Good morning. So welcome to today's lecture. So we were discussing about basics of solid state NMR and how we can apply this in structural biology. If you remember in the previous class we have discussed the differences between solid and liquid state NMR. One of the major difference that we have that in solution state most of the polarization transfer happens through J coupling. Because of the fast tumbling of the molecules these interactions that are present are averaged out and that is why we have a prominent mode of magnetization transfer is via J coupling. However in solid because of lack of motion we have a dipolar coupling and quadcopolar coupling and that leads to anisotropic interactions. However in liquid state or solution state these anisotropic interactions are averaged out we have only isotropic interaction. Then we looked at that if we want to achieve high resolution we have to adopt one technique called magic angle spinning which mimics the tumbling like situation what we have in solution and due to this magic angle spinning we can achieve sharper line. One other important differences that we looked at that inherently we detect on proton in liquid state. However because of the broad lines of proton we detect on carbon. Nowadays with because of fast spinning we can also detect on proton or when we spin dilute it with deuterium then we can also detect on proton but at moderate speed the mode of detection is 13C. However mode of detection in liquid state is proton and because of low gamma the sensitivity of 13C is low and that is why we have low sensitivity. So 13C detection and broad line are kind of signature of solid state NMR. However in liquid state we have a proton detection and that is how we have a high sensitivity. So just to summarize what we discussed the cross polarization and magic angle spinning these are the two basic building block of solid state NMR. Then we discussed about decoupling that basically enhances the resolution and to like a then we use recoupling to reintroduce the lost interaction that we had because of anisotropy. So we are then we use 2D correlation spectroscopy how we can employ this 2D correlation spectroscopy for resonance assignment. We briefly looked at the carbon-carbon correlation 2D spectrum and carbon nitrogen 2D experiment and today we are going to now discuss in more detail how we can use carbon-carbon correlation, carbon-nitrogen correlation for resonance assignment. Just to remember we at the moment we are talking about spinning at moderate speed not very high speed more than 60 kHz. So we are talking about 10 kHz, 15 kHz, 20 kHz where dominantly we are detecting on carbons and therefore we are trying to look at the carbon-carbon carbon nitrogen correlation spectrum. So we introduced to you the 2D carbon-carbon correlation which is known as a proton driven spin diffusion PDSD or DAAR which is dipolar assisted resistance recoupling sequences. So what we are doing we are transferring the proton magnetization to carbons relative respective carbon and we are trying to establish the carbon-carbon correlation that is what these 2 experiments does it. So just to walk through you to the PDSD experiment that we have here. So we start with a 90 degree magnetization which we see here. Now 90 degree magnetization first polarized spins into XY plane then using this cross polarization condition we transfer the magnetization on carbon. Now my magnetization at this stage is on carbon and for doing this cross polarization just to remind you again we are we are just getting this Hartmann hand matching condition in the rotating frame so that we can transfer the magnetization from proton to carbon. So now at this stage my magnetization is on carbon. So then we are introducing this 2D formalism where we are incrementing it to achieve another indirect dimension and that is how you see T1 here. During that time we are decoupling the protons. So TPPM is 2 pulse phase modulation pulse sequence is one of the decoupling sequence that we had discussed earlier. One of the decoupling sequence that decouples the proton carbon coupling. So then after that we now encoded indirectly into carbon dimension. Here during this period we are mixing the carbon-carbon magnetization it is similar like a nosy. We are mixing it in the in the z direction. So here is a 90 degree pulse and here again a 90 degree pulse. So we are just like a whatever we have seen 3 pulse experiment in liquid state you have 1 pulse, 2 pulse and 3 pulse. This is similar like 3 pulse experiment but here we are using dipolar coupling for mixing. Actually nosy also we use weak dipolar coupling. So here we are mixing the magnetization and because of that the magnetization can transfer say from C alpha to CO, C alpha to C beta, C beta to C gamma, C alpha to C gamma depending upon how long we mix it. Now mixing without any additional irradiation if it is done that is called PDSD proton driven spin diffusion. Proton driven because it is driven by protons. Protons are contributing to the magnetization and spin diffusion because spin is diffusing transferring magnetization to other spins like a C alpha is transferring to CO, C alpha is transferring to C beta and C gamma. So that is a PDSD. However many times this transfer is not that effective. So what we do? We apply additional pulse on proton which is of order of either magnetic like spinning speed half of the spinning speed that assist the recoupling. The transfer is assisted that is how it is called dipolar assisted resonance recoupling. So it recouples this facilitates recoupling and the transfer of magnetization from one spins it becomes better C alpha to CO, C alpha to C beta, C beta to C gamma. So using this simple carbon-carbon correlation spectrum we are now establishing the spectrum. This is kind of the parameters that are used. So here we have two axis say proton axis we are starting from here because proton has a high gamma so it has high sensitivity. So we excite protons using 90 degree pulse what is the typical power like if we are using 2.45 microsecond of pulse that corresponds to 100 kilohertz. So what we are doing in experiment little more experimental details we are exciting protons with a 90 degree pulse. The duration of this pulse is 2.5 microsecond that means the power that we are applying on proton is 1 divided by 2.5 into 10 multiplied with 4 and microsecond that goes here. So that will be 10 to power 6 divided by 10 and that is 10 to power 5 hertz and that is actually 100 kilohertz. So this is the power that we are applying on proton for exciting proton and why we are exciting proton because it has high gamma it is more sensitive. Next our job is to establish a cross polarization condition. Now cross polarization simultaneously we are applying a pulse on proton and on carbon with varying power. So if you look at here we are typically having 67.5 kilohertz, here we are having 50 kilohertz and duration of that cross polarization is 700 microsecond. Now if you remember here omega C we have is 50 kilohertz and omega H we are what having 67.5 kilohertz. So if we and omega R suppose we are keeping 17.5 so that becomes omega H minus omega C equal to omega R. So that is what conditions we are achieving here. Hartman hand matching condition duration of this cross polarization is 700 microsecond. Now our magnetization is on carbon during this cross polarization. This is called ramped CP because of R H in homogeneity we ramp it say 70 to 100 or 80 to 100 this is called ramp CP. So we are ramping we are changing the power typically power applied on proton is here and power applied on carbon that should have matching this condition omega H minus omega C equal to omega R. Then we have a Hartman hand matching condition in rotating condition. We are back on carbon we are doing the T1 encoding the frequency here on carbon while applying a decoupling. So decoupling power is 90 kilohertz this is called high power decoupling the TPPM is one of the pulse sequence that we discussed in the last slide. So applying this 90 kilohertz we are decoupling protons while encoding on carbon and then we are applying here again a pulse of 90 on carbon of 50 kilohertz which duration is about 5 microsecond. During this time we are mixing the carbon-carbon polarization magnetization of about 20 millisecond. So this can be done without this pulse or it can be done with this pulse. If you are doing without this pulse that is PDSD. If you are doing this pulse that is called DAR. So the power we are applying is omega R 17.5 kilohertz and that extra power that we are applying on proton that facilitates the mixing it enhances the mixing capacity and then finally we apply a 90 degree pulse on carbon of 50 kilohertz. We decouple the protons here using high power decoupling and we acquire on carbon. So this is the typically we are establishing carbon-carbon correlation using one of these two pulse sequence either PDSD or DAR. Wonderful. So what we get? Here we are getting now carbon-carbon correlation spectrum. It is similar like an OG spectrum. Here you see 13C carbon frequency. Here 13C carbon frequency. Here we have a diagonal peak and these are off diagonal peak that shows correlation. So here if you remember your chemical shifts here are threonine C alpha C beta. So this is threonine C beta. Here we have a threonine C alpha and then if you go around this axis we have a threonine C gamma. Here are the reason for serine and we can have here alanine. So sorry isolucine you can see isolucine gamma delta gamma 2 beta alpha. So isolucine you can establish all the way like here say if you go to diagonal peak here is alpha of isolucine then beta of of isolucine here then gamma 2 gamma 1 and delta. Looking at these chemical shifts you can identify spin systems and if you start mixing more and more the neighboring residue will start contributing what we have here. So you can even get it near neighbor effect. So like a C alpha of magnetization of this I residue can be also transferred to I minus 1 residue CO or C alpha depending upon how long we mix it. So it not gives only spin system specific assignment but also near neighbor assignments or even little medium range assignment depending upon how we mix it. So we need to just vary this mixing time. 20 millisecond is short distance correlation if we increase to 150 millisecond it will be neighboring residue if we increase to 500 millisecond even more some long range 800 millisecond even long range. So you can establish all these carbon-carbon correlation using DAR or PDSD that helps us in resonance assignment of this spectrum. So I am taking another example of say here K 59 K is lysine 59. So we have a C alpha here if you just follow these lines. So C alpha here in red you can get a C beta lysine has C gamma C delta C epsilon. So we can assign all those and C epsilon comes around 41 42 ppm C beta comes around 35 ppm. So if you know from BMRB values of different amino acid you can essentially analyze it. You see here epsilon of lysine is coming around 42 beta is coming here delta's, gamma's and all those are coming there and which can be assigned. So I am showing you one of the publication from Adam Lange group where they have used this BACA bacteriophiline they got a beautiful spectrum carbon-carbon correlation spectrum and you can see it is as beautiful as no G spectrum. You can use this PDSD based experiment or DAR based experiment for resonance assignment. So these are all short range correlation. You can see here is isoleucine C alpha C beta serine C alpha C beta then Q B and Q C alpha C beta. If you go here this region phenyl anionine you got this region is for alanine C alpha C beta here are isoleucine this is serine sorry threonine C alpha C gamma. So all these correlation one can easily establish from C alpha to C beta to C gamma to C delta here C beta to C gamma C delta here are delta's delta can be also shown here like you can see all the way going from top to bottom we can assign this spin system specific assignment resonance assignment or near neighbor assignments by doing couple of of months of assignment. This is beautiful spectrum and can be used for starting the assignment. But that is not enough we have to establish this was only carbon carbon spectrum. So we have to establish heteronuclear assignments for a like a carbon nitrogen experiment like we have a typically HNCO or HNCA kind of experiment in liquid state. Similarly in solid we can do this by again polarization transfer. So to explain to you how we do it I am just explaining you see ith spin system this is the I-1 spin system we start polarization from HN using dipolar coupling we transfer to like through bonded connected N15 that nitrogen of amide then we transfer to C alpha and we establish the correlation between nitrogen and C alpha this will be direct dimension here will be indirect dimension. So we are establishing a correlation NC alpha and we are detecting on carbon while nitrogen is on indirect dimension. So we have a 2D of NCA. Similarly rather going in this direction we can go in backward direction. So this will give I-1 correlation HN we are transferring to N15 going to CO. Now I-1 correlation can be established here and that will be kind of HNCO experiment that we have in liquid. So this is HNCA and this is HNCO but in solid since we are not utilizing protons we called it NCA and NCO. Here we are 2 times transferring the magnetization from HN to N15 and N15 to CO or C alpha this is called double Cp experiment XCp yaha, 2Cp yaha, first Cp here, second Cp here that is what it is called double Cp, DCp double Cp experiment. So schematic is something like this we are starting with proton and transferring to, transferring here to carbon here we are starting here. So we can get I correlation, I-th correlation we can go back and we can get I-1 correlation in NCO and the pulse sequence is something like this. So let me walk through Q to the pulse sequence. We are again exciting the protons using 90 degree pulse. Then we are doing the first Cp we are transferring the magnetization from proton to nitrogen. So first Cp directly attached protons magnetization are transferred to nitrogen, now magnetization is on nitrogen. Then we are indirectly like in direct dimension we are encoding nitrogen so this is the T1. Then we are using another Cp here for transferring but before that we are just decoupling protons as well as using 180 degree pulse we are decoupling carbon as well when the nitrogen is evolving. So then when we are at this stage we will do use the double Cp like the second Cp and we transfer the magnetization from nitrogen to proton while we decouple again proton, sorry nitrogen to carbon while decouple proton and then we detect on carbon. So this is our T2 and we are again decoupling protons. So these are the two high-powered decoupling we are using. One when T1 is being encoded when T2 is being encoded and during this transfer we are using the Cw decoupling. So that is why we have a one dimension nitrogen 15 another dimension carbon 30 and depending upon how we want to transfer the magnetization the same pulse sequence where we shift our the carrier frequency the NCA correlation can be established or NCO correlation can be established. Same pulse sequence just you have to shift the frequency. If you are shifting on CO we can establish the CO correlation I minus 1 NCO correlation whenever shifting to 55 ppm then we can establish the CA correlation so that would be NCA correlation and when we are shifting to say 175 ppm it would be NCO correlation. So that is how we do it and when we do we get a beautiful spectrum this is from Chris Zeronic group they have done on some fibril protein you can see now beautiful again NCO correlation you are getting this dimension is N15 this dimension is carbon 13 and here for each amino acid I minus 1 correlation we are getting here for each amino acid ith correlation we are getting. So here is like you know this is CO of say 137 this is CA of 137 similarly we can get for valine so you can see CO of 122 valine so similarly you can establish I minus 1 correlation coming from here and ith correlation coming from here just by looking at this and using couple of those carbon-carbon correlation spectrum you can assign resonance sign all of you can identify all of these correlation beautiful but that is not enough right we just did 2d we need to establish further correlations to get a resonance specific assignment so what we can do the kind we fuse this first we perform the carbon-carbon correlation now we are performing nitrogen carbon correlation can we fuse little bit this and get a more magnetization transfer that is what these experiments do NCO CX and NCO CX so what we are doing here starting with a proton we are transferring to N15 encoding here and then then we can transfer to CO but we do not stop it here let it mix whatever we are doing in pdsd or dark so we can fuse these two sequence the 2d HNCA correlation with pdsd or dark correlation so now my magnetization does not stay at CA it can go all the way to C beta, C gamma, C delta so that will be called NCA CX when C beta, C gamma, C delta and all NCO CX analogous to like our HN this is like HNCACB this is like HNCO CACB so here we are transferring starting from proton transferring to nitrogen going to I-1 CO and then we are mixing that so we can get the I-1 C alpha, C beta, C gamma and C delta the third one can be also depending upon how we are starting so starting from say H alpha, C alpha, N then going to CO and then mixing with CX so this is like HCA, NCO, CACB something like that so I-1 all the correlation we are getting when we are starting from H alpha to C alpha to N15 going to I-1 residue CO, C alpha, C beta, C gamma, C beta so these are these can be 2d version as well as in 3d version depending upon how many axis or frequency we are labeling it now using all these series of these experiments we can almost achieve a liquid like correlation spectrum which can be used in a similar manner for resonance assignment just one of the example that I am showing here so NCO, Cax and NCO, Cax so if you look at here it was NCA experiment but when we did PDSD, NCO, CX, PDSD now we are getting also correlation from C beta, C gamma and C delta take any amino acid that we want K60 here you see it is C beta is coming here C gamma and all those so here similarly one can take valine here valine you get a valine 53 or something like that C gamma, C delta and all those so glycine just one peak coming here so you can establish putting NCO, Cax, NCO, Cax even using 2d you can achieve lots of lots of resonance assignment because 2d can be done in few hours 3d will take days so you can collect a good 2d and that should be enough for resonance assignments of few of these peaks. So here I show an example how you can use your DAR or PDSD with NCO, Cax and NCO, Cax and establishing the correlation so you can start from say Thionine, C alpha, C beta then you can go to C gamma here you come and find it is a C beta then here from here you can come C alpha here you can find the NCO alpha we can go here and find it out CO of my I-1 residue so this helps us facilitates us in working. You can take another example like here in this region we can get an alanine so alanine C alpha is here C beta is here now we can come all the way we get N15 of this we can get I-1 of this and similarly using NCO, Cax, NCO, Cax we can assign each of these resonances that are present this is a few weeks or maybe a month job depending upon how much experience you have this can be used for resonance assignment. Now people did not stop it there they developed a series of sequence so one of the sequence that I am showing from Tata-Gopinath and Vagilia that developed the carbon 13 edited C-C experiment and 15 edited N-C experiment on N-C-S-C-X experiment like N-C-S-C-X, N-C-O-C-A-X, N-C-S-C-A-X, N-C-A, N-C-O-N-C-S-C-X, N-C-O-C-X, N-C-S-C-A-B and many of these where sometimes it is also labeling the protons. So this is a gallery of experiment that they have developed and these can be essentially used for doing resonance assignment. Tata-Gopinath use multiple equations so in actually in the same sequence he can detect various of various experiment like C-S-C-X, N-C-S-C-A-B, N-C-S-C-X, N-C-O-C-X. So in same experiment at the different time point you can detect it various experiments so you save lots of time because these are low sensitive experiment. This is a beautiful exposition of Tata-Gopinath and Vagilia tried to attempt to cut short the times like cut drastically the acquisition time and facilitating resonance assignments in a shorter possible time. Now we have to if we record all these series of experiment you can take a strips right so you can take a strips and you can sequentially work C alpha to C beta, C delta to C gamma using various experiment like N-C-S-C-X, N-C-O-C-X, C-A-N-C-O, N-C-S-O all these are you can see in different colors these are there and similarly like liquid state you can use this strip for resonance assignment. So 128 we can work to 127 we can work to like using these assignments 126, 125, 124, 123. So if we assign all those now we have the value of C alpha, C beta, C-O then what is the obvious next step then we can get these assignments and we know that these chemical shifts are quite deterministic of the secondary structural information. So we know from our chemical shift that C alpha has only glycine right. So however these spin system like alanine, therene, thionine, serine they have C alpha, C beta and they have a characteristic C alpha, C beta so it helps us in resonance assignment. Glycine has C alpha only at 45, alanine has C alpha around 52 and C beta around 22 just two spin system, thionine C beta is lower than C alpha, serine again C beta is lower than C alpha. So using all those signatures we can start the assignment these are start point or check point. Similarly C alpha, C beta and C gamma gives most of other amino acids, histidine, tryptophan, tyrosine, phyline, alanine are difficult to identify because they have a broad line but then we can combine their aromatic chemical shift to find it out. And then looking at these distribution of different chemical shift for different amino acid that we have seen it becomes quite easy for assigning using the spectrum of 2D or that we have combined here like a 2D you can start from like that is what I always showing you started from thionine it has a distinct chemical shift serine has a distinct alanine has a distinct glycine again comes somewhere here. So you can use these distinct chemical shift for resonance assignments and then you once you have the resonance assignment then subtract the sequence corrected random coil chemical shift of say C alpha, C beta plot along the sequence. So here what I am showing you again from Madam Lange group the delta C alpha minus delta C beta so these are C alpha and C beta subtracted the random coil chemical shift you plot along the sequence and then if these values are negative that you know that these are beta sheet. So this protein that I am showing you is in reach of beta sheet you can see using the secondary chemical shift you can plot along the sequence and you can find it out what is the secondary structural topology similarly like liquid state. So we got a secondary structural topology what next? Next is now we establish the secondary structural topology can we get inter sheets or inter strands the distances if we fix these distances then we are all set for a structure determination of these long elongated fibroler structure that we have. So for that I said PDSD is also good enough because that gives you long range correlation some of these distances we have to measure using PDSD. But in the next class I am going to show you how what else we can use for measuring the long range distances but PDSD is good enough for giving you long range distance you can see 107 to V97 these kind of distances you can even get it from PDSD here 100 to 117 the long range distances can emerge from carbon-carbon correlation and that fix us measuring or getting the topology called arrangement of these beta strands how they will be arranged that is how we can generate a structural model of any fibroler. So with this I am going to stop it here today and in the next class we will be taking we will be taking the idea of how we are going to use these structural information to getting the due de novo structure of these difficult protein system whether they are amyloid fibres or membrane protein in their native state or the native setting. So I hope to see you in the next class. Thank you very much.


I told Andy one thing. I told him, hey, please be where your feet are. What that means is we pulled out his phone and we started looking at pictures on his phone. And I started telling him, hey, do you remember when Sophia, our daughter, did this? Do you remember when our son Ian graduated from his little kindergarten class? Do you remember when we went to the park and we did this and it really made our day? Do you remember our child's footsteps, first footsteps? Do you remember that? And he looked at me with this blank look in his face. He did not remember half of those pictures we talked about. Now, you might be chasing money, you might be doing all of this stuff, but you're living a separate life from your family. You need to be where your feet are. You need to understand you don't have to be one-dimensional. You need to bring your family along with you along the journey. They're gonna be your biggest cheerleaders if you do that. Talk to you about something that really, really changed me and Andy and then actually helped us get through life. So I'm gonna start tonight by asking this question. Are you qualified to have a good life? Failure was a part of my DNA. I learned to fail. I was cold because I didn't have the motherly figure. I turned into a kick-ass mom because of that, thank God. But also, I was very ballsy because failure was a part of my DNA. I wasn't afraid to fail. I looked at the bright side of my failure. I knew that those wounds could be my weapon, but some people in here are looking at your failures and are preventing you from growing.  Because you're grateful because, hey, I'm better than anybody else in my family. That was me, that was Andy. When I met him, I was the ballsy one. I was the one willing to take the risk. I told him, hey, you're so good at what you do. Why are you still in the same position for a 10 year? Why aren't you excelling? Why aren't you thinking bigger? I grew and empowered him to wanna grow.  She should be the one that's cheering you on, but you're not doing it right. But you have to ask that question to yourself right now. Are you stuck where you are right now because you won't forgive yourself because you don't feel like you're qualified to have this good life that you have right now? Are you one dimensional?  You can go make a whole bunch of it.  We made money and lost money along the way so many different times because we were just chasing money. I told Andy one thing. I told him, hey, please be where your feet are. What that means is we pulled out his phone and we started looking at pictures on his phone. And I started telling him, hey, do you remember when Sophia, our daughter, did this? Do you remember when our son Ian graduated from his little kindergarten class? Do you remember when we went to the park and we did this and it really made our day? Do you remember our child's footsteps? First footsteps, do you remember that? And he looked at me with this blank look in his face. He did not remember half of those pictures we talked about. Now, you might be chasing money. You might be doing all of this stuff, but you're living a separate life from your family. You need to be where your feet are. You need to understand you don't have to be one dimensional. You need to bring your family along with you along the journey. They're gonna be your biggest cheerleaders if you do that. We talk about so many different things. So when we started our company, we had to basically start over with everything. We went and we gave everything up, but we brought our family along with us along the journey. We decided, hey, we're gonna be where our feet are and we're gonna fight together as a team. But you have to understand that you can have it all and you can't be one dimensional and chasing money. You can bring your family along with you and we're gonna go over that right now. But why doesn't my family believe me? Why is it that when I'm ready to change, they fight me every single time? I'm gonna tell you one thing. Like I fight Andy sometimes when he had some ideas, hey, I think we should go buy this drone and do all this cool stuff. And I'm like, no, I don't think so. I just test them all the time. Us women, we're great at testing our men. We're so good at it, right? But why do we do that? Because we won't really wanna see if they really want to do something. Have you made promises to yourself? How many times has it been January one and you set a goal? Or you said, I'm gonna start going to the gym and this is what's gonna make the difference. And by January 10th, you give up.  How many times have you said, hey, you know what?     You can make promise to your family.  I want you to trust me blindly.  I need you to support me. And she has in the past.  There's no more money in the bank.  You don't even remember any of that. Why? Why should she trust you again? What's different? You set your goals, you break them.  Do that to yourself. Hold yourself accountable and include your family in them. So Andy and I believe in fighting. Who here doesn't fight with their spouse? Who here does fight with their spouse? We believe in fighting, okay? And a lot of people are like, why would you say that? They say, we know a lot of couples out there that never fight.  And you're like, we're the perfect family. Why the heck are you getting a divorce? Why did this even happen? Like, I don't get it, you were my role model. So it's all of those times that they just held it all in and they try to avoid that they didn't know. It's like death by a thousand paper cuts over and over and over. Unresolved issues that they never ever surfaced. And then they resent each other. They can't even look at each other because they never ever showed their true colors or they never even got to know each other. So we believe in fighting. But we had to make some rules to fighting. And he said that I was an alpha. Yes, massive, I was an alpha. I was used to take care of myself. It was really hard to get into a relationship because I was a problem and I didn't want to ever lose. I'm like, hey, it's my way or the highway and that was it. And he was the same exact way so we could either explode or we could grow together. Okay, so we made up some rules to fighting. Healthy couples fight for resolution. Unhealthy couples fight for personal victory. We came up with one rule and that rule is if someone wins, no one wins.  Why? Because it shouldn't happen that way. You should grow together. So if someone wins, no one wins. We do not avoid a fight. Do not get historical about what was done and you're gonna learn to grow and not talk about it again but you're gonna let it all out. Do not walk on eggshells, ever. That's one of the things that we did and one of the things that we grew to do with everybody. We do it with our kids, we do it with our team and so we have such a strong team and we do it with each other. We treat our relationship, our marriage, our parenting and everything by the same rules. We believe in being our true selves but there's a way to do it. See the reason why I can push my husband or the reason I can tell him what he's wrong is because I do it in a certain way. If you're a leader in your company or manager or even a parent, you have to earn the right to be direct.  You have to earn the right to be direct. I've talked to my kids a certain way. I can tell my son, my son's 13 years old. Ever since he was little, since he was seven years old, I thought, hey Ian, you're seven years old. Listen, I can treat you like the rest of the seven-year-olds around and I can give you everything you want. You can have video games, you can have an easy life. I can tell you yes to everything that you want. It can be cool. Or I can treat you like the bad ass that I versus you, the leader, the one that will change people, the one that actually has this heart in here, the one that's gonna make a difference in this world. That's who I foresee you. But guess what?  Sometimes you're gonna disagree with me. Sometimes you're gonna wanna give up. Sometimes you're gonna say, why the hell does she still mean to me? But you're gonna be great. You're gonna be so good. And then sometimes they'll get weak. Sometimes they'll say, Mom, why did my friend did this and that? Why? Do you want me to treat you like that? Do you want me to treat you like the seven-year-old?  He's like, no, Mom, treat me like the bad ASS. And that's what we do. Same way for Andy. Certain things that I see that he could do better. We're very direct, but our heart is in it. We foresee, I foresee him being a certain way. So before you go and you criticize your team, understand what really moves them and motivates them and earn that right to be direct. Show your heart, wear your heart on your sleeve because it will work harder for you if they do that way. So the number one question that I get all the time, say, Jacqueline, how do I get my spouse to support me the way you support Andy? Now, just think about it. When you get home, what is it that you show your spouse when you get home? Do you bring home leftovers? Does she look up to you? Does she still see you with admiration?  You can't do that. Talk about what you do. Talk about people's lives that you change. Talk about why you love the opportunity that you have, where you work. You know, I talk to so many people and they might meet Chad or they might meet Valentino and they're like, hey, you know, hey. Oh, he made me stay late on the stuff. How are they? How are they greeting?  They kept you late, man. Okay, it worked. Right, it's nice. That's what I thought. But how are you speaking about them? That's how they're going to support you. You did that to yourself. I had a rule in the very beginning when I met Andy and we got into a relationship. I told him, hey, you know what? I'm never gonna speak badly about my husband or my boyfriend or anything to my family. There's so many people out there. They're like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe that my parents don't accept my husband. Well, you did that to them.  You said what he did to you in the very beginning.  They will never forget. If my daughter comes up to me and said, hey, this guy called me a bad name, we're never gonna forget that.  You're talking about your problems too soon. Now, I always skip the slide there because there's three things that actually change our lives and one of the things that we had to do is we had to cut ties with so many different people that weren't like us in the very beginning. So many different people and we had to go dark and you hear a lot of people talking about going dark.  What does it mean? I'm gonna tell you what it meant to me in end. We've made a lot of sacrifices to start a business. We had a very beautiful million dollar house in Oklahoma which is a lot of money for Oklahoma, okay? And when we decided to start a company, we decided to just go and sell everything and basically we went and we rented a house and we slept on mattresses and we decided to make that decision together but we didn't go and we didn't tell our family the sacrifice that we needed to make in order to do that because we knew that we worked so hard to get that million dollar house before we sold it and they were gonna be like, why would you do that? Why would you go and sell your beautiful home and import so much work into to go and sleep on mattresses? Why would you go and sell your car to buy a lease? Why would you give up your nine to five job to have this life? Why would you do that? Sometimes we complain about things to the wrong people too soon. They do not understand what you're shooting for. They do not understand what your goal is of. They do not understand the sacrifices that you're willing to make and they're gonna talk you out of it.  Quit talking to those people.  Don't isolate them. When we sold our house and we slept on mattresses guess what we did? We told our kids, hey, you know what? We're gonna go and we're gonna sell our house. We're all gonna live in one room. We're gonna sleep on mattresses on the ground. And guess what? We're gonna make boards all day long. This is gonna be so awesome. We're gonna be able to jump on the beds and all this cool stuff that we've never been able to do and you're gonna love it. Mom, I can't be, heck yeah I can't be. We're gonna be camping every day. But they were in that journey with us. If they expected it, if they knew what the sacrifice was gonna look like when you're dreaming big, you're gonna have to tell your kids, hey, you know what? We're gonna go and we're gonna build this and we're gonna do something really cool and guess what?  We're gonna make the sacrifice together. Sometimes we're trying to shelter our kids. How do you get your spouse to support you?  Your wife does not wanna be the queen of the castle. I didn't. I wanted to be that battle-maker. I wanted to be the one that held them accountable. I wanted to be included in that success, in that win with them. Sometimes we're not including our scholars in that and we're just bringing our home leftovers. Talk about why you love what you do and she will wanna be included in that. So your family will support you if you bring them along and they are included in that picture. So I told my husband one thing, one time that was very painful. There was a time where I was working really hard. He was working really hard. We got together, we had kids.  Then I told him, hey, Andy, we learned to live without you. You're not here present with us. You're going, you do your work and guess what? Hey, we go and we have the whole mom thing and we go to the park and you're not included in that picture. We're just on our own. We have our own separate life. How many people go and work so freaking hard at their job and their family has a whole different life? That's what was happening to us.    But guess what? Remember, talk about being one-dimensional. We don't want that. Tell him, hey, you know what? Don't get confused. As a woman, I need a man that I can look up to. I want a man that's fulfilled.  I don't want to guess, man. I want somebody that can be a bad ass at work that can show us the example and provide for the family but also can be present and be worse reader.  Hey, babe, what is it that we're going to do with that money? How are we planning? What is it that success looks like to both of you? Your family will support you if they have a clear vision of what success looks like to you and they are included in that picture. Not the queen of the cast. Another big mistake that we made in the beginning. If you have kids, we made this big mistake.  We wanted to give our kids a life we didn't have. We went through a lot of heartache as kids so we wanted to give our kids everything. Want to make life easy for them.  So I told Andy, quit taking her to get a toy every time she gets hurt. Life is hard.  What's gonna happen when the first guy breaks up with her?  Then that's why you have people committing suicide and getting depressed and all this other stuff. You need kids that are strong. You need to have them know and appreciate life. Start sharing what your heartaches were with your children. They don't necessarily have to go through the same pain you did, but sometimes we try to give them everything. We don't include them in that pain that you went through or those sacrifices for them to even grow a backbone and then they break at the first moment that they freaking stub their toe. But be that example to your children. I was walking around with the bun in my head all the time.  I was making sure my kids have perfect clothes. If their clothes was nice and pressed, they matched perfectly. Their hair was perfect. Now I was walking around like I would, going to the gym and I wasn't going to the gym. I just had a bun in my hair and I just wasn't taking care of myself. I was eating cold food. I was eating leftovers. I was giving Andy and the kids everything I had as a woman. One day I said, you know what? I'm gonna take a shower. I'm gonna fix my hair. Then I'm gonna eat first. And I started valuing myself. Sometimes it's women especially, Latino women, this is what happens. We try to give everybody so much and we try to keep up with other moms and try to give our kids and we've put ourselves last. And what I realized is that my kids were looking up to other people on the internet. Other people that they wanted to look like. Other people that they wanted to admire. Listening to other people's advice. They should be looking at me as their hero. So I needed to learn to love myself. I needed to show them what it was like. I needed to show my son what it was like to find a strong woman that she can value. I needed to show Andy that I was the one, the woman that he fell in love with, the firecracker, I needed to come back, fireball, whatever the song was. I needed that. So my kids started looking up to me. I can tell you right now that you know, like I saw my kids watching Wonder Woman one day and I'm like, oh man, my mom's just as strong as her. My mom can do that. This is when I know my kids look up to me.  Now some of you women that are here, you have kids and you're working really hard to provide for them. But what are you bringing home? Are you excited about life? Are you excited about providing opportunity or are you making life too easy for them? Where they can't even look up to them? Are you giving them electronics to them? What are you doing? Become a hero to yourself. And you can be a hero to others. And those men that are out there, remember to tell your wife that she's beautiful. Remember to remind her of who she was and never lose sight of who you fell in love with. Sometimes we need that reminder. So Ian was talking about this, keeping it new. He made a very, very good point. Keeping it new.  You're like, oh my gosh, I got the opportunity. I'm gonna prove that my bosses made the right choice by bringing me on. I'm gonna go out and sell everybody. I'm gonna go and self develop. I'm just gonna have the best attitude. I'm gonna do everything right. I'm gonna train every day. I'm gonna be a badass. When you met the girl, there was that fire burning inside. I call it from idolizing to demonizing. Just think about when you met your wife. Hey dad, you have to meet Rita. She's so amazing, she's so beautiful. She has beautiful hair, she has beautiful eyes, but she's so driven, so motivated, so awesome. She pushes me to be better. She's just so awesome, man. I wish you could just meet her. She's so organized. Oh my gosh, she's just my other half. You would love her. And then you get the girl. What happens? Oh dad, you should see Rita, man. She's such a nag. Nothing I ever do is good enough for her. She just wants me to be perfect all the time, man. She's so annoying. I can't ever do anything right, man. Dude, I don't get it, what happened? Everything you loved about her just turned into something you demonize about her. The newness wore off. Everything you liked about her is suddenly gone. Your job. Ian was walking like, hey, you were so excited the first day, then all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, another day in paradise. Who do I need to talk to now?  Like that's what it is. You need to be in that proving stage every single day and everything you do as a parent, as a wife or husband, or even in business in what you do. Remember to keep it new. We talked about getting married every day. Yes, I told them, hey, I married you once. I didn't expect you to be married once and then lose every day. We get married every single day. We get better every single day. We're so competitive. We compete in everything, in keeping it new and trying to impress each other.  You were checking around, your eyes were meeting. Oh my gosh, she's bending over. Oh my, she's washing the dishes. Oh, how many times do you look at her in the eye now? How often do you do that? She's not new anymore. Whose fault is it? Yours. So with this, with your business, don't make the mistake of living separate lives. You want to kick butt? Who are you working for? What is your why? Why aren't you bringing your family along with you? Why aren't you including them in the journey? When we hire people, I'm just going to tell you, when we hire people for our company, we go and say a guy wants to come work with us. Okay, great. Okay, we're going to interview you. Okay, are you married? Yes, okay. Let us talk to your wife. We want to interview both of you guys at the same time. Why? We're on the same page. We tell him, hey, okay. You know here, your husband's going to be here. What are you going to do? You know, you agree that he's working for the best company in the world. What is the reason why you think he should work with us? She's going to tell you exactly. Well, I really like what you guys stand for. I really like your core values. I really like what you guys do. You guys sell dreams. You guys are doing all this cool stuff for people. Okay, great. So what happens when he doesn't reach the sales or he doesn't make a sale for the day and he comes home negative? What are you going to tell him? She's like, oh, well, I'm going to, what happens when he doesn't meet his quota and he doesn't make the money that you're expecting? What are you going to do? You're going to have him quit? So we have that buy-in from both of them, but we also make it very important. We'll be like, hey, you know what? We're hiring your husband. Guess what's going to happen? We're on the same page. We're hiring you too. If he ever speaks anything negative about you, you're fired. He's fired. If he ever goes and he cheats on you, he's fired. We're in this together. We're going to make sure that you guys are taken care of and we're going to know everything about you and you're going to hold everybody accountable and we're going to make sure he doesn't bring you home leftovers. We're going to make sure he treats you with respect. We're going to make sure that we're all growing together and we have the same mission and goal. So don't make the mistake of living two separate lives. You can do that in what you're doing right now. Don't put your wife aside. If you think your wife is not interested in your business, I promise you, I promise you, you're having a self-limited belief. I'm going to tell you one thing. If you're in management right now and say your wife has incredible instinct and if you were to tell her, hey honey, like what do you think about this guy? I've been talking about this guy I want to bring on to the team. What do you think?  Or she's going to tell you, hey, I don't really think you should hire him. There's something about him I don't really like. Later on, you hire the guy and all of a sudden she's like, I told you, I knew he was a bad guy. She has an incredible instinct and you don't think she's interested in your business? I promise you, if you include her in that, she'll be like, hey, yeah, you're talking to that Johnny guy. Is he working out? And you're like, oh yeah, he's doing a great job. He's a cool guy like everybody. And then she's going to keep asking, how is work, honey? And then all of a sudden you start talking about work and then she's interested because you're including her in that. It's your job, your closures. That's what you do for a living. Include her in that and she will support you. So the truth is, your spouse wants to see you fulfilled. Your spouse wants to see the man that she married. She wants a man that she can look up to. Hey, your husband wants to see a woman that's excited about life. She wants to see that firecracker he married. He wants to see that person that's confident that remembers who she is. That carries herself a certain way. A lot of times women and men, they compete with work. It's your decision whether we make it all be the same and she's going to support you. Not just financially, but in everything because she will support you if you do it right. But most of the time we do it wrong. We keep our family from everything. We don't bring home. We don't tell them what we're doing. We don't say, hey, you know what? I helped the nicest family in the world. You should have seen them. They came to the resort and they were thanking me. They were crying. They're like, man, you saved our marriage because we came and we did this. Babe, I love my job. I wish you could have seen how happy their little boy was running around in that slide, man. He came up and gave me a big hug, man. I love my job. That's not what we do.  Don't let your home compete with your work. This is your decision, but you have the power to have it all. You can have your health. Everything you put your mind to that's important you make time for. You might think, hey, I don't have time to go to the gym. If it's important to you, you'll make time. I don't have time to, you know, have breakfast with my wife. Hey, if it's important to you, you will make the time. Anything that's important to you, but you can't have it all. You can have your faith. You can have your family. You can have your work. You can have it all. If you don't do it right, you will make money. You will lose it all and you will start over again. You will lose your marriage and you'll start again with another one. You'll have the same freaking problems. You have the power to do it all if you just focus on taking care of everything at the same time and bring your family along with you. When is enough enough when you love somebody? When are you gonna get back that time? The present right now. Bring your family along with you. You do have the power to have it all. So anyway, we went way past our time. I wanna thank you guys for having us for all the hospitality and everything we have been totally, like this has been amazing. So I wanna, I appreciate you guys for having us. Hey guys, that's what I'm gonna tell you. You're the true one percenters. You made it till the end of the video. Do me a favor, share it with the friend that wants to go to another level. Make sure you like the video, comment below so I know who you are, set your notifications, and then subscribe to the channel. We got daily sales training videos dropping. I'll see you soon.


Here's a thought, here's a thought to consider. Your life is actually working perfectly right now. Now, how can that be?  There's still parts of my life I don't love, or there's parts of my business that's not working as well. All of it is working as it should because there is a system behind everything. Everything has a system behind it. Whatever is happening in your life or in your business is because of a system that's causing it. Now, you might say, well, there are many causes, George. There's other people are not doing what I want them to do. There's technology that changes. There's the stars, so there's my upbringing. There's my background. There's my genetics. A lot of things that seem to be outside of our control, but every single time you blame those other factors, you give away your power. And do you want to give away your power? No. So let me give you a thought that I hope you'll take on going forward. The thought is this. I am in more control of my life experience than I previously thought. Now, as Spider-Man has told us, with great power comes great responsibility, right? So you are also responsible for whatever is happening in your life experience. Now, notice I say life experience because I literally mean that. I mean the experience you have of your life. Things that may happen externally, but it has to happen externally. But it's how you interpret the experience that allows you to feel this or that way. Okay, so another very important thing is you have the power. You have the responsibility. And the third very important point is this.  Because when you're blaming, you are talking about the past, which cannot be changed. What you got to do is to say, there's a system behind what happened and what can I do to change the system? And let me go ahead and do what I can do to change the system going forward. There is no blame needed. It's just empowered action. Ten years ago, my life was in turmoil. I didn't have a job. Felt really bad about that because I had to be supported by my wife who wasn't making much money then either. She was a social worker back then. And my health wasn't great. You know, because of my situation, the relationship I had, my wife wasn't great. She was stressed with her job too. And life wasn't great 10 years ago, turmoil. And then once I started to build a business, a business is a system. So I started to think about my life as a system too or a series of systems. And so I thought, if I can design a business that works, why can't I design a life that works? So I got going, writing down the different systems in my life and then tweaking it, changing each one until now, today, my life is like heaven. I have a business that I love. My relationship, my wife is going great. My health is going great. And just overall, the feelings I have in my life are, every day, it's like 99% positive. It's not that there aren't problems. Of course, I'm a human being. I'm here on this earth to learn and to train to become a better soul as well. So of course, problems are going to come my way. But how I interpret problems is a system too. When problems come my way, I interpret it. I've learned in practice interpreting it as a blessing to say, oh, what's the blessing in that problem? And what's the opportunity for me to change some system and to grow stronger while I'm working on making it a better system? So as a result, I do feel great every day throughout most of the day. Of course, I have my times of feeling down and etc. Of course, I'm a human being too. I'm not perfect. But even that, it's a system behind this. Oh, how can I tweak it? So the next time I don't have to feel that way, I can maintain a positive and empowered way of being in the world. So I want to encourage you to write down the aspects of your life that aren't working as well as you'd like. What aspects of your life would you like to improve? What aspects of your business would you like to improve? What aspects of your health? What aspects of your relationships? Write them down. And then secondarily, write down what are the systems underneath each one of the problems? You need a brainstorm. Maybe you need to sleep on it and brainstorm the next day and just keep on trying to brainstorm. What are the systems behind it? That's the question to keep asking. So what is the system behind this thing that isn't working as well as I'd like? What is the system? That's what I've kept asking myself for years. What is the system behind it? If you have a friend or a coach or a mentor, you can talk to about a particular system that's baffling you. Talk to somebody that can help you brainstorm. What is the system underlying? And how can I redesign that system in my life to be working better?  So I hope this is encouraging for you. I look forward to any comments and questions you have about this. Until the next video, go forward, remember that you have the power to change your life completely. The question is, will you do it with a happy heart, with an empowered mind, knowing that you can change any system that's underlying your life? I wish you well.


and Lockheed Martin. So with that knowledge, right, that these are American companies that profit enormously from Israeli occupation, and also profit from the ongoing war on Yemen. And of course, every year, they receive over $350 billion of our Pentagon budget because it goes directly into the pockets of private political defense contractors, like Raytheon Boeing, Lockheed Martin, really just to pan their bottom line, right? So that's why it's really urgent that we continue to work to divest from the war machine in our own communities. And really, the only way we're going to do that is by revoking the power of the companies and people who profit the most from war making, right? And this is the first step in transforming our nation, our nation's budget priorities, and also, I think, just as importantly, ending the spread of violence, oppression, and death at home and abroad. So today, I'm really honored and excited to talk with you all more about a burgeoning campaign to divest Vermont from the war machine, which is why it's so important that we have people on from around Vermont on the call. So first, I'm going to review the national campaign to divest from the war machine that we have at Code Pink, what our theory of change is, and also importantly, some of the resources that we have to divest local communities from the war machine. Then I'm really excited. I'm going to turn it over to Cody Urban, who is a national organizer with our divest from the war machine campaign, and James Ellers, who are both currently working alongside many excellent local activists in Vermont to divest from the war machine, and they're going to speak more about how you can get involved in local divestment efforts in Vermont. So after the panel discussion, we'll have time for some audience Q&A as well, right? So this is, you know, after my presentation and after James and Cody give us a little more info about what's happening in Vermont, people here are going to be welcome to ask as many questions as they'd like. And, you know, during my presentation and during James and Cody's discussion, please feel free to write down any questions that you have in the chat box, and we'll be collecting those throughout the event and make sure we get to them during that Q&A section. And then finally, just a note for everyone here. This event will be recorded. It's being recorded right now, and it will be up on our Code Pink YouTube channel, and all participants will receive a copy of the recording, as well as all of the resources we referenced during the conversation tonight. So you don't have to worry about writing anything down or saving anything from the chat box. We'll make sure you get it. So with that, without further ado, I'm going to kick us off with a short presentation about our National Divest from the War Machine campaign. So I'm going to start sharing my screen now. And we've had some other folks join us. So if you're just joining us, welcome everyone. Really great to have you here. And hopefully folks can see presentation. Everyone can see that. Awesome. All right. So I'm going to get us started. So as I said, I just wanted to go over what our Divest from the War Machine campaign is at Code Pink and what our theory of change is, right? Why do we talk about divesting from the War Machine? So I'll go through this. First, the Divest from the War Machine campaign started in October of 2017 with a summit in Washington, D.C. And that summit brought together a range of people, foreign policy experts, activists, people who had experience with divestment campaigns to really talk about how we can use divestment as a tactic to take on an industry that's as well established as war profiteers, right? People who make weapons and profit from the war. So that started in 2017. So part of our theory of change for the campaign is that divestment campaigns can do a number of things, right, that you see on the screen, help spark a vital public debate, which really denaturalizes the role of weapons manufacturers in having a profit motive to perpetuate conflict around the world, right? I think that's something that many people grow up with just thinking is normal because they haven't questioned it. So these campaigns can drive those questions. Expose how our financial and educational institutions are supporting companies that profit from war, right? So how even places in our local communities are connected to the global war machine really inspire the public and investors to pressure institutions to divest and to publicly hold the arms industry accountable for their culpability in the death and displacement of millions of innocent people. So those are important aspects of what a divestment campaign can accomplish. So I want to review just quickly a few key resources and ways that we can actually divest in the war machine in our local communities. And one key resource that we use for all of our campaigns to find out if mutual funds and exchange traded funds have investments tied to weapons of war is called the weapons free fund. And you see it on the screen there. So Code Pink has joined with, as you so, to develop a social database of commonly held mutual funds and ETFs to determine if our investments, right, so your personal investments or your institution's investments are tied to weapons of war, right? And the URL is on the screen. You can find that tool at www.codepink.org slash divest. And it's used to track major military contractors and we use the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute arms industry database to do that. So this database contains information on arms producing and military services, including public companies identified as nuclear weapon manufacturers or servicers. So that's what that weapons free fund really focuses on. So this is such an important resource because we need to have this information about whether or not ourselves or institutions are actually invested in the war machine. So I just quickly wanted to show people just a short example of how we actually use this tool, right, because it enables everyone to do the vital research to determine if our investments are tied to the war industry. So as an example, I'll just sort of walk you through what it looks like if we search the tool using investment manager BlackRock, which Code Pink has been targeting, because of its many billions invested in war and violence and climate change, right? So let's say, right, we do a example search, we type in BlackRock to the weapons free fund, I want to show you what it looks like and what some of those markers actually mean. So when you search BlackRock, you'll come to a page that looks like this, right? And what you can see if you look at the middle column where it says weapon risk and everything there is in red, that says that the weapons risk is considered high for that fund. So what does that mean? That means that every single one of these funds that BlackRock manages because BlackRock is an asset manager, every single one of those funds is invested in weapons, right? So if you search for a fund and you see that the weapons risk is high, you know that they're invested in weapons, right? So let's quickly just look at that in more detail. What does that mean and what does that look like? So you can see that, you know, if you clicked on one of those funds, you can see that each fund page has even more information with full breakdowns of investments, right? So this fund alone has millions of dollars invested in major military contractors and nuclear weapons, right? You can see 1.68 million invested in the major military contractors, 1 million invested in nuclear weapons, half a million invested in gun retailers and civilian firearms, right? So this tool is really there so we can show and see very clearly whether or not our institutions or our personal investments are actually tied to the war machine. So in Vermont, I wanted to show something quickly and James and Cody will talk about this in more detail, right? We've looked into the Burlington Retirement Fund account and there is a fund that manages Burlington assets called the Mellon Large Cap S&P 500 that's listed on the investment in prey form and this fund is circulated through the S&P 500. And so while this index doesn't invest in weapons directly, the Burlington assets called the Mellon Large Cap S&P 500, since the fund is circulated through the S&P 500, they do invest in weapons, right? And you can see here that the weapon risk, they're given a D rating, so A through F, right? A D rating, that means that its funds are still being used to invest in weapons, right? And this is how the City of Burlington Public Retirement Fund is invested in weapons indirectly, but still nonetheless propping up the US war machine and James and Cody will go into that a little bit more in more detail. And you know, this is a strong basis for a divestment campaign in the City of Burlington and we can look into funds across Vermont as well using this tool. And again, if people have questions about this, more than happy to talk about it. So, I talked a little bit about this, so I'm going to talk a little bit more about the divestment campaign writ large, right? Now that we see some of the oranges in the campaign, one of the tools that we use, if people wouldn't mind muting while I'm talking, there we go, sorry, there's a little bit of feedback. So, we were talking a little bit about the origin of the campaign and then one of the key resources and tools we use to get our campaign started, right? But also, right, it's important for us to take a step back and remind ourselves how the US war machine operates to influence our politicians, our national budget priorities, and our local communities in this really cyclical cycle that you see on the screen, right? And while this analysis that's represented is not all-encompassing, right? This is not the way that the US war machine operates in its entirety. What you see here is important for local activists like ourselves because at each point offers us key points of intervention and ways to organize in our local communities against the war machine, right? Weapons manufacturers make a large profit. They donate to their profits in part to fund the campaigns of politicians who then steadily increase the Pentagon budget and vote for new weapons systems. And then, of course, what we just talked about, which is large financial institutions like banks and asset managers invest heavily in these weapons manufacturers and profit from them, right? And this is a cycle that continues unless we stop it, right? And that's what we're talking about today. So one of the ways that we intervene on the local level is to create campaigns to divest our cities and states from the war machine. So we have city council resolutions and state level resolutions to divest city and state level investments, including city operating budgets and public employee pension funds from the war machine. And this is important because municipal and state level policies can really work to drive a new conversation not only around divesting from the war machine, but also about what socially responsible investment policies look like, right? And what we need to prioritize in our local communities. I'll just give one example in 2020. During the pandemic, a small city in California, San Luis Obispo, their city council voted five to zero to divest from the war machine, so unanimously. And then the city adopted a new socially responsible investment screening policy, one that excludes both weapons manufacturers, fossil fuel industry, and private prisons all in one policy. And the campaign involved growing a local coalition of community activists, including environmental organizations, to really take action to divest from war, right? So this is something that's possible. It's been done before, and we're now working on it in Vermont. We also have campaigns to urge schools to divest their endowments from the war machine, campus level organizing, right? That demonstrates the many ways that the war machine funds and heavily influences our educational institutions is really an important side of intervention because of the many ways that weapons companies are financed by endowments, right? And really insinuate themselves onto our campuses. And people have seen, right, Raytheon funding engineering programs at local schools, right? So we have to intervene in that conversation. Here's a great photo from our protest that was led by students on the campus at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. We also work to divest philanthropic foundations from the war machine. I think it's pretty clear that philanthropic foundations working to do good in the world should not be invested in and profiting from companies that literally make a killing on killing, right? And we have resources for that. And then the last thing I won't spend too much time on is we also work to divest our local politicians from our congressional representatives to our state level representatives to even our city councilors from the war machine by urging them to take the Code Pink pledge to stop taking campaign contributions from weapons manufacturers, right? And this is important at the national level because like I already said, half of our Pentagon budget goes directly into the conference of weapons manufacturers and private quote unquote defense contractors who then donate to politicians who then increase the Pentagon budget, right? And it's a cyclical process. So as I said, we have a commitment to refuse money from weapons makers that we ask people to take to their local congressional representatives, state level representatives, city council members to really show, right? We really need you to not no longer be bought off by the same companies who you approve funding for every year, or in the case of local communities, right? Who perhaps want to put local manufacturing plants in our local communities. So that's a really great organizing tool. And this is just to show that people who have taken the Code Pink pledge to divest from war have unanimously voted to move funds from the Pentagon to the people, right? To unanimously voted to defund the Pentagon. So that's important. And I just want to end quickly by showing some of the resources that we do have that I sort of went over that everyone here will receive after our webinar ends here. So first we have the weapons free funds that I went over an investment screen that you can use to make sure that your personal investments are not tied up in the war machine. A list of companies to divest from, right? When we talk about weapons companies, what do we actually need? And sample city council resolution to make sure that everyone can take that to their city council members. And then finally, what I just went over our congressional divestment pledge. So I'm going to stop there. I'm going to stop showing my screen. And some folks have joined us since we started and thank you for joining us. So just for people who have just joined us, we just went over our national campaign to divest from the war machine. And now I'm going to hand it over to two people who are with us today who are going to talk about local efforts in Vermont to divest from the war machine. So that'll be Cody Urban and James Ellers. So let me introduce them formally. Cody Urban is a national organizer with the Code Pink Divest from the War Machine campaign based in Portland, Oregon. And James Ellers is based in Vermont. And his work focuses on the merits of communities, states and the nation investing in an inclusive economy. An economy sound public policy and energy, agriculture, urban and suburban development, health care, and jobs is reflected in the health of our water, air and soil, and ultimately our personal well-being regardless of gender, race, orientation, age, religion, or social standing. So with that, I do want to hand it over to Cody and James to talk more about what the local campaign in Vermont looks like. Awesome. Thank you so much, Carly. Yeah, like Carly said, my name is Cody. I work with Code Pink and I'm based in Portland on the West Coast, but I luckily get to work with activists all over the country working on divest campaigns, including Vermont. So happy to be here. This is my furry friend Morty. He'll be my timekeeper for my part of the presentation, which is probably why I always end up going late. But all jokes aside, I'm really, really happy to be here alongside James as well as many other members, active members of the Divest Vermont Coalition on this call right now. So I'm just going to kind of kick it off and pass it over to you, James. It feels like just a few months ago that you, me, and Carly got together and started talking about what what a divest campaign in Vermont could look like. And now we're at this point. So really kind of James first question, how did this campaign get started? And I know that there's kind of a history of divestment, very successful divestment work in the state of Vermont. So maybe frame the history of this divestment campaign within the broader divestment work that's going on in the state. Cody, well, thank you. And I want to thank Carly too.  So let's get that out there in the open for everyone who is who is listening today. I was just, I think, probably an annoying gadfly on one of your other webinars, posting in the chat box.  And here we are today. I'll do my best to explain the divestment history in Vermont by the bio that Carly used for me is just a fancy way to say I'm an activist. Primarily, you know, a peace activist and environmental activist. And that comes from my history as a former naval officer and a lot of other lived experiences. But feeling an obligation, both moral and otherwise, to repay, if you will, what I saw, what I experienced in my time in the service and our foreign policy. And while we've done a lot of good things throughout history, we've done a lot of things that are also pretty shameful. And my experience in our legislature, I was assisting other fellow activists on a fossil fuel divestment campaign. And while that has stalled at the state level, because of, quite frankly, pension fund liabilities that go far beyond the scope of this conversation, there have been successful efforts, for example, at the University of Vermont. And in the cross section or overlap of activist work, and there's a few on this call tonight, I had been involved in coordinating a campaign to have our legislators, our politicians acknowledge the fact that the F-35, which Senator Leahy, the most senior ranking, most influential senator in the United States Senate right now, is one of my senators, literally intervened in the basing process to bring the F-35 here against the wishes of even the Air Force, who wanted to place that airplane in Jacksonville, Florida. We wound up what is a part of the nuclear triad, the F-35. It is a stealth first strike nuclear bomber based at our civilian airport in some of the most densely populated residential communities in all of New England, never mind Vermont. So fast forward, I'm hearing from the senator, as well as from Senator Sanders, the name that a few folks listening to this webinar might recognize. In fact, he was on the Senate floor earlier today. Thank you, Senator Sanders, calling for peace in Palestine and calling for an Israeli ceasefire. Senator Sanders has embraced the F-35 as a jobs program for Vermonters. So here we have the two, arguably two of the most influential people in all of American politics representing Vermonters embracing the F-35, the poster child, if you will, for the war machine, both literally and figuratively, right here in my hometown. They're poisoning our water, they're abusing the local populace, and these aircraft are not for our homeland security as we've been told. They're first strike aircraft for attacking the Russian people or the Chinese people or whoever the adversary of the day is. And the justification is jobs. So, Cody, I know you know this. Carly, I know you know this. Any justification, any economy that depends on killing machines for jobs is an economy we must deconstruct and rebuild. So I, not being an expert in that area whatsoever, I came to you folks and you graciously accepted my invitation to help us here in Vermont divest, not just at the state level. That's something we're going to get to by working with unions, particularly our state employees unions. But town by town, where everyone on this call today can actually literally start working on divesting. It could be their local town pension fund that covers, you know, a half a dozen town employees, whatever it is, we can do it and you're going to help us. Nice. Thanks for that, James. And yeah, I fully agree with something you said about, you know, any economy that is built off of this necessity of war, which Carly was really detailed for us at the beginning of this, you know, is an economy that used to be changed. And I mean, I've often said there's there's no such thing really as the war economy. It's just the economy. Right. It's always been made to buff up war. And that's one of the big points that the divest from the war machine campaign points at. And now you already kind of started to go into this when you were talking about the movement against the F 35s here in Vermont. But what are what are some of the other particular ways that the divesting from the war machine is important in Vermont in particular? I think symbolically, and symbolism is particularly important in politics. I mean, look at how how how wrapped up bad pun people get in just the discussion of the flag symbols matter. And here we have two senators, one chair of the budget committee, the other chair of the appropriations committee, they control where literally they literally control where all of us dollars, our tax dollars go and the Pentagon budget. So there's a chance for us to not just talk the talk, but to walk the walk and in a state like Vermont, where we hold ourselves above, right, there's where the Lake Wobagon of the Northeast, where we like to think we're morally superior because of the our values. Here we are embracing the killing economy for Vermont jobs. And local politicians, because of the power of Senators Leahy and Senator Sanders, have stayed silent. Yeah, they'll tell us when they see us on the street like we're with you. Those F 35s got to go. They're so noisy, the PFAS poisoning that the Guard is responsible for of our drinking water supplies and our fisheries.  But in a state where we supposedly, supposedly embrace progressive values, here we have a chance at every level of our state economy to work on what is not new. Admittedly, Cody, like I'm here because I stand on the shoulders of others and I know that you and Carly feel the same way. Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. 60 years ago was talking about the links between militarism, racism, and capitalism. And any economy where people are profiting off of exploitation and extraction and killing is one that we in Vermont, Senator Leahy and Senator Sanders have the ability right now to reject, not just in word, but indeed, and reshape the entire economy. And if they don't know how to do it, we're going to show them how to do it town by town, from the bottom up, because we're tired of waiting for leaders to lead. And again, thank you to Code Pink. I know this isn't going to happen in a year or two years or three years or five years. But I'm here to make sure that the torch gets passed on fully lit to the next generation of activists so that we have an economy that invests in peace, invest in each other, and ends an economy built off killing and destruction. And town by town, bottom up, like you said, is the way we're going to do it. So thanks for that, James. And also not just that, but highlighting not just how town by town we work on these city divestment campaigns, and eventually we get to divesting a whole state from the war machine. And then like you pointed out, and Carly's connection to our Code Pink's Defund the Pentagon campaign, the Congress members who are then part of that state can then be pushed legislation of defunding the war economy at the top two. So it really is this strong connection about why a campaign in cities within a state like Vermont is incredibly important. Now let's talk about the strategy for the campaign moving forward for folks on this call. So where is this campaign going? I know Carly in her presentation began to talk about what we were starting to see in the city of Burlington, how the Burlington Retirement Fund is most likely invested in weapons. And in addition to talking about where the strategy is going here in Vermont, you know, we're asking the different cities in the state to divest from war, but what should they divest into? So can you talk about some of that? Well, I'm not when you want managing your money. That much, I can tell you there's plenty. I count my pennies, I save them. I'm not an investment sort of guy in funds. I like to invest in people. So what I can tell you is I'm investing in my fellow Vermonters by spending time with them to help connect them to the resources that CodePink has already created. There's already very smart people out there who will screen investment funds. Carly and I met with one just the other day who's locally based, who wants to use the resources of his firm to assist this. And I know that there's others from the fossil fuel campaign that I worked on. Interestingly, it rarely gets discussed, but so much of our war economy is nothing but a handout to the oil industry. You know, as someone who served in the US Navy in the early 90s, there was a Gulf War then as well. And these Gulf Wars are all about subsidizing oil. No one really makes any bones about it anymore. It's not really a secret. That we're sacrificing the lives of my brothers and sisters for access to oil. So here in Vermont, we're going to do this as a team because nothing, nothing as structurally lasting as pivotal as this is going to be done by one person or even two or three people. This is going to be done by each one of the people on this call.  It could be the public library. It doesn't matter. We're going to educate our kids that this is not where we put our money.  And so in Burlington, there's already activists, the aforementioned Women's International League of Peace and Freedom, the eminable Robin Lloyd and Marguerite Edelman and Jane Henley. And who else am I forgetting right now? I'm going to forget someone. I'm always in trouble. But the point being is they're already on this. They're already reaching out to all of those progressives, self-identified progressives to ensure that their city isn't profiting from the death of people through military contracts. And so that is the public institution side. There's also, I know, I know that there's some folks on this call from world beyond war, physicians for social responsibility that are reaching out to different universities, medical centers. I mean, to think that the University of Vermont Medical Center would be investing money from health care into the proliferation of death. I think it's absurd enough that it should be a satirical skit on one of those late shows. The point being is there's plenty for all of us to do that want to leave a more humane, sentient, kind world than the one we have in front of us right now. And so that's what I'm going to ask, Cody. I'm going to ask each one of us. We are the change that we need to see. And there's no reason with CodePink's help that we can't do this. Absolutely none. You've already shown it. We're just walking in your shadow, and many hands make light work. So with the likes of World Beyond War and Women's International League, A Peace and Freedom, and probably organizations we're not even aware of yet, we're going to do this. We're definitely going to do this. Indeed. And I actually like to think of it as all of us together are the ones casting the shadow that's starting to creep up towards Montpellier and is eventually going to get towards DC one day. Hey, Cody. Cody, all of my friends, as they're always quick to do, and I always welcome it. I always welcome corrections. Who better to get corrections from than your friends? But one organization I neglect to mention, and I'm going to try and cover it up by saying I'm trying to avoid shameless self-promotion. That is, sorry, that was my son calling in. He just finished this little lead game that I skipped out on. He's probably calling to tell me the score. The, is Veterans for Peace. So as a member of Veterans for Peace, shame on me. Sorry to our chapter president and my fellow brother, Bud Haas, who I believe I saw in this call earlier. Yeah, just another reminder of just how big our coalition is, with the few members we have now and the more it will grow, I know, from the more folks who jump on board. And speaking of jumping on board, coming into the last question, maybe take a minute before James until we move into our Q&A. And the next minute, you know, we've covered all the cities and some of the cities and areas we have been targeting. What are some of the ways that people can get involved now so that we can start to find other targets for this campaign? Well, we have, we have weekly and bi-weekly calls. We have a leadership team that includes John Ruer from World Beyond War, and of course you folks, and our bi-weekly calls. And I think the best way for people to find something to do is to just get involved with people who are already involved. And there are anywhere between eight and 12 people that are already starting to work on this and divide up areas of responsibility. So whether it's the private universities or healthcare institutions or municipalities, the place to start is by joining with kindred spirits. You'll never feel lonely. There'll always be something to do. And when you need to take a breather, there'll be someone there to pick up the slack for you. Well, James, thank you so, so much for giving us all kind of the crash course of all the work that's been done in Vermont so far. Well, I love conversations like this, you know, starting off with where Carly was talking about our national campaign that Code Pink was one of many organizations that helped launch. You know, it's really inspiring thinking of what the national divest from the War Machine campaign can do. But none of it has any life. It is lifeless without campaigns like this on the ground, people looking at their own city, people moving up towards their own state. That's where the actual impacts of a national campaign like this take form. So thanks for walking us through that. We're now at a point for questions and answers. I was looking through the chat here. I saw a lot of comments. We got a lot of folks sharing a lot of thoughts, which is great. I'm wondering if folks have any specific questions that James, myself or Carly, or maybe even some other folks on this call involved in the campaign can answer. So either put them in the chat or if you would like to ask to unmute, we have a small enough room today. I think we can take some verbal questions too. So just let us know. I see Robin is raising her hand, but I just wanted to make a note also. Thanks so much, Cody and James, but also John was saying in the chat, which is so true. We have a need for everyone. We need people, anyone with the affiliation with the University of Vermont, you know, if you're a faculty, student, alumni, staff, member, taxpayer, that would be great. People with the affiliation of the Vermont Medical Center. And of course, anyone who has stake in local or state pensions, right, including Burlington, Vermont. I saw people here on the call from Burlington and it would be excellent to have you involved. And we have the link to sign up to get involved and also to join us at our next meeting right in the chat box. So Robin, I think, was going to speak. Carly, can I jump in before Robin? Just very quickly, the only qualification to get involved is a willingness to make some good trouble. That's it. You need no other special qualification. That's true. Robin. Great. Yeah. So a bit of good news. John and John Royer and I and Spencer Smith met with a city counselor here in Burlington. We presented the divest resolution. She was very open to it. She had read over it very carefully herself. So we're definitely moving ahead there. My question is we don't seem to have offices, any offices of the five big companies, you know, Raytheon, Lockheed, etc., in this area. However, there are a number of businesses right around the airport that are affiliates, I believe, with the F-35, helping them do their thing. And I wonder if that might be the research we need to do next. I drove around there and I got the names and now I don't have them at hand right now, but does anyone know any more information on that? Because we want to either go to banks and protest or to these institutions that are contributing to the war machine. Thanks, Robin. I think James, I see your hand in that. You're going to maybe answer that question. We also have another question, Cody, from Cheryl in the chat box just so you know. But yeah, James. Quickly, Robin, we can address that at our next meeting. The short answer is the chamber of commerce here has an aerospace sub-industry group. And that group in particular is closely allied with the Air Force. That is the reason why the governor, in fact, said that it was important to keep the F-35s here so that there was that line of communication, if you will, between the industry and military. So let's look at that at our next meeting. Okay, good. Sounds good. Thanks for that question, Robin, and for the response, James. To Cheryl's question, do we know what the barriers in mispreventing people from not divesting already are? And have we pulled the community on their thoughts and attitudes toward divestment? To bring to the first one, I think that one of the biggest myths I've seen about around divestment is that it's not profitable. It's not, you know, it's not worthwhile divesting because you end up losing money for whatever the fund or institution is. And that myth has actually been majorly busted. In fact, very recently there was shown that specifically sustainable investments have gotten more returns because that's just the way that the market is going. The war economy that will always kind of underpin the market as long as war is such a business, despite that there is also this other turn towards actual gains from reinvesting in sustainable industries and divesting from ones that are involving human rights abuses. So that's one major myth. And Carly, I think you're unmuted and you know this a lot more than I do as well. Yeah, I was going to say, I think that's a really good question. And I think that was from you, Cheryl, in the chat. You know, I think another, I think common myth is that, you know, divestment and looking into your city's finances and passing a resolution, it can maybe I think feel overwhelming for people. But I think, you know, a couple of things that I would say to that, right, is one, we could think we have the resources that people need in order to get this done, right. Like I mentioned, we have the Weapons Free Fund. We have sample city council resolutions, like I showed, that people can bring to their city councilors, like Robin and John did earlier today, to show them how possible it is to divest our local cities from the war machine, right. So we have the resources. And I think what James said is really important, which is we build teams of people in their local communities who are of, you know, similar mindset who want to work on this together and we troubleshoot any problems and we talk through any questions together, right. So it's really about building a community of people who want to work to divest from the war machine. You don't have to have, you know, financial management as a background. You just have to be willing to do the work with us. And so I think that's really important sort of myth to sort of bust, right. And what Cody said, too, about the profitability of socially responsible investments is important. And I can actually send everyone here a report that we have showing exactly what Cody said, which is that that's actually not a problem. And like also James mentioned, we talked with a local social responsible investment firm from Vermont, who's willing to provide that research for us, and also support the campaign, right. So there are a lot of resources that we have for people to begin working on this in their own communities. And it's already happening in Vermont. So please sign up in the chat box using the link there. We already have people signed up. I just checked. So welcome, everyone. Great. Thank you so, so much for that. I think definitely want to look more into Cheryl's other question about really getting more repulse from our community. I think that's why what's great about events like this that bring the community to us as we get to hear some of those thoughts about what people around Vermont are thinking about divestment investment. So I think that's a continuous one to look into. Another question before, and it looks like this one's already started to be spoken on in the chat. But what about unknown industries that support the war machine? So an example given here of a company that would clandestinely ship weapons each month, the CIA. The way that I think answering this question now is that this is just such a strong sign of how strong the war machine is by hiding all of the various ways that companies support them. And it can be really difficult. I have to make it can be very hard to pinpoint all of the different sort of tentacles that the war machine, the war monster has in all of the different areas of our society. And there's ways to find those out. But I think that's why at the forefront, the divest from the war machine campaign focuses on the most powerful weapons companies, the ones that are beyond a shadow of a doubt connected to giving funds to the war machine. So that's why we start targeting funds that are invested in Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, because they're the biggest ones. Along the way, there's many other companies you can find, sometimes local ones. There is a company, local company here in Portland, Oregon, that makes binoculars and scopes for hunters. And then it got found out that this local company was shipping scopes to the Israeli military in their military assaults on Palestine. So there's different ways you can find that. But at the onset, our campaign focuses on the largest weapons companies because it's the easiest fruit to get it, I would say. Yeah, and Cody, just really quickly, I also posted for people in the chat box, people can talk about it in the presentation, but you can click on that link there, and it takes you directly to the list of companies we want to divest from. And that information you can view quickly on our website. Awesome, thanks for that. Carly, and I saw Robin pulled her hand up, so I'll pass it to Robin before we get to closing. Just quickly, I mean, this Dave must be talking about Century Arms up in St. Albans, that makes guns with the added, you know, ability to shoot multiple bullets at one time, what are they called? Bumstock, I think. They make it and it's been reported through seven days that many of them in cartels in Mexico, and I've been wishing for years that we would have like a march up there and demonstrate there because we passed a regulation against these bump stocks in Vermont at the latest time of passing some regulations on guns, and we excluded Century Arms from, in other words, that we permitted them to sell those, and I'm calling them bump stocks, there's another word for them, the thing to put on your gun to allow it to shoot more guns at one time. We exempted Century Arms from that regulation, and Brian Cena, I talked to him about it, and he felt bad that the way it had worked out that he hadn't spoken up more about including them in the restrictions than he did. So anyway, I think that is an area of work. It's not nuclear weapons, but it's small arms are killing more people than nuclear weapons right now. You know, next month, nuclear weapons could kill a lot more of us, but for now, it's small arms that are doing it. Thanks so much for that Robin. And thank you to everyone for the questions asked and for the very lively discussion that's going on in the chat. We're getting at the end of the webinar today. Thanks again so much James for having the conversation with me. Thank you to all of the divest Vermont activists who are here who really, you know, all of us have been carrying the campaign up to this point. And my hope is that at least a handful, maybe hopefully a huge handful of folks from this call will be interested to sign up on our forum and join the campaign.  Yeah, thank you, Cody. And thanks everyone again for being here. It's been a really great conversation. I mean, both in the chat and also with you and James and Robin jumping in and also John in the chat box. Thank you so much to all of you. And I am just going to go ahead and post one more time in the chat box our sign up form that people can use to sign up. And if you're just interested in learning more about the campaign joining our listserv and also if you're interested in joining our bi-weekly campaign meetings to learn how you can get involved. I in particular, we have that exciting development from Robin about Burlington and moving forward with City Council there. So this is all really exciting and people have already signed up. So thank you to everyone who has already signed up. I just checked on the back end. Really appreciate that. And everyone here should sign up as well. Because really, I mean, I think we've talked about it a lot on this on this call so far. But we're really not going to be able to sort of end industries that make a profit on war and killing. The same industries that we see all over TV right now, bombing Gaza, we can't end that war for profit unless we start really taking them on in our local communities. And like people have referenced educating people in our local communities, but also hitting them where it hurts and divesting from those companies. It's only something that we can do if we all come together and across Vermont, people are coming together. So we want to welcome you onto that campaign and please sign up at the link in the chat box. So with that, that ends our webinar pretty much on time. I know it's late for people in Vermont. So I want to respect everyone's time, but I really appreciate everyone's time here. It's really exciting to have you on the call. And with that, I'm going to end our webinar and thank you so much, everyone. Everyone here will receive the recording of the webinar. And I think importantly, we'll receive all of the resources that we've talked about in a follow up email. So it's been really exciting to have people on the call. I see people saying thank you in the chat box. Thank you for joining us. And have a great rest of your night, everyone. Really appreciate your time. Thank you so much, everyone. Bye. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Jaina. Thank you, Patrick. Thanks, John, of course. Thanks, Cheryl. Bye, everyone.