and in Henry, and on behalf of the MLK Employee Committee and the City of Fort Worth's Diversity and Inclusion Employee Advisory Board, I want to thank you for joining us today to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. By the way, today, January 15th, is also the birthday of Dr. King. Normally, we would be having our program in person, but in these COVID times, we have had to implement a virtual platform for our program, although many of us have mastered the technology to navigate this virtual world. One thing hasn't changed. Technology is technology, and it is still so unpredictable. This will be a live program with many different components being presented by multiple people. Therefore, I ask in advance for a grace for any blips, miscues, or frozen screens that may occur during this program. Nevertheless, today's program was planned and is being presented by city employees as a way to remember a history maker who committed his life to the betterment of the lives of all people. It will include a short presentation on Dr. King, the late U.S. Congressman John Lewis, and the concept of the beloved community that both men embrace and endeavor to make a reality. Followed by self-videos from city employers sharing their vision for achieving a beloved community here in our great city, the City of Fort Worth. Also following the employee videos, we'll be joined by Lorraine Miller, former president and CEO of the NAACP, who also served as the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ms. Miller is a Fort Worth native, and she will share with us her recollection of working alongside the late U.S. Congressman John Lewis. Now, I'm pleased to introduce to you the first segment of our program, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his legacy and the beloved community, presented by city employees, neither Franklin from the Information Technology Department, Rwanda Prestige from the Transportation and Public Works Department, Nadia Howard from the Water Department, Katrina Newton from the Planning and Data Analytics Department, and I, Cannon Henry from the Transportation and Public Works Department will all present to you the beloved community presentation. So let's get started. Ms. Nina, please take it away. Good afternoon, everyone. It is definitely a pleasure to be here and be before you today. So I'm asking the question, why do we celebrate the MLK Junior holiday? Well, it's to celebrate the life and achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an influential American civil rights leader. He's most well known for his campaigns to end racial segregation and to promote racial equality in the United States. So let's take a look of some of his milestones and accomplishments. He was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He attended Morehouse College, Crozier Theological Seminary, and Boston University. He married Coretta Scott King and had four children. He helped coordinate the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. He spoke of the beloved community in 1956 as the end goal of nonviolent boycotts. He founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, and in 1960, he became the co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta while continuing his campaign against segregation and unfair hiring practices. He penned the Civil Rights Manifesto in June 1963, where he wrote this manifesto title, A Letter from Birmingham, J. Also in 1963, Dr. King was one of the leaders of the March on Washington where he made the historic I Have a Dream speech. He was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Also in 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, making him the youngest recipient at that time. Then and on April 4, 1968, he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Calls for a national holiday at Martin Luther King Jr.'s honor came almost immediately after his death. A law for a federal holiday was introduced later that year, but unfortunately, it failed to pass. In 1970, a number of states and cities made his birthday, January 15, a holiday. In 1983, Ronald Reagan signed the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday into law, making the third Monday in January a federal holiday and was first observed nationally in 1986. Then in the year 2000, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday was officially observed for the first time in all 50 states. Love community. But love community is a term that was first coined in the early days of the 20th century by the philosopher theologian, Josiah Roy, who founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation. However, it was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., also a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, who popularized the term and invested it with a deeper meaning, which captured the imagination of people of goodwill all over the world. So what is a beloved community? Dr. King believed a beloved community is a global vision in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the beloved community, Dr. King's beliefs are poverty, hunger, and homelessness would not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism in all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. International disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict resolution and reconciliation of adversaries instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict. Dr. King's beloved community was not devoured of interpersonal group or international conflict. His beliefs were conflicts could be resolved peacefully and adversaries could be reconciled through a mutual determined commitment to nonviolent. All conflicts in the beloved community should end with reconciliation of adversaries cooperating together in a spirit of friendship and goodwill. Dr. King also believed that the age old tradition of hating one's opponent was not only immoral but bad strategy which perpetuated the cycle of revenge and retaliation. Only nonviolence has the power to break the cycle of retributive violence and create lasting peace through reconciliation. Justice is not for anyone or press group but for all people. It is the birthright of every human being in the beloved community. Ultimate goal is integration which is genuine intergroup and interpersonal living and that the aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of the beloved community. Allow me to highlight some quotes from Dr. King in his own words. In his 1959 sermon on Gandhi, Dr. King elaborated on the after effects of choosing nonviolence over violence. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community so that when the battles are over a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor. As he said in his speech at a victory rally following the announcement of a favorable US Supreme Court decision desegregating the seats on the Montgomery buses. The end is reconciliation. The end is redemption. The end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men during Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sermon on loving your enemies in 1963. He shared these thoughts. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the distraughts, but the way of nonviolence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community. These strong words are also published in Dr. King's book, Strength to Love. In my final presentation, I leave with you these words from Dr. Martin Luther King that's published in the Christian Century Magazine article from 1966. I do not think of political power as a end. Neither do I think of economic power as an end. They are ingredients in the objective that we seek in life. And I think that the end of the objective is truly brotherly society, the creation of the beloved community. U.S. Representative John Lewis and Dr. King. John Lewis, born near Troy, Alabama, the third of 10 children, his parents were sharecroppers. While growing up in Troy, John Lewis and other African Americans suffered inequities under a segregated Jim Crow system. John Lewis never accepted this way of life, even though his elders told him that is just the way things are and that he should not cause trouble. As a teen, John Lewis listened to Dr. King on the radio and was inspired by his words for justice and the actions Dr. King and other civil rights leaders took to dismantle segregation and discriminatory laws based on race. At age 18, John Lewis was denied admittance to Troy State University due to his race. John Lewis wrote Dr. King for assistance in suing Troy State University. Dr. King sends John Lewis a bus ticket for him to come to Montgomery to discuss further. When Lewis arrived, Dr. King asked him, Troy, to which John Lewis responded, Yes, Dr. King, I am John Robert Lewis. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two men. After further deliberation about Troy University, John Lewis decided not to pursue the lawsuit due to potentially endangering his family that lived near Troy. Instead, he decided to pursue his education at American Baptist Theological Seminary, a small historically African American college in Nashville, Tennessee, where he graduated and was ordained a minister. While at the seminary, Lewis embraced the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence also embraced by Dr. King. Cultivated through his study of Gandhi-style disobedience, Lewis believed the bonds of sacrifice and struggle are essential in creating a beloved community. To Lewis, forgiveness is just as important as struggle in creating that community. Like King, Lewis denounced military militarism and the excesses of capitalism. Lewis became involved in a series of student sit-ins while in Nashville aimed to integrate movie theaters, restaurants and other businesses. In 1960, Lewis helped form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, commonly known as SICK and participates in the Freedom Rides of 1961, which Dr. King supported but did not participate in. Lewis and King helped organize the 1963 March on Washington for both man-gay speeches. In response to Alabama and other southern states discriminatory voting practices that disenfranchise millions of African Americans across the South, civil rights activists, including John Lewis, organized a peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capitol to dramatize, as John Lewis put it, to the nation African Americans desire to exercise their constitutional right to vote. On March 7, 1965, as the marchers walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met by Alabama state troopers who attacked the marchers with billy clubs, teargrass and trampled them with horses. Many marchers were injured. This event, captured by TV reporters, was aired nationwide and became known as Bloody Sunday. Subsequent marches were planned, but the Alabama Governor George Wallace refused to offer protection to the marchers. President Lyndon Johnson stepped in and called up the Alabama National Guard, federal marshals and FBI agents to protect the marchers. The third and final march on March 21 was unimpeded. Thousands joined the march, the March of Montgomery three days later on March 24, with approximately 5,000 people supporting voting rights for African Americans. As a result of the Selma to Montgomery marches, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed. After the success of the Voting Rights Act, Lewis clashed with emerging black power advocates who eschewed nonviolent protests for a more confrontational stance. Lewis was in Indianapolis with US Senator Robert Kennedy, who was about to give a presidential campaign speech when Dr. King was assassinated. After the campaign, Lewis led a voter education project and ran unsuccessfully for a US House seat in 1977, and then he ran for Atlanta City Council where he was elected. In 1986, Lewis is elected to the US House of Representatives representing Georgia's Fifth District. He is reelected 16 times. While in Congress, Lewis is revered by activists for encouraging Americans to cause, quote, good trouble. In the service of justice, a mantra he repeated until his death on July 17, 2020, at the age of 80. Now we would like to share three quotes from the late US Congressman John Lewis. Less than a year ago on March 1, 2020, a top admins had his bridge. Brother John Lewis said to the crowd, getting good trouble, necessary trouble and help redeem the soul of America. We also reflect on a quote from the book, Across That Bridge. Nothing can stop the power of a committed and determined people to make a difference in our society. Why?  And lastly, from one of his former essays, in his very stern, next slide, please. And lastly, from one of his former essays, in his very stern, aggressive, but important speaking voice, he is transitioning his work over to us.  In my life, I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love, and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring. Well, this concludes our presentation on the below community. Well, thank you all. Well, just see that our city manager, David Cook, has joined us. So let's pause and give Mr. Cook a chance to say a few words. Thank you, Cannon. And hello, everybody. First, I want to thank the Diversity and Inclusion Committee and the Martin Luther King Jr.'s Celebration Committee for putting this program on. I do think it's important when we think about what's going on in our country, our state, our city, the conversations and to celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. And for this program today, John Lewis, who passed this past year, but who was a great leader up until right at the end. And I think reading some of his quotes is just key on some of this. But I want to take the time to thank the committee. Thank Cannon Henry for putting this on. You know, it is important, as I said, given our time in the country, state and in the city. It does give us a chance to also think about and talk about the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. And again, John Lewis. And in a few moments, I don't think you've heard from Lorraine Miller, but I want to thank Lorraine, too, for spending time with us to talk about John Lewis's legacy. But as we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., you know, I always go to some of the quotes that I think about that are important to me. And again, given the time, and I'll do a couple of those. The first one is everybody's heard this injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. But it goes on. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny, whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. And one another favorite one is simply the time is always right to do what is right. And I'll leave that message with everybody. There's never a bad time to do the right thing. And so again, I want to thank everybody for taking the time today to celebrate in the legacy of these incredible Americans, Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis canon. Thanks for giving me a few moments. Enjoy the rest of the program. Well, thank you, Mr. Cook for those inspiring words. Since the concept of beloved community is aspirational and can make can mean different things to different people. We have had we asked a few city employees to share their perspective via self videos of what love community means to them, and their hopes and ideas for achieving it here and forward. Hello, my name is for we the good area. And I'm with Fort Worth Water Department. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to say a few words for MLK celebration. It's my privilege. In my mind, the basic principle of beloved community is engraved in common good or virtue for all. What I mean by all is we the people as is to play it in our US Constitution. For any community to thrive and prosper, all members have to be thoughtful and respectful of everyone's civil rights and freedom without giving any preference to one group or person over the other. We live in a community and conflicts and differences will happen. When conflict arise in a community, they need to be addressed without any biases in an objective and a fair manner. This is to ensure the protection of all individuals within our community. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Nowadays, the atmosphere in the US is quite charged and non trusting. It's very sad but true. We must not believe that someone is all bad or wrong all the time. Instead, we just have to practice active and open listening and we have to work together to find common ground and keep moving our beloved community forward on a right path. Thank you. A beloved community should be identified as a community who appreciates and recognizes all people as an asset. And a community that has a low tolerance for supporting community ideas, plans and systems that do not permit a framework of economic success for all. I believe we can achieve the goal of a beloved community by becoming more purposeful, implementing strategies and concepts to assure excellence and education through equity. Our formal and informal educational experiences shapes who we are and determines our impression in the communities in which we live. In Dr. Martin Luther King's beloved community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated. The city of Fort Worth of course has a role in addressing poverty, hunger and homelessness. It's why we raise funds every year for the united way of Tarrant County and the Tarrant area food bank as our selected nonprofit partners. It's why neighborhood services serves as the community action partner for Tarrant County, why directions home works to provide permanent supportive housing and why the city selects a neighborhood every year to receive millions of dollars in reinvestment. In the beloved community, racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. The city of Fort Worth of course has a role in ending racism, discrimination, bigotry and prejudice. It's why city department directors and the city manager's office issued a statement that we as the leaders employed by the city of Fort Worth stand together and with our community against the injustice and racism in our city and across this nation. We believe that black lives matter and we hear and understand that we can no longer delay the need to address and condemn the impact of institutional and systemic racism, inequity and injustice. What does beloved community mean to me? Beloved community to me means respect, the ability to respect someone for who they are regardless of where they're from, what they have or what they believe in. Respect is something that doesn't come naturally, it's something that's taught and it's our responsibility to be the example and teach others. When in doubt, remember the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Hello, my name is Petrina and the term beloved community, what it means to me is a place or society where all people are treated equally, treat it with respect and treat it with dignity, where individuals have the ability to pursue their dreams and pursue their goals in a society that supports them. How can we achieve the beloved community? Well, I think first it's a individual commitment. One has to be committed to treating folks, treating people with dignity and treating people fairly. On a broader scale, I think in our country we do have some work to do in this regard. I think some of the systems that govern our society should be looked at and if there are rules, if there are regulations that are contrary to treating people with respect and dignity and the things that Dr. King and others have espoused, how we can be a better society for all. I think those systems and rules need to be changed. I think this lines up with what this country expouses in the U.S. Constitution and that all persons will be treated equally to help move this country to a more perfect union. So those are my views on how we can achieve the beloved community. What does the beloved community mean to me and how can we achieve it? To me, the beloved community does the following. Needs the needs of those less fortunate, recognizes the good in people, searches out what can bring us together, acknowledges our differences, but does not let our differences divide us, seeks peaceful, nonviolent resolution to conflicts, replaces fear and hatred with love and understanding and understands that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. So how can we achieve that beloved community? That's a much harder question, especially in these divisive times, but here are a few things that I believe can move us in the right direction. Ignoring the noise created by those who seek power by dividing and segregating us into groups pitted against each other, not accepting corruption or injustice in any form regardless of who the individual or group that's perpetrating it. Seeking to resolve differences in conflicts with a true spirit of cooperation, fairness, and doing the right thing, but finally being less selfish, thinking of others first and putting their needs above our own. Hello, I'm Mary Hanna with the Transportation Public Work Department for the City of Fort Worth. My idea about Beloved Community is a community where we all both our political differences aside and focus on what is better for our nation. In the end, we are all American and we should be trying to achieve one goal, to create a better environment for our future generation, to grow up into one love. In my opinion, we can achieve this goal by being able to peacefully disagree on opinions and be able to resolve conflict without hate or violence. Many people believe what they read on social media and think they are fake, when sometimes they are fake news. We need to do our due diligence and research to find the truth. We should continue to progress towards this goal and try not to be biased learning toward one side and disagreeing with the other. Hopefully we all can do that. Thank you. Hi, my name is Ronnie Ingram and when I think of Beloved Community, I think about the fact that although Dr. King was not the first to coin the term of Beloved Community, he was the first to make it popular. For him, Beloved Community was a realistic achievable goal that could be attained by massive people committed to and trained in philosophy and methods of non-violence. Dr. King's Beloved Community is a global vision and in which people can share in the wealth of the earth. I too believe also in this philosophy that we can be a beloved community if we come together peacefully and in an organized way. I was asked to speak about the meaning of a beloved community. What that meant to me and how can we achieve that here at the city of our work? And living in a beloved community means that every member of this community is treated with love, kindness, and respect and he's given every opportunity to live a life with dignity and to achieve happiness. Here at the city of our work, I believe that we're embracing diversity and that is reflected upon our workforce and also in our programs and policies that we continue to center all of our services with equity in order to be able to provide all the opportunities to access our services to every single member of our beloved community. I think that we must make a personal choice to choose love instead of hate and to fight injustice and that has to happen at every single one of our relationships. Personal and business alike, I believe that we have a room to grow and become a better organization and to be able to reach all of our members of our community in order for them to belong to a beloved community. Thank you so much and have a good day. What a beloved community means to me is that there's a group of people with different backgrounds and ideas coming together for the common goal of providing opportunities and resources that everyone can benefit from. We can achieve this type of community if we appreciate and respect one another's differences and make a concerted effort to make those differences work. Hello, my name is Kim Tran and to me, beloved community means to value the dignity of work. It takes work to make a community thrive. To move towards equality and mutual respect, we must value all levels of work and service because each piece, each person contributes to the whole. Every single one of us watching this video is wearing some form of fabric. How many hands did it require to create the shirt you are wearing? How many strands of thread had to be woven together to provide you with the warmth and comfort that you have? How much work does it take to fill up your grocery shelves with fresh produce? As we live through this pandemic, it is evident that work is required to keep the world running. We should value and dignify work on all levels provided by all people because we are woven together and this combined fabric of service protects us much like the clothes we wear. By valuing and respecting all levels of work, we help promote equality and pride in our community. When we dignify work, we intertwine ourselves into the fabric of our beloved community. The beloved community to me is the belief that as a community, we can exist free of issues that affect our quality of life such as poverty, oneness, and adequate healthcare access to education and equitable business opportunities. These issues are, I hate to use the buzzword of the day, but often systemic problems that we faced in some form or another for generations. To a certain extent, they've become ingrained into the fabric of who we are, how we think, and how we react in society. So how can we reach the beloved community? Champion education and vocational training that lead to our community members achieving livable wages. Champion programs and funding that focus on mental health care, which is a leading cause for homelessness and incarceration in our communities. Champion diversity and how we contract and spend our dollars within the community. Most importantly, champion equality by embracing our similarities instead of explaining our differences. Be a champion. Wow, what inspirational and aspirational words from our fellow employees. I want to thank each of them for taking the time to share their thoughts, hopes, and dreams for achieving the beloved community. Thank you. Now I want to introduce and welcome Fort Worth native Lorraine Miller. Miss Miller served as the African American clerk of the US House representative from 2007 to 2011. During her tenure of public service, she held a number of positions in the legislative and executive branches, including working for the late US congressman, Jim Wright from Texas, Tom Foley, and John Lewis, and served two years in White House as deputy assistant to the president Clinton. Miss Miller also passionately supported the National Association for the Advancement of Color People where she served in leadership roles for the forward and Washington DC chapters of the NAACP before being appointed interim president and CEO in 2013. Miss Miller, welcome and thank you for taking the time from your busy schedule to share with us your recollection of working alongside the late US congressman John Lewis and how this MLK is different now than in years past. Oh, wait. You're there. Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. Great. Well, thank you, Mr. Henry, and for the invitation to join you for a few minutes today. That's a pleasure. And I'm so glad I had the opportunity to hear the other testimonials from city staff. It's heartening. Today is actually Martin Luther King's birthday. And I remember vividly before we had the holiday marching in the snows in DC to get the holiday. I was on the staff of congressman Wright then before he was well, he was majority leader, but to marching with Mrs. King and Dr. King's sister, Mrs. Ferris in the cold snows of January to the capital to make sure we have a Martin Luther King holiday. And then to hear all of you speak so eloquently about the beloved community is heartening. It makes me feel that the work that was done so early on is appreciated even now. And I hope we pass it on to our kids and to our next generations, because if we don't, we lose. I never had the opportunity to meet Dr. King, but I had a sense that I knew him because Mr. Lewis was a disciple of Martin Luther King Jr. John Lewis, I guess he was the most I've had the opportunity to work for three speakers of the house, Jim Wright, Tom Foley and Nancy Pelosi. But my, I guess it's not a word, fun risk, the most inspiring, the most fun, the most enlightening time I had was working for John Lewis. John Robert Lewis, his mom before she passed away several years ago would call the office and if I answered the phone, she'd say, baby, is John Robert there? Tell him it's his mom. And he would come to the phone and he'd be on the floor and I'd go get him and he'd come to the phone. And he said, yes, mama. And he was a very, he had, he was full of humility. If you talk about the beloved community, I never heard in the years that I worked for Mr. Lewis, I never heard him say an ill word about anybody. And when I read his book, Walking with a Wind, the first three chapters told the story of who John Lewis was. This was a young man who wrote Martin Luther King when he was 18, freshman at fifth university to say, I don't want, I want to be a part of what you're doing. Mr. Lewis genuinely believed in the beloved community. And you know, sometimes when politicians, you see something, you see them in the public and there's one persona and then you see them when they're not on TV or in private times. But he was consistent. He believed, he really honestly believed in the beloved community. If you get a chance, you ought to read Walking with a Wind. It's one of his, I think one of his most telling books. And if you don't get beyond the first three chapters, you then get an ideal picture of the makeup of the man. John Lewis was born in Troy, Alabama. I can hear him saying it like it was yesterday. He called me young lady, never called me by my name, he always called me young lady, which I appreciated young. And Troy, Alabama, his family, his father had a farm sharecroppers and Mr. Lewis always knew that he wanted to be a minister. And so he would use the chickens there on the farm as his congregation and he would preach to the chickens and he would often say that the chickens obeyed him and took his message better than the members of Congress. But he served the people of the fifth district of Georgia, which is basically Atlanta from 1987 until his death in 2020, 33 years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. And this came about as he defeated another cherished friend of mine, Julian Bond. Julian Bond served for many years as the chair of the board of the national board of the NAACP. And Julian and I would laugh sometimes about the race that he and Mr. Lewis ran against each other, which was heated. But they made up, they became good friends and worked on a lot of projects. I joined Mr. Lewis's staff in the early 90s when Speaker Foley decided he wanted to expand the House of Democratic leadership to reflect the more diversity of the Democratic caucus. And so at that point, Mr. Foley appointed Butler Derek of South Carolina, let's see, her name Barbara Cannelly of Connecticut, and John Lewis of Georgia as Chief Deputy Whips. These folks helped with the whip organization and Speaker Foley asked that I leave his staff to join Mr. Lewis's staff to help him with his floor activities. The 435 members and eight delegates, it is the operation of the house floor can be overwhelming. And Mr. Lewis wanted somebody that had some experience. So I had worked for two prior speakers and had floor access. So it seemed unnatural. And I was so personally honored to work for Mr. Lewis. This was a man who remembers when Mr. Lewis would take to the podium to make a statement, people would stop. And his words were listened to with such intensity.  One of the things I learned from him was you don't pack a whole lot of stuff. The first time I went to Atlanta with him, we got on the plane, and when we got off, I checked the bag. And he says, young lady, if you're going to travel with me, we don't check bags on little domestic flights like this. You're going to have to travel light. And I said, well, Mr. Lewis, I got makeup. And he said, hey, you're going to have to, if you can't do it in a carry-on, you can't travel with me. So I learned how to pack light and travel light. One of the things that I always remember about Mr. Lewis was his honesty and his believability. This is a man who believed in people, who loved people. And if he thought that there was voter suppression, how many times have we gone to cities where someone would call the office and say, Mr. Lewis, they're doing voter suppression here. Can you come? And he and I, or just he, we would be on a flight in a heartbeat because he believed that voting was the, it was the thing that we all have to do. You can't have a beloved community and you're not participating in it. And one of the things, yes, it's respect, but you've got to work towards that respect. And that was something John Lewis was absolutely, unequivocally, about a great man, a humble man. Let me tell you two things kind of sideline. You kind of know the history here. I took the liberty of bringing my copy of his ceremony preceding the, his lying in state at the Capitol in July. And his photo. These are of the things that I have of him that I treasure. This is one of my most valuable. I have a copy of the photo. This is the photo hangs in the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. But Mr. Lewis was, he was funny. He had a whimsical grin. He was devilish in his way. But there are two things I want to tell you about him and then I'll be done. He was a tremendous collector of African American art. He knew, I laugh because there are a lot of people who say, I've got Romay Bearden paintings and he had some members who said, you know, Romay Bearden was this and this. And he would say, I knew Romay Bearden and I have lots of his work. So in his home on Capitol Hill and his home in Atlanta, oh my God, he had so many African American paintings. He knew a lot of these artists and he collected them. The second thing that was interesting about Mr. Lewis that you don't find among many members of Congress, Mr. Lewis was an ardent shopper. I mean, he could shop better than anybody. I remember an instance, we went to Somalia. He had organized a food relief program and it was a small group of us and we went to Somalia for about 10 days and we were distributing food that was heart-wrenching to see people that live like that. But that, again, was his effort to expand the beloved community. And so we had a stopover in London and we had an event at Buckingham Palace that evening and so we had a two-hour break. And so he said, young lady, let's go to Harrods. And I said, oh yeah, I'm ready to go to Harrods. I'd been to Harrods before and I knew exactly what I wanted from the store. I like perfume. And so I knew exactly where the perfume section of the store was and I was ready to go. So we got a cab, we went to Harrods, got in there and right at the, as you walk in the door to the right is, begins the men's section.  I said, okay, but I'm going to the perfume section. So we had two hours. Where did I spend my two hours? In the men's section with John Lewis as he was trying on ties, shirts, suits. And I never got to the perfume section. And then it was time for us to go. But he thought that was funny and cute. He says, young lady, you need to spend more time with me. But I never got to, never got to the perfume section. But I love spending the time with him as he was buying ties and shirts in one suit. That, I hope gives you a sense of the seriousness of him as a legislator and as a real believer in the beloved community. And as a man who had his own personal proclivities and collecting art and shopping. So with that, Mr. Henry, I hope I've given you a real sense of the man. And thank you for having me. Thank you, Miss. I know you have another virtual engagement to attend. I don't want to delay you, but your story sharing is very much appreciated. On behalf of the city of Ford, thank you for sharing. We love your gift today tremendously. I know you never got to that perfume session, but I like your phrase. You can't have a beloved community if you don't participate in it. So true. So we hope to be able to visit with you again soon. It's been an honor. Thank you. Thank you. Y'all have a good day. Happy Martin Luther King Day. This is not a day of holiday. It's a day of service. Yes. Thank you. To our virtual audience, thank you for spending your time with us and celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And as a quick reminder, there are a number of additional local programs, events, and activities planned for the MLK holiday that are listed in the roundup, including a program by our very own Fort Worth Library, King's Patch of Social Gospel, a virtual discussion with Dr. Dwight Watson. To learn more about the other community program search, the roundup for the post title, celebrate the MLK Jr. Holiday virtually this year. A link to the story also will be included in the survey you will receive via email about today's program. Thank you for your attendance and have a great long MLK holiday weekend. Bye-bye.


Hello friends, welcome to the session. Today we are going to solve this problem without actually performing the long division state whether the following rational numbers will have a terminating decimal expansion or a non-terminating repeating decimal expansion. Assam is 17 upon 8. So before starting with the solution let me tell you the basic idea behind the question. It is let x equal to p upon q be a rational number. If prime factorization of q equal to 2 to the power n and 5 to the power m where n and m are non-negative integers this implies x has a decimal expansion which terminates. But if prime factorization of q not equal to 2 to the power n 5 to the power m this implies x has a decimal expansion which is non-terminating repeating that is rackering. Now let's start with a solution if we 17 upon 8. Now let x equal to 17 upon 8 on having the factors of q which is equal to 8 we see it is 2 to the power 3. This implies it is in the form of 2 to the power n equal to 2 to the power 3. This implies the fraction x equal to 17 upon 8 is terminating. Hence 17 upon 8 has a terminating decimal expansion. Hope you understood the session and enjoyed it. Thank you and goodbye.


Hi, my name is Sunny. I came from Seoul, South Korea. I graduated Kenmore State High School in 2013 and I'm studying medical imaging in Queensland University of Technology. Kenmore State High School helped me a lot to go to university by getting supplementary classes for international students such as ESL classes in lunchtime or after school. First of all, I can confidently say my international partner at Kenmore State High is awesome because she helped me a lot to get through the challenges in State High obviously and also helped me in private. My degree is at QUT which gives us to practice x-rays, CTs. We also can analyse the images and also we have opportunity to practice x-ray. So we've got a lab and we also have an opportunity to go to the placement to different hospitals in Queensland. As I study medical imaging at QUT, I would like to become a diagnostic radiographer in any places in Queensland or in Australia that would be great. I love to stay in Queensland because it's really peaceful, people are nice and especially when I study they don't give me any pressures to study comparing to Asia country. The advantage to study in Queensland is, first of all, English. You can improve your English very well. And secondly, Queensland gave me to think in a different way like internationally, globally and I can also go everywhere in the world.


Welcome, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Tabitha Thompson, and I serve as the Acting Director for USIP's Program on Nonviolent Action. We focus on research and capacity building to better understand and support movements around the world as they seek to advance human rights, justice, and sustainable peace through nonviolent means. As you may know, today is International Anti-Corruption Day, a day committed to spreading awareness about the ways we can combat corruption damaging social, political, and economic effects. A growing body of research has identified linkages between corruption and violent conflict, making it a key threat to sustainable peace and one of the greatest challenges to achieving the sustainable development goals. Rooting out corruption is important for building and maintaining democratic institutions, strengthening rule of law, and ultimately creating more just and peaceful societies. This year's theme is United Against Corruption, which very much aligns with the topic of our event today. How movements are fighting corruption and demanding transparency and the accountability for their national and local governments. This event also marks the end of a multi-year research project studying the effects of external support to movements focused on transparency, accountability, and good governance. And we are grateful to our partners at USAID and DRL for supporting this work. As part of this initiative, a series of interviews, focus group discussions, and workshops were conducted in six countries, Burma, Guatemala, Zimbabwe, Ukraine, Nigeria, and Kenya. With the goal of learning how citizens and movements are using nonviolent action to fight corruption, as well as the best ways for international actors, such as ourselves, to support them. The findings and reports for each of these countries are available on the USIP website, and you'll be hearing from three of those report authors today. They'll share what they learned as well as provide more recent insights on citizen-led efforts against corruption in light of COVID-19, which has heightened the risk of corruption in many states around the world. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce our panel. Gladys Hletwayo is the Secretary of International Relations for Zimbabwe's MDC Alliance. She has 15 years of experience in Zimbabwe's democracy movement, in which she has worked as an activist, member of a coalition, and for a donor organization. She was previously a British chevening scholar and a Hubert Humphrey Fellow at the University of Minnesota. Elena Trigo is the Secretary General of NACO, the Independent Defense Anti-Corruption Committee, which is an international oversight body created by Transparency International. She has more than 15 years of experience in policy analysis, design, and reform implementation, with a special focus on corruption prevention in economic and security sectors in Ukraine. Walter Flores is the Principal Advisor for the Center for Studies for Equity and Governance in Health Systems in Guatemala. He is a social scientist and a human rights advocate whose work has been carried out all over the world, and his expertise is in health equity, right to health, democratic governance, social accountability, and community participation in public policies. Brian Sims is a Senior Manager of Peacebuilding at Humanity United, where he leads the organization's Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation Initiative in Zimbabwe. Brian has over 10 years of experience in the fields of human rights, democracy, and governance, including research, advocacy, and the establishment of an internationally-based NGO. And finally, we are grateful that our former USIP Research Advisor, Shasko Bayer Ali, will moderate this conversation. Shasko now serves as a Senior Fellow at the Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center at George Mason University. She's a researcher, writer, and educator in nonviolent action, focusing on anti-corruption and accountability, and she's the author of Curtelling Corruption. Thank you all for taking the time to be here today to share more about your work and research. And a special thanks to my colleague, Miranda Rivers, for all the work that went into bringing us all together. Shasko? Thank you, Tabitha. If anyone cannot hear me, please let me know. Raise your hand to send a message to the chat room. We are really excited to have this session today because, as Tabitha mentioned, it is the culmination of extraordinary research that has been conducted in a number of countries around the world. And we are so fortunate to have three of the leading authors here with us today who are also civil society actors in their own right. I'd just like to give you a brief overview of how this session is going to run so that you have a sense that we have designed something as interactive as possible through Zoom and also to mention what will be the format for sending in questions and comments to the panelists. So the format will consist of two short sessions of presentations. So in our first session, our panelists will give a three to five minute overviews of the country research and the conclusions of their special report. Then we will have our first round of questions and comments from all of you out there. Then we'll turn again to the panelists and they're going to have another three to five minutes each to talk about the takeaways for civil society and international actors. I should mention that we're also very thrilled that Dr. Brian Sims from Humanity United is here with us and he is going to be discussing in the first round how Humanity United has constructively supported social movements. Without further ado, I'd like to turn the floor over to Gladys. Thank you so much, Shaska. Firstly, just to appreciate USIP for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts on this very important day. Anti-corruption day. And also to contribute to this very, to the research that we're able to do in Zimbabwe. So the title of the paper was challenges for social movements in the post-Mugabe era. Firstly, one of the key things that we're able to find out from the research was that the majority of the research respondents were of the view that there is, we have not seen a transition in Zimbabwe. We have seen a change of leadership, but that change of leadership was not concomitant with the change of the governance culture in the country. So the 2017 November coup has not led to a transition despite the optimism that we saw that was characterized by the immediate post-coup period. And also the rhetoric that came out of the current administration under President Mnangagwa, especially around the promise for comprehensive reforms and a transformation to a democratic Zimbabwe. What we have seen instead is more of authoritarian consolidation characterized by militarization, characterized by closure of democratic space, closure of civic space. We saw what happened on the first of August just after the elections when six citizens were actually killed in broad daylight in the streets of Harare for demonstrating to demand election results. We also saw what happened in January 2019 when citizens were demonstrating demanding, they were demonstrating against the increase of few prizes, the hiking that had happened. We saw how 17 citizens were also killed related to January 2019. We also saw just recently July 31, 2020 when citizens were also demonstrating against corruption. And we saw quite a number of people being arrested, quite a number of people being detained, abductions. And extra judicial killings. We have also seen lethargy on reforms. In fact, as I'm talking to you right now, there are 27 amendments that are being proposed by the government in this 27 amendments to the constitution are not meant to feather the rights of citizens, but they actually meant to consolidate power for the current administration. We have also seen a little first state capture and corruption, escalation of human rights abuses. Since 2018, we have seen 50 extra judicial killings in more than 120 abductions being perpetrated by the government. And there's also been a lot of impunity because no one has been held to account for all of these human rights abuses. So largely President Munagaku has retained and perfected the predatory systems that sustained the previous president, President Mugabe, which bordered around party-state conflation, captured state institutions, talk of your media, the judiciary, military police, the electoral management body, all of these are under the firm grip of the executive. We have also seen militarization of state institutions, including the executive itself. I think for the first time in Zimbabwe, we now have former generals who are part of the executive and the current vice president is actually a former general in the army. Coming more specifically to issues of corruption since today we are talking about the anti-corruption day, President Munagaku promised to put an end to corruption and to bring paper traitors of corruption to book. I think this was one of his campaign messages in 2017, November, but also is the country prepared for the 2018 elections. Nevertheless, corruption and state capture have become so pervasive and have become one of the greatest failures of the current regime. They've absolutely failed to deal with this cancer in society. And in the majority of cases, corruption cases have been linked to individuals that are quite close to the president and the first family, including his own wife and his sons. There are also individuals such as Kudabwase T'Aguide. This individual is actually under restrictive measures of the US government. And he is... One minute, please. One minute left. Okay. I didn't realize I was already... Anyway, let me try to quickly finish. So all of these individuals are really close to the president and nothing has really been done to make sure that paper traitors of these corruption cases are actually brought to book. Between 2017 and 2018, USD $6 billion was actually lost to corruption under a program called Command Agriculture where the military was heavily involved. And these statistics are actually available in the Auditor General's report as well as the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee. The Anti-Corruption Commission, which is supposed to be an independent commission to look into these issues is really captured. In fact, it is led by the wife of the current foreign affairs minister who is also a former general. So you can actually see that there is no political will to do with these issues. And we have seen a lot of catch and release where individuals are arrested, but nothing really comes out of those cases. And some of them are actually given bail without even the state contesting some of these issues. And lastly, I just wanted to say we have also seen the state going after whistleblowers in generalists who are actually exposing some of these corruption cases. I'm sure you might have followed the case of Hopo Chingono, who was arrested for an effing some of these corruption cases. Citizen protests against corruption have also been brutally crushed. I think I've already made reference to this issue. So corruption is really a big issue in Zimbabwe. And statistics are showing us that we are losing about a billion dollars, United States dollars as a result of corruption. I think I will end here. And maybe I can have more time to speak next time. Thank you Gladys. And I'm sorry we are keeping the presentations short because I know that there's so much to discuss about Zimbabwe. And there could be a whole entire session just on the situation and the report itself too. Thank you. I'd like to turn now to Dr. Walter Flores from Guatemala. And Walter, could you please take three to five minutes to present an overview of the country research and the special report? Great, thank you. During the last decade, we saw a search interest in looking at social movements confronting corruption and demanding transparency and accountability in different parts of the world. They are of spring Eastern Europe and Latin America and specifically my own country, Guatemala. In our report, we argued that in the case of Guatemala, the roots of social movements fighting corruption and impunity have a long history, centuries, particularly indigenous people movements fighting oppression in a post-colonial society. In our report, we focus on human rights movement of the last four decades, which includes indigenous and non-indigenous activists and how they influence the young and urban social movements that led the 2015 demands for the resignation of the president and vice president accused of corruption. The main findings in our report is that the success of the social movements of 2015 was based on several conditions that were achievements of long standing indigenous and human rights movements. For example, the access to information law of the year 2008, the creation of a National Ombudsman Office and the creation of a United Nations Pact Commission against impunity in the year 2006. Urban youth led social media. They use social media as the main tool for communication and organizing. However, the mobilization gradually expanded to include more and more of the long-established social movements and more traditional means and tools for communication. After several months of peaceful protests, the president and vice president resign. They are currently in prison facing trial. But despite the energy of mobilized citizens, it all came to a sudden stop once authorities resigned. Some organizations such as indigenous movement insisted in continuing the pressure to demand structural reforms and agree on unified social justice demands beyond corruption. However, this did not happen. Elections were near and there was a general impression that the new authorities would continue the anti-corruption agenda. The new government elected under an anti-corruption slogan did all the opposite. It allowed and facilitated the restructuring of a coalition of politicians, judges, bureaucrats and some members of the economic elite engaged in corruption and impunity. This coalition led a backlash against anti-corruption movement. Despite the backlash, an anti-corruption movement is still very much present in Guatemala and is still fighting against this very strong coalition inserted in the overall state apparatus. And, but very importantly, they are showing that they had been learning from the experience of the year 2015. Nowadays, we can see that the social movement fighting corruption, they are using different strategies, not only the street protests, but they are also fighting in the judiciary system and they're also created a new political party and they're trying to elect progressive politicians as well. So, very importantly, social movements do learn in this process. And now we stop here. Thank you. Thank you, Walter. You're pointing to something to many important lessons and how the movement is learning and adapting and also starting to shift strategies and tactics and to actually combine institutional and extra-institutional tactics together. So I think that we definitely will stay tuned on what is happening in Guatemala. And sometimes there are some steps forward and then some steps back and then some steps forward again, which leads me to our next speaker, Olena Tregub, who in fact used that expression as the title for the special report on Ukraine. Olena, could you please take three to five minutes to present an overview of the country research and the special report? Yes, sure. Indeed, corruption struggle in Ukraine can be described as some ongoing struggle and Ukraine, according to many rankings, according to the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International is the most corrupt country in Europe. And of course, this struggle has started, I would say, since day one of Ukrainian independence, but my report specifically speaks about what happened after so-called Euromaidan Revolution in 2014, we had a big national uprising to basically demand pro-Western democratization and reform in Ukraine. And our pro-Russian president fled to Russia and a new president was elected the pro-Western president, Poroshenko. And since then, of course, anti-corruption reform became number one priority because if you ask an average Ukrainian in sociological polls, you see that they say that two biggest problems of Ukraine are corruption and war with the Russia. So did we really have anti-corruption movement in Ukraine? This is what I'm trying to answer among other things in my report. And the answer is, unfortunately, no. We had a very serious anti-corruption agenda supported by international actors, by professionalized civil society actors who are called in Ukrainian society, anti-corruption years. There is even like a name, this profession, I would say, but it's a professional thing. All these people, they work for institutionalized NGOs. And they were very influential at the time of post-revolutionary reform and they were able to gather with international partners to push for a certain agenda. And that agenda was establishment of, no, I'm sorry, that's my dog, sorry, sorry. And that agenda was establishment of independent anti-corruption institutions, the infrastructure of those institutions, which included the National Corruption Prevention Agency. It included the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Office and Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine. And as of, and my report describes how these institutions were set up and how difficult it was, it also describes other achievements of Ukrainian anti-corruption struggles, such as establishment of transparent system of electronic asset declarations of government officials, transparent procurement, which is probably one of the most successful anti-corruption reforms after my revolution. Yet, my report that concludes that corruption remains persistent. And also my report concludes that it's very hard in Ukraine to mobilize society for some social movement on the anti-corruption agenda. I actually even make a comparison with the social movement that we had after the war with Russia started. People really united on all levels of society, not people who only do it professionally, but also like common people who were given away their time, their money in order to help Ukraine fight Russia in the East. And this was a real movement. And these people even entered Ukrainian Ministry of Defense because they said that not only they now are replacing the function of the state because they understand that the state is weak and they are just citizens are replacing this national security function. But they also said, let us reform this state, let us enter MUD as advisors and let us just draft a new legislation in order to reform defense procurement, housing, food, all the kind of necessities in the war. And this was a real movement, but anti-corruption remained our high priority. Everybody worries about it yet. Of course, the result is not yet the one that we would like to see and our international partners would like to see. Thank you, Alina. I appreciate that you're giving such a concise summary of such an in-depth report. It's not easy to do that. And you're pointing to the, in a way, the balance, the difficult balance that civil society actors have in the anti-corruption realm between on the one hand being a strong resource and source of policy analysis and recommendations that have a bite that can be listened to and adopted. And on the other hand staying connected to citizens and continuing to sustain citizen involvement and mobilization in the anti-corruption struggle. Absolutely. We have very strong civil society in Ukraine, very vibrant, but it is strong exactly in the area of giving policy recommendation and formulating policies. Yet it's not strong in mobilizing citizens for something because these are two separate worlds a little bit and these worlds unite only when we have some massive uprising like we had in 2014. Thank you. Last but not least, I'd like to turn to Brian Sims from Humanity United. And Brian, you haven't written a special report for USIP yet, but maybe you will one day. But in the meantime, I think all of us would really benefit from hearing from you about how Humanity United, which is an international actor has constructively supported social movements. Sure, first I just wanna say it's a real privilege to be here and to be in conversation with everyone. So thanks for having me. And for perhaps those of you who aren't familiar with HU were a foundation that was founded in 2008 and our peace building approach is really centered around supporting locally led peace building initiatives as well as networks, practices, policies, all to elevate the voices of local peace builders. And so over the past few years, we've learned a lot about how to be and how not to be a donor within this really fluid, often very intense but really rewarding space. And so there are four lessons that we've learned from supporting social movements that really account for how we show up now. And so the first is that donors really need to understand the movement ecosystem. And I think this was something that both Gladys and Charles pointed out in their report for Zimbabwe. And so that includes understanding power dynamics as they're perceived by our movement partners, by allies and by the opposition, so to speak, all in an effort to facilitate strategic relationships where sort of the knowledge and the agency of those who are doing the work is respected. And this also means encouraging and supporting safe spaces where we go beyond connecting the usual suspects and we either create or we reinforce those unlikely networks among activists, among people that'll work within NGOs, sympathetic civil servants, musicians, creatives and technologists, but really in order to expand and to improve their knowledge of civil resistance but also to find ways to make sure that knowledge is available, that it's understandable and that it really becomes attractive to their own communities. Second, there's always a need to focus on capacity and strategy. And one of the gaps that we're seeing and experts like Maria Stefan and yourself Shostka have made a really compelling case about this is that as authoritarians become more sophisticated in monitoring or repressing activists and human rights defenders and as more people use social media to connect and to mobilize, movement effectiveness is decreasing. And so we're committing to supporting an array of trainings and workshops that talk about power that teach people of good old-fashioned organizing skills. We're supporting dialogue and mediation approaches that really try to identify local grievances and solutions in ways that bring communities, especially those that are at loggerheads with one another that bring them together to identify and strive for that common goal view. And I also think it's really important to keep in mind that partners and donors can have multiple strategies at the same time. You can increase resistance while laying the foundation for dialogue and sustainable peace. Third is as a donor that is not accountable to government strategy or to a taxpayer, we can assume some risk. And that's important because not only does shared risk really increase the initial trust, but there are times when key activities, especially when it comes to seeking accurate information on grand corruption or state capture, they may be too dangerous for people living in a country to undertake or to investigate. And so I think we have a duty to make sure that people on the ground who are doing the work have the access to the most accurate information possible as they plan and as they seek to leverage their influence. And finally, we've recognized sort of a need to be really, you know, to be able to move quickly, to support partners that find themselves in a moment of crisis or there's an unexpected window of opportunity, as well as commit to partners for longer periods of time and accompany them to achieve their goals. So all the while, you know, we want to be really cognizant of the fact that movements at peaks and valleys and they require different types of support. And so just sort of to bring this home, these lessons and others have led us to make sure that as a donor, we can either respond in ways or encourage our partners to respond in ways that capitalize on both the designing and implementing strategies that are really sort of the nexus of those contentious extra institutional methods that can intensify conflict. So civil disobedience and self-organizing with the more conventional mitigation methods, right? So those multi-track approaches, focusing on activities that support dialogue and facilitation and mediation, that when you bring them together, we really try to create paths for inclusive political and peace processes that try to avoid agreements that only address the really narrow preferences of elites and often further entrenching of inequality and poverty and really the root causes of violence. Thank you, Brian, for summarizing so much wisdom about effective donor support in such a short time. You've hit on so many key points and I think it will give our other panelists a lot to comment on in terms of their own experiences and perhaps even people who are participating virtually in our session. So I'd like to encourage everyone who is listening in right now to please send in questions. Please send in any comments or experiences that you may be having in a country either with international actors or within your institution or civil society organization or movement. We'd like to hear from you now. So I'd like to, and just mention again because it's really important to please, in order to submit your questions and comments, please use the chat box function that's located just below the video player on USIP's event page. So all of you who have connected via USIP's event page please look on there now and submit your comments and questions just below in the chat box function just below the video player. While you're doing that, perhaps I can just turn to all of you because we're operating in a different world now from when the field research was done and the reports were written. And of course that world that we all share now is the COVID-19 pandemic world. And so perhaps it would be great if each of you could take a couple of minutes to just share with us some comments about, I mean just some comments about how are transparency, accountability, good governance, anti-corruption, movements and civic initiatives in your country pivoting towards or dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic or how is the pandemic affecting the anti-corruption, transparency, accountability, good governance, movements and civic initiatives in your country. Olena, would you like to just start first this time around and I'll go in reverse order? Sure, well, definitely COVID-19 is a big factor. Well, and before COVID-19, of course I'd like to mention that the fact that we have an ongoing military conflict in Ukraine also affects very much anti-corruption struggle because first of all it distracts attention from corruption struggle if the national sovereignty is at stake, national security, of course, everybody feels it's a priority. It's essentially Russian aggression is scarier than corruption to people. So it is very similar with COVID, I would say. If COVID is a threat, then of course corruption is less of a threat when we need to deal with COVID. And society generally cares less about different stories that keep happening not in COVID related expenses, but in other areas, other sectors, energy, defense, our customs, they remain as corrupt as before even more but people pay less attention and this story, some occasional story or some corruption scandal generates less of a response from people than before, I would say. And when it comes to COVID itself, of course, like any country, we established the COVID fund and we allocated national resources to this fund and resources of the international donors and there was a lot of scrutiny to how this fund was spent because a lot of organizations, they did their projects around monitoring this fund and yet, even though there was this oversight, the fund wasn't spent properly and like more than half of the money was spent on constructing roads, for example, instead of medical expenses related to COVID and nobody could do anything about it. And right now, the international monetary fund who is our key international partner is auditing the expenses of the Ukrainian COVID fund and trying to understand why we spent all of our money on roads instead of fighting COVID. But the answer is, of course, again, corruption during construction of roads. Well, I wonder if there's a different dynamic in Guatemala or Zimbabwe, perhaps where the linkage between corruption and COVID responses and public services to deal with the pandemic is being made if those linkages are being made and if citizens are involved in that. So Walter, let me turn to you and just ask you for just a brief response about the impact or the interplay of COVID with citizen mobilization. Yes, so because of the lockdown, of course, this affected possibilities of the collective action, which is the heart, the center of social movements, but using this same lockdown and using the national emergency as justification, we have seen that the corruption has exacerbated the country. We also see a lack of capacity in authorities to lead the response to the pandemic, a lot of lying and not being transparent with the citizens about what's happening with the pandemic. So we have seen that citizens have lost trust on authorities, but very importantly, throughout this process civil protest by social movement did not stop. It's only that they adapted to the new reality. For instance, we have seen an increased use of digital spaces for protests, such as Facebook, Twitter, and others, a lot of using local radio and audiovisual campaigns. And more recently, civil protest has returned to the streets, but they have adopted protecting measures such as everybody using masks, a facial mask, maintaining physical distance, use of gloves or hand washing. And in the past few weeks, a large civic protest which included street mobilization in different parts of the country were successful in forcing parliament to back up in the approval of a budget for next year that was very much prone to corruption and with insufficient support for people worse affected by the pandemic. These mobilizations still continue because they are putting pressure in the resignation of the authorities that push for this very corrupt budget. But more importantly, the message is that people is aware that the pandemic will stay a lot longer, it's not going to disappear soon. So they are rapidly adapting to the new reality and continue with the street protest, but also using more alternative communication, as I mentioned. Thank you, Walter. There's a lot happening in Guatemala and you're illustrating how quickly, sometimes adaptation can happen and that creativity enters into tactical repertoire, into the selection and development of tactics to put pressure on those who are not listening. Gladys, let me turn to you and ask you for a brief report from Zimbabwe in a few minutes, about three or four minutes about how, what is the interplay between COVID and social movement activity around corruption, transparency, accountability, and governance? The situation has really been difficult for social movements in Zimbabwe in the COVID-19 era. We have seen largely what has been termed an authoritarian pandemic where the government has been using the lockdown in COVID-19 to sort of curtail the freedoms of citizens. And citizens have really been trying to mobilize, come together to demand accountability around how the COVID-19 funds are being handled to demand accountability even in terms of the inability of government to provide social safety to citizens. Zimbabwe is a highly informalized economy so the majority of citizens do not have formal jobs and as a result because of the lockdown they've not been able to go to their jobs and there was an expectation that the government was therefore supposed to provide social safety to the citizens and that has not happened. So the government is really taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to further loot resources at the expense of the citizens but also using the COVID-19 pandemic to sort of curtail the freedoms of citizens. As I'm talking to you right now elections were actually suspended because and to be quite honest we don't have apart from the fact that we are not testing enough we really don't have huge numbers in terms of the cases but the government is really seeing it as an opportunity to curtail the freedoms of citizens and also even to go after political opponents. They have used the lockdown to go after the MDC Alliance using the courts, using the military to seize the headquarters of the opposition they're doing a lot of things under the guise of COVID-19. So it's really an opportunity for them to further their political agendas in terms of destroying the authentic opposition in Zimbabwe. So I would say those have been the experiences in Zimbabwe's more of an authoritarian pandemic that we are seeing. Thank you, Gladys. I mean, the experiences in Zimbabwe echo what's happening in other parts of the world too. And for example, you and both you and Olina have talked about how resources and funding that's supposed to go towards COVID pandemic is actually being looted. And it just listening to you just makes me think that they're one of the things perhaps that international actors could do and are doing and maybe Brian will tell us about this is bringing together virtually people of activists and civic leaders from different countries who are trying to operate within the pandemic to learn from each other. So just listening to the three of you, I can just see how fruitful it would be if for example, the three of you and some others from other parts of the countries just got together virtually and started talking about how are you doing it? What are you doing? And things like that, something that's very simple but could be so profound. So that was not meant to be a segue to Brian, but Brian, it would be great to hear your input as a private foundation. How is the pandemic affecting your priorities and interactions with social movements? And I'll mention that once you share with us some thoughts, I'm going to direct a question to you from one of the participants. Sure, and this sounds good. So one of the things I want to do is also just maybe take a step back and sort of acknowledge that as a donor we need to be really aware of what the environmental costs are of doing this work. So this means being aware of burnout and exhaustion, being aware of mental and physical health that is either threatened by repression and violence, as well as the stressors that are a result of this pandemic. And so we try to accommodate this in a few ways. And the first is we try to provide general operating support grants to organizations that provide legal support and medical and psychosocial care in countries where we've committed to accompanying movement partners over a bit more medium and longer term. And we also make sure that essentially immediate family members of those people that we do support also have access to those services. And in situations where we can't give out those types of grants, we try to connect our partners to organizations like Freedom House to other regional human rights defenders networks to sort of help them seek additional support in emergencies. And we try to sort of help them problem solve as best we can as we go along. But also during the pandemic, what we did is we actually reached out to every partner that we had to basically ask them what it was that they needed. So this included things like making sure that they had money available to pay staff salaries and to cover staff benefits. This meant providing extra equipment, whether it was laptops or sort of dongles and cell phones that people could connect. Making sure that people had not only access to internet but good access if it was available. And it also meant things like changing timelines and readjusting goals as needed and just being, try to be more flexible than what we could also, what we normally are. And then the other thing I sort of just going back to some of the conversations that the other participants were mentioning, I think one of the things to also keep in mind and it's trying to maybe find a little bit of light in what is a really sort of hectic situation around the world right now is that I think there is also an opportunity recognizing that sort of COVID and corruption could potentially offer sort of a convergence a convergence point, if you will. I think there are these issues could bridge the interests of certain people within government, certain folks within movements in civil society to help them organize around healthcare but also sort of lay the groundwork for some of the more radical and sort of systemic change that needs to happen. Thanks, Brian. Thanks for these really valuable and astute observations. The, as mentioned, I have a question for you. The question is, I will read it out. It is, I have a very operational or process question. What does implementing these principles look like in terms of staffing and tools provided by your organization? That's a great question. So I think a couple of things. One is that a lot of this, we really try to focus on relationships. So what it does mean is that operationally, we commit to investing the time with organizations and with people to really try to understand as best we can what their situation is and what it is that they want from us and how we can provide that for them. So that might sort of mean having a looking internally to figure out what types of skills and things that we can offer beyond just funding. And in situations where maybe we don't have those capacities looking to other sort of other organizations who we have relationships or organizations and people who have those skills and making sure that we can connect them. So that might mean we put together a contract for an organization that is really skilled at developing sort of PR campaigns. If an organization or movement doesn't have that capacity and sort of connecting them that way, we sort of try to make those connections and build up those networks so that the partners that we do have are building the skills that they need to have to feel confident both in their ideas and their ability to take it forward. And sort of build their own networks without each you having to be the person constantly driving that forward. Yeah, I think a lot of it really focuses on that. So it's good relationships and then sort of making sure that people on networks and have the ability to sort of build their skills as they see fit. I mean, you raise really important points that when we talk about international support for social movements, oftentimes the immediate thought is funding, but in reality, there are so many non-financial avenues of support that are so important to movements and that are often very simple and don't require a lot of funding to make happen. For example, what you mentioned, which is putting movement actors in touch with organizations and groups who themselves have skills or capacities that they could share with movement actors. And I mean, and we, you know, I'm sure all of you in our panel would have examples from your countries about that where you wish it would have happened or it happened and it was really helpful. The next question is directed to Walter. And the question is, given the recent less peaceful protest tactics employed in Guatemala to demand reform, do you think a return to the peaceful mass mobilization style of 2015 is required to be effective? Yes, I think that this less peaceful action that was mentioned, which included a status on fire in parliament and also a public transport, these are the exception stills. This were probably some people that were very much upset with the situation, but it still is not the main trend. The process are still peaceful and I'm very confident that they will remain peaceful. Of course, there is no, in this kind of very large civic action, there is no control of every single person involved in the actions. But what is very important, I think, is that immediately the large social movement realized that as soon as the movement is stopped being nonviolent, then they lose the legitimacy that they have for their demands. And this is very clear. There was a widespread information that that's our legitimacy, we should maintain that. So I'm pretty confident that it will remain peaceful because it's very much aware that that's where the strength comes from. Thank you, Walter. Another question has come in and I will read it out and ask whomever from the panelists would like to respond to please raise your hand. The question is throughout these USIP reports, there seems to be less success in accountability initiatives than transparency initiatives. What can we do to bridge this gap? Elena, please. Yeah, I would like to say a few words on this because it's exactly the Ukrainian case. Ukraine is super transparent. One of the most transparent countries, you can find anything about anybody online, the court decisions, declarations, people's addresses, anything. Yet no accountability. And of course, we came to our conclusion is that we need to reform judiciary. Anti-corruption court was not enough. It existed now for one year, but only six people were sent to jail and those people, they committed like small scale corruption comparing to what we have here. And yes, judiciary is a very important pillar of society. And if there is no fair judiciary in the country, there will never be any accountability. That's very simple. Thank you, Elena. Gladys, we'd love to hear from you. Thanks. I just wanted to say, I think for Zimbabwe, it's a different ballgame altogether because we actually don't have transparency. We also don't have accountability. And it is largely because of the captured institutions that we have. We have some kind of a facade democracy where the institutions that are supposed to provide oversight are there on paper. But in terms of how those institutions are working, it's another story altogether. So we have an anti-corruption commission that is supposed to be dealing with these issues of corruption, but again, like I indicated, it's a captured institution and it's failing to discharge its constitutional duties. We have the judiciary is the same case. The judiciary is actually used to persecute political opponents and tag actors and civil society actors. So I think for Zimbabwe, in some of these corruption cases, it's actually money that is being siphoned, for instance, directly from treasure. So you actually see that there is no transparency to talk about and even the oversight role of parliament is currently being decimated because the opposition parliamentarians are being plugged out of parliament as we speak. So just recently, our own vice president, Tendai Niti, who chairs the parliamentary public accounts committee, which is very key in terms of oversight role of parliament on the executive was actually arrested on very flimsy charges. But you can see that they were going after him because of the role that he's playing in terms of providing oversight. So for Zimbabwe, no transparency, no accountability. Thank you, Gladys. Walter, did you want to comment? Yes, transparency is an important factor to achieve accountability, but by itself is not sufficient. And I think that's one of the major weakness of many organizations working in the area of good governance and transparency and accountability that they assume that by supporting transparency action, that's sufficient or automatically lead to accountability. I think organization must be aware, especially external donors, that tackling corruption and lack of accountability is actually tackling the abuse of power by powerful actors and authorities. So this is not a matter of having a set of rules, it's a matter of long-term engagement and pushing and pulling with this very powerful actors. So it's very difficult to have achievements or success in accountability if donors work in a frame of mind or one or two year cycles instead of seeing that this is a long-term process and also instead of adapting to how the solution is evolving. It is easier for donors wanting to support this that they just want to support similar strategies or the same thing that they use elsewhere with a really paying attention to each individual context, what do they need and support more long-term engagement process. So until we start doing that, I think we will not see successful examples of tackling the issues of lack of accountability or for corruption. Thanks, you've hit on something very important that a lot of this discourse and concepts come from the international community and their applicability or relevance may not be the same in each context. Brian, I don't know if you would like to comment on this line of conversation, but if you want to take two minutes or so, please do so. Yeah, thanks. I mean, just to sort of belong to what Walter was saying, is I think it's also important to not sort of look at donors as all the same. So making sure that there are situations where you have donors with a lot of money who are often the USAIDs, the diffids, the cities of the world who can come in and sort of really, they have the capital to invest and really shift, but it's also making sure that organizations that you all run are able to also link up with foundations who have a little more flexibility and find ways to get them, find ways to program and do the work that you want to do and sort of use both of those different types of organizations for your own benefit. Thank you. That's really helpful, Brian. So we have now 15 minutes left to our session. Time has been flying by and questions are coming in. So what I'd like to do as the moderator is the following. There's one question that's come in for Gladys. I'd like to give Gladys the floor to answer that question and then basically take the remaining time for each of you to wrap up. And in the wrap up, if you would very succinctly just share a few takeaways for civil society and international actors from the USIP field research and the special reports you authored. So literally if you would be able to just say here are two, one, two, three takeaways for civil society and social movement actors, one, two, three takeaways for international actors. I think a lot of that has already been covered in the conversation, but I know that there are rich insights in the reports and it would be great for you just to highlight a few of those insights. So we've got now exactly 15 minutes and there are four of you. So that means less than four minutes per person and I have to be really strict.  So I'm gonna set the timer for three minutes and then after three minutes I'm just gonna say like do this for each of you. So Gladys, the question for you is given the recent events in Zimbabwe, do you think Zimbabweans in general are fed up and ready to join social events for drastic change or have they given up hope? So if you could answer that question and then share a few takeaways, that would be phenomenal. I do not think that Zimbabweans have given up hope on the situation in Zimbabwe. Yes, we have a very difficult situation, especially around the capacity of citizens to mobilize given how militarized the society is, but I think Zimbabweans continue to demonstrate that they are ready to come together and to let the regime know that they are not happy with what is going on around corruption, human rights abuses, all of the issues that we are facing in Zimbabwe. And we saw that even after the first of August, 2018, after 2019, we saw citizens coming together again just recently around the July 31st movement. So the citizens have continuously tried their level best to mobilize. And I believe that someday Zimbabweans will, they will be successful in terms of getting what they are demanding from the government. Coming to the recommendations or the key takeaways from the research, I think number one, with specific reference to countries such as Zimbabwe, it is important for international actors to help, you know, tag actors in terms of putting diplomatic pressure, you know, for reforms, especially for Zimbabwe, it's really important. I mean, given how the society so militarized, how the civic space has, you know, shrunk, it's important to get that boost from international actors in terms of diplomatic pressure to make sure that there are reforms that are necessary to the resolution of the crisis. That's number one. Number two, you know, more resources are needed for democracy and governance actor in such environments so that they continuously, you know, push a back on authoritarian consolidation. It's unfortunate that, you know, given the context of COVID and everything, I mean, donor priorities are shifting and everything, but it's important to make sure that, you know, authoritarian regimes such as Zimbabwe, democracy and governance resources are built. And this funding should not just be available, you know, around elections because when these funds are also, you know, around available around elections, it feeds into the, you know, propaganda by regimes such as, you know, the one that we have in Zimbabwe that, you know, civil society organizations, are puppets of the West and they are there to push a regime change agenda. So it's important for civil society to remain visible in communities throughout the electro cycle. Number three, it's important to support, the support should be targeted at various levels.  And so it's important to also focus on these organizations. And some of these organizations do not necessarily take the box, all the boxes in terms of, you know, criteria for funding and everything. And it's important to be flexible to allow these organizations to do the kind of work that is needed at a grassroots level.  It's really important, especially in context such as Zimbabwe where there are sensitivities around the role of the West and, you know, all the propaganda that we get from the government. I would say for me, those are some of the recommendations to external actors. I'll stop here. Thank you, Gladys. That's really an important list of recommendations. And I know all the hard work that you and Charles Mangonguera did in Zimbabwe to gather this input and these insights. Thank you for that. Walter, I'd like to turn to you quickly, very, very fast. Please share with us a few takeaways. Yes, it may take away from our research, but also from my work in many different countries is that we have the support of external donors and supported like the organizations of Brian, but they are the minority. The majority of the support come from bilateral donors or large donors that use public funding and they are used very inadequate structure to provide support. They use the same framework that they use to support general development, which is very rigid, the logical frameworks and very in the principal value for money, which it doesn't really work for this kind of work or supporting organic social movements. My second comment is that there is a need to support the organic analysis, capacity building and learning within organizations. Still, many donors are parachuting external consultants into different countries that are aiming to provide support to grassroots organizations or social movements that many of them do know what they need, what they want, what they need is the support of solidarity instead of the external consultant parachuted. And the final one, which is very important, I think is the most important is that we need support for grassroots organization. The heart of social movements are grassroots organization and by that, I mean voluntary organization, they are aiming to improve public policies and services that directly is affecting them. So this is opposed to many of us who work in professional NGOs. So donors, external actors need to have alternative arrangements to support grassroots movement because many of them ask grassroots organization to have financial and administrative system to receive grants, which they do not have, but some of the alternatives that we can have is NGOs, local NGOs, national NGOs that do have those structures, they can be intermediary organizations with external donors to provide support through training, capacity building to grassroots organizations. I'll stop there. Thank you, you did that in two minutes. I've got, I'm timing you. All in all, two minutes, please. I know that's not a lot of time, but please share with us some takeaways for the report. I'll try to be here as precise as Walter in terms of timing. Indeed, in my report, I had exactly the same recommendation about the grassroots movements about local communities because like I mentioned before, there is no national nationwide organic and corruption movement in Ukraine, but there are multiple organic movements that happen around different localities around the different corruption problems where corruption is affecting people themselves, but yet those people are not able to receive any funding. And my suggesting was that these big professional organizations in the capital can be used as a funding hub for those smaller organizations and capacity building facility. The second recommendation for international donors was to essentially try to leverage the power of Ukrainian civil society more when they are trying to push for reforms in Ukraine because I analyzed in my report that many of the reforms that were conditions of conditionalities of the international donors failed because civil society were not interested in them, they didn't know. And civil society is really powerful in Ukraine. They go on TV, they go in parliament, they shape opinions. So international donors should understand that they need to engage more with society to achieve this country ownership of a reform. Another recommendation was of course to set those conditionalities in a strict fashion. And if we see that corruption persists, donors can refrain from providing financial support because very often the support that the country receives is used to even increase corruption and to profit corrupt officials. This is of course a known fact. And my last point was that it's very important to pay attention to protection and support of anti-corruption activists because on the cover of my report, we chose to have a picture of anti-corruption activist Vitaliy Shabunin and at the time of my report, he was attacked during one of the street protests with some medical antiseptic liquid. But now, one year later, his house was set on fire. So that's the difference and the scale. And we had one of the anti-corruption activists, Katarina Gatzuk, not from Kiev, but actually she's a regional activist. And regional activists are much more in danger than Kiev activists.  So just we should always remember about this, especially on this day. Thank you. Thank you, Olana. You echo what, you were reinforcing what Gladys is saying that solidarity and protection is so important. People are challenging vested interests and they face repercussions for that. Brian, I'd like to give you two minutes. Apologies that I cannot stretch our time. I'm gonna put the timer on and then we'll just wrap up.  Thank you. I'm gonna work at Shostak and I can speak fast. Sort of holding that really good question around process and operations, holding onto that for a moment. One of the things that all the reports mentioned was that tension felt between movements and activists and donors who have different priorities. And we were all pretty well aware of how donor dollars can create or exacerbate divisions within civil society that ultimately handicapped the ability to sustain a kind of mass non-violent action that builds social cohesion and fragments power of the ruling party or the government, which is really needed to get those key individuals to jump ship and help shift power. So our approach is to try to mitigate this in sort of like three different ways. And I hope there are other things that resonate both with folks who are donors and folks who are accepting donor money. And so the first is right off the bat at our first meeting with a potential partner. It's important that we are clear about what our interest is, what we're offering other than just funding, why we think collaboration is gonna help achieve mutual goals and what our red lines are. And so among those red lines is that we will only support movements that are committed to non-violence whose campaigns are consistent with international recognized human rights and movements that are not part of the portable party. And this framework was really adopted by thought leader in the field and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and I hope we can get that link in the chat. The other thing is we gotta really take on the work to find out not only where the gaps in funding are but to ask people what they're already planning on doing so that we avoid a situation whereby certain activities are getting triple funded because donors think they're attractive and the real needs aren't getting funded. And perhaps sort of what I was trying to talk about before is a unique role that we can play are those networks that we can bring in when they're relevant and that can help our partners fast track progress. And so some other things that we have done is that we try to have private and as frank as possible conversations with other donors about making sure that financial support is spread out and that we avoid came-making so to speak. And then we try to connect our partners like I said earlier to those who have a certain technical experience but we also try to make sure that those partners and those voices are connected to people that are on Capitol Hill or who are in the executive, people who set policy but who are designing RFPs. So that they better understand the impact that they're having in creating harmful competition or in an effort really to mitigate those predefined externally determined objectives and goals. And I'll leave it there. Thank you. My apologies for doing this. We're gonna be cut off in one minute. So I'd just like to thank all of you for your outstanding and insightful contributions. And thanks to all the participants for joining us today and thanks to the United States Institute of Peace and Miranda Rivers and our other colleagues for convening this meeting. If you want to stay in touch, please get in touch and we'd be happy to forward you resources on the special reports. Thank you very much. I think we're gonna get cut off in like five seconds. Thank you all.