One, welcome to another barn's takeout, your daily serving of art. My name is Kailin Jewel. I am senior instructor in adult education at the Barnes Foundation, and today I wanted to spend some time talking with you about a couple of paintings in the collection by Pierre Augustre Noir, and the one that we'll spend more time talking about is the one in the center of the room here that we see in this photograph of the North Wall of Gallery 13. It was painted in 1881 by Renoir, and it is called Young Mother, and it represents a painting that is a moment in Renoir's career when he's trying out something new. But before we do that, let's look at Renoir in terms of what we're more familiar with thinking about in terms of his style, specifically. So often when we think about Renoir, and I think that this is totally normal, we think, oh, he's an impressionist artist, and he is an artist that is interested in what the impressionists were interested in, like the concept of capturing the fleeting nature of light. So let's look at another painting that's also in Gallery Number 13. So if we were standing in Gallery 13, just turn to your left. We see the West Wall, and the West Wall had wonderful paintings on it, one that my colleague Martha Lucy has already discussed in a previous Barnes Takeout, and then we have this one here called Simply on the Grass that was painted in the 1870s. And we'll look at it more closely. Here it is. Painting in the 1870s, this painting really serves as a great example of Renoir's interest in the impressionist movement, the impressionist style. And the impressionists, as I mentioned, were interested specifically in capturing the fleeting nature of light. And so what I mean by that and what they meant by that is trying to capture light with its ephemeral qualities. So when we look at a painting like this, the ephemeral qualities that you see about light are the fact that it seems like shadows are being cast over the faces of the dresses of these figures who are seated outside, very kind of standard or kind of typical type of setting for an impressionist artist. We know that they would paint on planer, they would take their canvases and their paint boxes outside. And so Renoir has done that. He's painted these two women enjoying time out, perhaps in a park. And we can see a really nice juxtaposition in the light quality that is hitting the two faces of these figures. The woman in the background appears to be in shadow, and the woman in the foreground appears to be highlighted. And if we zoom in on her cheek there, we can really see how Renoir is utilizing white paint to create those highlights on her cheek, on the area just above her eyebrows, and also on her nose right here. And all of this, again, is meant to give us the sense that if this painting were perhaps painted a second later, it would look totally different. There's something like a snapshot aesthetic about it, which is really, really interesting. So let's move back to our painting that was done a little around 10 years later, this one here, Young Mother. And let's look at it more closely. So, painted in 1881, this is a picture that is relatively simple in its composition. We've got an interior scene. We have a woman who is seated on a wooden chair that seems to have a little bit of a green cushion.  We've got some, a basket in the background, a ceramic vessel in front of it, and the color palette here and the brushwork is remarkably clear. And that clarity is coming from the fact that this was painted in Italy. This was painted in the city of Naples in 1881 during the time when Renoir deliberately left France to go see the kind of light quality, the bright light quality of the Italian peninsula. And so he was there between the fall of 1881 into the winter of 1882. And while he was there, he painted a whole bunch of paintings, including this one. And we know that while he was in Italy, not only was he captivated by the light quality, and any of you who've been to Italy or seen photographs of Italy know how bright and vibrant the light is there. But we know that he was interested in seeing works of art by some of the great master painters from the Italian Renaissance, including artists like Raphael. And so he would have encountered paintings sort of like this one. And when we see these types of Renaissance paintings of Madonna and Child, and we look back at our young mother, we can see that Renoir was clearly inspired by Raphael and the Italian Renaissance artists in paring down compositions to their basic elements and giving them a monumentality, which is really, really interesting. So again, this is 1881. And I'll end by just noting this painting, this landscape picture right next to it, which was painted in the 1890s. And it has a more kind of soft impressionist aesthetic to it. And I show that to you and I point that out to remind everybody that these artists aren't necessarily pigeonholed into one style. Yes, Renoir is one of the most important impressionist artists in the history of art, but he didn't always paint in that purely impressionist style. And we can see that in this great juxtaposition here on the north wall of Gallery 13. So I'd encourage you to check out this room when you go to the Barnes and think about the kind of career and the style changes that happen in a prolific artist like Pierre Augustre Renoir. Thanks for joining me today and be sure to stay tuned for another Barnes Takeout. Thanks. Take care. Your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation.


Money in politics, so. Okay, let's start with a little quiz here. Who here makes tech for money, in exchange for money? I do, I am a professional programmer, that's what I do for my job. Who here makes tech at a tech company, a company that primarily sells tech? Okay, that's some two, not everyone does that. Who here uses products programmed at a tech company, say Twitter, Facebook, yeah, most of us do, almost everybody does. Who pays for products programmed at a tech company, maybe you run, give money to Amazon Web Services, maybe you donate through Patreon, something like that. Okay, so I wanted to say money a lot, and I wanted to say tech company a lot, because that's the theme of this talk. What I, the reason why I started like that is because we are all part, all of us who raised our hands, and I would venture that everyone in this room is part of an economy that involves these tech companies in exchanging money and wealth being created. Most of the wealth being created by tech companies these days, some of it is from the direct sale of products or services that people make. A lot of the very large amounts of wealth that are generated though are through what they call exit events. And what that means is that's a public offering on a stock market or a sale for a very large sum of money of a company. And the profits from that event are split between shareholders. And sometimes that's employees, often that involves some amount of early employees in a company, people who did make the products whose labor created whatever is being sold. But often it's mostly investors. And these are people who've given the people who make the products money in exchange for a fraction of the ownership. And we call very early investors in tech companies and other companies as well, venture capitalists because they're like cowboys in a Victorian novel. I don't know why it has something to do with the risk, that's why they call them venture capitalists. But most of the wealth generated in these exit events goes to venture capitalists. And I wanted to give that definition because I'm gonna be talking a lot about venture capital today. And I'm gonna use the abbreviation VC for that. And so those of us who work for tech companies who either before or after these events, our labor is going to grow those investments of VCs. And all those of us who give money to buy tech products that money is going to grow that investment. And that wealth that's generated is spent on a lot of things of all different types. Some of the things increasingly are political. They're political campaigns and races. And so what exactly are they being spent on? Well, nationally, a lot of it is going to Obama. That's a big story, tech money supporting Obama and other national candidates. Also lobbyists, like other industries, the tech industry has lobbyists. Nationally, the priorities of the tech industry are immigration, tax policy, cybersecurity, and net neutrality. I am not gonna talk about any of those things. Why am I not gonna talk about any of those things? Well, nobody talks about immigration in the tech industry. I would love to hear a talk or read about that by the way, if you do talk about that or write about that, please let me know. It's not something I'm gonna speak about today. Tax policy, tech companies want the same thing everyone else does, they want to not pay their taxes. Cyber security and net neutrality, there are other people who talk about this and talk about it far better than I do. Instead, what I'm gonna talk about is there's a trend of this money being spent at a lower level, below sort of national investment and at a state and even a smaller local level. And I wanna talk about that. I think these local actions have more impact on our day-to-day life and I believe we're gonna see more and more of them for reasons I'm gonna lay out. I will admit a bias towards California in the big area as Ash mentioned, I originally was gonna give this talk in LA, I am from California. I'm gonna justify it a couple ways. One is the services goes my hometown, so it's what I know. Another one is that a lot of the money made here does end up there is a lot of these big corporations that are funding this and a lot of the capitalists that venture capitalists that are funding the companies you work for here are based in California and the Bay Area. Tech hubs around the country are being built on these models, it's something you're seeing and we're all being priced out and moving up there up here so we're bringing it with us. So let's talk about what tech money cares about on a state and regional level. Does anyone, has anyone heard of this? Make it up here, yeah. Six Californians, so Six Californians is a plan to split California into six states, small government or whatever, totally unworkable, completely impractical. It's a ballot initiative in California, if you get enough signatures, you can put something on the ballot to be voted on. To get enough ballots saved in 2014, they collected a million, only 750K or so are valid, they're not trying for 2016. This is Tim Draper. Tim Draper is a billionaire venture capitalist.  He is the founder of Draper Fisher Drivenson Associates. Some of his investments with that firm include Skype, Hotmail, Tesla, Baidu, which is the search engine in China, Twitch, and an unaccredited university named Dr. Amon San Mateo offering degrees in entrepreneurship. He is the sole founder of Six Californians, he's the only person who's paid any money for Six Californians and he's poured five million dollars in his own money into collecting those and just get on the ballot. At least in 2014, we don't know what the numbers are for the next round of trying to get on the ballot. So this is sort of like wacky rich guy, right? Like he's so entrenched. The only kind of issue this is in his university, like all this big and drapery university is being backed. And this would be significantly more like wacky if it was his first entrance into politics, which he just bought. So in 2005, the year 2000, turns out there was like another time I recently were, there was all this money floating around and people needed to know what to do. I think I might be from tech, but we don't talk about that. But in 2000, he put on the ballot a proposition for voters called Proposition 38. Prop 38 imposed from every student in the state $4,000 to attend private school with no regulation whatsoever. Privatizing both education. He spent a record breaking $20-40 billion of his own money on it, which is huge. It's far to the right of even the most ardent school choices when they call that sort of policy advocates. And it failed, it failed overwhelmingly, but not before its opponents spent another $30 million on it. This is still probably firmly in beanbag territory in terms of like viable political campaigns, except that at that point he was actually fresh office sit on the state board of education. So he had been appointed there by Governor Pete Wilson and his main qualifications of the state board of education was that he had fundraised for Governor Pete Wilson. And the board of education has a ton of power and they accept education policy. They adopt textbooks, they measure the outcomes, they decide what to measure and they decide whether to continue the policy. When Pete Wilson was replaced as governor in 1999, Tim Draper was not re-appointed. However, Reed Hastings was and you probably know him as the CEO of Netflix. He's also on the board of Facebook. He was on the board of Microsoft. And Hastings was already rich when he founded Netflix. He had a 750 million dollar acquisition early in the first film. He's a huge major, major, major democratic donor. And he was a special supporter of the newly elected Governor Greg Davis. He stayed on the board of education much longer than Draper. He was actually the president of the board of education in California. He actually had his own big bunny school bill on the ballot in 2000. Prop 39 was designed to reduce the threshold to pass local school bond measures from 66% to 55%. Passed super easily. Probably at least thanks in part two outspending its opponents six to one. They raised 31.5 million dollars to pass Prop 39. That was one million of that was Reed's own personal money. But it was in thanks in big part two weeks buddy in this camping co-chair, John Doar. John Doar is a billionaire partner at Kleiner Perkins Cowfield & Byers, who you've probably heard of in conjunction with the recent Ellen Powell sex discrimination case. Kleiner Perkins and Doar made their huge amount of wealth by investing in basically any tech product to ever use. Google, Amazon, AOL, Intuit, Sun, EA, Genentech, Zynga, Poppin, see I threw in some local play cards. So for Prop 39, Kleiner Perkins plus Doar ended up investing more than eight million dollars between the partners and Doar himself and the company. Made from investments in those companies, they invested in, they paid more than eight million to pass Prop 39. So like you have to start thinking about 31 million dollars, eight million from Kleiner Perkins, all that just to like lower the voting threshold for school bonds is kind of esoteric. It turns out that there's a proposition of Prop 39 that has nothing to do with bond funding. Charter schools are private organizations that can be non-profit or for-profit that run public schools and they're funded by taxpayer dollars per student. It's been a growing movement over the last 20 years to sort of grow and encourage these charter schools. That Prop 39 requires that public districts provide charter schools with space reasonably equivalent to those used by non-charter students in the district and they have to be authentically furnished and have to be in the area the charter school wants. The LA Unified School District has fulfilled this request via the controversial practice of co-location, which is literally putting the charter schools in the same building as non-charter schools that hasn't gone very well. And this culminated recently in a drawn out series of lawsuits against the LA Unified School District by the California Charter Schools Association. Where are we going with this? Well, guess who's on the board of the California Charter Schools Association? Reeve Hastings is on the board. He's also an investor in a spotter, which is California's largest charter provider. There's another couple of tech pieces on that board. He's on the board of KIP, which is a massive nationwide charter network. The CEO of Viacom and the former director of Bain Capital, which has a very big tech investment arm and is funded optimistically run for the way LinkedIn are on the board of KIP as well. Hastings is also on the board and a major investor in Rocket, the Rocket Ship K-5 charter group. They're known for their aggressive growth. They actually have their own real estate company to buy land to build new schools on. And this is a really tech heavy charter network. They're former CEO, John Tanner's, which from the first boom, they've got a ton of tech investors, including the CFO of Skype, Sheryl Sandwork from Facebook, Arthur Rock, who's a legendary venture VC, who invested in Fairchild Semi, Apple and Intel. Metlo Ventures, who invested in Uber and Warby Parker. Excel Partners, who's funded Etsy and Dropbox. Benchmark Capital, who have funded among many others Snapchat, Instagram and Heel. And then the aforementioned Clenor Perkins and John Doar are all in on Rocket Ship for more than a billion dollars. And that's a lot of tech people, right? It's a lot of tech money that's going from those companies. And in fact, there's a ton of tech money in the charter movement. It's kind of everywhere you look. Lauren Powell Jobs, who's Steve Jobs Widow, too much of her philanthropy that's been sort of lauded since his death, has been to charter schools via her Emerson's Lend of Education Fund. Jeff Bezos' family and Paul Allen have given a lot of money in Washington to establish charter schools. Mark Zuckerberg's million dollar donation to Newark schools was focused entirely on charter schools. And here in Oregon, Stanford Children, which is a long-standing advocacy group, in the past few years, has taken on a bunch of VCs and write and finish the founder of Survey Monkey and pivoted to focus on school reform. So what are they spending all that money on these charter schools? Well, as sort of state initiatives that allow charter sovereignty in the past, they started to turn it from state to local governments and therefore in just an unprecedented amount of dollars into school board elections, local school board elections. In 2012, $185,000 went from the Tech Fund of the Washington Committees to school board elections. $150,000 in 2014. West Country Crafts to County, which is a county in the East Bay of the Bay area, saw $350,000 in 2014 in their school board election. And this is even going farther afield. We saw $285,000 in the Minneapolis School Board Race last year from our African friends. It's happening in New Jersey, it's happening in New Orleans, it's happening all over the country. And this is really an order of magnitude over the normal amount of money you're seeing in a school board race. So this is a new thing and it's a lot of money going into relatively small elections. So like, why? Well, sort of every day, he says a couple quotes here that explains why they spend this money. And if you ask what's wrong with school districts, this is sort of an answer again. He says the fundamental problem with school districts is that they don't get to control their boards. The importance of the tourist movement is to evolve America from a system where governance is constantly changing. So if you allow me to paraphrase, what's wrong with school districts? It's definitely their democratically elected school boards, right? And one stated outward goal of the charter school movement is to shrink school board power. And this is where the opposition to church generally happens at the school board level, right? So like, what? That isn't really, I'm being a bit of a toddler here to answer a lie question for another why, but why, right? So they're doing this to further the charter school movement, but why is the tech money so invested in the charter school movement? And so this second quote, I think, is pretty instructive to that. Hastings says the school district still exists in New Orleans, which famously has not all chartered, I believe, since 2012, bringing to town more and more charter school networks. Sort of like a chamber of commerce would to develop business, I hope will become a long-term model for great education. So the thing about charter schools is that they're really heavy advocates of something called blended learning. And that's classroom time backed up like a peer-based instruction. And in fact, there are charter school networks, including starting in Xamarin, that are entirely online, entirely online schooling. It's a ton of online work. That requires a lot of software. And there's a new sector called EdTech that's been growing hugely, especially K-12 in the last four years, that's focused around providing the software. So this is stuff like online classes, apps to drill for tests, classroom management, things like that. This is big money stuff. Dreambox, which is an online rough education app, was recently bought for eight figures by Reed Hastings and John Doar, and now used in all rocket ship schools. The former CEO of Rocket Ship Left to develop an app that's now used in schools. The founder of Camp Left to head an EdTech company. There are now VC firms that focus only on EdTech, and there are multiple EdTech accelerators. There are stuff that are focused only on K-12 EdTech that are building companies to build software to sell to these schools. The size of the K-12 market is projected to be over a hundred billion dollars for the peak for EdTech. So that's huge. It's a pretty huge market opportunity, right? And there are definitely challenges of investing in EdTech. So this quote is from Mark Andreessen, who's famous for building Netscape, and then for investing in many, many companies, and for contemplating on Twitter. He says, I wouldn't want to back a business that's selling to public schools or characterized by public financing. Unions are about to run institutions. Those institutions are incredibly hostile to change. Now, what I think is important to point out what this quote is, that Mark Andreessen does invest in EdTech. He's not saying he wouldn't invest in EdTech. He's saying that certain things need to change to make that market more favorable to companies that he invests in. And that's happening. Some of that's happening via changing public schools the way they can sort of the way as we can see them exist so we can change how they procure things. Another interesting trend is bypassing schools entirely. You go to parents and students directly. And these products are almost always offered for free, right? And something we know is that if you have a free product, it's not the app itself isn't the product. It's the user's data, right? And so having some measure of sway over regulations about student data could be really valuable if you are building and investing in companies that do that. And there's a really good piece. I feel like there's like a minimum one model view culture shout out per talk, but there's a really good piece in model view culture by Jesse Irwin talking about surveillance in EdTech and that being a new and lucrative model. Okay, so what? So I put this slide in here because I wanna cut off a conversation that I'm not that interested in having after this talk, which is that I'm sure I don't really wanna hear about how your niece is in this charter and it's amazing or your cousin to teach for American it changed their lives. I don't dispute that, right? Technology in the classroom is not inherently bad. And I think the charter school argument is actually really complex. And I don't wanna imply that the two million students currently in American charter schools are diluted or that and their parents are as well or that the admins and educators who work at those schools and work very, very hard and those schools are evil or scheming for profit. However, what we have here is a private infrastructure being built under our noses by people who are publicly advocating for less democratic processes in order to serve their own economic interests. And that bothers me. I think it should probably bother you too, right? Public schooling is one of the foundations of our democracy and has been as long as our democracy has been conceived. And whether you agree or disagree with school reform our ability to have that conversation at all is being usurped. And it's being usurped with our own labor with money we're generating, right? As tech workers, those of us who do work in tech. I think that's disturbing in and of itself. And there's something else that we know about tech and tech companies. That is that they imitate each other.  Sometimes they imitate and improve on each other. So you had a MySpace and now you have a Facebook. And so I wanna point out at the end of this talk a model where I see this same pattern being applied again. Does anyone know who this is? Okay, see this, I know this is an Oregon audience. This is Ron Conway. And if we were in San Francisco, people would know who he is. Ron Conway is an enormously prolific angel investor. And he's invested, he made early investments in Airbnb, in Google, in PayPal, in Twitter, in Zynga, in Facebook, in BuzzFeed, Reddit, Pinterest, Mint, Square, over 200 and 650. I'm sorry, other tech companies. You have interacted with a Ron Conway investment today. I'm almost sure of it in some way. This is his most impressive investment to date. This city and entire political apparatus of San Francisco. And I'm not exaggerating by this. He paid to have our mayor elected and paid to have seven members of our 12 board of supervisors elected. This is not a secret. This isn't me being tinfoil hat. This is all very public record and a thing that's happened out in the open. He's used his sway to enact laws that are favorable to companies he invests in the Twitter, Taxbaker, the Airbnb, short-term rental lobbying, two examples. He's also set up a lot of public-private partnerships which him and Ed Lee, who's his sort of, I think they've even said protege before, are really famous for with the school system and with notably for this talk, the SFPD. Why that? Well, he has a pet cause, Ron Conway does. And in response to Sandy Hook, he came out and he said, look, gun safety is where I'm focusing my philanthropic efforts. And that's a really interesting word to use philanthropic because what he's actually doing is investing in an entrepreneurship challenge. And he said, I am looking for the Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page Innovator for Gun Safety. He's offering to invest money into companies that offer technological solutions for gun violence. And that can be a private owner market, but it also, one of their challenges has been community safety. So I'm doing this because that means police. When you hear the word community in terms of politics, it almost always means police. His partner in announcing this challenge, Ian Sobieski, said, there is money to be made. Gun violence is expensive to society and there is a big potential market for solutions. He would note, one of his investments that he's very proud of is SST Inc, which used to be called ShotSpotter. ShotSpotter is a audio gunshot detection tool that's been, that's installed in many companies or many cities around the country. The idea being that it has these microphones that activate when a gunshot is detected and alerts the cops. It turns out ShotSpotter is on all the time and records conversations. That may, at least in the case of Oakland, have been a feature, not a bug. Oakland being one of their big pilot cities. Oakland also is in the midst of attempting to build a domain awareness center, which is a hub for surveillance data for police. And the way that it's supposed to work is that all of this data is sucked in from various sources, including ShotSpotter microphones and surveillance cameras and things like that. And it's run through data analysis software, phase detection software, machine learning algorithm software. What I'm getting at is that there's a lot of software that's needed to make these domain awareness centers work. And it's being designed explicitly with an eye towards future integration of additional tools and software ensuring there'll be an ongoing market for this. So far, most of the bids for that one in Oakland have been military contractors, but Google actually, we found out via a Freedom of Information Act last year, put in a bid. They already have products that do this that they've marketed to other municipalities. In New York, Microsoft helped develop a domain awareness system and markets it to other municipalities now. It's called, this is so Orwellian, I hope you all are ready. It is called the automated workspace for the analysis of real-time events, Microsoft Aware. Yeah, this is a market that exists and is growing. It's called predictive policing often. Some of the big companies that are innovating, disrupting in predictive policing are Predpaul, Hunch Labs, Street Cred. There's over 150 law enforcement startups listed on Crunchbase, if you go look it up in Angelist. So those are directed at police and sort of marketed as being police-friendly. This is a body camera, and these have been in the news a lot lately. Body cameras are less welcomed with open arms by police, but there's increasing clamor to outfit police with them for very good reasons. A thing that I haven't seen as much of is discussion of who makes body cameras, and so the biggest manufacturer of them currently in this country is Taser, who also makes non-lethal stun guns. Now, Taser's approach to profitability with body cameras is interesting. Body cameras themselves are not that expensive to make or sell. The way, really the cash cow for Taser is a cloud-based storage solution to store all this footage, right? That's central to their company's plan for profitability. Their cloud offering is called evidence.com, and it's really touted as the way they're gonna continue to make money long-term from this body camera plan. The sort of policies around how evidence.com works in terms of retention and redaction and release are generally not really known to the public. I think that there's, you know, again, this is another situation where we have an argument happening that has really good arguments on both sides, but I think there's reason to be concerned about what Taser's motivations are in a cloud offering for body cam evidence. There are two members of the board that I think are really interesting in view of this strategy, which is Hady Partovi, who's the director of code.org. He worked at Microsoft and MySpace before that. And Brett Taylor, who worked at Google Maps and was the CTO of Facebook for a long time. These are people who have really sort of strong experience with surveillance and with evidence collection and with profitable cloud strategies, right? Again, it's not that the cameras are bad, but what are the incentives there? We're not really examining that for the people that are making them. And what we're seeing with Taser specifically is that they are pursuing extremely aggressive and potentially illegal sales strategies. So the chief of police in Albuquerque recently was fired because of his handling of the Taser contract. In SF, there started to be sort of details leaked out about these no-bid contracts. I would argue that the legal barriers here are actually more easily surmountable than those that have been steamrolled by the charter school movement. And I think we're gonna start to see police reform, which is a worthy and important movement, start to get bankrolled, funded and steered by people who are making products who would stand to profit by these things being enacted. So, what's my point, Erin? This is my last slide. I think we all make trade-offs to pay the bills. I don't really mean to guilt anyone out specifically here about this, about what our tech money is funding, right? Does this happen everywhere? Sure, all sorts of industries have lobbyists, right? But we're sort of, I feel like we seem a little determined to ignore the broader context of the economy we work within. I did a lot of research for this talk, but I am a programmer. I'm not someone with a special background in this. I wasn't like filing Freedom of Information Acts. These were all news articles. Journalists are following this, and yet I'm surprised about how little we, and I include myself in that, know about what our industry is doing. The activism around this, I do, okay. I've given this talk a couple of times and people keep telling me it's a bummer. So I'm gonna try to wind it up on a positive note, and I do think it's scary and overwhelming, but if there's one positive note I can take out of this, when I was telling you about those school board elections where they're pouring just an order of magnitude of more money than's ever been poured into these school board elections, $350,000 is a lot of money per potential voter even on a school board level. They won a lot of those elections, but they didn't win all of them. And I do think that at that level, you've got a scale where those are still winnable even without that financial backing. And there's, when you look at stuff like police contracts, a lot of those businesses are done in, they're done in city, they're done in boring, not sexy spaces, right? I've been to City Hall and I've sat in those meetings and it is not the most exciting form of activism, but it actually can have real impact. SF for one, local activists without huge bankrolls have managed to keep the actual Taser stun guns out of SFPD hands for over a decade just by going to meetings and backing it up. I think we can do this. And I think not just as citizens, it's our responsibility to, as tech workers specifically, because in my mind, right, like we're doing this in, like, we're, that's maybe, okay. People in this room and out of this room are doing amazing, incredible, awe-inspiring work to fix some of the really serious problems inside of tech and to open the doors to see who's in there, right? And to fix the problems in there so we're not just funneling more people in to a shitty situation. It's amazing work. Those of you that do it, I am so proud to boost your voices and to join in with you. I do think if we are doing that hard and critical and incredibly important work to open the doors to more people, when the policies being enacted with the labor of ourselves and the people who are welcoming into tech are chewing up communities on the outside, that's not even like a toxic pipeline that's like love canal. So I think we have to look, my final thought is we have to start looking at who's funding our work, where our labor is going and how we can build systems to make tech and to make tech that's sustainable, usable, and that supports people's livelihoods without depending on venture capital. Thank you. And there's, you can check all my sources at this link.


Hello, I'm Rachel Zembery, Chair of the Arlington Redevelopment Board, also known as the ARB, and I will be taking you through warrant Article 21 for 2020 special town meeting. Article 21 was submitted by the town manager and is a proposed zoning map amendment to rezone a parcel of land belonging to the town of Arlington located at 51 Grove Street, adjacent to the existing Department of Public Works facility. The majority of the existing Department of Public Works facilities are currently situated in the industrial zoning district. In order to facilitate the renovations at the Department of Public Works campus, a portion of the salt shed and a fueling facility needs to be located on this adjacent parcel. The adjacent parcel is currently zoned R1, single family residential district, and would need to be rezoned industrial to accommodate the expansion and uses which are not allowed in the R1 and are allowed in the industrial zone. The main points of the article include the DPW facility has not been significantly renovated or upgraded since 1975. The town considered multiple conceptual plans to accommodate the program that is included in the redevelopment of the DPW campus. As the building program expanded, new space demands needed to be fulfilled, including existing office space for the Inspectional Services Department and relocated office space for the Facilities Department and the Town Information Technology Department. The project includes the renovation of four existing buildings and construction of a new operations building as well as new ancillary support buildings and dedicated vehicle parking. The R1 parcel has historic contamination due to a prior use with a gas holding tank. The R1 parcel has a Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection engineered and a direct contact barrier that makes it infeasible for use as a residential parcel in the future. The engineered and direct contact barriers will be maintained and routinely inspected to prevent exposure to underlaying contaminated soil through direct contact. In this slide, you can see the parcels is existing today. Note that the R1 parcel is shown in yellow and the industrial parcel is shown in purple. The majority of the Department of Public Works yard renovation will take place on the parcel shown in this slide as industrial at 549 and 51 Grove Street. However, the proposed new salt shed will straddle the lotline to the south and be located partially on the parcel currently zoned R1 and a fueling station will also be located on the parcel currently zoned R1. The zoning bylaw prohibits a municipal public works yard and associated maintenance, storage and office facilities in R1 zoning districts. As such, rezoning this parcel from R1 to industrial will fit the goals of the DPW yard renovation. The requested change is consistent with the historic use of the parcel for industrial purposes as evidenced by the gas tank location and historic contamination. The lot has an existing curb cut and is currently used as a driveway and parking for the DPW yard and a portion of an Arlington Public School playing field. Following the construction of the DPW yard renovation and completion of the new Arlington High School, the anticipated use will primarily be parking for the DPW and will connect to new parking at the Arlington High School complex. In summary, by rezoning this parcel and amending the zoning map, this change would provide the town with a consistent zoning district for the town yard municipal facility, allowing the town to meet the project goals and apply the appropriate and consistent zoning criteria based on the use of the site and support the development of the new municipal facility, housing operations that support essential services provided to the town on a daily basis. We hope that you will vote favorable action as recommended by the Redevelopment Board. Thank you.


What's up everybody JC over Jaspie's case race calm 2020 tops diamond icons baseball one box break random hit number 18 just sold out Then again, you guarantee to hit we first open up the box Show you guys the hits then we'll randomize the customer names all 10 names and all 10 hits and whatever you match up But is what hit you get so here's a dice rolling. Here's a customer names only two customers bottom straight up Brandon and James Anthony John SKS James Patrick Craig Michael Daniel all got those in select blasters one two three and four So let's do the break guys. We have three options for you guys. It looks like boxes one two and three Let's use a little dice roll If I roll a one two, we're gonna go with number one three four is gonna be the middle five six number three Let's move this out of the way so I can use the backboard and it's a five So one two three four five six So they go box three. All right, so they go box three Let's see what we got here. Yeah, let's finish up ice rich. I'm with you man It's like seven months. I think we actually have these boxes for sale smoking.  All right, the first one we got is a One out of ten David Ortiz big boppy autograph Next one we got is a little diamond gem one out of five cow ripkin It's a little tiny diamond, but it's in there Then you got pledges again brings closer to the past present and future their autograph there This car contains a genuine diamond hold up J. Dog. Are you telling me legacy football has some type of rip cards dare to tear? Damn, I didn't even know that man, but that's awesome. I don't know what the odds are on that. I didn't even know they had that We have a very large in ten out of ten red ink autograph. Yeah, let's do some legacy I'd love to do some of those dare to tear cards. I Love rip cards, and we got a two out of five Ronald Acuna junior autograph two out of five There you go downtown saying one per case That is awesome And then we got a One of one little majestic tag and autograph one of the best autos in the hobby reach Hoshkins Nice one right there. Yeah How about some more red? One out of or actually four out of five Gavin Lux four to five autograph Gavin Lux Definitely not. Yeah out of 25 labor Taurus Seven out of 25. You got a red ink 11 out of 25 arstides Aquino There you go.  So here's the customer names Anthony John SKS James Brandon James And then Patrick Craig Michael Daniel, and we got David Ortiz autograph at a ten Cal Rick and junior auto diamond one out of five Berry Larkin ready and got out of ten run into junior auto red two out of five Reese Hoshkins tag auto one of one Gavin Lux red four out of five Labor Taurus auto out of 25 Aquino red ink auto out of 25 Chris sale auto out of ten and Clayton Kershaw relic two out of five Good luck guys Everybody's guaranteed a hit. Good luck. Let's roll it and we got a four to two six times. Good luck six times four five six one two three four five and six all right six times Mike with the top down a Brandon and let's go six times here now on the hits one two three four five six Boom six times Ronald Acuna junior auto red at two out of five at the top done a Berry Larkin red ink auto So Michael you have the Ronald Acuna junior auto red two out of five SKS with the reach Hoshkins tag auto one of one congratulations James from Blaster number two got Chris sale auto out of ten and James keeping it a red socks gets the David Ortiz auto out of ten Daniel Bondo so you get Gavin Lux auto red four out of five John with the clean cursor relic two out of five Patrick with Labor Taurus auto out of 25 Craig with the keynote red ink auto at 25 Anthony You're getting Cal Ripken junior autograph diamond one out of five and Brandon with the Berry Larkin red ink auto out of ten So congratulations guys you guys all got a hit. We should have another one of these up soon guys Jasper's case breaks dot com. Appreciate it


You know, we're seeing God do some amazing things in New York City. My wife, Julie, was tearing it up, just throwing down preaching today with my daughters, Bella and Everly. You know, Bella saved Everly. We're praying for her. She's very independent. She's seven years old, going on 45. And she's our executive pastor. Like on the drive over, she's always telling me what to do and how to do it. So we're working on her. But New York City is an amazing place. I'm originally from Indiana, so I'm 50% hillbilly. I don't know if we have any hillbillies here. Or we got a couple of them, okay. Okay, security team, watch them. Watch them. They're the wild ones. But in, you know, I felt a call to go to New York City and start a church. We started with 18 people in a house and it just began to grow. And I don't, now that I look back, I don't know that all 18 were even saved, but they just felt like God was doing something and they wanted to be a part of it. And we ended up launching three campuses within our first three years. But I was telling Pastor Vlad that it was actually atheist, Hindus, agnostics, and Muslims turning to Christ and getting saved in New York City. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing? You know, and when you all were praying for the 1040 window, I got a revelation. It suddenly hit me. I'm like, wait a second. For the ones from the 1040 window who are foolish enough to fly to New York City to visit their friends and family. I'm there waiting for them. I'm like, come to papa. I've been waiting for you.  And now she signed up for ministry training at the college we have. And it was just amazing testimony in the making. And she had family members who came to see her get baptized. That's scandalous. That's scandalous. Isn't the true unadulterated kingdom of heaven scandalous? I mean, isn't it just amazing? And you know, we had a guy recently, this was like insane story. I, you know, when you do church and you're used to the way church is done, you oftentimes forget what it's like to be a guest, right?  Have you ever seen that happen in a service? Well, I look all the way in the back of the rafters. I see this six foot three big beautiful brown man, this Indian man, except for instead of doing this, he's waving both hands like he's gonna land an airplane.  And afterwards I'm like, well, let me get your story. What happened? He's like, my name's Ayush. And I am a multi-generational Hindu. And I am first generation American. But my father, my biological dad just recently passed away. And my friend invited me to church. And when you kept saying that God is our father, I can't explain what I felt, but I felt a love that I never felt from my biological father. And he literally said, I may have been raised Hindu, but I could not deny what I experienced and now I serve Jesus. And weeks later, I baptized him. He shot up out of the water, baptized with the Holy Spirit and water. And God is saving Hindus in New York City. Do you believe he can do it in Washington? Do you believe he can do it in your hometown watching online?  Get somebody to shout, do it again.  It's that drummer. I believe in divine disruptions. You might be in one right now. Divine disruptions. It's somebody inviting their Hindu friend to V1 church and I introduce him to his true heavenly father. It's a Muslim that hears the gospel and starts to cry because she realizes that Jesus was more than a prophet. He was the Messiah. Divine disruptions. There's a young man named Joseph who is disrupted divinely by a dream. Do you know him? There's a young man, David, who is divinely disrupted by a giant-sized opportunity.  Then you've got Jonah chapter one. Matter of fact, I think Jonah is a spoiled brat, by the way. You know how hard it is to discover your purpose. You've read every book. You've went to every conference. In Jonah chapter one, God sovereignly speaks to him directly and says, go to Nineveh.  Wouldn't that be amazing? Go to Hungry Chan. Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. You've got this teenager, Mary, divinely disrupted by the angel messenger, Gabriel, who says you have found favor among women. Come on, you've got Saul thinking he's doing the right thing. Come on, we just heard a testimony where she thought she was doing the right thing, going to psychic mediums, trying to figure it out.  If you think you're doing the right thing, but haven't received a revelation from the Holy Spirit. And so Saul thinking he's doing the right thing. How many of us went to church for years thinking we were doing the right thing? But a car in a garage does not, come on, standing in a garage does not make you a car. Just like standing in this building does not make you a true believer. And so oftentimes we need a Damascus road, divine disruption, divine disruption. See, God will actually bring a divine disruption to counteract a demonic distraction. And see, many of us are experiencing demonic distractions our entire life. We're raised in families with abuse. We're raised around drug use and alcohol abuse. And we have these things that we suffer with and we have these demonic distractions all around us. The pandemic felt like a demonic distraction to me in New York City. But see, sometimes when you rise up in boldness, you say, I see another opportunity. I see another way. I started holding a phone to my face and casting demons out of people through Facebook, because I was so mad. I said, if I can't show up in a building, I'm gonna show up in every house that will turn their phone on and let me in to cast demons out. It's a divine disruption. Have you ever encountered a divine disruption where you can definitively say there was my life before that moment and there was my life after that moment? Has anybody been in a divine disruption? See, everything visible and physical, everything that you can experience through your senses, everything that you can smell, touch, taste, everything that you can see is interacting with what has been preceded by that, which is invisible and spiritual. Sometimes you're like Daniel, there's warfare happening in the heavenlies. You think that God has delayed, but it hasn't yet manifested in the physical reality. I believe that there is something that had been stirring, something that had been happening in the spiritual realm before you got here today, whether you logged on to YouTube or you're in the room. And I think some things are about to manifest in the physical scene realm today. Come on. If you wanna address that which is visible and physical, you must identify the cause and the cure to what is invisible and spiritual. A lot of people don't believe that their problems are demons until demons start manifesting. In New York, I went from being weird to being a genius. They said I went to every doctor and they couldn't help me. And I said, I know the great physician, he can. They tried every other world religion. They tried everything else and they couldn't find peace. Our church is full of entrepreneurs that have private jets and mansions that are bigger than most church buildings, but they didn't have peace because they didn't have Jesus. And so people are like, what's your strategy for church growth? I'm like, we're not a 21st century church. We're a first century church doing it again. The same power, that resurrection power that was on display is on display. I see it in this house. Let me put it another way. If all you see is what you see, you do not see all there is to be seen. Can I say that again? If all you see is what you see, you do not see all there is to be seen. There's more, there's more. Oh, I feel something stirring in my stomach right now. Second Corinthians chapter four verse eight. Now we're gonna go deep into the scriptures. Do I have anyone who really wants to dive deep into the word with me today? Because I love to scream preach, but I'll scream theology and I'll scream good doctrine to you today too. And I believe that God wants us to feast on the meat of the word. I've been wrestling with this, fasting, praying, leading into this because I feel like there is such a massive download for hungry Jen today. There's something that God's gonna do in you and through you that's gonna change you. Second Corinthians chapter four verse 18 says, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. The things that are unseen are eternal. Hey, 12 spies, they look into Canaan. Guess what, they were all right. The 10 who said that based on what I see, it's not possible, they were right. They died and never stepped in. But the two who said I see that it's possible, they live to see it, Joshua and Caleb. So here's the thing, whether you believe it can be done or you don't, you're all right. So the question is who's going to take hungry Jen and what we're doing in this house to another level and say, I see the vision, our pastor just cast. Come on, does anybody else believe it? I was 15 years old. I want you to imagine me with a big curly mop of hair right now. Can you see it? And yes, I was 15 years old. I was the product of multiple abusive stepdads and extreme poverty. I come from nothing. My biological father beat my mother and then divorced her when I was a baby and then killed a man a couple years later and went to jail. So that's my pedigree. That's my family. That's my genes. And that's where I come from. I was born and raised in a trailer park, extreme poverty. And my mother was one of those generational bloodline curse breakers. Does anybody, maybe there's one here right now that says it may run in my family, but I'm where it runs out. I'm talking to the Moses. The Moses who said, we may not have stepped into the promised land, but we're certainly not in Egypt anymore. And see, my mother, she didn't know anything about Pentecostalism. Matter of fact, my mother was just hungry for the things of God. Her name is Sandra. We call her Moses. And so all these New Yorkers call her Pastor Moses. And it's like an inside joke. And I said, well, I'm Joshua. I'm meaner than her. But see, she started to go to a small Nazarene church and she began to ask about the Holy Spirit, whether it was real, because she actually made the mistake of reading her own Bible. Who would have thought? And the youth pastor told my mom, I can't help you with that question. That's above my pay grade here in the Nazarene church. And sent her to the lead pastor. And the lead pastor said, honey, that's not for today. But she knew on the inside that that was not right. There was something more. See, there was something unseen. She didn't see the movement of the Holy Spirit in her Nazarene church, but by faith she saw something and she knew that there was more. Matter of fact, her father, which is my grandfather, was passed out drunk in one room. And then my grandmother was drinking a beer next to her. And my mother started playing the piano and she was just doing a worship song. This was over 40 years ago. And the Holy Spirit met her in a home. She began to speak in tongues. She began to cry. I mean, to the amazement of her family, they're like, what is happening with Sandra? And my grandmother said, I think she got the Holy Ghost that she won't stop talking about. That's my heritage. So no, I'm not good at being religious. I don't come from that. I'm a wild one. I just know about the Holy Spirit that'll meet you in a home that will meet you at your place of desire. And my mother started a legacy, but she had her own issues to work out. She was the bloodline curse breaker. I honor her as Moses to our family, but there were things that she had to work out. And so here I am 15 years old now. And I am the product of all that dysfunction that my mother's been struggling through. And you know, I had to pray in mom and she would pray so loud at home. It was so annoying. And I remember being almost like it was agonizing to hear it. There was something in my flesh. Now I know I needed deliverance, pastor. But at the time I was so annoyed by it and then I'm the oldest of five kids. So my siblings of course were like, mom let's pray and they were the good ones. But I wanted to go upstairs in my room and play Mortal Kombat. So we only don't have any old school people here. So at 15 years old, I wouldn't have been the person on the front row worshiping. I was the person who slipped into the back row. I brought my little green screen, my little green screen Game Boy and I would play it in the back and I would completely ignore everything that was happening. But see, there was a godly heritage. How many of you believe that you are the result of a praying mother, a praying grandmother, a praying grandfather? There was a godly heritage and it was calling me and so no, I wouldn't do all the things that we did. I was raised in a Spanish church growing up. We were the only white family in a Spanish church. Quanto saben que Dios está aquí? I was just checking the diversity levels here. Dobre, dobre. But at 15 years old, I didn't do the things that my Pentecostal church did. I didn't want to be around the things of God. It was like my flesh and these demons that were inhabiting my soul, they were just holding me back but secretly I started to do something. I started reading the Bible for myself and every night I would read the scriptures and I fell in love with the scriptures and I'll never forget Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges. I kept going deeper and deeper and I'll never forget around 15 years old I get all the way up to the book of Acts. Now I read about Acts chapter two and you know it's a really riveting story if you read the gospels and then get to the book of Acts because you're like, that's Peter? That guy was such a flunky.  I think he was drunk sometimes. That's not in the Bible but I just feel like you could smell marbles on his breath. He was one of those guys. You know what I mean? Peter and I'm like, what, what? And that was the very first time I prayed my most dangerous prayer. I think it was my first real one.  And at 15 years old in the privacy of my own bedroom, I had my personal Pentecost. Tears begin to roll down my face. I felt, I mean, this didn't happen in reality but I felt like a wind just began to blow through the room but I was so introverted, so painfully shy. I still deal with that sometimes and I was struggling with all the abuse and the trauma from my past. So I had this personal Pentecost that no one knew about but God, but God. And so what began to happen at 15 years old is I would sneak into the church, sneak out. I would avoid all these crazy people that I saw every week but then one day I was sitting in the back row and church dismissed and I walked out at 15 years old and I got down the stairs and as I got down the stairs, this woman from the neighbor, this was South Chicago, it's crazy. So South Chicago, this woman walks down the block and she looks at me and she goes, Santo, Espírito Santo. Now listen, in South Chicago there's a lot of crazy people. So when I saw her approach me, now her face turned ghost white, like she saw ghosts.  That's what I'm thinking, 15 years old Mike Signorelli. And all of a sudden she begins to walk up closer to me and she looks at me and her hand starts trembling and she said, I had a dream two nights ago, you were in my dream. And now I'm like, okay, she is crazy, she is crazy. So I'm like, now what do I do? I'm the first person out of the church, I'm all alone. And she was like, I had a dream, I had a dream. In my dream, you were preaching at my church, revival broke out, all the young people got saved, there were healings, demons were being cast out of people. Now that's very inspiring, but not to someone who's broken and traumatized and introverted, that's scary. So this is what I told this woman, I said, I said, woman, no offense, this is how I said it, okay? I said, woman, you're crazy. I know I have facial hair, because I'm Italian, but I'm 15 years old and I have no idea what you're talking about, can you walk away from me now? And she was like, no, I know what I saw. This woman at 15 years old, I was experiencing a divine disruption. I was experiencing one of those moments where God refuses to allow you to be left alone with yourself. One of those moments where he just begins to speak into the epicenter of your pain, because this woman that I never met before had a vision for me that I didn't have for myself and not even my Holy Ghost-filled mother had for me. Matter of fact, if you had asked my mom out of all my siblings, if I'd be the preacher, she'd say there's no way, not if you know Mike, not if you know Mike. That woman though, she scared me and I hope to God she didn't take it any further. So I just got in the car, we drove home. But for the next two weeks, that woman who lived on the block of that local church would walk down and meet the pastor and tell her the story of the dream she had about the young man. And every day for two weeks, the pastor would say, you don't know Mike Signorelli. He hides in the back. He doesn't want anything to do with this. You don't know. And she was like, no, I never saw his face before. But when I saw his face, I know that this is to be done. For two weeks, this woman annoyed me. All of a sudden, two Sundays later, she comes after church and she grabs the pastor. The pastor pulls me into the office and now I'm alone with this woman. And all of a sudden, the woman, she literally tells the story again. The pastor's like, I know, I heard the story, I know. And she said, now Mike's here. Let Mike say it for himself. Because I know Mike, and maybe his youth pastor can do this assignment. Maybe one of our associate pastors can do it, but he cannot do it. He literally said the words, but Mike can't do it. Okay, I want you to hold that story there. I'm gonna get back to an eight or nine minutes, but I gotta take you to First Kings, chapter 21, who has their Bible with him today. First Kings, chapter 21. I'm gonna read verse 21. Sometime later, there was an incident involving a vineyard belonging to Naboth, the Jezreelite. The vineyard was in Jezreel, close to the palace of Ahab, king of Samaria. Ahab said to Naboth, let me have your vineyard to use for a vegetable garden since it's close to my palace. In exchange, I'll give you a better vineyard or if you prefer, I will pay you whatever it's worth. But Naboth, he replies boldly, the Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my ancestors. Verse four, so Ahab went home, sullen and angry because Naboth, the Jezreelite, had said, I will not give you the inheritance of my ancestors. He lay on his bed sulking and he refused to eat. Ahab had the complete opposite problem I have when I'm depressed.  Verse five, his wife Jezebel came in and asked him, why are you so sullen? Why won't you eat? And he answered her, because I said to Naboth, the Jezreelite, sell me your vineyard or if you prefer, I will give you another vineyard in its place. But he said, I will not give you my vineyard. Jezebel, how many of you know that Ahab and Jezebel is also a spirit? I'm gonna give you some very profound revelation. Stay with me. Jezebel, his wife said, is this how you act as king over Israel? Get up and eat, cheer up. I'll get you the vineyard of Naboth, the Jezreelite. So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, placed his seal on them and sent them to the elders and nobles who lived in Naboth city with him. And in those letters she wrote, listen to this, proclaim a day of fasting and seat Naboth in a prominent place among the people. But seat two scoundrels opposite him. In other words, I'm just gonna tell you this right now, she declares fasting and says, seat two scoundrels next to Naboth. In other words, these were church folks. Just hold that and have them bring charges that he has cursed both God and the king, then take them out and stone into death. Verse 11, so the elders and nobles who lived in Naboth city did, as Jezebel directed in the letters she had written to them. Verse 12, they proclaimed a fast and seated Naboth in a prominent place among the people. Then two scoundrels came and sat opposite him and brought charges against Naboth saying, he cursed both God and the king. So they took him outside the city and stone him to death. They were sent word back, now they sent word back to Jezebel, Naboth has been stoned to death. We know according to the Bible that the enemy is sneaky. He's compared as a serpent. Serpents do not have good eyesight so they rely on their senses. We know that the devil is also a strategist.  Why? Because he's a strategist. We also know that the devil is an opportunist. He'll actually withdraw from our life and he'll wait for the opportune time and then he will enter in seeking whom he may devour. We know this. Come on, how many of you know this? Are we equipped today? So this is more than an incident in a vineyard. This is more than a real estate deal that's going down in First Kings chapter 21. We know this, why? Because the Bible says the kingdom of heaven is like a vineyard. In Luke chapter 20, Jesus refers to himself as the Lord of what? The vineyard. In John chapter 15, he says, I am the vine and you are the branches. You have to be connected to the vine in order to be what? Fruful. So this is more than just a story about a vineyard. This is more than just a real estate deal. And I wanna give you a little bit of historical background. Can I do that? This man named Naboth is from the tribe of Manisa. Manisa, if you remember, is the son of Joseph. Joseph is the son of Jacob.  Joseph receives this promise from his father.  He makes it into a vineyard and passes it down to Manisa. Then Manisa begins to have many sons. This is how you get the tribe of Manisa. Okay, are you following me? And then five generations later, there's an inheritance and Naboth receives this inheritance. And guess what Naboth's name means? Fruitful. He's literally living in his prophetic destiny. Naboth is standing in the thing that has been promised and passed down for five generations, okay? It's five generations of blessing. It's five generations of promise. Naboth is born to be fruitful. There's this prophetic promise on his life. I believe that you were born to be fruitful. Does anybody else believe that today? You were born to be fruitful. And Ahab says, I want that vineyard, but I want it because it's adjacent to my palace. And he's looking down and he was like, I need a vegetable garden for my chefs. I wanna take a five generation promise that's gonna continue through this line and I wanna turn the vineyard into a vegetable garden. This is how sneaky and subtle the enemy is. It's almost as if if you don't look in the scripture here, you'll completely miss it. You'll completely miss it. Ahab is saying, I want you to give up your vineyard for vegetables. Can I put it on another way for the note takers? I want you to give up the extraordinary for the ordinary. I want you to give up the God idea for a good idea. I want you to exchange great for good. I want you to exchange the eternal for the temporal. I want you to exchange the spiritual for the material. I want you to take the miraculous and the majestic and just exchange it for the mundane. Come on to somebody. I want you to exchange God's provision and his blessing for just survival. He's saying, I want you to give me this vineyard and turn it into a vegetable garden. You know, vegetables, there's nothing wrong. Nobody would say that there's anything demonic about vegetables except for my seven year old Everly. But they represent mediocrity, settling. Thinking that my marriage will probably only be this good. Oh, I wish I had some real people with me today. Oh, our ministry can only go this far in one lifetime. It's exchanging the miraculous for the mundane. Naboth says, I cannot allow that to happen because that's not what's best. You know, the apostle Paul shows up and he tells the church at Thessalonica. He says, still continue to excel more. I know you've seen miracles. I know you've seen deliverances happen on your altar, but Paul tells Thessalonica, just excel more. How many of you believe for more? You're believing that there's more, that we haven't seen our best service here at Hungry Chan. Come on, that we haven't preached our best sermon, that there's more, there's more. Paul said, excel even more. The vineyard was God's best. Naboth wasn't called to vegetables. He was called to the vineyard. I believe that Hungry Chan is a vineyard for the world and it's going to supply the wine of the Holy Spirit to the nations from this place. And we are not gonna give Ahab and Jezebel this vineyard and turn it into vegetable gardens. We believe that we are in a vineyard. Jesus' first miracle was not turning water into a kale smoothie. I'm not hating on vegetables. As you can tell, I don't eat that many. But his first miracle was turning water into what? Wine, wine. It's not the vegetables of the Spirit, it's the fruits of the Spirit. See, the devil loves to get us to surrender our vineyard for vegetables. Oh, just go ahead and stay sick. Just keep managing the pain with medication. At least you're still alive. See how subtle he is? Well, at least you're still married. Never mind the fact that your marriage has a purpose and a destiny by God, but at least you can just still hold on. And Ahab arranges a meeting with Naboth and tries to negotiate a price. But Naboth refuses, there is no price. I will not give you my vineyard. God forbids me that I do this. Remember, Satan took Jesus on the mountaintop and he said, I would love for you to exchange your vineyard for a vegetable garden. Jesus said, no, I can't do that because the cross that is set before me, I see something in the spiritual realm. I see something that hasn't happened yet. I see multitudes that are yet to be saved in the generations to come. And I would never give up what God had called me to to turn it into a vegetable garden. Jezebel comes to Ahab and finds him depressed, sulking, emo. She comes up with a plan and writes a letter with two things in the letter that I wanna draw your attention to as we break down this text. I will bring Naboth to a prominent place and then I will bring him to men who are scoundrels. How many of you know that when God wants to change your levels, he changes your circles? Oh, when he wants to take you higher, he'll bring you into a new circle of friends. But how many of you know when the devil wants to take you lower, he will also change your circles? See, when somebody comes into your life, they're not just bringing a body, they're bringing a spirit. And so you've gotta ask yourself the question, what spirit are they bringing into my life? Oh, I wish you heard me today. And that's why it's so important that you're here in the house of God, whether it's on Zoom, in a chat, or in the room, because God has to change your circles to change your levels. Sometimes you've only gotten as far as you can go.  He'll take an introvert like me and hide the keys to unlock the chains that bind me in a crazy woman in South Chicago with a dream. See, my own mother didn't believe it. I didn't believe it. But he hid that in somebody else. See, God was gonna introduce somebody in my life once you see, and it's the tactic of the enemy through the spirit of Jezebel, to take and rob the vineyard and turn it into a vegetable garden. Jezebel says, I'll take him to a prominent place. I will give him a false success. I'll give Naboth a job that's just good enough to pay the bills that they'll never believe for their destiny. I'll take Naboth into a circle of friends that just comfort them just enough to keep them conformed and comforted. I'll bring him to a prominent place and I'll surround him by scoundrels. These scoundrels were church folk. They had been fasting. Have you ever read it like that? Sometimes it's even the people, maybe you came out of other ministries, came from other churches surrounded by scoundrels. Don't tag him in the chat. When someone enters your life, you've got to understand that they're not just bringing their physical body. You have to see in the spirit realm, they're bringing a spirit. Demonic distractions come in the form of people, but so do divine disruptions. So all of a sudden I'm standing and I just need you to understand this, 15 year old Mike Signorelli and I'm in the office with my pastor and my pastor says, you don't understand to this woman, you don't understand, he cannot do it. But see, I had been baptized with the Holy Spirit privately and it was about to manifest publicly because all of a sudden this stuttering, stammering, I mean, I'm talking totally introverted young man. I said, yes, I'll do it, I can do it. Then after I said, I was like, whoa, what did I just say? I started to sweat like I'm sweating now. And the woman was like, what? He changed his mind. The pastor's like, what, you're gonna do this? I said, yes, I'll do it. How many of you know when you receive the boldness of the Holy Spirit and the fire of the Holy Spirit, he'll empower you to do things that you didn't ever think you can do? So at 15 years old, my dad is literally in jail. I come from nothing, no seminary training. I just know the Bible that I had spent the previous year reading and I've got the Holy Spirit. I show up to this woman's church. I had to borrow a suit because I didn't even own a suit and you could only preach in suits back in the day. Do you remember that? And the suit was so big, it didn't even cover me. I mean, it was like all over drooping, sagging and looked like a zoot suit, like I was a gangster. And all of a sudden I got up there, I read my text for the first 15 and 20 seconds I was nervous and then all of a sudden the gift of God was unlocked in me. I only way I can explain it is I felt like I was hit by a bolt of lightning. I began to speak with wisdom, knowledge and revelation far beyond my years. It was like my brain had to catch up with my spirit because my spirit started running with the gift of God. Before I know it, come on, somebody. Before I know it, the young people are getting saved. They're saying, I want Jesus, revival starts breaking out. Old people start coming forward every generation. And it was just like that woman's dream but this is the craziest part. The entire altar is full. And as the altar is full of people, I have no idea what I'm doing, no formal training. It's the first sermon I ever preached and all of a sudden I begin to lay hands and pray for people. That woman who had the dream, she comes up with her daughter. Her daughter is about four years old. She's carrying her on her side. Her daughter was born with a decrepit hand. So zero mobility, zero function or usage of her hand. And that same woman who had a dream brought her daughter. And she said, can you pray for my daughter? This is the last part of my dream. I had no idea what I was doing. If anything, I'm more of a professional now than I've ever been. I still don't know what I'm doing. But I simple, yes, an act of obedience to say God, I'm already out in the deep waters. Meet me here. I'm already all in God.  I'm not gonna allow the pain and trauma of my past to cancel the victorious future that he has for me. I'm not gonna let my lack of financial resources and lack of knowledge cancel the future. And so all of a sudden, I begin to lay my hand on this daughter. I kid you not, this was the very first, but not the last miracle I saw God do. That young girl's hand shot forth like this. And I'm telling you, the place went completely crazy. I mean, pandemonium screaming. And it wasn't the kind of screaming like, yeah, this is an amazing service. It was like part fear of God was installed. Like when that girl's hand came forth, it was like people were screaming in utter terror that God has revealed himself into a level and extent that they had never seen. That's how I started my preaching career. A divine disruption. A divine disruption. Just a guy who said yes, who believed in the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe that this is your divine disruption today. I believe that this church is about to mobilize into a whole nother season. I believe I'm here to shake some things up. I'm here to speak to a spirit of Ahab and Jezebel and say not one of us under the sound of my voice is going to give up this vineyard for a vegetable garden. I'm going all the way. I'm not gonna shrink back. I'm not gonna make excuses.  I want the miraculous. And just like Gabriel showed up to marry, I'm here to show up to you today and say I stood in the presence of God and I've got a word for you today.  It's time to speak to the Ninebites. I'm here on assignment to disrupt something. It's not business as usual. It's not just another service. It's a divine disruption. A divine disruption. A divine disruption. A divine disruption. I want to give you one more thing. You can just stay on your feet if you like because we're about to go in.  I want to impart something. I literally was telling your pastor, I have been with John Maxwell and all these renowned guys and they're like, tell me your story. I'm like, you don't want to hear my story because all I know is complete and total faith in him. All I know is reliance on him. All I know is to say, God, I believe it's a yes and I'll keep giving you my yes. See, something you need to understand in nature is that a lot of times we have this, oh, can I just say what's on my heart? I feel this so strong. I know the difference between 99% submission and 100. I know the difference between going through the charades of killing your Isaac and then actually preparing and then going through the motion of killing him because somebody who's gone all in for the Lord can always tell when somebody's holding something back and that 1% is enough to turn your vineyard into a vegetable garden. That 1% is enough, that little bit of compromise, that little bit of mediocrity to say, well, I'll just content to be a part of it and watch it all go down. No, no, you're not supposed to watch it. You're supposed to lead it. You're supposed to be a participant. You're supposed to get up off the bench and go. And what happens in nature is it's like you have these lions that they go and they hunt together.  And as they're going out in a pack to hunt, they find the prey and it's strategic and you can study this in nature. The old lion roars as loud as he can and the terrifying sound of that roar causes the prey to run away. But see, when he runs away, the younger ones who are agile come and they say, well, we're gonna take this prey now and then we'll bring them back and feed them to the older lion. But see, there's a secret here that if there was enough courage in that prey to run towards the roar, what they would find when they got there is that old lion has lost his teeth. That old lion has lost his agility. And the safest place for the prey is not to run away from the roar, but to run toward the roar.  If you'll run toward the roar, if you'll say, not by might, nor by power, but my spirit, the safest place is to run right into the impossibility, right into the thing that they say is not possible, right into it. Naboth dies in the story. Naboth dies because he tried to hold his ground, but Naboth made one mistake. He did the right thing by saying, I will not give my vineyard, but remember the enemy is subtle. The mistake he made is he called it his vineyard. It was never his vineyard, it was God's. It was a blessing handed down from Joseph, five generations. So all of a sudden Elijah gets the call. God says, Elijah, go to the vineyard. See the presence of Naboth produced the absence of Elijah, but when there's the absence of Naboth, there's the presence of the spirit of Elijah. Oh, there's a revelation on this. Elijah shows up and he says, Ahab and Jezebel, you're gonna be fed to the hounds of heaven. Come on, you know the story. And he begins to execute judgment on them from that place of a vineyard. But see what that symbolic of is you have to say, I didn't ask to be a preacher, but there was something divinely deposited in my life. This is not my gift. It's a gift he gave me that I used for his glory to make his name great, to lift him up. And if he be lifted up, he'll draw all men unto him. And so this is not my vineyard. It's not my marriage. A three-fold court is not easily broken. It's me and Julie and Jesus and crafted it. This is not my ministry. This is his ministry. This is not my business. I'm a kingdom builder. It belongs to him. Multi-generational wealth will flow to steward the gifts of God on earth because it's his, it's his. Can somebody shout amen if you believe what I'm saying? So I've come here today with that same resurrection power. The spirit of Elijah, that spirit that says, I'm standing in this vineyard to say we are going all the way now, baby. We are going all the way. They told me in New York, they said, you'll never have more than 30 people in New York. I said, there's 10 million lost souls going to hell.  Come on, you don't tell somebody with the Holy Spirit what can't be done. Come on, it's fuel. When you say it can't be done, it's fuel. You don't know my God. You don't know my savior. You don't know my Jesus. All things, somebody shout back to me. All things, all things, all things. Every sickness, every disease, every demon, all things. Somebody shout all things. I got a question. Who's gonna run toward the roar? Who's gonna run toward the roar? Who's gonna run toward the roar? Who's gonna believe that things that medicine can't heal, that God can heal? You know, somebody said, let's pray for the Baptist church. I was laughing. There was a woman watching my broadcast. Man, I feel the power of God. Some of you are gonna have to triple dip in these services today. She was watching my broadcast. She's on staff at a Baptist church. That's a super Baptist. The Lord challenged me. And he said, my weeks, he called me Pastor Mike. Every time he challenges me, he calls me by my title. Pastor Mike, I'm like, yes, Lord. He said, I dare you today on your broadcast to start praying for medically verifiable miracles. That's how I do that all the time. He said, no, no, you're playing it safe. You're only asking healing for things that you've already seen healed and that you think is possible. I want you to go deeper. There's a woman from a Baptist church on staff with MS. MS does not have any medical cure. All of a sudden on that broadcast, the Lord told me that neurodegenerative diseases were gonna be healed. And I began to speak into that over the broadcast.  All of a sudden months later, I get an email full of attachments. The attachments are all the medical verifications that the MS is completely gone, completely gone. And she said, you divinely disrupted my pretty Baptist church because you're making it hard for me to contain myself. Because if I don't praise him for what he did, the rocks are gonna cry out because I know my Jesus can do it. I know he can do it. Give up your vineyard for a vegetable garden. Don't try to control stuff with medication that God can heal through the blood of Jesus Christ. And that blood has not lost its power. That blood is still testifying. That blood is still cleansing. That blood is still healing. That blood has not lost its power. Just one drop was enough for the entire world. Come on, does anybody believe it? Here's what I wanna do. There's a lot of people here, but I believe strongly that I'm to pray for many of you. There's an impartation. We've got a team here to pray, and I wanna pray for you. And I believe God's gonna do more throughout the entire day, but he specifically told me healings. So what I wanna do right now is before we open up the altar, I wanna pray for everybody front to back. Is that okay? Is that okay? Do you believe there's more? Paul said, Excel, go deeper. Go deeper, there's more. There's more. Father, I thank you. You have been so faithful. You are not intimidated by pain. You are not intimidated by sickness. You are victorious. Victorious, victorious. Father, I pray some of you are going to begin to encounter his presence in such a strong way. I'm doing this on purpose because I don't want any credit coming to me. I don't want you to think it was because the man of God touched you. I want the Holy Spirit to do right where you're at before we take another step, what only he can do. So Father, right now, even people watching online, I want you to drop in the chat if something's happening right now. I speak to every bit of pain right now and I command it to go in the name of Jesus. Go in the name of Jesus. Every infirmity and sickness now, I break the power of it in Jesus' name. Every growth, every tumor, every cyst, I command it to shrink and disappear now under the sound of my voice. Go in the name of Jesus. Go, some of you, if you have tumors, cysts, if you have growths, I want you to begin to check them now. Check them now. I just had somebody wear a wound that was open. Doctors could not close the wound and the wound miraculously closed in a session just like this. It was so dramatic that the doctor said that it was an enigma. They didn't have a better word. I said, you say enigma, I say miracle. Father, I thank you right now. From the top of their head to the soles of their feet, I break the power of every spirit of infirmity now and command you to lose them and let them go. I command you to lose them and let them go now. Father, I thank you for healing, healing, healing, healing. Barren wounds, this one's gonna have a long wick on it. Come on, barren wounds. I speak right now. Cystic fibrosis gone in the name of Jesus and I release healing. I thank you that we will be fruitful and multiply in Jesus' name. Come on, this is a dangerous prayer. We had half a dozen couples at our church. The doctor said it's medically impossible for you to actually conceive and we had to do spontaneous baby dedications in the last couple of weeks because we said it nine, 10 months ago and we're seeing the fruit of it today. So I speak to barren wounds now and I release life, resurrection, healing power in the name of Jesus. Just wave at me right now. If you're feeling the Lord, just move in in your body. Come on, just give me a wave. Praise God, praise God. Strength, I just released supernatural strength in the name of Jesus, supernatural strength. I believe the Holy Spirit will even quicken your body and your very body, every cell, every fiber of your being will begin to be recharge. Sometimes when you go through trauma, depression, anxiety, fear, it takes a toll on your body but I believe right now that God is reversing and restoring the toll that depression and anxiety and fear has taken in your body. If you receive it, would you just receive it by faith right now? Coming out of a season, this is a divine disruption. I'm drawing the dividing line now and here's what I wanna do. As we come to a close, if you wanna run toward the roar, if you wanna step in, I dare you right now just to come forward to this altar and say, Pastor Mike, I'm ready to cross that line. I'm ready to go 100%. I'm ready to step in. This might not be for everybody but I wanna know who this is for. Somebody who says I'm done playing games. Pastor Mike, I've been fooling a lot of people but I know that I've been 99%. I've been 98%. I'm ready to go 100. I'm ready to surrender. Would you just come? Would you just come? Maybe there's a few more who say I'm fighting for the vineyard. It's not my vineyard. It's God's vineyard. It's God's dream. Come on. I wonder if the least likely is represented here. I wonder if there's a Mike Signorelli. I wonder if there's somebody who says I came in skeptical. I came in doubting but I believe I've seen too much now. Come on, just stay here. If you're here on the front, I want you to just begin to pour out your heart. I want you to just get into a posture of surrender. I want you to just release it. Just turn it over. Just begin to pour out your heart. Just surrender. Just surrender. Just surrender. Just surrender. Not my will. Thy will be done. Not my plan but your plan, God. There's such a sweet fragrance. There's just such a sweet aroma that comes from laying it down, surrendering. Saying, God, to finally disrupt me. I'll step in. I'll step in. Come on, we're gonna take just a few more moments. I'm gonna begin to pray for people here in a few moments that are here on the stage, but I wanna do something. Romans chapter 10, verse nine says, confess with your mouth, believe in your heart that he is Messiah. I told you the story about Ayush, my Indian friend. I told you the story about my Muslim friend, but it's possible to go to church and to say, Pastor Mike, to be honest with you, I'm not living a life as if he's the Lord. I haven't been living that way. Oh yeah, sure, I get emotional during worship. Sure, I experience these moments, but I can't say that I've truly surrendered and that I am saved, that I am a true believer, but I wanna step over because I would be remiss. I've preached at churches where literally the children's workers say, I've been doing the curriculum and I've been showing up every Sunday, but I don't know Jesus, I'm not a Christian. And so I wanna take an opportunity, if there's someone here, the greatest miracle is salvation. And I believe that there's maybe just a few, maybe they're watching online, a friend tagged them in the stream and they're like, I don't know what I just watched, but the Holy Spirit is drawing me. I know the truth now that Jesus is savior. Would you right now just say, Pastor Mike, I wanna be led to Jesus. I wanna accept Him, is there anyone? Just lift up your hand if that's you. I wanna accept Jesus. I wanna accept, just lift it high so I can see it. Come on, looks like even some people here up front, isn't that amazing? Wow, isn't that amazing church? Isn't that amazing? Come on, they're making the best decision of their life. Okay, let's all pray this together as we celebrate somebody coming into this new season. It says, when souls of makes disciples. I'd say we did that during the first service. Let's keep going. I'm gonna pray for people here, but let's all raise our voices together. Just say this with me, everybody. Come on, just say this with the person who sang it the first time. And if you said it a hundred times, Heavenly Father, I thank you for the cross, where my sins were forgiven. I am no longer an orphan. I belong to you. I will serve you. I will follow you. I will walk with you. I will be all you've called me to be in. In Jesus' name. Come on, somebody shout amen and let's celebrate.


Talk about self-forgiveness. Yeah, self-forgiveness. A lot of times when, as Francis was saying, when there's anything that's kept inside or unconscious gets projected out, oftentimes it gets projected onto the person that you think you are. And so there's a sense of self-hatred, self-condemnation, being overly critical with the self that you believe you have been. And so, in one sense, self-forgiveness is really loosening from identification with the self that you have believed you are. I've had examples in my life where I would work with somebody and one time this friend contacted me and he said, can you help me out? He said, I've got this really vicious love triangle going on. This vicious triangle. There's all kinds of jealousy and envy and possession and all kinds of things going on like this. And he described it and everything. And he said, can you really help me with this? I was living in my little peace house and since night at the time I said, why don't you bring the triangle down to me and I'll see what I can do. And he said, I don't think the triangle is going to want to come. I said, this is a vicious love triangle. I don't think they're going to want to come. So I said, well, I'm going to be going on some travels. I'll be coming up to your town. So I will come up and join with you in the triangle. It was him and two women. It was very vicious. So I stopped off and of course brought my movie watch, This Guy to Enlightenment, but I got my back in those days before everything's going digital. We had DVDs. My case of DVDs. So I thought, well, let's see. What shall we watch? Maybe like Fatal Attraction. I think it's some movies we could all sit down and watch together. But no, we ended up watching Vanilla Sky. If you've ever seen this Tom Cruise movie and it's a love triangle. It's a twisted triangle with Tom Cruise and I think Penelope Cruise and Cameron Diaz. So anyway, I sit down in the living room at the triangle to watch Vanilla Sky. And I only got halfway through the movie because one of the women, she would never say an unkind word. She would never speak an unkind word. But her defense mechanism was there was still guilt, a lot of guilt in the mind. And her ego method of choice was projecting not on to other people and yelling and screaming and everything. It was on to the body. So we get halfway through Vanilla Sky and this woman is literally paralyzed. Half of her body has literally gone numb. She's watching the movie with me and the rest of the triangle and she's like, so we had to stop the movie. I had to go out and do a one-on-one session with her. Healing session. She was literally half of her body was completely numb. Then the other one was just raging and screaming and shouting. She was much more into the projecting on to others. But the self-forgiveness is really starting to see the self-concept that was made in hatred and let it come to awareness so that you can release it to the Holy Spirit. And in this case, that was the purpose underneath watching the movie together was to let the emotions, whatever they are, jealousy, envy, anger, whatever, let them rise up and start to get in touch with what identifications are going on that's generating all these very egoic emotions and let them go. So eventually we were able to restart the movie and continue on. And what's how the triangle started was they were talking about having an open relationship and how open-minded they all were, open-minded, open relationship. And then it's like talking about walking into the egoist trap like, okay, and then they got into it deeper and deeper and it got more and more vicious. And what it came down to was time. They even had agreements about, okay, open sex and all these different things, but then it was coming down to how much quality time are you spending with this one versus that one? It still always comes down to time. Linear time is what the ego made up to deny eternity and beneath all the issues around possessiveness and sexuality it was the self-concept rooted in time that has to get exposed in order to have that self-forgiveness. So one of the movies in Movie Watcher's Guide to Enlightenment is called Dark City. And that's a spectacular, it's kind of like a Course in Miracles movie that's made in Australia. Pretty intense and pretty dark until in the end the upside-down world gets turned right side up to the light and everything heals in the blazing light. It's very beautiful and graphic how it's kept dark by being turned away from the light and then everything's turned to the light and everything heals. So it's, yeah, it's beautiful. If you're open to it, you know, you start to realize that the forgiveness is always available but it just requires you accessing the darkness and then allowing it to be raised up. So that word allowance we talked about last night at dinner is so key to the whole process. But it works. It really works.


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