refer people to two groups, one called life after hate, and the other called parents for peace. I have a partnership in my lab with the Southern Poverty Law Center. We have a number of tools that are all free and downloadable, available. I can drop it in the chat in a minute. It's housed on the special site on the Southern Poverty Law Center's website, also in multiple languages, that are tools for parents and caregivers that we've tested with parents and caregivers to see that they're effective counselors, teachers, coaches, even other youth, other people who work with youth. They're all youth focused in that area, but that helped people recognize really early warning signs, because the more they get down that path, the harder it is. So, I don't have a great answer for you on how can you communicate, other than that, it doesn't help to come at it with facts, generally speaking, and it's better to approach it from it. The evidence shows that it's better to approach people with evidence about how manipulation works than it is to tell them about the facts. I'll just give one example without running too much over time. A lot of our research draws on public health research, for example, that shows after decades of trying to teach teenagers about healthy eating habits by telling them about the long-term consequences of bad choices for their BMI or diabetes or whatever, it had zero impact on the choices they make about what they eat. But when researchers designed a study that taught them how fast food companies were manipulating them with advertisements to make choices that were not in their own best interest for their bodies, but were lining the pockets of those companies, that did change the behavior of kids and it changed the behavior of boys more than girls. So what we take away from that is nobody likes to find out they're being manipulated, especially teenage boys. And so if you can help them understand more critically why they don't want to be a pawn in somebody else's game, try to understand what might be behind a motivation of somebody else sharing that propaganda or disinformation, that is a step that can help. But for somebody who's already radicalized, you really have to get professional help. Right, and we would see that in the jihadist extremism world in my time in government and hear the stories of how families struggled with those very personal decisions about do I inform law enforcement about these possible signs of radicalization that I'm seeing with my family members? And then what are the consequences of making those decisions? And I think we're seeing the same thing play out now in a different type of threat. Okay, some additional questions populating here. To what extent can content moderation systems sift through the nuances of types of far right content and community forums and predict harmful outcomes? Yeah, I see the whole the content moderation world and also tweaks to algorithms changes to algorithms that try to prevent, you know, things like, for example, more salacious content from being amplified, or that try to prevent people from being exposed. They're all ND platforming. These are all really, really helpful tactics and strategies that have been shown to reduce the spread of disinformation significantly, for example. But they're always a band-aid solution. You know, to me, anything on the content moderation, de-platforming side is already going to be too little too late by the time, you know, by the time you remove the content, a lot of people have already been exposed to it. By the time you remove the bad actor and kick, de-platform them, they've got 10, 15, 20,000 followers behind who've been following that toxic material that don't get any explanation, typically, of why that why that suddenly just there, the person left the platform. And so much like the way I see law enforcement and security solutions as the band-aid solution at the end that we want to reduce the flow, we want to reduce the bubble that goes into that. We also want that on the social media and the online world. I mean, it's exhausting to even think about, it's insufficient what's happening on the content moderation, but there's, you know, tens of thousands of content moderators employed across these platforms, and they're not able to keep up. And we know real harm is happening. So even in the best case scenario, it's not enough. It can make a difference. It does make a difference. It's better than not having it at all. But it can't be the only solution, I guess. So sticking with this content moderation topic and going back to the broader points we discussed earlier about the role of social media, one thing you didn't necessarily address, and I just didn't give you the prompt, but maybe this is a good time to do it now. And this is a really esoteric thing that I'm not sure a lot of our listeners and viewers might know. So it would be great to get a minute or two of your thoughts on this. But where do you see the whole Section 230 debate of the 1996 Communication Decency Act in this broad, broader conversation about the impact on prevention and countering far-right extremism? I know, again, it's a very technical thing, but it's so important. Yeah. I mean, this question about regulation of the social media companies is an enormous part of what we're talking about here. My personal view on it is that I want someone to be having that conversation. I want really smart people in the room when that's happening, and I still don't think it's going to solve, even if the best solution is arrived at, whatever that solution is, it's always still the band-aid solution. The regulation, anything that involves the regulation of content is always going to happen after the fact in my mind. By the time you recognize that bad content is out there and deal with it, it's just really, really because of the coding. In Germany, when I was first studying this stuff, one of the schools outside of Berlin banned the number 88 from display because 8 is for the 8th letter of the alphabet for HH for Heil Hitler. Immediately, kids were wearing t-shirts that said 100 minus 12 or 87 plus one. We see that that kind of game playing is constant. It is endemic to the system.  It's not that I don't think it's important, and maybe this is a dodge of the question. It's not my area of expertise on the regulation side, and I want someone to do it, but I think it's insufficient no matter what. My goal is to draw more attention to the much earlier prevention so that we have less content to deal with that's nefarious. Yeah, you're more focused on the upstream aspect than the downstream kind of swatting Okay, time for probably a couple more questions. Do you see the role of women in domestic extremism increasing, especially in what's playing out in some of these local school board settings if you've been following the news on some of those conversations? Yeah, the role of women is definitely increasing. It's been going on for I would say about eight or nine years, maybe a little bit longer, and I'd say there are a couple different things happening. One is that historically these domestic extremist groups also have tremendous misogyny going on in them, and sometimes assaults of women, but also just there's no way for, it's been very difficult for women to be taken seriously within those scenes and movements, and so they have stayed in the background. They haven't played much of a role historically. Now that's not to say they were unimportant as somebody as famously said, it's not my line, but somebody was sowing those Ku Klux Klan hoods. There was always a backdrop to what was going on that was enabling these movements, but social media and online platforms have totally transformed that because women no longer have to physically experience the misogyny or the danger of these movements for them, and they have stepped into some real leadership roles on the recruitment and radicalization side by streaming content, by recruiting other women, by producing Instagram accounts that are really aesthetically quite appealing, that integrate wellness, that integrate attacks on traditional medicine, but embed those with conceptions of purity, that integrate food and cooking and homeschooling, and ideas about traditional life and traditional roles as women and as mothers with content about purity and raising white babies. So it's drawn out and attracted more women to that, and they're also using the same tactics that anybody builds on social media to attract more followers with really parasocial relationships and content that is appealing to people like makeup tutorials or cooking shows or something like that. So we've seen a lot more engagement on that side, and then the conspiracy stuff, the QAnon stuff has attracted a lot of women through the yoga and wellness movement as well, along with those intersections with the anti-vax movement. So that's where you start to get these strange coalitions emerging where anti-vax, traditionally people who might have been more on the left or a little lefty liberal hippie, are seeing alignment with the kind of anti-government folks who are now in a COVID era, emerging more as anti-vax advocates. And so that's where we've been seeing a lot more of the women, and we saw that on January 6th, very obviously I think. And we're also finally seeing more women coming out of active duty military, and so because veterans groups are targeted and militaries targeted by some of these unlawful militia movements, we would probably also see some of the same trends there as well. And just as a side note, for those who are students of terrorism, both at home and abroad, if you go back to the late 60s into the 70s to the early 1980s, if you look at the way terrorist groups had leaders or women who were leaders in those groups or actual sort of operatives and attack plotters and planners, that was definitely much more of a dynamic than across the threat spectrum, both from the far right and the far left. I would argue it's more recently coming up now, but going back almost 50 years, even the United States, the role of women in extremism here was far more pronounced than I would say is now. Okay, time for one last question, and it's a very profound one, but I think it's also, it's a good way to end this conversation here. So the question is, what can the average person do to help combat domestic terrorism? Great question. One, I think is, I would say just a couple things. One, to be better informed. So again, most of my work has focused on youth over the years because youth have historically been at the greatest risk for violence. And what we see again and again are adults in these communities, parents, caregivers, teachers who recognize red flags far too late. Once it's already far down the radicalization trajectory, and it's really difficult to turn that person back. So I think staying informed, and again, we have some of these tools on, I'll just say it out loud, it's www.splcenter.org backslash peril. So the Southern Property Law Center's website, and they have a page for peril for my lab, which has all the tools on it. So we have found that that really does help empirically help people feel more equipped to recognize red flags and more empowered to intervene if they do know a child. And then there are lots of resources on there for where people can go for additional help. I think people also need to pay more attention to the way that victims of rising hate are affected and to be more responsive. So we have, we often focus a lot on the perpetrators of rising violence and don't spend enough time looking at targeted groups and the victims of those communities.  And so I think we often have to focus a little bit more on some of those targeted groups and not just on thinking about how to devote more resources to the perpetrators of hate as well. And then, yeah, the last thing I think thinking about any way that we can reduce polarization, which we know is fueling some of the political violence, and the willingness and support for political violence is probably the thing that troubles me the most right now, you know, because we know that that underpins some of the fringe activity. But it also means that we're more likely to see the kind of violence that we've been seeing at school board meetings or parents getting angered, teacher for asking their child to wear a mask, or just the physical violence and harm against healthcare workers, etc., that is not quite in the traditional wheelhouse of domestic violent extremism, but some of which is motivated politically as well. So I think thinking about ways in every small community to reduce polarization and form better ways of kind of protecting democratic values are a positive step forward. So great question to end this conversation on. So Cynthia, thank you so much for spending not only this hour with us, but the day today. You spoke to my class earlier, and I know the students really enjoyed hearing from you. Always great to have Ford and Michigan alums back here on campus. Open invitation to come back anytime. And thanks to my colleagues at the Ford School, Daniel Rivkin and Erin Flores from the communications and outreach team who really put this together. And my colleagues as well from the Wiser Diplomacy Center for just giving me the opportunity to be part of the team here. So with that, thanks again to everyone who watched and listened. And this will also be recorded and uploaded for future viewing and hope to see you on the next policy talk. So thank you again. Thank you. Go Blue. Thanks for having me.


someone's just watching me hi everyone welcome back to my channel welcome to another video we're doing a drive with me i haven't done one in a very long time because i haven't had my car in a very long time well that's all right i've had our uni for a few weeks now but i thought we'd do a drive with me today a bit of a mukbang i'm going to get well kind of a mukbang i'm going to get starbucks because i haven't eaten today i really really really really really need a coffee right we're gonna have to turn the music off though because copyright i asked for some assumptions on my instagram i actually haven't read them all yet usually i like to leave it as like a little surprise for myself so it's just as exciting for you guys no for me as it is for you oh we have the most ridiculous feed bumps in this place uni's been very interesting recently obviously we are in lockdown so starbucks drive thru has pretty much been the only thing we've done trying to get out of the road hon she wants to get run over let's go vroom vroom vroom bit oh that is such a nice car there is a massive Ferrari like showroom centre shop i don't know what they're called right down here by my uni it's making me really sad actually that i don't have music so i might have to just ditch you guys in a minute and find us you got them there sorry you're not going to be able to hear anything i'm saying driving solo i'm just living through my hands when i'm sober i just don't like who i am i've got a lot of enemies i used to be my friends hello we are by nilly at starbucks i've already been in this queue for about 10 minutes and i have a feeling i'm going to be here for about another half an hour also you guys missed out i was driving down the motorway massive flashing sign says car on fire slow down so i slowed down like that's going to stop me from catching on fire i was just waiting to see a car actually on fire like a full blown exploded car or something like that nope there was just a car on the side of the road with its bonnet open no fire nothing no smoke very disappointing i mean i'm glad for the his ever car it was there wasn't on fire but like don't tell me there's gonna be a car on fire also i was kind of scared i was gonna catch on fire myself so i did have to go in that outermost lane so that i didn't catch on fire i think that's all i had to update you on haven't decided what i'm gonna get yet i don't even know what the starbucks festive drinks are let's have a look eggnog latte who who who drinks an eggnog latte and their sandwich has gravy in it that is just so not what i want so they only have three drinks maybe i'll get a toffee nut latte or should i get a gingerbread latte guys i really want to get lip fillers i know everyone's gonna be like don't eat lip fillers jeez i don't know where that came from firstly that sounded like a compliment to myself by saying i didn't need them but can you see my lips because i can't oh i also can't drive without glasses on i just want right so if anyone can just let anyone tell me how much i should get because everyone gets like a mil right and all my friends that have had lip fillers have had started with a mil and then eventually got like another mil a few months later again i feel like i say now i wouldn't do that i could just get a mil and like if it faded well dissolved or whatever then that's fine i'll just deal with it whatever but i also said that about dyeing my hair blonde which i spent far too much money on now after the first time i said i was only gonna do it once same with my eyelash extensions and acrylic nails which i haven't actually got for a very long time but as soon as i start getting them again i will get them all the time so am i just adding another expense to my life that i can't afford i need to put glasses on to be able to read this menu hi hi can i get a toffee nut latte please i just found my ex bitch pull up on the next oh my god they have them as frappuccinos as well i feel like a gingerbread frappuccino would be nice i've got a shit i've got gingerbread oh my god she can still hear me i forgot oh that was so embarrassing i was just screaming and i forget that my microphone's on all the time and she can hear me and my window is still open okay i'm gonna see you when i've got my food bye we're just gonna have to deal with the lighting i'm sorry okay i have my toffee nut latte it smells like a toffee milkshake oh i guess it's kind of what it is no it's got coffee i didn't even try it yet but i don't like it okay well it definitely tastes like a toffee nut latte like that's exactly what i thought it was going to taste like i don't know if i prefer it to a normal latte i feel like it's going to be very sick here i'm glad i did not get a bigger size let's answer some assumptions okay a lot of these i'm not gonna answer you're smart as hell i'm really gonna understanding people firstly that's really cute i think yeah i think i am actually very okay firstly i don't think i'm smart i think in terms of like understanding people i actually do think i'm very like in tune with people's emotions just from stuff that's happened in my life like i've just learned so yeah i would say that's true sometimes at a cost your family are actually really rich and you try to hide it by being relatable she then says i don't think this i love you i love you too i don't think i've ever like said my family doesn't have money like my they we definitely do oh that sounds bad we're definitely very comfortable and i have nothing to complain about in my life in terms of that kind of stuff my dad started his own company and he's done very well for himself so yeah we do have money but like it's not like an unrelatable amount of money like i'm not a trillionaire like i'm not about to inherit millions of pounds it's such an awkward topic to talk about i don't think that's what makes people relatable i think it's just about showing your actual personality and just not being fake on camera you work hard and put a lot in a lot of effort into school it doesn't come easy to you yeah i don't think it comes easy to me i think it definitely used to when i was like in primary school i was very clever in primary school and then gcscs i did work very hard for them i did work very hard for them but i also really wasn't in a good headspace at the time i was revising for them and i still did very well so i don't know whether that was from me working hard or as it was just from me like naturally being clever i think probably a bit of both but by the time i got to my a levels down the drain i don't know where where it went like i worked really hard for my levels as well and did nowhere near as good as i did in my gcscs obviously they're considerably harder and i'm not gonna lie i did have a few distractions during my levels yeah i don't think i'm naturally clever anymore especially at uni oh my god like i don't feel clever at all i definitely have to work hard if i want to do well which is a shame because i used to be clever but i don't know it doesn't matter um this is a very strange you would get with a guy who just broke up with his long-term girlfriend just because you don't like her um no i that's a really weird thing to do like that's very strange i i only going to get with a guy if i like him not if i don't like his ex-girlfriend i don't know where this has come from am i missing something should i be really offended by this he used to want to go to oxbridge interesting uh no i never really considered it properly a lot of my friends weren't doing it it was a lot of hard work originally when i chose my a levels i thought i was going to do medicine at university which is obviously a very difficult course to get into and a very difficult course to actually do even when you get onto the course so doing medicine at oxbridge just seemed like a ridiculous idea so i never considered it and i just don't think i'm clever enough i mean my a level grades would not have let me in anyway so i don't know why i'm saying that and also i just don't think i could have handled the pressure you found making friends at uni easy um all of the two friends that i have yes um no i'm joking kind of am i yeah i'm not gonna lie i haven't really found it that difficult considering like covid and everything i thought it was gonna be impossible and i was terrified that i wasn't gonna have no friends no one was going to talk to me and i was going to be by myself crying in my room every day which i kind of do do anyway but usually i have a friend there to cry with but yeah i think i was just really lucky and that i just met people who i just clicked with instantly like we are so similar we just get on like literally from the like day i met them or we got on so well you had your heart broken vibe it's one way to put it just tell me how it is you don't enjoy youtube as much as you used to i don't i don't think okay i think that's partly true i go through phases with how much i enjoy youtube sometimes i really really enjoy it sometimes i hate it want to quit it never do it again in my life uh a bit dramatic but there have definitely been times i mean you want to see in the gaps on my channel where i don't upload for like two months just because i don't know what i want to film i get really demotivated if i upload a video and no one wants to watch it i'm like why don't i put 20 hours of my life into that video and i go through phases of the content i'm making whether i really enjoy and whether i don't but yeah like when i was doing when i was at school i really really enjoyed filming like school vlogs just because firstly it was what i was doing with my day anyway so it didn't feel like i was taking time out of my day to sit down and film a video which would have stressed me out because i had so much work to do i just didn't have time for that you guys seem to really enjoy those kind of videos and i love watching them back because i've got all my friends and them and obviously i'm not at school anymore same with uni like i'm gonna do another week in the life probably soon because whenever we come out of lockdown so it's a bit interesting because i like those kind of vlogs but yeah sometimes if i just don't know what to film like during my gap year i just had no idea what to film because i wasn't doing anything if i'd been traveling i think i would have loved it i was so excited to make traveling videos during that time i really didn't like it but i think i'm kind of getting there again i mean honestly i'll see you tomorrow and i'll probably hate youtube but right now i do like it you smoke packs i do not smoke i hate cigarettes i hate the smell of them i hate the taste of them i hate being around anyone who's smoking or has smoked if i ever had a boyfriend who's smoked i well i wouldn't have a boyfriend who smoked because i could not deal with it like i genuinely hate it your body count is double digits nope absolutely not but if it if it was there'd be nothing wrong with that you care too much about other people's opinions again it depends who it is like if people like people i don't know random strangers on the internet comment on my videos comment on tiktok instagram whatever i don't care i really don't care like i've never really got that much hate definitely had some it really doesn't faze me it actually makes me laugh like i kind of find it funny that people are that angry that they take the time out of their day to write me a message that i then just laugh at unless i've done something actually wrong then please call me out for it but like just making comments on people's appearance i've had a fair few of them it's just like why but people in real life who i actually know and whose opinions i value and who i care about definitely like even if i love something or love something like about myself or like i really want to buy this or really want to do this if someone who's important enough to me says that looks awful or you really shouldn't do that or that's embarrassing something like that i mean that wouldn't be very nice and i probably shouldn't love them as much as i do if they're saying that to me but this is a hypothetical situation i probably wouldn't do it wouldn't buy it wouldn't wear it whatever it is because i think i do care too much what other people think because i doubt myself a lot okay and the last one is that i'm struggling with uni yes and no i feel like i've said yes and no to every single one of these assumptions i think i'm just very emotional right now i don't know what's going on with my body she's not really handling anything i can't really stomach any food i can't sleep i don't know what's happening um she's shutting down we're getting a little bit better i'm fine no one call 999 on me i just don't know what's going on like i don't even think what obviously it is mental you can be really sad and it will literally physically hurt your body like your brain is so powerful so i'm just trying to tell my brain that we're actually good and we can sleep at night and we can eat a full meal and we can do our work work is a lot like it's very stressful and i think because i've had a year and a half out of any kind of responsibilities like that i think it's just a bit of an adjustment i'm just trying to get used to like self-discipline and self-control and time management and all that kind of stuff but it's a learning curve we're all going to get there together anyways i'm going to end this video here because i've been filming for so long i hate i'm gonna hate myself in a few days time when i come to edit this video and it's gonna take me like 10 hours because i just chapped absolute rubbish out my ass so i really hope you guys enjoyed this if you did please give it a thumbs up subscribe if you aren't already and i will see you guys next week with another video


, wait. I thought they want that deleted. No, there's always a parking management, well, if there isn't a parking management plan, they don't have to come back, but only part of the management plan. So reviews, so I'm not prepared to say there's not a parking requirement or a plan for them, but if there is one, it has to be followed. So hold off on it. We'll hold off on it for the time being. Parking space is clearly designated and clearly marked. We need to know the numbers for those. So we'll come back to that, look at the numbers for those. And science, we can agree on 50, I think. Landscaping maintained by the owner along with the, in accordance with the management plan, any plantings that die shall be replaced. All right, that's standard, 50, 51. Reasonable efforts to use natural herbicides and non-toxic chemicals, appropriate warnings of tenants. I don't think there's any objection to that. If I hear any, please speak up, members. Mature trees shall be found in the area except those shown in the proposed plans to be removed shall remain and be maintained to provide visual screening from adjacent properties. All right, that's what we tend to always require this. Any applicant has to come back for review and approval of the design of any permanent signage and any temporary signage standard. Stormwater and drainage, we're gonna wait on that till we get more from the engineer. We just make sure that we understand that better. Construction, so I think all these constructions and there's just a ton of them, these are all standard, what we require for major construction projects. Am I right, Maureen? They are, they are. This is all, and so instead of running through 56 through 63 and going through, I would like to have all of those approved as standard. And if upon reading this during the week, you come up with the concern, we can address it at that point, but let's approve 56 through 63. Then we move to 64, crosswalk shall be provided in the front just as off-sale point drive. The department like, okay, I think that's not controversial. Benches, spike racks, we're gonna leave those for later. The lot shall be approved at no more than 32. 35.2%, we have to get to that finding. Mr. Judge, since the applicant is gonna be providing, additional bike racks and pick and tables and the like, the law coverage number, the proposed law coverage may be increased. So the applicant should update the site plan to reflect any new amenities provided and then update the law coverage just so. So I have a question for staff, does a bike rack count as law coverage? Well, if there's a concrete pad underneath. So do bike racks need a concrete pad? That's an excellent question. I don't know. But like a picnic table and that would, I would assume. And then the gravel, if it was even gravel underneath that would count as law coverage. Even if it's the gravels pervies, it's... Dave, I feel like I asked you this question earlier this week. You have to look it up. So yeah. I don't wanna misquote it. Okay. Okay. Can move on if you'd like. Yep. We'll move on to 66. I would encourage, let's find out whether bike racks and picnic tables increase law coverage. And if it does, increase in the number of bike racks and picnic tables, let's figure out how much each bike rack increases in law coverage if that's the case. So 66 will weight 67, just maintaining property. That seems to me to be non-controversial. 68 safe site distances and properly maintained intersection of South Point Drive. Again, I don't think there's any controversy about that. 69 air conditioning on other, should be placed on the roof. Not the windows. That's true for all for this new building. Correct, Mr. O'Sullivan. Everything's on the roof. Okay. 69 we can do lighting fixtures as identified in the building. So lighting fixtures and construction drawings. You have to use the same one you have in the drawings. Mr. Judge, Dave Buskevitz has raised his hand. Yes, Mr. Buskevitz. Okay. Maximum law coverage shall include percentage of a lot covered in the manner described in the section 6.17, plus that portion of a lot covered by driveways, parking areas, walkways, tennis courts, swimming pools or other similar materials. For the purposes of this bylaw, all such surfaces whether constructed of impermeable materials concrete by two Ms. Asphalt oil stone and the like or constructed of permeable materials, gravel, piece stone and the like shall be included in the calculation. I think anything that has structure that would be impermeable, we've done solar panels for instance, you calculate that percentage of the panel that would be impermeable or in that case on the ground. So I don't know about a bike rack necessarily, there's not a lot of surface therapy, minimal minuscule, but certainly something if a bike rack was on concrete, the concrete would be included. I imagine it would be hopeful if you already have impermeable surfaces, you would try to locate these types of things on that surface already since it's already impermeable would definitely be to their benefit, but hopefully that's helpful. So if we had one bike rack for every building, how many buildings are on the property? I don't know, I found. There's a new one, Mr. Martinez, do you know how many buildings are on the property? We can look on the site plan, but if we can figure out the worst it could be is a bike rack at every building and multiply that by whatever the coverage is of the gravel underneath the bike path, a bike path. So that's the number we need, that would be the worst case scenario for the in terms of increasing coverage, a lot of coverage. I will say for the most part I've seen bike racks on concrete or asphalt, something that would be impermeable, also just to mount it there as a permanent fixture. So that probably could be planned on. So if you're looking at a bike, so the goal here is to figure out how large a footprint a bike rack has, multiply that by the number of buildings that are available and that's the number we need to think about for increasing the potentially, depending on the board vote, increasing the lot coverage and also for picnic tables, which was also raised. So that's those are the two figures we need for the... There are 10, sorry, there are 10 buildings plus the one that we're looking to build. Okay, so we've got 11 buildings total. There are some bike racks already. Right, they currently exist, yep. But I'm trying to give the worst case scenario that we can work back from there. So we're not, and we're talking about a couple of different picnic tables as well, okay. So we're gonna leave the coverage ratio for another time. Light fixtures as submitted, as traffic study should be reviewed and improved by talent to your private, okay. That's already taken place. Traffic study has taken place. Stormwater management report. Is there a new, has he reviewed this stormwater report or does that have to be done yet? The town engineer is currently reviewing it. Okay, so it has to be done before the building permit is issued. Correct. It doesn't negate the need for the engineer to review it. All right, full construction drawings have to be prepared, submitted, that's standard. All site demolitions will follow the approved plans that are identified and leave those. Well, you can fill in these sheets at a later point. So we're not approved that one until it's filled in. 73 will leave, 74, I don't know. I mean, is this just the building itself and not the sites? We haven't had a lot of question about the building itself. This is just a carry forward from the 2018 special permit. This was a condition from that 2018 permit. And then we modified it just to reflect the sheet number change. And in two weeks, we can have a date so we'll know what the report is. Okay, so we'll leave it for now. 75, management plan, five guests is a minimum. That's been, we talked about that. I don't think there's a concern about this. 76 new property owners shall return to the ZBI public meeting to approve and update the management plan. I think we should approve that. That's not standard. It's required even by another condition. The removal of the massive roof and interior mile of all existing buildings shall continue during destruction of the approved building. All building exterior renovation shall be completed prior to receiving file. All right, this is carried over from the earlier special permit in 77, 78, 1.6 parking stalls per unit. And that's been, that was the original as well. Okay, so I think we've got most of the non-controversial low hanging fruit taken care of. And we're coming up to nine, just a little after nine o'clock. I would propose that unless anybody has a question with any of the conditions that we approved tonight, that we move to approve these conditions and we'll come back and do the ones which were left hanging in two weeks. And we'll also do our findings at that time as well and make the decision. Ms. Pollock. I would suggest the board that you hold off on approving any conditions until the final, you know, your final deliberation and vote on this permit and after you make your findings because there could be, you know, there could be a modification between now and the next meeting. So we wouldn't want to approve anything prematurely. But we could, there's nothing would prohibit us from coming back and modifying that condition that we approved the next meeting. Yeah, but it's a condition of the permit. So you haven't approved the permit yet. So I would recommend that you approve the conditions as part of the approved, you know, if you so choose to approve the special permit, it's approving the special permit with conditions. So I would recommend that you do that at the same time, but you have informally now, you know, I've indicated that the ones that you have would like to approve, we have taken note of. So at the next meeting you, I would say if there aren't any changes to the ones that you have informally approved that we can just skip those and not have to like read those particular ones out loud unless you would like to modify any of them. So I want, what I'd like to do is I understand your point. So what I'd like to do is have an acknowledgement that we've done. If you agree to these conditions without a vote and acknowledge that there's no objection and then we will move on next week with all but these, we'll deal with all the other conditions. We'll have a final vote, which will wrap these and the other ones together all at once. But these, we've locked these down and unless anybody objects, I'd like to move forward with, consider these done and move forward with the new conditions next week, or in two weeks. Well, some of them, I think a few of them need some forms filled in. Yeah, there's technical conforming changes that we need to, that we identify and. Authorizer. You can deal with, yeah. Fine. We always authorize the staff to make technical and conforming changes. It's important. Maureen, what do we have on tap for two weeks from now? Anything else on the agenda? Yeah, so there are two other applications. One, two special permit applications. One, to deal with the installation of like a fiber optic pabbitant that will be located on the property of Aspen Chase Apartments at 615 Main Street. I think that application will be relatively straightforward. Famous last words. And then also Applewood, the senior living, the retirement community is submitting a special permit application for three additions to their building, including that will include nine new apartment buildings and apartment units and inside pool and enclosed atrium and a meeting room. And so, but we can put this item also on the agenda. All right, so this, we can have this item first, deal with the other two subsequently. Does that date work for the applicant, Mr. White? And that would be Thursday, September 22nd and the meeting would start at six o'clock via Zoom. Let me just gotta make sure that there's no conflict. Thursday at the 22nd. Everybody check here. That works for me. All right, for me. I can't be calling the 22nd, but I can have our managers who otherwise would have been here today attend that meeting. So you can ask them your questions directly if that's okay, Mr. Church. That would be fine. It should be available or somebody either me or Chris Chamberlain from the office will be available. All right, and I'll make myself available. We do have some business in Boston that day, but I think I'll be back in time for six o'clock. So, yeah, but I'll figure out a way to do it. All right, okay, so do I have a motion to continue the public hearing and meeting on this matter to our next board meeting on September 22nd? Moved. Is there a second? Second. Roll call vote. Chair votes aye. Ms. Parks? Aye. Mr. Maxfield? Aye. Mr. Gilbert? Aye. Ms. Marshall? Aye. Motion carries, motion is unanimous. And, you know, once I looked at this, the date, Maureen, I said I wanted to do this one first. Perhaps we can have this second just in case there's traffic coming back in Boston and the two other ones or maybe somebody else will be can share that the first two just to make sure that I get back for the, for this one. So. Okay. All right, so let's work that out. I want to make sure that all the time we put into this, I don't. I don't. Sure. So the meeting will start at six o'clock on Thursday, September 22nd. And then the board will open the public hearing for the fiber optic. Those two. And then, and then. We'll do this one. Yeah. And then continue this one. Cause I just, I don't know when, you know, who knows, doctors take a long time to. All right. Sometimes it's late, right? You know, you can take a while. Okay. Well, I guess just real quick.  So, okay. There you go. So moved. So moved. Give me a little look. Yep. All right. And you'll have to find somebody. And this Marshall, you will probably be on that panel. If I'm not on the panel, it's only five. So you're getting a workout right away. All right. And then I'll disappear back into the woodwork. That's fine. Okay. Okay. I have one last question that I was taking notes of the changes that have been requested and information that's been requested. But Maureen, will you circulate your notes as well? Just so we're all on the same page? Yep. And if I may add, as you were going through that last spring, there was two items that I believe you've got today. One was the Deming or Optic Info, information requested as it relates to families. And the other one was information as to issues we've had on site. No, that was our overzealous baseball player. Oh, okay. Okay. All right. We've completed our work on this application. The next order of business for the board is to have, to listen to public comment on any matter, not before the board tonight. Are there members of the public who wish to speak on any matter? Well, again, thank you to the applicants for being on the call, the long process. We appreciate your willingness to work with us on this and we'll see you next week. Two weeks. Excuse me. We'll see you in two weeks at the next meeting. So you can leave now if you wish. Thank you. Thank you everyone. So are there members of the public who wish to comment on any matter that was not before the board tonight? And if you're calling in, you would press star nine. Well, no one's calling in. Or if you're at a computer or something, you would press the raise the hand feature. All right. No comments from the public. Is there any old business or not? Business line anticipated in the last 24 hours, we've gone through the schedule. So that's pretty much it. We do have someone from the public raising their hand actually. Okay. Mr. Du Bois, please state your name and your comment, please. Name an address for the record and unmute yourself. Oh, oops. Sorry, I thought I unmuted him. Oh, he's unmuted. Yep. I had a question with respect to the 12 month lease. Is that for the whole complex or for the building? This is, it's a good question. The board may want to deal with that, but we cannot take and make comments on the matters before the board tonight. And that was a matter before the board. So, yeah, that's okay. That's a good question, but it's just not one that we can deal with specifically by our rules and by the town rules. Thank you though. Any other question? All right. If not, and if there's no new business, I would entertain a motion to adjourn tonight and continue the adjourn tonight. And we've continued the matter until two weeks from now. Do I have a motion? Mr. Maxfield moves. Is there a second? Is Marshall moves? There is no debate on the motion to adjourn. It's a parole call vote. I vote aye. Mr. Max, Jim? Aye. Ms. Parks? Aye. Mr. Gilbert? Aye. Ms. Marshall? Aye. Motion carries. We are adjourned. Thank you all for your work tonight. Appreciate it. Good night everyone.


Well to me, I think the way to dissolve the unforgiveness and to come into this full experience where you see everyone as yourself and like that simultaneous merge you were talking about, it is a purification that's going on. You know we've talked about chemistry and alchemy and the transformation that's coming and it's just in the end I would say it's just a total purification. It's symbolized in a Course in Miracles workbook lesson. My mind holds only what I think with God and I think a stepping stone is kind of coming towards that a little bit is I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts. Again you can see how I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts is another version of all illness is mental illness. You can start to see that it's just using different phraseology to come to that same thing that it's all mental, that it's all mind. What would be the benefit of that is that the mind is one, mind is singular, mind is unified and there's no duality in mind. To perceive negativity, attack, whatever you have to and that too could be whatever. It could even be an inner world and an outer world. A lot of times people talk about the inner world of their consciousness and then the outer world that they perceive and that's what this transformation this kind of mental alchemy that's occurring is starting to show us that there really is no world apart from what we think that even when we meet some people that we can seem to talk freely and share ideas and there's a synergy and excitement and you feel like after you've talked to this person you feel energized. You feel like we were both lifted up and taken up higher there and then there seem to be other encounters where it's like it's a different kind of a belief system, it's a different kind of thought system, it's more negativity or more closed-mindedness or whatever. But in the end it can't really be that there are these different levels of people and different levels of ideas out there. It has to be during this purge or this purification that it all comes together as one. So for me that was the thing of surrendering just to say I'll go wherever you want me to go, I'll do what you want me to do, I will step back, you lead the way, you show me. I'm not going to try to freeze down an identity into anything that is like static. I want to just continually go through an evolution of consciousness where I'm just so unattached and so open to whatever comes my way that in the end I reach a state where I see that I cannot judge anything, that I never could judge anything, that I never did know my best interest, this humble state of just pure openness, open-mindedness. And so there's a lot of ideas that get left along the way, even the idea of kind of positive energy and negative energy. You can start to see there's so much duality in everything that we have believed in and that we have to truly, like Vuddha said, empty the mind of everything that we think we think and think we know and come into that state of pure emptiness and innocence. Recently I was listening to the Chinese translator of Course in Miracles and she said, I mean at the beginning they didn't get into mainland China, they got it over to Taiwan and she did a lot of her work in Taiwan there and she said first it kind of caught fire as kind of this catchy new age teaching and philosophy, you know, and it started to become popular that way and so forth. And then occasionally some Buddhists would trickle in and start picking up the book and working with it a bit and she noticed over time over the years that the ones that kind of came in from like a new age perspective, they were like flesh in the pan, they quickly let it go and it was the Buddhists that were the long-term course students, the other ones all faded away and I thought how beautiful, you know, this ancient tradition of non-dualism of emptying the mind, this deep, rich spiritual tradition there, they came into it very slowly, like what's this? And then they started working and then they hung with it and I think that's the way that this kind of alchemy, this transformation goes, we have to have a lot of steadfastness, a lot of persistence, a lot of devotion to truly hang with it and then pop. It just seems like we reach a crescendo, we reach a threshold or something and it's just like wham, it just you know, it's just like aha, you know, it just comes at us. Eureka. It's like aha, aha, aha, you know, just the simplicity of it just dawns, the glee, the joy, the happiness and at that point, you know, the practice, the process, all the things that seem to come before are just kind of swallowed up, you know, in it and so to me that's the most important thing, it's just like this deep desire and willingness to have that experience and that seems to be the thing that really fuels the purification, you know, that our desire to be still and know God, you know, ultimately wins out, we could say, because it's the most natural experience that could ever be and those things, I mean, I have so many parables of meeting people along the way that the world would describe as the most dark or describe as the most judgmental ones but it would be more like, you know, just an awareness for me that everything is a reflection of my mind so I would just stay there and sit there and really be there almost like searching, searching like, I know you're in there, I know you're in there and I'm not leaving until I see you, you know, and one time I was in Chicago and I did this course gathering and the woman who had invited me, her husband, was not into the course and it was his, like, real estate office and he was there the whole time but after he left, you know, he was, he went through all his darkness, his negativity but I just stayed with him, stayed with him and later the woman told my friend who was traveling with me who they had gone into another building but that his stereotype or nickname they called him Archie Bunker so it was like I was out in the room for three hours with Archie Bunker and he was just telling me, you know, which races should be exterminated and, you know, I mean, all that kind of stuff and I just sat there though in presence, pure presence for about three hours and then after that, near the very end, it just turned around where, you know, he started to say, well, I don't know maybe there is like a divine intelligence behind it all and the spirit started just moving through him I was like, oh my God, Archie, even Archie Bunker can channel the spirit if it's just your desire, you know, I just had the desire to stay there and to see the innocence and I had such a strong desire for that that I had no intention whatsoever to go anywhere I could just sit there beautifully in presence I did a lot of listening there wasn't a lot to speak but at the end, you know, it did pop through and it was this ah, this feeling like, of course the innocence has to break through, you know the darkness cannot hide the light the light, you know, is just perfect love, cast out fear and it's just a matter of divine reality and divine fact and so, you know, to me that's what this is about we really hang in with that determination and nothing can stop us from experiencing that