Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Anna Lee. I am the Director of Community Impact for the Chicago Community Trust. And I have the esteemed pleasure of welcoming you all to this event. The Chicago Community Trust is co-hosting this important conversation during this unprecedented time. And we think that engaging all of you to listen intentionally about what immigrant communities need right now. And as you think about policy to move forward, we're just delighted to have all of you. Just to give a little bit of background, for those who are not familiar, the Chicago Community Trust is over 100 years old. We are the community foundation for the Metro Chicago area. And we are known as funders. We work with donors and also with philanthropic institutions to ensure that the Chicago region is a thriving, equitable, and connected region. And we are lucky to have our CEO, Dr. Hoeing Gail, be a board member of New America and to foster this important collaboration. I also want to mention that since Dr. Gail has been at the trust, we have been focusing our work on closing the racial loss gap. We recognize that it is the racial and ethnic loss gap that has created so many of the issues that so many of us are addressing in our work day-to-day. And that's been especially pronounced during this pandemic. COVID-19 has impacted all of us. But we recognize that there are communities in Chicago and across the nation that are disproportionately impacted because of barriers and systemic racism. And so we're just excited to have this conversation to think about what those policy solutions might be. And with that, I will, and I also want to mention that the Chicago Community Trust has also been the place where we hold the Illinois Immigration Funders Collaborative, which we are delighted to be a part of. And I believe several of my colleagues on the Funders Collaborative are on this call. And we were created in 2012 to address for the funders to convene and respond to the issues surrounding DACA. And since then, we've continued to be a collaborative responding to various issues impacting our immigrant populations. So just delighted for all of us to be part of this call, too. So with that, I'm going to pass the phone or the call to Megan Dugan-Bastet, who is a fellow at New America's in Chicago. Thank you, Anna. I have the pleasure of working with Anna in the office. So as a New America fellow, I'm actually based at the Chicago Community Trust, which has been really wonderful and delightful to work with all the amazing people there.  For those who are not familiar with New America, we are a think-and-do tank-based in DC. I am part of New America Local, which has four hubs around the country that are doing work with local communities on issues of work, income, and equity. And I'm really excited to be part of this discussion. The idea for this event, one of the things we really wanted to make sure, I am not someone who has worked a lot on immigration policy, and so this is a new topic to me. But there's such a robust and large population of immigrants in and refugees in Chicago. We really wanted to make sure to have an open conversation and be able to talk about what are the experiences of those communities over the last four years as immigration policy has really changed quite a bit. But also, as current events are unfolding, how has COVID-19 impacted those communities differently? And really our goal for this conversation is to both help people who aren't as familiar with these populations who would like to learn more about how these current events are playing out for those communities and how they can serve them better, but also for those of you who are very familiar with immigration policy and with changes in the community for you to be able to also share what you know and hopefully learn more as we really have a dialogue. We're going to actually first, we wanted to do a little bit of listening. So we wanted to spend some time just hearing from people in the community about how things are going from immigrant and refugee communities right now. One thing I'm going to ask is if people can actually use the chat, we wanted to take a really informal poll. So we just wanted to hear from people that are joining. What is your interest in being on this call? What would you like to learn from this call? And if you want to say a little bit about, you know, how what your connection is to the immigrant and refugee communities in Chicago, you certainly can. So for example, if you're already working with those communities, if you are a member of that community because you are an immigrant or a refugee yourself or you have family members who are, feel free to drop a little note in the chat and we'll just keep those going as we start to share. But right now I'm going to actually turn it over to Nissa Rhee, who we're really happy to have with us. She is the CEO of Fortalist Magazine and she's going to take over this listening section. Thank you, Megan. So I think to start off, we have a little presentation from StoryCorps, which is, of course, a national organization but has a location here in Chicago at the Cultural Center. And it's a story of a young couple living in Chicago and their their challenges at this time. Pecón was just two years old when his parents brought him to the United States from Mexico on a tourist visa. They never left. In 2012, Iroquere received DACA and was able to attend law school. It was around that time that he met Ariana Hermosillo. He later asked her on a date to Millennium Park in Chicago. And it was there that Iroquere told her he was undocumented. Did it make you feel apprehensive about dating me? No, it didn't make me apprehensive. It was almost like it's OK. It's cool, but not even fully grasping what that meant. I was a U.S. born citizen, and I think I didn't realize that I would start living some of that indirectly through spending time with you. So I've started working as an immigration attorney. It's weird to be undocumented. It's weird to be in those offices with somebody else who also is in the same situation. You've mentioned to me that sometimes you're scared or you're sort of nervous when I go to immigration court or when I go to ICE. Because I imagine you going in there and talking smack and just kind of standing up for your clients. And I just imagine you saying the wrong thing. Tell me the truth. Have you ever been afraid? I'm always afraid. When I went to my first ICE check in with a client that's on the fourth floor and it's just completely packed to the brim and you cannot walk around. It's very hot. It's almost suffocating. Sometimes I'm curious if they know about my status. Yeah, we've kind of built an unspoken system for you telling me in the morning that you will be at a nice check in. And then I say, please be careful.  And I say, thank God. But it does weigh me down a little bit. It is a very specific cloud hanging over us. It just feels like we're at pause. Travel plans are paused. Long term plans are paused. You know, we want to buy a house. We really can't take too many steps in any direction until we have this resolved. So it is hard. What did our wedding day feel like for you? I think I felt that peace. Yeah, like it's it's it's a start of something new for us. We've been together for over five years now. You've been very supportive and very caring in so many ways. I wonder how you feel when you no longer have that title of undocumented person, but I'll be there with you. So I'm ready. All right, let's do it. That was Iroquere Picon and Ariana Hermosillo. Although the two were married earlier this year, it is still unclear whether Iroquere will receive a green card to become a permanent resident. That was a really sweet story, I think. But of course, we know, you know, immigrants in Chicago and elsewhere are a really diverse group of people from all different countries and all different backgrounds. And we have two people in the in the webinar today that I just want to bring into the conversation who are really important people in their own communities. And Nancy, let's start with you from a United African Organization. Are you are you able to unmute yourself there? Oh, let's see. Where are you? All right, I see you, Nancy, but you'll have to unmute yourself. To talk. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Hello, Nancy. Hello, how are you? Good. Welcome. So, Nancy, do you want to start just by telling a little what United African Organization is to everyone? Yes, my name is Nancy Esri-Fiaturi, and I am with United African Organization. We are a coalition of different African community based associations here in Illinois. We work to promote social economic justice and civic participation to empower African immigrants and refugees, mainly here in Illinois. So most of our work revolve around public policy advocacy, organizing within the community and helping people with the support that they need to be able to access programs. Yeah, Nancy, you you deal with a whole wide range of people from all different countries and all different age groups. What do you think people, what do you wish people understood about what it means to be an immigrant or refugee in Chicago today? What do you wish people knew? Great question. When Megan reached out to me over the weekend, I was completely broken over the death of another community member. For us, as Africans, we are often caught in the intersectionality of being black, caught in the largest struggles of the black community, the struggles of the immigrant community and for many constituents that are Muslim, also caught up in the issues around xenophobia and other things as well. FG was 53, a resident of the Fort Ward, a family of four and spouse to a head breader. There were also a family of limited English speakers. The money spoke with a wall of French at home and they had a disabled child in their household. I was really sad because Eve Jean was the main person who took care of her daughter. She needed dialysis three times a week. And as his wife breaded her, he was the one who took care up and down for their check-ins and the dialysis. None of the resources for COVID-19 that have been provided by the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois is any African language at the moment. FG was a driver, his wife, a head breader. These families depend on their day-to-day sales what they are able to bring in. The head breading business is really seasonal and it's around this time during tax season that they are able to make most of their sales and bring in income. Many of them, the drivers, the head breaders have had to shelter at home for these past six weeks, 68 weeks without any access to income. For those who have social rights, they have been eligible for something through the case that probably the stimulus payment. But for many of our constituents that are self-employed, access to unemployment benefits is still a struggle. It was only on April 4th, 15th that IDES asks everyone to apply for unemployment benefits. And they don't have any specific guidelines that help these unemployed populations, self-employed populations, to help them in understanding how the process is going to work. I currently understand that IDES is working on the system to help them implement payments to people who are self-employed. So no one has been able to regain anything yet. They are at home and trying to see how they can manage between now and when they will be able to get back to work or when they are able to get any income. We just had, for us, we've had a number of constituent virtual meetings, and we just had one this morning with close to 100 participants. Many of them self-employed with all sorts of questions about how they are going to assess income or what they can do at this time. Most of what we have heard as well is that some of the people who have gotten sick are mostly people who are self-employed, Uber drivers, cab drivers, some of them have even passed away, just like FG, because of this coronavirus. They also have children at home. Some of the parents that we've been in contact with do not even know about checking the case work, whether they have access to the technology that they need or not and how to even assess to be able to help their children. The most desperate and the most desperate are undocumented folks, not eligible for anything. People are desperate for food. We have had a number of donors that have been generous to drop off food for some of our families. Many of those who apply for the Chicago Rental Assistance Program have no head back or were not chosen. Many people are desperate for incoming resources to help them with their utility bills, their rent and their food. We have a lot of people who have items, who are asking whether they can use that for unemployment. Some have had to stop and stay home because their children are also at home and they don't have anyone to take care of them. And I think that besides that, most people, right, what I fear the most are those people who are self-medicated and at this time, a lot of mistrust in the health system or government system. We have had so many people tell me about the heaps they are taking, some taking chloroquine and other things just to protect themselves so that they don't have to find themselves in any of the facilities. They don't even want to get tested for COVID-19. And those are some of the issues in addition to that. We've seen with immigration, many people are afraid, even those who can access these for their family members. We get in a lot of questions about public charge and how this is going to impact them later on if they get unemployment benefits and food stamps or anything that relates to the government. And we also seen a number of patients that have been reported recently back to Haiti. Some of them even tested positive for coronavirus after they were reported. So those are some of the things that we're working around and trying to see how best that they can help you Thank you for sharing that, Nancy. There's so much pain and confusion and fear. And I'm sure people have more questions for you about how to help. I can see that in the chat box, how to reach out to you. So if you're able to stick around, please do. I want to also call on Fernando from Spanish public media right now. Fernando, are you able to unmute yourself? Yes, I am. Can you hear me? Yes, yes. Great, Fernando. Same question to you. You know, what do you wish people understood or about what it's like to be to be an immigrant right now? What are you thinking people are getting wrong? Well, the first thing. So I'm a DACA recipient myself. I came to the United States in 1986 when I was 12 years old. Even though I have DACA, I still I still live in the shadows, right? And there's a lot of socio-economical aspects that that people sometimes get wrong, for example, just the fact that a person can stay home and work. That's a luxury immigrant families don't have. We cannot afford to stay home. We cannot afford to not go to work, right? We and we often have a lot of, for example, my stepdad and I even work at work for a company that cleans, right? Those things. So a lot of these jobs require interacting with large numbers of people. We clean essential businesses, work. We work in restaurants, grocery stores. We are making deliveries. So we cannot afford to not to not go to work and we cannot afford to work from home, right?  Well, yeah, we might be saving a life, but we're also not saving our lives, right? And even as a doctor recipient and there's a lot of other people that I know who are also doctor recipients, this new public charge immigration rule that went into effect last late February has left many, many of us increasingly afraid to seek any public services from medical care to, you know, just the fear of that could lead to deportation or prevent us from receiving a permanent residency in the future if there was something to happen in immigration. There's the fear that that might come back and haunt us, right? Even though there's a few people that I know that have back and have a type of unemployment, they still have that fear that it's gonna count against them. When just as an example, we need to services, right? I live in a building that has in a small apartment that has six other different apartments with the smallest family is four. And we're asking this social distancing when ourselves, we cannot even social distance, right? And there's a lot of other families out there that are in a little village in Humboldt Park that live in this same situation with the building where there are six, seven families that average size of the family is four and they live in the small spaces. And we're asking them to social distance and they're going out to work and they're coming back to work. So it's a luxury. Many of our immigrant families cannot afford. And some of these policies, I mean, DACA and the public charge issue, these are things that we're going on before COVID and now they're just being exacerbated by the disease. Vika, I wanna pass it on to you for the next section. Thank you so much, Fernando. Yep. Thank you, Fernando. We really appreciate you joining us. Thank you. We're gonna open it up to our panel discussion now. So thank you guys for joining us and thank you so much to Nancy and Fernando. I wanna say, anyone who has questions for the next section, please feel free to type those in the chat and continue to add in the chat. If there's specific things you're interested in hearing about throughout that, we've got throughout this session, we've gotten some really interesting comments and people have mentioned like what their connection is in our community, so keep that up. So we're very lucky to have a really wonderful panel with us today. So I'd like to welcome Karina Ayala Bermejo, the CEO and President of Instituto de Progreso Latino. We also have someone that I am super lucky to call my boss, Cecilia Munoz, the Vice President for Public Interest Technology and Local Initiatives at New America. And many of you may know her. She previously worked in Chicago years ago and has just been an amazing leader on this issue over the years. You've already met Nissa Reed, the founder and CEO or Executive Director of Borderless Magazine. Welcome Nissa, thank you. We're also joined today by Dr. Nicole St. John and she specifically works at the Kovler Center working with people who have experienced refugees in particular who have experienced trauma at Heartland Alliance. We're, our final panelist is Fred Sau, who I've known for many years and I'm sure many of you also have the Senior Policy Council at the Illinois Center for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Thank you all for joining us. We wanna open it up and just talk a little bit. Let's give a little bit of background for people like me who are newer to this issue. We'll talk a little bit about how immigration policy has changed over the years. And then we'll start to dig into, you know, what we see coming down the pike, what you're hearing from communities, but also I wanna make sure we really talk about, you know, what are things that you're seeing solutions are coming, seeing coming out of communities and what nonprofits and foundations are doing in this space. So let's start it off. I'd love to hear from Cecilia and Fred. What are some of the key changes that you've seen in immigration policy over the last four or five years? So I'll start if that's okay with you, Fred. This is Cecilia. It's almost hard to know where to begin. There's been so much that has changed. And I think if there is a thread which goes through kind of all of the policy changes, it really is, there's really two threads. One is that we have a federal administration which is really interested in stoking fear and Nancy and Fernando's presentations, you heard the extent to which that's been really successful. And then the second, I'm sorry to say, is that this is a federal administration which is really interested in reducing the number of people who come to the United States from foreign countries. So that means both immigrants and refugees, refugee resettlement has slowed to almost nothing. And they've just announced in the last week that they don't intend to process green cards for 60 days, which is, I mean, their excuse is the current crisis, but that's a strategy which has actually nothing to do. It doesn't influence the crisis at all. Obviously COVID-19 is something we have here in the United States. It's not coming from immigrants or people who seek green cards. But to sort of put it in perspective that story core piece that you heard, you know, Ida Kede is waiting for a green card by virtue of his wife's citizenship. So if you stall green cards, what you're preventing is his adjustment of status, right? I think the public frequently assumes that people who are waiting for green cards are just somebody who got in a line somewhere because they wanna come to the United States when in fact the people that we're talking to are the members of our family, the people that we're talking about are the members of our families. So we've had in the past four or five years a series of travel bans, a dramatic decline in refugee processing, a dramatic increase in immigration enforcement, both at the border and at the interior, some craziness and devastation at the US-Mexico border, which includes the policy of separating families and increased detention, but also we've pretty much ground asylum processing to a near halt and are preventing people from asking for asylum at the US-Mexico border and there are now camps of people, of tens of thousands of people in Mexico who were already exposed to violence as a result of our policy decisions, but are now also terribly exposed to the virus because of conditions that our policies in the United States created. And I know Fred's gonna talk a little bit about public charge and you already heard about it from Nancy and Fernando, but that has had an enormous, enormous impact, which is I think what the administration intended on keeping people, including people who are eligible for the concept services, which Congress has put forward, which are essential if people are gonna keep it together. That policy is preventing people, is discouraging people who are eligible for those services from taking advantage of those services, which means additional levels of pain and devastation, it particularly felt partially felt by immigrant communities. The last thing I'll say before handing off to Fred is DACA, right, you heard again in the StoryCorps story about one DACA recipient, there are just around 800,000 of them and we're waiting for a Supreme Court decision in the DACA case any day. And it's impossible to predict exactly what they're going to do, but there's a lot of fear that will get a negative decision and that the administration will take negative action also against DACA recipients. So all of that adds up to a climate of fear, which is being stoked intentionally by our government and a climate in which people who are immigrants and also people who are parts of immigrant communities, whether they are immigrants or not, right? We know that many, many, many immigrants live in mixed status families with that where there are citizens and immigrants, legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants all in the same household. So the reach of these policies goes well beyond foreign-born people themselves. They can affect whole huge swaths of the community and it's part of what is making our communities more vulnerable to the impacts of this virus, to the impact of the economic turmoil which has followed. So I wish it were better news, but it's not. And we will have an enormous amount of work to do to fight back from all of these policy changes. And it's important that we illustrate the harm that they're causing because it's harm. I mean, obviously you heard from Nancy Fernando how deep the pain is and how deep the fear is, but that undercuts all of us, not just the immigrant community. And with that, let me hand off to Fred. Hi everyone. First off, thanks for inviting me to be part of this panel and thanks to everyone for taking part this afternoon. I'm not sure how much I can add to Cecilia's very thorough overview of developments over the past several years. I think if there is a bright side to all of this, I guess I would point out a couple. First off, I think people are realizing just how wrong these policies are and they're now stepping up to fight back. And this isn't just people coming out to demonstrate or march as we see regularly on May Day or for the families belong together march a couple of years back, but it's also many state governments and local governments trying to figure out for themselves or in alliances with each other, the best ways to resist this administration's policies. We saw this very, very early on with the litigation challenging the Muslim travel ban basically within the first week of this administration. And we continue to see this with the ongoing litigation, the challenges to remain in Mexico or the proclamation limiting people based on whether they have healthcare coverage or the public charge litigation, which I'll may say a few words about later on. And we are also seeing movement on the legislative front. Any number of states, including here in Illinois have enacted legislation that prior to this administration would not have gained as much traction. Now it has, whether it's attempts to delink local police and state police forces from immigration enforcement or to extend driving privileges to the undocumented or to extend healthcare coverage. All these different things are now coming to the fore. Thanks largely to a reaction to the overreach of this administration. One last thing I would note, yes, immigrant communities, immigrant families are confused and scared, but I do wanna emphasize that our communities are incredibly resilient as well. And if anything, many of them have shown some really deep inner strength and have stepped forward to try to support each other. I can think of several organizations that have pulled their resources to support their neighbors, support their community members, particularly in light of the current pandemic. And on top of that and on top of the communities coming together, I think there have been many allies who've been willing to step up, to support people who for whatever reason have been excluded from the federal relief. And I know we'll be talking about that a little bit later too. So, you know- Can you share a little bit, sorry, can you share a little bit more about some of the efforts that you've seen where people have been coming together to help their neighbors? Sure, sure. Well, one example I can think of is the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, which surveyed several dozen community members to figure out the needs that they have. And has created a mutual assistance fund to try to help those who are in need. And I can think of several other organizations, both here in the city, as well as in the suburbs that have launched similar funds. I think that's just one example of the ways in which immigrant communities are coalescing to try to support each other in this time of need. Fred, I understand that you have been part of the coalition in Chicago or Illinois that's been working on the public charge stuff. Can you say a little bit, explain a little bit more about what that means, how it's impacting people and what you guys are doing about it? Yeah, thank you, Fernando, for bringing this up. And thank you, Cecilia, as well, for bringing this up. The public charge rule has been something that this administration has had in its spotlight for several years now. And it finally was able to implement this new rule back in February. In fact, right when the pandemic was starting to hit. So this rule expands the range of public benefits that count toward what's considered public charge, which could disqualify someone from getting a green card or getting an immigrant visa. And then also expands and quantifies the range of different considerations that either Homeland Security or the State Department can use to determine whether someone is likely to become a public charge. So this is having two effects. One, the more obvious one being so in confusion among immigrant communities. To the point, as Cecilia noted and Fernando noted, that many immigrants are just confused as to whether they should seek unemployment benefits or whether they should enroll in Medicaid or seek medical treatment. So, and that's particularly and tragically playing out during this pandemic. But the other effect, which is probably even more serious, but getting less attention, is that it essentially creates a wealth test for many immigrants who intend to come to the United States or to seek a green card. Now you have to essentially show a minimum amount of income. You have to show a certain range of education or job experience. If you're too young or you're too old, that's a strike against you. So all these different things are now in effect, due to this administration. My organization ICRR was one of several organizations across the country that filed a lawsuit or filed lawsuits to challenge the public charge regulation. At the trial level for each of these lawsuits, we won, but the Justice Department being particularly persistent sought raised appeals that went all the way to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court agreed to set aside every single injunction that we had won at the trial court level, thereby allowing the public charge to go into effect. And the last domino to fall was actually the court order that we'd won in Illinois, which was an Illinois only order as opposed to all the others, which were national. So yeah, since February 24th, public charge is now in effect, thanks to adverse Supreme Court rulings. I wanna ask a kind of an unusual question. And then I wanna make sure we chat more with Nicole, Nissa, and Karina. I think one of the things I hear in this conversation sometimes is you'll hear people say, well, my ancestors came here legally or my ancestors, you know, followed all the rules. And I'm just curious, I feel like for many of us, we don't necessarily have a real clear sense of how those like those rules for what it, what, you know, who's allowed to come in and how that has changed.  How have expectations and rules for immigrants refugees really changed drastically over, you know, the last many, many years? So you want that one or I've been doing a lot of talking, so. Well, the, it's changed so much. I mean, my reflexive answer to the question, dating back to my days in Chicago, which go back more than 30 years, to the answer of, is it safe to take a bag of food? Is it safe to take help when you desperately need help? For most of my career, the decades that I've been doing immigrants rights and immigrant service work, the answer was take the help that you need because it won't be held against you. And we can't advise people that anymore because we're at the moment, we're living under a government which wants to use it against you, which is looking for every possible lever that they can to use against immigrants. And so, you know, we used to be fighting against caution in the immigrant community, which was overblown and overstated.  They're government, this government is out to get them. And the harm that that causes is immense and goes well beyond immigrant communities. And especially at a time like this one, where, you know, pandemic is obviously, doesn't observe borders and doesn't respect, you know, different kinds of people, different kinds of immigration status. You know, I've worked in government. What government's job is supposed to be about, like the core course requirement is you're supposed to keep human beings safe. And in order to do that, you need to provide access at least to the basics with respect to public health and safety. And when we fail to do that, we're not just hurting the immigrant community. We are hurting everybody by making immigrants and immigrant families more vulnerable in the way that Fernando described earlier in the presentation. That's not just bad for them, although that's enough, is bad for everybody. But unfortunately, the caution that people are living with, the fear that they're living with is they're not making it up. You know, it's well-founded, unfortunately. And that's, I think, maybe the biggest change I've seen in my, you know, way too long doing this. I'm wondering, Nicole and Karina, can either of you share more about how you're seeing these policies play out in communities? You know, how have people responded differently? You know, how is it making, how is it really changing what you're seeing in your work? It's changing what we're seeing in every aspect of how business as usual was. So in order to gain trust and have a relationship with a community, it really is fundamentally based on trust. And when that trust, because of the raids or because of the deportations or because of the confusion, when that fundamental trust, not because we as an organization have done anything wrong, but because now they're distrustful and fearful, it makes that outreach effort, it makes the know your rights efforts, it makes everything about the work that we do extra. And while those of us in this profession know that our work will be very hard and it will require numerous outreach efforts and almost re-explanation of what was a truth or an obvious because things were changing so rapidly. It, for us as Instituto, we've been a big enough hope for 43 years in the community established on the premise that every immigrant and their families have the fundamental right to reach their fullest potential. And we do that through education, training and employment. And what we have found most difficult in the last four years is this educational component to regain that trust. It is the numerous ways in which we have to say almost that yes, DACA, you can apply for unemployment. Yes, you are allowed this fundamental right to education. Simple things that one would imagine are logical, but in this illogical, chaotic, confusing time, we have to spend a bit more effort. The other complication that we're facing now is that because of the extreme financial hardship that our community and our participants are facing, things like a citizenship fee is a barrier. Things like a very small, what one would consider an insignificant expense is a very much a barrier. So from gas cards to CTA, paying for transportation, child care, those things that always are barriers, now are insurmountable barriers that one must address if the goal is to continue those services, whether remotely, which is part of what our new reality is, right, if we are going to continue down the ability to connect with our participants, we have to do so remotely. So that's another set of barriers, right? You're talking about addressing access issues, internet issues. Do our participants have smartphones so that we're able to continue the process and for those of us in the education arena, we have two high schools, we have a small college and we have careers to pathways. All of that was a quick shift to a remote learning environment, which you can't begin to do if there's no access to internet. There aren't sufficient devices for every learner in the family, right? We're not asking the right questions. We need to be asking do you as a student have your own personal device? When you ask to have a computer at home, the answer will be yes. So that's not going to solve the problem when you have six or seven individuals within a household that also need to learn. So I think that part of what we're relearning and pivoting at Instituto is to ask the right question so that we're able to address the barriers and that those barriers that might have existed before that probably they could get by a week or so that now they're larger and they're with a more frequent cadence of need. And as we begin to address the digital divide, it is a deeper question that we have to ask, right? It's not just that there's some free internet for certain individuals, it's not free and that fear that Fernando and Fred and everyone has talked about is real. So folks are afraid of getting the free internet. They feel that that might violate their opportunity for permanent citizenship because of the public charge. So it's that education component. So it's a multitude of barriers that we're facing with in this new COVID times. And I'd like to pause there. Yeah, I'm curious to hear, Karina. What would you like to see? Like what would you be your suggestions to foundations and other nonprofits for engaging people in more effective ways now, given all these really challenging new barriers? I really appreciate that question, Megan. I think that the foundations have done a tremendous amount of effort in listening and understanding how they can help. I really wanna put it back to the need for the community is so large and those individuals whose boots on the ground have already been working with communities and have established that trust really have to be that warm handoff, that phase that gives the service. For example, if there is additional barriers, a link or a signup or a registration process that is not part of the organization that interfaces regularly, it just won't work. Even if it's go to this link, sign up for a free computer, it's going to be a barrier. We've seen it. When we announce, Inciduto is providing free laptops for its participants, we'll have a line out the door. But when it's, you need to go to this link and fill out an application process to be entered into a lottery and they'll advise you, they won't follow up. So I think it's continued support for the community organizations that are working with immigrants and refugees to continue the good work by supporting those relationships to continue so that they can be the bridge into the community to provide the services. That's going to be a significant increase in access to those services, whether it's internet, laptops, whether it's benefits and the opportunities to distribute food and basic necessities through those community organizations is really the intersection of opportunity and where you can funnel that commitment and funds. Nicole, I'm curious about what you've seen with, thank you so much, Karina. What have you seen with the people that you're working with? Sure, I think what I wanna do in my response to that question is highlighting and underscore all of the expertise that has been shared already through all of the panelists and also even recognizing a lot of the expertise that are showing up through the comments and focus my response to the mental health impact. So you're hearing a lot about fear and systems and how that's increasing barriers to accessing and reaching out to all of these places of support that are limiting are much more limited now, but I wanna take us back to when the current administration went into place in Chicago, immediately following the executive orders and the travel ban, there were five suicides in Chicago within the immigrant population, that first weekend purely due to the fears that this next four years we're going to bring upon this community. And since then there have been increased numbers of immigrant and refugee folks calling up hotlines and seeking out mental health services with coupled with this experience of distrust and fear. And so what that has resulted in, I specifically work and direct a child trauma center. And so the youth that we see are six to 21 years of age. And when we're talking about what does this mean for families, we're talking about children and parents who are free to leave each other side, who are free to go to the grocery store out of fear that we're gonna be picked up on the streets, our kids are gonna be taken from us. These kids who are now going to school being worried that when they go home their parents are no longer gonna be there. So if we're talking about education and learning, we're now talking about kids who have difficulties focusing in class who might not be completing homework who already have limited English speaking proficiency who are then gonna be targeted by teachers for behavioral problems or academic difficulties in ways that are already biased and unjust. And so then what ends up happening is youth get identified if we're lucky and referred to some places of support. But what ends up happening once they come to a space like my center, although our focus and our kind of eligibility is a six to 21 year old who's experienced trauma in their home country during migration or part of resettlement. What we are seeing is youth who have experienced horrific traumas at various points in their life and ongoing, but what ends up happening now is instead of talking about the migration story or the torture that happened in their home country, we're now talking about the systems that are torturing them here in the US. And so it's, my legal case has now been brought out from one year into three and four years and how am I gonna continue to navigate this and I'm terrified day by day. And so trauma-focused treatment is around survival. And it's no longer around how do I, typically it's around integration and how do you heal past experiences, but this is so chronic and ongoing. It's what do we do now to help build that trust that we're all talking about, how to give experiences of future orientation and hone the resiliency within the communities and it's really about community. All of these individuals and families have an incredible amount of strength, but it's how do we come together to do that? And so it's trying to build a lot of these bridges. I think one of the things that I've seen within Chicago is coalitions across the city really becoming strengthened and multidisciplinary in order to band together to work against some of these policies that are being put in place. Thank you. Nissa, I'm curious if you wanna share from some of the reporting that you guys are doing at Borderless Magazine and what you're seeing. And if there's anything that particularly it stands out to you in this discussion. Yeah, I guess a couple of things. In Borderless Magazine, we were founded shortly after the Muslim travel ban in 2017. So, our history or our coverage has started from that initial policy and gone on. And it's just been, there's always some immigration story in the news. So it is a time when I think a lot of people who are not immigrants are paying attention to immigration in a way that we haven't seen before, which is great. But at the same time, there's a lot of like misperceptions going on. And I think, you know, as an outlet, like I really appreciate what Fred said about resilience and resistance because there is so much to be fearful and sad about. And, you know, especially at this moment, you know, the stories that Nancy shared and what we're hearing in our own reporting of the challenges and really sorrows that people are facing now. But in the midst of all that darkness, there's so much reason to hope and so much reason, you know, that people are building new new tomorrows right now and really like building on the policy level what the next steps are. And I really appreciate, you know, like you can check out Iser's work in this and some of the campaigns they're doing, other groups around Chicago are doing a lot of work around impacting the immigration court and detention system. So there's a lot of resilience and resistance amid all this fear and sadness. And, you know, that's what we try to focus on at Fortalist Magazine. But I think people really need to remember that, that this isn't just a one-note story. Want to make sure to open it up to questions from the audience. One of the questions that I've seen in the chat is about how this is impacting suburban immigrant communities. I think, you know, one of the things that I've been thinking about over the last few years is that we kind of our discussion has really, for the last few decades, really focused on the city in Chicago. And we haven't often recognized that a lot of lower income people have actually moved outside of the city as it's gotten more expensive. I saw a statistic recently that like 50% of the low income people in Chicago are actually living in the suburbs. And it may, I think it was over 50%. I'm curious if anybody has anything they can share about what's currently happening in suburban communities and feel free to start putting questions, more questions in the chat for those of you who have other questions to share. Well, I can start. Quite a number of, quite a number of organizations within ICRS membership are organizations that serve the suburban communities. And obviously there's been a great shifting of immigrant communities out from the city to the point where many immigrants are now settling directly in the suburbs because of social networks and employment opportunities and available housing for that matter in those communities. Yet as these communities emerge, there's not always the same kind of infrastructure, certainly not the same range of organizations like Instituto or the same kinds of community, community organizing projects that you see in the city. And much of the challenge that ICRR has been trying to respond to is how do we build up that capacity in the suburbs, whether it's working with existing organizations or even helping people in the community create their own organizations. Life in the suburbs, given lack of public transportation and just sheer distances is difficult. But that said, I can think of at least a couple of organizations that are stepping up. One in particular is the Southwest Suburban or Immigration Project in Bowlingbrook, which is led by actually a couple of immigrant youth leaders. They're not so young anymore, but these are younger people who came up through the community and have dedicated their lives and careers to empowering immigrants in the Southwest suburbs. And SSIP is one of the organizations, as I mentioned previously, that's created a mutual aid fund to assist immigrants in need in places like Bowlingbrook and Romeoville and Juliet. So while immigrant communities may be hurting out there, at least there's some glimmers of organizing and mutual assistance that have also emerged. Does anyone else have anything to share on this question? Or we can move on to Mary's question. Okay, Mary had a great question, which I also have, which is what can I tell people who think immigrants need to wait in line or just come here, quote unquote, legally? What would you say to those people? That the immigration system is broken. We were so close so many years ago to comprehensive immigration reform and that when you look at the face of an immigrant, I think we have to share those stories. And Fred's heard my story previously, but we have to courageously tell our stories. So if someone like me who came from Mexico back in the early 70s can become an attorney and contribute to democracy and all that's great about America and have been an undocumented child, if more of our stories can come out and that show that what could be possible can be possible, we have more faith in the immigrant success stories and the ways that we can contribute. For us it was the ability to adjust status through the anchor baby laws that existed at the time. My brother was a US citizen born in the fields of Salinas, California and we were able to adjust. So I think it's hearing the stories of those of us who are very similar to the stories that you heard from Ida Sire and Fernando stories, right? The good that could come out of really defining that pathway towards citizenship is so critically important now more than ever. I think that's a really good point. I'm also curious, I'm just from Fred and others. My sense is that historically there were many, many more in previous years we've allowed many, many more immigrants to come. Can you say a little bit about how that's changed? Are we like for example, compared to 70s or compared to the 1920s, how has the number of immigrants were allowing into our country changed over time? Okay, well, I'll try to start on that. So, we go through phases in this country's history and I meant to mention this earlier, but in the first 100 years of our country's history, we pretty much let everybody in. Just anybody who could afford the ticket to get on the ship to come over was able to come in. And we started a wave of restrictions in the 1880s initially targeted against the Chinese, but then extending to Southern and Eastern Europeans and most of the rest of the world. And then in the 1960s, even though we brought in, even though we eliminated the immigration quotas, we also imposed a overall ceilings on the Western Hemisphere on Latin America. So what had been a largely legal flow of people coming up from Latin America overnight became illegal or restricted. And one of the consequences of that was a large undocumented population that was partially fixed in the 86 amnesty. But the underlying conditions have not changed. So the numbers have fluctuated and though now with this administration, those numbers have plummeted for any number of different reasons, whether it's, well, all the reasons that Cecilia laid out, cutbacks in refugee resettlement, cutbacks in asylum processing, public charge, tougher scrutiny of visa applications and now the country bans that have been imposed and now the 60-day so-called temporary suspension. We go back and forth and hopefully when this is all done, we'll go back to a time when we are more welcoming. I want to pose one last question for anyone on the panel who wants to answer and then we'll switch over to the breakout rooms where people get a chance to talk a little bit more in depth about what they'd like to see. If we were to really see equity for immigrant and refugee populations in Chicago, what would that look like? What would we have to do differently as a nonprofit and foundation community? What would be some of the first things you would like to see change? Big question, I know. So I think one of Nancy's very important points that was made earlier is just really making the information available in the country's origin language so that that language barrier is addressed and removed. So critically important to have information that someone can understand, right? And that sometimes includes pre-literate pamphlets of information. I know that my father was less than a third grade education when he came to this country and one of the smartest men ever. However, we have to meet individuals where they're at and relay information in a way that they could understand. That's great. Anyone else want to add? All right, well, then we can go to the next slide. We're going to break up into breakout groups and you're going to be assigned. And thank you to everyone who posted questions. We're sorry that we weren't able to get to all the questions, but we will certainly try to follow up with you individually. So if there was a specific question for a specific panelist, we're going to break up into breakout groups and we'll just probably spend about 10 minutes just letting people chat together. And we have some specific questions. You can go to the next slide. So what we really felt like it would be useful to do is really talk about what can we do better? So what's an example of something you've seen that's not gone well? So what's something that maybe a nonprofit or foundation has gotten wrong when working with new Americans or immigrant and refugee populations? And what else could we be doing? What are either things that you've seen that you'd like to see more of or what's something you haven't seen that you would really like to see more of? And if you like, you can also share if there's something that you would like to do differently in your work or in your life after following this conversation. So we're going to go ahead and break up into breakout groups. You will be invited into a breakout group. And then you can say yes. I see there's one more question in the chat and we will follow up on that with an email. And then we'll come back and Cecilia will wrap us up. And if there's anything that people really want, specifically want to share from their breakouts, we'll open that up to share. So you should be receiving a breakout invitation shortly.  And then I will just make a quick note after that about future events. Great. So I should start just by thanking everybody for participating in this. This is sort of a new era and being able to have, you know, a virtual event rather than the in-person event we were hoping to have. It's really, really heartening to see this kind of participation and actually the depth of the discussion, which I found incredibly useful and I hope that others found incredibly useful too. I'll just say, you know, from the breakout session and from the general conversation, there was a lot of work to do and I'm incredibly grateful that for how vibrant the Chicago community is, how many folks from foundations are part of this conversation, as well as folks from NGOs who are doing really heroic work in this time. I just, I want to echo what's been said, what Karina said in particular really eloquently, like that folks in the community are showing extraordinary courage in telling their own stories. And that makes all the difference in the world in making visible what sometimes the rest of the country doesn't see. And that even if the COVID-19 crisis hadn't happened, there really isn't anything that we described today, which wasn't already affecting this community really hard. And obviously a crisis like this makes it all even more difficult. So that's when the kind of infrastructure represented by the institutions and the leaders that are on this call really, really matters. And the inclination to make sure that we are gathering as much information as possible from like the real source, which is the families and the individuals and the organizations which are working day and night to serve them, is really essential if we're going to get the response right. One theme that came out of my breakout session is that we don't always have the best tools to reach people when they are able to be reached. We heard stories about lines outside of NGO doors before seven in the morning so that people can get served and people be having to be turned away because there's so much need in their capacity issues at NGOs. We heard about from even government organizations recognizing that if they're putting information on websites, that that may not reach people who don't have broadband access. And so one of the challenges that I think we particularly need to work on is figuring out how to reach people who need us the most in a way that will actually get to them. I know that's something that Megan is working on with a number of her colleagues there in Chicago. So I guess just my concluding remark is to say thank you. This is, these are the times that really show us for who we are. As a society, they really reveal the ways in which we have failed each other as a society. And since we're seeing a little bit of America at its worst, we're also seeing a lot of America at its best. And that includes some of the stories that we've heard today, and it absolutely includes the folks who are, you know, doing the work under these really difficult circumstances. So much gratitude to all of you for participating in this discussion. Megan, much gratitude to you for pulling this all together. And, you know, hopefully these are conversations that we can continue because this, this work is tremendously, tremendously important.  Thank you. Thank you so much. So just want to let people know that we will continue to have other events in the future. So please keep an eye out. On the new America Chicago page for future events. Thank you for everyone for participating. I'm sorry, we didn't get to share more about what was in the breakout groups. But if you would like to share something. I'm interesting or unique from your breakout route. Please, please, please email it to me. I would love to hear about it. And we look forward to continuing this conversation. We are one last note. We are currently working on a project that we're going to be working on. We're going to be working on it. We're going to be working on it. We're going to be working on it. So for one last note, we are currently working on a project to help more people in Chicago access their stimulus checks, particularly the people that we've been, you know, it won't be, it won't be accessible to many of the people that we've been talking about today, but for people who don't have. They don't have web access or they don't have IDs and addresses. If you have ideas for that, please also email me about that because we are developing it. It's going to be the hardest for them to access it.


Welcome to the 1030 a.m. to 11 a.m. session of the 2021 Open Simulator Community Conference. In this session, we are pleased to introduce the presentation Excalibur and the story continues. Our speaker is Haike Philp. Haike is CEO of Let's Talk Online, an immersive education specialist for language teaching and learning. She's co-initiator for the virtual classroom and EU-funded Lancelot and Avalon. She's the founder of the virtual roundtable conference and co-owns a donation in Second Life and in OpenSim. Please check out the website, foundatconference.opensimulator.org for speaker bios, details of sessions and the full schedule of events. The session is being live-streamed and recorded. So if you have questions or questions, please contact us. We'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you for joining us. We're live-streamed and recorded. So if you have questions or comments during the session, you may send tweets to at opensimcc with the hashtag O-S-C-C-21. And again, please put the word question before your actual question in the chat if you need to ask a question in the local chat. So welcome again, everyone, and let's begin the session. Over to you, Haike. Hello, and good evening to some. Good afternoon, good morning. Thank you very much for being here. And I'm happy to have been following in the footsteps of Helena, although this is really difficult. Hasn't she done a wonderful presentation? And to be honest, I am truly admirable at what she's been doing in opensim. Thank you so much, Helena, for your hard work with your students. And you are giving us often the solid, pedagogical principles of teaching in world. Thank you so much. And I'm here to talk about Excalibur. So Excalibur is now it's finally been funded. Yes, yes, yes, after, it's the fifth one after Lancelot, Avalon, Guinevere, Camelot, now Excalibur. And it is wonderful to hear that the European Commission in the Erasmus Plus Program has got some funds left over for that one. And Excalibur, I've talked about it last year already when we did some special sort of proposal. And then at that time, we got turned down because the project coordinator was British. You know, it was a university in UK and because of Brexit, they didn't grant us the funds. So we resubmitted with a new project coordinator then in spring this year. And that's the, yeah, yeah, that's the Finnish university project coordinator. So let me talk about what Excalibur stands for. And I know it's a little bit long. It's even as long as that almost the speak easy heart can't handle it, expanding content and language integrated learning through building a sustainable future in real time and immersive environments. And there's something great about this acronym and the acronym, oh, sorry, just to mention the University of Finland. It was project coordinator. And there's something great about this acronym because it contains another acronym which in the language learning world has a lot of meaning and a lot of famous connotation to it, which is CLIL. Does anybody of you know what CLIL stands for? Have you heard about this language learning policy which in Europe, thank you, Buffy, which in Europe has been kind of the major language learning policy. I mean, there is no, in Europe, there's no language ministry as such, but all of the countries just follow recommendations by ECML, which is kind of apart from Council of Europe, you know, an extended arm of Council of Europe, but they're following recommendations and the recommendations are based on research and research has found that if students and pupils in schools learn STEM subjects in the schools in their respective language, and this is what the acronym stands for, kind of language, is an approach for learning content through an additional language, thus teaching both the subject and the language. So the subject is usually is STEM, STEM subjects like science, technology, engineering, arts and maths, and they are taught in English rather than in the language of the respective country. And it's not taught in English, not in Italian, in German, it's taught in English in the schools in Europe. And this policy has been widely implemented and it's rather difficult for some of these science teachers. On the other hand, the students are very excited about it. So it's very popular amongst the pupils for some, you know, and so they've been working hard and implementing CLIL in Europe. So in Excalibur, which will be focusing on immersive building, the project coordinators and some of the universities, and I'll be talking about the project partners now, University in Nordisk, Artiske in Norway, and they are at the very, very most northern tip of Norway, so they're near the Arctic Circle. So they're very interested in teaching at a distance and in that case, it is the German CLIL form, CLIL Lotte, it's called, and the University of Norway is providing some expertise when it comes to steam subjects in the schools been taught in German, interestingly. Then Germany is present, Landesmedia Zentrum, teacher gaming. Teacher gaming is an amazing partner because they developed Minecraft Edo before it was acquired by Mojang and it's not the Microsoft Minecraft Edo. They are not those ones, but they've built up a community of 20, some 70,000 teachers who are playing Minecraft. So, and its focus is a lot on Minecraft. So the schools involved Minecraft is the core sort of technology and OpenSim will also be deployed. I mean, initially in the project, there was a clear direction of doing OpenSim as well, but budget funds, cuts, which is normal when you apply for funds, yeah, they're not drastic, but we might still work on even like not doing things in OpenSim. I don't know yet. The project will start in March and the project partners will meet in January, February to discuss the technologies involved. It will be Minecraft and Mine Test, which is the open source version of Minecraft and hopefully also OpenSim. It would be to my liking. Why OpenSim? Oh, I'll just quickly mention our expo, four reading building. So why OpenSim? Well, if you remember two years ago, we did a comparison of a lot of 3D environments and came to our favorite one, OpenSim.  Oops, I have to catch up with my speaking yard. Yeah, oh, sorry about this one. So, okay. And now they're coming up the workshop, yes. And two years ago we, in Evo, Evo is our sort of annual workshop, language teachers buy the hundreds and thousands get together. Thanks, Lea. And for five weeks we immerse ourselves in various activities. This year in January, we focused on storytelling and I have some beautiful products that are brought with me, I'll come to that in a minute. But two years ago we decided it was OpenSim and now what we did is this bare piece of land. It looks much, much more beautiful. That was last year. And this is what Egya Nation in Kiteley is this year. A gorgeous FourSim region, almost full of various spots for what we love the storytelling part of it. And it's so beautiful. It's got lakes, it's got parks, it's got several castles, it's got sandboxes. And here this Evo session to which I would like to very much invite you. The Evo session will take place here. And this is where we will also learn building in OpenSim, but not only in virtual worlds. And some of our builders are also teaching us how to create a hut in Second Life, for example. Thanks, Shaken. And some of our activities coming up will also be about building in virtual reality. So Egya Nation in Second Life is still active. And Egya Nation in OpenSim is beautiful. And we're so proud of what the teachers have put together for our Evo session. I was amazed, absolutely amazed. Amazed at the beauty, amazed at the products. So and the story books, which I'd like to present from this year's Evo session are the fantastic work we did. Now, coming up, as I said, it's about building, but this time we did focused on storytelling. And here in, I'm going to present some of the examples. So if you could perhaps take those links in the speakeasy hut and check it out for afterwards. I pasted a couple of them. There are done in Book Creator. Book Creator is an online platform which allows us to put screenshots together in form of comic books or in form of reading books. They've got several templates for that. And we use the Book Creator to develop the story and then we took the screenshots from Second Life. Here are the examples. We're so proud of them. And especially the one from Singapore 1825 by Chris Morningsing, so well done. And some of you may know Chris Morningsing. Yeah, he joined our Evo session and he took us to his Singapore 1825 Island which is absolutely adorable. And he built that together with Kaylee West, if some of you know him from Second Life. Dr. Scott Grant, Monash University. Does anybody know him? No? Oh, she's volunteering. Oh, wonderful, wonderful. It's so great to be among friends. So I come to the almost the end of my session and I hope to get another five minutes to actually ask you the audience a couple of questions. Here's the amazing journey that I started 2003 and the year funding project and here's Excalibur number five. So made more than 2 million euro. No, funding, 2 million euro. Oh, Kaylee, we love her. Absolutely love her. And Chris Morningsing was a student of Kaylee's. This is where the connection goes. So the one thing which was the purpose of my talk today was to invite you to the Evo 2022 session. Check out one more time the link to sign up. It's an unofficial link because sign up apparently only starts in January, but I'd like to give you that one again. And this Evo immersive session will focus on building in virtual worlds and virtual reality. So we have some of our language teachers, experts or building in framevr.io. Engage in old space VR and Mozilla Hub and we want to learn this kind of building too in virtual reality as well as in virtual worlds which is then open sim and second life. And I'm also part of the Evo session Minecraft MOOC. So in order to prepare for Excalibur, yeah. This is where I stopped about what's happening in the metaverse for us language educators. And can I ask you a couple of questions? The audience, if I may, you can also be free to ask me a couple of questions. And well, the biggest question I have is, have you met people in world who the unofficial link? Did I paste it or not? Did I not paste it? Oh, it's the tiny URL link that I've pasted. Let me grab that unofficial one. Yeah, let me grab that unofficial one again. One more time. Okay, Heike, there's a question already. I got lost in the chat. What is the unofficial link again? Yeah, that's the one. I just pasted it, it's in Canvas. And as I said, don't expect any activities when you sign up there. It's Canvas link, but from January onwards, we will be able to officially announce that one. So you can sign up a little bit beforehand. And Friends Charming worked on Aframe VR, a web project we got spaces like that. That sounds wonderful. Rhine and perhaps we could ask friends to, if you wants to present how to build, if he knows how to build Aframe VR, do you? Oh, is he here? Probably is. And you know of people who stayed in world because they wanted to learn a language or who came in world because they wanted to learn a language? And do you know of people who stayed in world because they learned to build? Friends, good you're here. Rhine and says, absolutely. Can I ask the audience? I mean, you can also ask me questions, but I would love to know from you because last year and the year before, I keep calling for a big building project.  The Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel with all of those different. Well, the thing is that I asked you, what do you think will bring people in the world or what keeps them in world? And a lot of you have said, well, easier entry, more orientation, more this than the other. And we've been doing this for 15 years and people are not staying. They come in world, yes, but they're not staying.  The Tower of Babel. And I will keep asking you every year again until we do it. So with this, I'm closing. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you. Thank you very much, Heike. And by the way, I know some people who come for languages and at least to practice some languages in Opensim. So thank you very much for this informative and interesting presentation. And as a reminder to our audience, you will want to check out conference.opensimulator.org to see what is coming up on the conference schedule. We now are moving, I'm sorry, also we encourage you to visit the OSCC 21 Poster Expo in the OSCC Expo 3 region to find accompanying information on presentations and explore the hypergrade two resources in OSCC Expo 2 region, along with sponsor and crowd funder booths located throughout all of the OSCC Expo regions. The next session will be at 11 a.m. and in this keynote region, and it is entitled Grand Opening of Opensimulator Art. Thank you again to our speaker and the audience.


As part of its continuing commitment to humorless programming, National Public Radio presents, That's Not Funny with your host, Skylar Umbridge. Hi, I'm Skylar Umbridge. Welcome to That's Not Funny. My first guest is Fred Donahue, and he certainly has a unique profession. Yes, I am a food tester. I test food for zaniness. For the sake of consumers, I determine if certain food products are as wacky as they claim to be. That's very interesting, and you're going to do a live demonstration for us. Yes, I have here a jar of fluff or nutter marshmallow spread. That sure sounds like a wacky product. Yes, it does. I will taste it now. Well, I'm only sensing a medium level of whimsy. It's lacking the robust irreverence of the 83 nutter butter peanut butter sandwich cookie. That is valuable consumer information. Yes, and now I'm going to taste test a nut-rages bar. Well, I must say the nut-ragesness is really coming through quite distinctly. Excuse me, but I'm willing to put up with nuttiness. I'm willing to put up with outrageousness, but there's no place for nut-ragesness in this studio. That's not funny!   My next guest on That's Not Funny is Clarence Lewis, who is a singer-songwriter with a politically satirical bent. Yes, I sing satirical songs that poke fun at the foibles and follies of American political life.  Everybody's tuning in to see the candidates in the GOP. The primary season is about to begin. I really wonder who's gonna win. Because I do, I wonder. That's it. That's the whole song. Yeah, you can see the wonder in my face. You know, we really don't know who's gonna win the race, do we? Um, yeah, I guess. I'm not afraid to speak truth to power. I'm sorry if I ruffled some feathers with that one. Here's a song I wrote that takes on the whole Herman Cain thing. It's only a ripe area for satire. Go ahead. Herman Cain has certainly amassed charges for women who say they were harassed. Many are saying he should be axed, but I don't like to pass judgment until I've seen all the facts. So your satirical take on Herman Cain is... ...that it would be irresponsible for me to offer an opinion about his situation one way or the other at this point. And yet you wrote a song about it. Of course, as a satirist I couldn't resist the Herman Cain story. And if you'll please indulge me, I'd like to perform my musical takedown of the Koch Brothers. Oh, the Koch Brothers, yes, absolutely. I should warn you, I'm taking no prisoners with this one. Please go ahead. The Koch Brothers are behind the scenes of one of the biggest political machines. There's much to be said about all their dealings, but I won't say it because it might hurt their feelings. Wow, you're very considerate of the political targets you take on. Yes, as a political satirist I believe that if you don't have anything nice to say, just don't say it. I thought you said you were taking no prisoners. Well, there wasn't a single reference to taking prisoners in that song. There wasn't even about prison or prisoners, so I clearly delivered on my promise. I have to say, for a political satirist, you're a bit odd. Well, I'm sorry if my songs are a little too edgy for you, Skyler Umbridge.  I'm outta here. That was awkward. My next guest on That's Not Funny was visiting me for Thanksgiving, and I thought I'd have him on so he could finally see for himself what I do for a living. Please welcome my dad, Tyler Umbridge. Welcome, dad. Boy, you're not exactly Koki Roberts, are you? Dad. Yep, your mother and I had high hopes for you. Just imagine how happy you were when you changed your major at school from law to liberal arts. Dad, please. I want to talk on the Supreme Court when she can be the host of a show that airs in the middle of the afternoon on a station that has fewer listeners and a ham radio. Dad, we went over all this at Thanksgiving. Ladies and gentlemen, since this is NPR, I should point out that Skyler Umbridge's college education was made possible by a grant from the Skyler's Parents Flushy Money Down the Toilet Foundation. Dad, please. Let's not rehash all this. I wanted a son. I always wanted a son. But after your birth, your mother stopped sleeping with me. Dad, why are you bringing all this up on the air? This is private stuff. What could be more private than your radio show? That's not funny. No.  Well, folks, now you have some insight as to where I got my humorlessness from. Thank you for joining us on That's Not Funny. What? What did I say? That's not funny, Dad. Come on, honey. Man up. It's really not funny. Grow a pair. Can you just get out?


And joining us now to talk about your health is Dr. Abed Fakri of the University of Maryland, Baltimore Washington Medical Center. Dr. February is American Heart Month. Heart disease remaining the number one killer. But it is also a preventable disease. Is that right? Yes. Thanks for having me on today. It's a pleasure to reach out to the community this month to raise awareness of heart disease. The number one cause of preventable death in the United States. So you know, there's certainly a lot of room for improvement. And we've seen that highlighted more so even during the pandemic as we've seen the a disproportionate number of heart heart disease deaths throughout the United States. What else have you seen during the pandemic? I'm curious about either heart issues that may have resulted from somebody's infection with COVID or secondary to their respiratory issues, or maybe something involving the vaccine. Are you seeing a lot of any of that coming across your desk? We see a little bit of everything. Certainly during the pandemic related to COVID-19, we did see a fair number of heart rhythm issues and weakening of the heart muscle or congestive heart failure directly from the infection itself. So the first year of the pandemic, that was really the story was the direct impact of COVID, but also we saw a disproportionate number of patients who were coming in with delayed presentations of heart disease. Basically, patients who were not accessing the healthcare system early on for preventative care and presenting very late into the stages of their illness. So direct COVID related cardiovascular illness, but also cardiovascular illness that was independent of COVID. Both phenomenon were witnessed during the pandemic. When we talk about cardiovascular illness, is there a group of Americans that maybe gets overlooked in the conversation that could use more attention? I think it's appropriate to bring this up during February, which is we call it go red for heart, because not only is February home to Valentine's Day, but it brings to root that women are often overlooked when it comes to preventative care for heart disease and also in our delivery of healthcare for heart disease. Preventative care is accessed less by women and patients who are presenting to the hospital for cardiac illness, whether it's a heart attack or a stroke, often gets underdiagnosed or present late in their illness. We see this phenomenon disproportionately greater in women of color. We have a greater percentage of heart disease risk factors in women of color, where we see a higher rate of high blood pressure, physical inactivity and diabetes, all known to directly correlate with their risk for heart disease. Well, and the issues that are on the screen, somebody's weight, their blood pressure, their activity and whether they have diabetes, that's something we all need to pay attention to, right? Absolutely. What we've seen, especially over the last three years, is less engagement in the preventative care that leads to heart disease. We're seeing more people die at home from their heart disease, from heart attack, from stroke, from congestive heart failure. Patients have over the last three years, we've really seen a disengagement in cardiovascular prevention and cardiovascular treatment. Addressing these risk factors is, I think, the building block for good heart, for awareness and for good heart health.  We really want to reach out to the community to re-engage, not only as cardiologists, but as a medical community in general. Are there any specific screenings for heart disease that you advise when somebody hits a specific age or maybe they have some symptoms? What do you want people who either don't have heart disease or are unaware that they have heart disease? What do you want them to know? Well, first and foremost, when you hit the age of 18, I recommend having a lipid profile done as a part of your routine screening, minimum at every five years, and some patients will do it every year. Starting at 18. At the age of 18. Yeah, I think it's an older person's thing. No. Well, heart disease prevention starts at a young age. The sooner the better. Addressing those building blocks for heart disease, such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure is something you should engage with from the time you hit adulthood. Annual screenings for blood pressure and blood sugar are also part of that, preventative care. You mentioned some of the differences in heart disease with men and women. One thing we think about often is, when do you get help if you have some sort of symptoms? And I've heard that the symptoms can be different for men and women. Absolutely. We see a lot of women present late in their illness because they don't recognize the symptoms. Well, men may have typical symptoms such as heaviness or tightness in their chest. For a lot of women, the symptoms may be more vague. They may feel more tired than usual. They may have difficulty with exertion, shortness of breath, symptoms that may not clue them in that it's their heart. Oftentimes, people attribute it to getting older, being out of shape or being overweight, when it may in fact be their heart that's preventing them from doing the things that they want to do. So those classic symptoms of chest pain when it comes to a heart attack may not be there for a lot of women and also for diabetics. That's many of our diabetic patients actually don't present with typical symptoms of chest pain. It's easy to understand how smoking results in lung cancer. How is it that it increases somebody's risk of heart disease? So smoking increases levels of inflammation within the blood stream. And if you have plaque that's been building up that is vulnerable to causing a heart attack or a stroke, smoking may make that plaque become more inflamed and potentially rupture. That's the basic root cause of a heart attack is the rupture inside a coronary artery that closes off the blood supply. So smoking is like putting fuel on the fire. How about salt, sodium? How big a role does that play? Salt is salt draws water with it and where water goes the blood pressure of the blood volume expands. Expansion of blood volume puts more pressure on the heart leading to congestive heart failure. Salt also for those who may have a normal heart may have normal heart function. Salt promotes higher blood pressure. The higher blood pressure over time leads to increasing inefficiency within the heart muscle and thickening of the heart muscle. A bigger thicker heart is less efficient and more vulnerable to heart damage. Everybody advises getting more exercise from a cardiology standpoint. What sort of exercise and how much? The American Heart Association recommends 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic exercise per week. That can be divided up into half hour blocks, five days a week. So basically they're telling you to take a half hour walk, five days per week. Saturday, Sunday you get to take a break. The level of physical activity should be enough that you get mildly short of breath and a little bit sweaty, but enough that you can sustain it over a 30 minute period. What's happening with medications in the cardiology field? I'm thinking about statins as a well-known treatment for cholesterol. Well, the interesting thing about statins is we're recognizing cholesterol numbers in and of themselves may not tell us who benefits from treatment. What we're taking now is a risk-based approach to patient. In other words, if you have identified as a patient who is at risk for heart disease based on, for example, we use a 10-year atherosclerotic risk calculator in our office, if you have a high 10-year risk of heart disease, even though your cholesterol numbers may be modest, you may still benefit from preventative treatment. So we take a risk-based approach to patients' blood pressure and cholesterol management. Those patients at higher risk, for example, are diabetics or patients who may have a strong family history and other risk factors such as smoking. Those are the patients that benefit even more from taking preventative therapies. How much of a general cardiology practice involves things like cholesterol and clogged arteries as opposed to other issues with heart rhythm, congenital defects, things like that? That's a great question. So I think that basic preventative care starts with your primary care physician. They're kind of the quarterback for your healthcare. By the time you get to us, we hope that it's not too late. That's really not where you want to be starting the preventative care. A lot of times, the patients that are coming to us often are manifesting symptoms of disease and are requiring further work on. So I think the basic primary preventative care starts in your own backyard with your primary care physician. You know, the last thing I want to ask you may sound like it's out of left field, but we have this incredible technology coming along with, I just read something about the Apple Watch may eventually be able to check somebody's blood sugar or glucose. But it can also apparently do heart rhythms and, you know, pulse and all that. How often are you telling somebody to get something like that? Some sort of monitoring device? I think that's a great question. So there's two types of point of care technology that is accessible to patients. One is heart rate monitors, and the other is pedometers. Pedometers have been around a lot longer than heart rate monitors, and you probably have heard of Fitbit. So heart rate trackers are actually a very good indicator, and I actually screen a lot of my patients who are using heart rate tracker or who are using pedometers on their activity level when they come to see me in the office. As I alluded to earlier, a decrease in exercise tolerance can sometimes be the first sign that somebody's not doing well. So I actually pay attention to my patient's step counts. When it comes to the heart rate monitors, for our patients who have heart rhythm disorders or may experience symptoms of palpitations, I think that the wearable technology with the iWatch for heart rate tracking can be helpful. The important thing is to share that data with your doctor, not try to self-interpret, because there may be nuances in diagnosing heart rhythm conditions where your doctor needs to be involved. Dr. Abed Fakri practices cardiology out of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Washington Medical Center. Doctor, thank you very much. You're welcome. It's been my pleasure. Your health segments are a co-production of Maryland Public Television and the University of Maryland Medical System.