So, hi everyone, welcome thanks for coming out on a, you know, Friday evening late afternoon depending on where you are. We figured we'd try something a little bit different, since many people are stuck inside at these times anyway. So, my name is Joe to manual hall, I am an organizer and educator with labor notes based in Brooklyn, New York. Many of you are probably already familiar with labor notes but I'll give the little backstory in case you aren't labor notes is a multimedia education project focused on trying to help build and facilitate and foster and coordinate a militant wing of the labor movement of getting people from one another about struggles that they've been involved in things that they're taking on. And so we put out a monthly magazine and have been doing so for 40 years, we publish a lot of news material on our website. And we also host educational events both ones like these that are panels but we also do a lot of training and organizing training education and look forward to being able to do so in person with you all again. The big flagship event is every two years we do this big conference in Chicago just outside of Chicago to that brings together thousands of rank and file staff officers from unions around the country and around the world to learn from one another teach from one another and just network in a way that we think is really important. So, without further ado or talking from me. I'm going to get started with this and pass it off to the panelists, just a couple of quick housekeeping notes. If you have questions for the panelists that chat is going to be really difficult for me to follow doing all of these different things please use the q&a. It's great to have people introducing themselves in the chat and doing stuff like that.  So, with all of that being said, we're going to keep it to try to keep it to within an hour to respect everybody's time. And, you know, I think that we'll have a lot of good discussion in that time. Without further ado, I want to pass it off first to our first panelist, Kristen Perez who is an RN and a unit steward with the Illinois Nurses Association at UIC hospital in Chicago, and who's going to tell us about a strike that she was involved in and then we're going to go to our next panelist and then we're going to keep going and have some back and forth discussion. So, Kristen, thanks so much for coming. Thanks Joe. I'm really happy to be here and talk to other people who are interested in labor action and furthering union causes, both in Chicago and across the country. The way I found out about, you know, being on this panel that I participate in a monthly group of people who are union members from different parts of the country and we talk about different labor and union issues where we are locally. And so I'm really glad to be able to have the same kind of discussion with a broader audience. At our, the strike that I participated in specifically just happened this past September. And it stemmed from an expired contract that expired in August of last year with a very contentious negotiation process with our hospital administrators, it was really going nowhere. And, you know, they just gave us no choice in the matter but to strike. We had a resounding strike vote that was, I want to say more than 99% of our membership voted to strike. And administration still did not take that as we were serious and we did have to go out on strike and we went out for seven days. The great thing about it is that the other labor union that exists within our hospital other than INA is SEIU and they are the overwhelming majority of union membership in our hospital. And they have over 5000 members, whereas INA is something like 1000 nurses. So the two unions together coordinated about strike dates, and we didn't go out on the same day but we went out each union within, I think INA went out on a Friday and SEIU followed us out on the following Monday. So there was upwards of five, 6000 people outside of the hospital who are usually inside the hospital working. And so those numbers outside the hospital really sent a message, not only to the administrators but to the public of what the issues were, and that it wasn't just something trivial. It was more than just nurses wanting a raise, which is what the hospital likes to, you know, portray it to be, but we were really fighting for really important safety issues, not only for nurses what in asking for appropriate and adequate PPE, but also asking for safe patient ratios to protect the people we take care of. There's no point in trying to save lives if we're doing a bad job of it. And so we were asking for a safe patient ratios we were asking for adequate PPE supply and we were asking for a nominal raise. We were asking for every main request. And so after the seven days we did go back in and the hospital did finally negotiating good faith with us and our executive board did a fantastic job negotiating on nurses behalf and anything that was questionable that they were offering they brought it to us and when we said no they said great, we're going to go back and fight for you. And my goodness they won, we won and it felt so good because there was 6000 of us outside saying like this is wrong this is not the situation workers should be working in. And the hospital just could not say no in the end. And so both unions went back in, we're able to negotiate fair contracts. And for the most part we achieved everything we asked for. But a huge thing and now you I see is the only hospital in the state that has something close to safe patient ratios. So that's a huge deal. Absolutely. Thank you Kristen and is super inspiring huge win and I already have some, some questions. But I'm going to I'm going to hold my tongue for now and we're going to come back in discussion, we'll get to it so I wanted to introduce. John Pearson, who is an ER nurse, and is the Alameda Health System chapter president for SEIU local 1021. And so, hit us go go with it and tell us about the your your actions. Okay. Great. Thank you. It's hard to follow what Kristen just told us about. And actually, it's really cool to be here with Kristen because Kristen you might not know it but you and your coworkers blaze the way for us, because our strike was about a month later. My coworkers and I were all following as much news as we could find about your strike. And a lot of ways there, there are similarities. We're also employees of a public hospital and clinic system that, you know, is run kind of with this, you know, basically kind of regime of austerity, like cutting public services. And multiple unions were involved as well in the fight and, you know, something that's kind of unusual in healthcare. It's at least it's not the norm is that nurses were together with other people that aren't nurses in the strike and the buildup. Just to give people context, I'm a nurse at a big public county hospital Highland hospital. And that's part of our county hospital system are our part of SEIU local 10 to one is called a hs chapter that's the name of our employer Alameda health system or hs. And it's basically like, you know, over, I think over 200 different job classifications pretty much everybody that works in the hospitals and clinics in our county, the public ones, everybody from, you know, clerical workers who answer and write things down to people that do complicated procedures like nurse anesthetists to food service workers, you know, it includes professional chefs and people that serve food and deliver it to patients to housekeeping workers trained to keep levels of infection down to, you know, of course nurses and nurses aides and hundreds of others. And 3,000 of us are strike and the buildup and the whole campaign also involved CNA, which is a union that's only our ends. And basically, you know, to try to give you the short version of it, just like probably many of you are familiar public services for decades have been cutting and cutting and cutting and handing over lots of the things that used to be only public services to the private sector. So what does that really mean it means like the county agreeing to get rid of public sector jobs that have the benefits and security and all that and just turn them over to private contractors. So our hospital system for example would take something like the dialysis department nurses that dialyze patients and all the support staff that goes into that, and just get rid lay off all those positions that have pensions benefits and job security, and union rights, and then just get a contract with a private sector company and bring in non union workers. That's just one facet of, you know, kind of the work environment that we're in. The other part of it is that our work day and the way that our patients get treated is is pretty horrible right the conditions that we're working in a really bad. So what does that mean for patients on the ground where I work in the ER that means that if you come in to see the doctor and have a real emergency that you know that you're very, very sick. You might end up waiting six, eight hours just to get in a bed and see the doc be seen by a doctor, even if you're really sick sometimes. When you're in that bed you might be stuck there with no windows lights on 24 hours a day constant noise for days at the time in the ER, no guaranteed meal service. Many of the things that the doctors taking care of you are ordering aren't done because we're not able to do them in an ER. And, you know, kind of on and on just like this. That's the conditions we're working under. So our employer at the beginning of bargaining back, you know, way over a year ago, when our contract before our contract expired in March of 2020. Basically went on a rampage trying to tear up the contract and rewrite large sections of the contract probably more than half of the whole contract. A real sort of scorched earth approach that we don't usually see in the public sector. So kind of union busting at the beginning of our campaign we sat down and figured out you know what do we want what are our members telling us on this contract survey that we did what they want. And then we realized that to get anything that our members wanted or to fix any of the problems, we were going to have to basically force the county to come in and remove the leadership and reverse this kind of privatizing direction. And to all of our surprise, we pulled it off, because we built up to what ended up being a strike in the middle of the pandemic, and force the county to come in get rid of our entire board of trustees, and a very dramatic public meeting. And the new trustees are now very busy pushing out the executives who've been doing all this to us. And so, you know, it's going to be a continued fight to finish our contract bargaining has totally turned around but we have to we have to close the contract. And it's good, it looks like it's going to be a fight to get the county to actually follow through on what they promise to do because the back peddling now. And that's kind of in a nutshell what we did. We want to strike the middle of the pandemic and got the got what was basically a privatizing public service to reverse and come back into the county. Apologize I covered up my unmute button with a different screen. So very inspiring great story and now I'm looking forward to digging in a little bit to both of the examples and if along the way either of you have questions that you want to ask each other please interrupt me because those are really cool too. So, Kristen I wanted to ask a little bit about you know john started to talk about the, the some of those structures that they had to build up some of the work that they did in the lead up to the strike. I want to talk a little bit about what that looked like in your unit and with your coworkers of trying to build up to support for the strike what were the conversations like what were the challenges to doing so. Yeah, I mean it wasn't hard to drum up support amongst the union members. We were all just have had enough. You know, our administrators are so heinously terrible to us in some ways, and the pandemic gave them a huge opportunity to correct some of those actions, and they totally took the opportunity to do the opposite. So, during the pandemic one floor was, you know designated as the COVID floor outside of the ICU and those nurses work so hard and every nurse in the hospital works so hard every staff person. It was really just doing everything they could in the name of helping people who were sick. Meanwhile, so many of us became sick, some in very serious and dire ways. And we had a total of, I believe four staff members who passed away to nurses and to non nurses during the pandemic due to COVID. And I want to say that generally, those, those staff members did not work in the COVID areas and did not generally have a lot of comorbidities. It was very shocking and very painful for our staff. And so on top of the bad behavior from our administrators before the pandemic, and then with the pandemic and being asked to reuse our PPE up to six times with an unknown sterilization process. We were very wearing those masks and receiving emails about how not enough of us are recycling and reusing our masks and and then just, you know, like the just the general disrespect from our administrators. It was easy to say, enough is enough. And it's, and it's time for us to say like we're going to go stand outside now. And by the time it came to the vote in August, administrators had done very little negotiating the kinds of things that they were asking to change in the contract. It was basically as if they had torn up the previous contract and started over and they were doing very ridiculous things, something like 150 hours or something like that of mandatory low census time and, you know, changing floating tracks and raises that are only based on patient outcomes that are actually impossible to get with the staffing that we had in the first place. And nurses were just tired, and, and every staff person in the hospital had had enough. And so we all, you know, on, on that Friday we walked out of that hospital and we stood outside for seven days as brothers and shouting at the top of our lungs and telling anyone who would listen, what we were asking for and why those things were important for not only, you know, to make the hospital a better place but to keep those patients that are inside safe. Because that's, that's why we all get up and go to work in that hospital every day anyway. And so what are we doing if we're not asking for the safety of those people, and in turn, gaining safety for ourselves as workers. So it was, you know, like the, the 6000 people standing outside shouting and telling the administrators what a terrible job they've done was really powerful and a lot of people, it seemed like stood up and listened and there was so much support from outside. You know their teamsters stopped delivering to the, to the hospital and to the nearby construction site for which they're building our new surgery center. Other labor groups came and supported with people and signs every single day. Some of the nurses down the street from Cook County who are from National Nurses United came and visited every day. The teachers union members also came, and it was so great to have that visual and verbal support from them, because that those seven days were long, and sometimes it was raining and cold, but everyone's energy and passion for fighting is fair. And for what was safe for our patients was paramount and everyone stayed together and it just looked like such a strong, like massive movement outside the hospital and we even took it marching, you know, around the radius of the campus, down to the chancellor of the university's home, which is not a short walk. So they blocked, I want to say the bridge crossing Ashland going towards the chancellor's home. And it, you know, people in the city had to say like gosh why they, there must be something wrong going on if all these people are out here, doing this. In the end, both unions were successful in getting what we were asking for. And it was, you know, a historic ask because we got a commitment for the hiring of an additional 200 nurses in the hospital. And I think their deadline is this coming June. Once we have those additional staff, we will have a commitment for ratios that are actually safe in the hospital, where nurses can practice safely, and patients are going to have the best possible outcomes. Thank you. And, John, I wanted to ask you the same question about in in the build up to the strike how what did, what did that organizing look like, what were the challenges that you faced. How did you build out the networks and structures that you needed and what types of networks and structures did you need to be able to wage a successful strike. Yeah, we really kind of had to roll with the punches and come up with, you know, like with plans on the fly at times, especially because of the pandemic that really changed a lot of things for us. And in a few ways, I think it actually, I don't want to say it helped us because it gave us some huge challenges, you know, like for instance, I think it's much easier to have a strike when you can have more in person meetings. And so it was really hard to build up enthusiasm over zoom. So the preparation, I think a lot more went into it than it might have looked on the surface to a lot of our members and to the public. We started talking about a strike the possibility we might have to go on strike, and then potential need for a strike and then planning for how we might do it. Two years in advance. And the first thing that we did when we started saying, you know, like, look, we've got to consider all the tools that we have in our toolbox and the probably the strongest one that we might have to resort to, if things get really bad as a strike. And the way that we kind of like ended up planning this out, and you know it didn't go perfectly there were hiccups but we started by working on a contract survey. We kind of like crowdsourced from as many different crowds as we could at work questions and issues to put on a contract survey to see what our coworkers cared about. We had a goal of a percentage of how many surveys we were going to get back I think it was somewhere around like 70% of the membership. And they quite reached that goal but we got over half of our members surveyed I believe, and then that became the basis for what the bargaining team decided were their priorities. And one of the reasons that that was really helpful is that in the past our experience has been when bargaining teams come in cold. Most people in their normal lives, don't really have a sense of having to represent lots of other people. And that is a kind of unusual thing to have to do. And so if you're just kind of coming in cold, mostly you're just going to refer to like your circle of friends, and your own personal experience, and not what lots of people want, right and we're representing 3000 people, working in this big hospital system. And so that kind of set limits, you know, based on what the majority of our members really cared about wanted, and we're able to use it to justify what our priorities were in bargaining. And it also, I think that was actually even a secondary purpose the main purpose really was just to have the survey as a vehicle for having one on one conversations with lots of people. And so that kind of like started people thinking about talking about just being aware of the fact that like we're going to bargaining what does that mean for me and what's my role in it, even if I'm not somebody that's going to sit at the table. What are the possible outcomes, and then what role can I play to get, you know, what my coworkers and I might need or want. And I think that was one of the most helpful ways to think through every other part of the campaign is like what out of what we're planning what is the right vehicle to use to have lots of one on one conversations and get people engaged in a way that feels really connected to things that they care about to their own interests. And how do we tie that to things that we need to be fighting about that are about patient care. So after that happened, there were several other vehicles including things like you know giving bargaining updates, having the election for the bargaining team before that. And then in the ramp up to the actual strike as we're escalating. We had is right before the pandemic escalating actions at different campuses to put pressure on management, press conferences, then the pandemic hit we had more press conferences, because we got tons of media attention during the beginning of coven. And then, finally, a couple things like petitions to get buy in around the other county taking over and to put pressure on the county. And then we had a strike vote very dramatically and kind of out in the open very visibly so that management would see us see members like you know coming off of their floor and wearing purple and all putting a ballot in a box and you know a big sign that said strike vote. And so all those kinds of things really went into the buildup. And then, you know just to talk about some of the things that were challenging that we had to roll with the punches, like with coven. One of the hardest ones to deal with was the fact that we couldn't have in person meetings very easily. And so we ended up, you know, doing lots of work around having online meetings having conference calls, but also, you know, many of us are working together shoulder to shoulder every day no matter what because we start to take care of patients in the pandemic. And so, some of us would just go from floor to floor and talk to people and we just pull people into an open space stand as far away from each other as we could and just have quick and prompt to meetings or talk one on one. And that very methodically and kept a list of all of our members and made sure that we've had multiple one on one conversations with everybody by the point we got to talking about strike. Thank you both. So, one set of questions that have gotten a couple questions about, and that you've both mentioned in different ways. And both of the strikes that you were involved in involves more than one union striking at the same time striking together in workplaces that are represented by multiple unions. What was, you know, either of you wants to speak up to this first and hope that both of you will. What was the, the role of that how important was that to the strike and how what sort of takeaways did you have from it challenges about making that work promise for future work, things like that. I can take that so. You know, the fact that we have the two unions within the hospital and one union represents such a large majority of the staff, and that both of both unions chose to go out on strike at essentially the same time. You know, it really showed that unanimously across the hospital, every single staff member was unhappy and felt that we were being treated unfairly, and we were. And so the fact that 6000 people are like hey, this is not cool. And we need to stand up for this and walk out of our jobs was a huge message to not only our administrators but and the state because it is a state run facility and we had so much support from outside unions who came to speak up on our behalf and other political figures who came to speak up on our behalf and say like hey these people are not asking for something crazy. What they're asking for is something that will benefit the patients and that's like the most important thing. The fact that not only strategically but symbolically as the IU walked out of their jobs with along with the INA was so powerful and showed so much solidarity and strength between the two unions and so much commitment because it wasn't easy and this was the first time that the nurses have walked out in an actual strike since the inception of INA at at UIH and so I want to say that's something like 47 years. So that it was the very first actual strike in since its inception, and in the past they had always been able to resolve whatever contract issues there were before having to actually read, you know, actually walk out and this was the first time and so many nurses were like, oh my God, what are we really going to go on strike like what is it going to look like, no one had any experience in that.  It was easy to just give in to whatever the hospital administrators demands were, and it was it was tough to stand outside and like, make yourself a target to administrators as well. And the fact that resoundingly in, you know, the, you know, every every member of each union really did that and there was so much more safety and strength in our numbers because of that. And just the fact that Teamsters and all the other unions in the city came to stand beside us, or took action along with us to help our cause really made it made it an obvious choice that it eventually administrators had to give in. And to do our fair share share of appealing to media and to, to the governor himself as he does sit on the board of our hospital. And, and to the, you know, we tried to go above, you know, even just the CMO of our hospital and go up to the union chancellor and, and whatnot to ask for these things because we weren't asking for something crazy. And we just wanted to get what was fair and due to our members who work so hard and sacrifice so much during the pandemic. So that solidarity was meant everything, even in just giving everyone motivation to keep showing up and keep standing up and keep shouting at the top of our lungs even though you had no voice anymore. And, and honestly we had a great time. It was a fun time. And I never felt more supported or and more close to my fellow union members, and not just other nurses but just everyone in the hospital. I'm a float nurse in the hospital and so I go to all the inpatient non ICU units. And so I know quite a, you know, like I'm a familiar face to a lot of people and so it was great to just like spend time outside the hospital with them and build our relationships and support each other and like, I already know that you can count on those people inside the hospital, but then you learn that you can count on them outside the hospital to, and it felt so good. And it, and it just made it that much easier to take the risk and to lose the seven days worth of pay, and like I could care less, because everything we built together, and knowing that we could be successful, and then feel like if it were to come to this in the future to know that we could be successful at all times. It was great. Yeah, john I'm interested to hear from you as well about the, the multiple union dynamic, and any, you know, the promise and challenges of it if there were any. Yeah, so we had pretty centrally involved in our campaign and strike California Nurses Association they have some of the RNs. Not the majority of our ends those are those are myself and my coworkers but at two of our hospitals they represent some of the RNs a few hundred. And they were, you know, we basically did a lot of coalition work with them, not around the bargaining so much. They basically got stuck in the same kind of position with the employer and bargaining but took a slightly different path to fight it. But we did a lot of coalition work around the county taking over and just kind of like pushing back really hard at the scorched earth bargaining approach. And we coordinated our strike dates and our strike votes, and we're able to work pretty closely with them around, you know, picket lines and many of the escalating events like rallies and press conferences that we had in the build up. And then, you know, the Labor Council was extremely helpful we got the Labor Council, you know we get kept giving them updates as the campaign was progressing in the build up to strike to get some buy in. And then we got sanction from them and the secretary treasure of the Labor Council basically was like our kind of liaison or facilitator when we would meet with the politicians like county supervisors, who we're putting pressure on to take over or to intervene. And that was that's been extremely helpful, they've continued to play that role, as we're trying to finish up bargaining. And as we're also meeting with these new trustees like to put pressure on them to be accountable. And there were some really wonderful moments during the strike where we got great support, you know, like memorable things were that we found out that the garbage truck drivers that pick up possible garbage or Teamsters.  And so there are these great moments where you know you have like a garbage truck driving up seeing a picket line hockey their horn and then driving away. There's one truck driver I guess who got upset, cross the picket line and then got sent back as a penalty by his fellow union members to walk the picket line with us as a penance. That was really cool.  That was pretty cool. We had so many other union send crowds of people in support and to be on the picket line with us fight for 15 workers that was really cool. A group of women who have been involved in lots of fight for 15 action over the years came. There was this great interaction where they said, how are you guys feeling.  But I, you know, like, and I was just thinking in my head, they're not in a union and that's the fight for 15 campaign. They're way more vulnerable than we are we already have a union, like you know, they probably would be even more scared to go on strike and they were like, yeah, you don't need to be scared we've been in lots of strikes, and you should also consider marching to Sacramento for your demands.  So yeah, there were lots of great moments I think of cross union collaboration and solidarity. That's fantastic. Thank you both. There we've gotten a few questions and I'm interested myself in the, the community support and public response aspects of how if you were able to build what you think was an effective community support in the strike. What were some of the things that went into that and maybe some of the lessons to take away from that and then also just sort of generally, what was the, the public response and the public perception of the strike. I think we used a lot of different tactics to reach out to the public and garner support for for the strike, you know, prior to the INA coordinated a candlelight vigil for those staff members that we lost to coven in front of the hospital to just bring awareness to the, to the plight that we were going through at the time and currently and and there was plenty of news coverage there. During, you know, during the strike, again, like lots of news stations came and not only did they talk to eboard members who represent us so well and have all the right things to say when it comes to the media but they also talked to the rank and file members, including, you know, those who who represent our black and brown communities who are a majority of the staff in our hospital.  And I remember being, you know, well versed in what we were asking for and ready and willing to speak to any news outlet, anyone who stopped them to, to give their perspective. So I saw, you know, that happen over and over to independent news sources and papers and, you know, the public networks that that were coming to give us press coverage and you would see the same repeat networks over and over covering us each day. And then the political support that we had on each rally day, most notably Jesse Jackson, who came and marched with us and actually, you know, like held hands with our INA president and walked, you know, the perimeter of the campus, marching with us. And Chewie Garcia, several other state representatives, other representatives who were previously sponsoring our safe patient limits bill that did not pass last session, but will hopefully be reintroduced or will be reintroduced in coming up this session and hopefully with more success to garner safe patient ratios, not only in our hospital but for the entire state of Illinois, which would be, you know, like California level amazing. And just using every opportunity to give our, our version of what was going on and what we were going through and why we were asking for those things that were so not out of this world they were completely reasonable things and backed by evidence, you know, safe patient ratios and, you know, and staffing limits are are totally supported by evidence. And there was a huge study that was that came out even in some time around the time of the strike that you know really supported what we were asking for and so like people could see the logic and the science behind what we were asking for, not just that nurses are tired and don't want to, you know, help you to the bathroom. That's never the case. So, there was so so many angles from which we could show like from our human angle from an evidence based angle. And from a solidarity angle, you know, some of the SCI you members, even though Cook County has a $13 minimum wage we're not even receiving the Cook County minimum wage because the hospital claimed it was a state hospital and was not was exempt from that. And so winning the $15 minimum wage for SCI you members was a huge thing. And, you know, like if I don't, if my, you know, compatriots in SCI you don't win then I don't win either because if they're working in an unsafe and unfair environment, then it's it's only a matter of time before it's unsafe for me. And so it was so great to see their success.  And so we wanted to show to the public and, you know, set an example that like at UIC, we care about those things and we're not going to let anyone get away with that whether the governor is on the board or not. And it seemed like based on, you know, all those things combined, they just couldn't say no in the end. Thank you so much. I wanted to, again, ask you the same question this about communities for how did you build it. How important was it and what sort of was the public response, if you could articulate what it was. And something that we struggled with at the beginning because we were using as an example for, you know, how do we carry out a successful strike lots of the teacher strikes. And I think, you know, a key difference that we realize quickly is that teachers, you know, have kind of a ready made constituency of public groups right so like in elementary schools you have your parent teacher associations or groups, whatever they're called. And then in the high schools we saw lots of groups of high school students who are, you know, together all day in class or, you know, socializing after school, supporting the teachers and the teachers interacting with those groups, you know, to collaborate about demands or those groups kind of pushing the teachers. We don't have organized groups of patients like that, and many of the privacy rules that we have to work under really don't allow, you know, us to facilitate or even really talk about things that could help that happen. And so I think we, you know, we really struggled to build community support, some of the ways that it was facilitated were in some of the, you know, initial response to the pandemic. We had a huge surge of media interest and public interest and just what's happening inside of hospitals at the beginning of a pandemic. And we were able to use that, you know, to fight with the employer and public about providing safe conditions for patients and for workers, and to have kind of these fights similar to what Kristen was talking about over just providing us with the right equipment to do the job to be safe and to keep patients safe. And that sort of set the tone for the strike. And through that, there were people, you know, like my coworkers in the ER doing big fundraisers we collaborated with some doctors, and we put the hospital kind of in the hot seat about not providing some basic equipment that they were required to provide we fundraised and bought it on our own kind of to scold them and public about it, and to shame them and we got tons of interviews and lots of attention and raised money. And it's nice to help build like a strike relief fund, which our union has structure set up kind of like that but it's very clunky and hasn't been used I think in quite a while in a very effective way. And we wanted it to be kind of like, you know, ammo, so that people feel like they've got backup and security.  We also had some organized groups helping us in our coalition we got tons of them signed on to support our demand to get the county to take over that helped us get more politicians to support that demand and sign on to our, you know, our letter asking the public to take over. So, those are just some of the ways. I think we also, you know, probably like lots of other people in healthcare, saw lots of public support in the form of like sending food and donations beginning of a pandemic. And we were able to use some of those connections to get people to come to the picket line or to organize groups of their friends family members or coworkers to come in and support us during the strike. I wanted to give either of you the opportunity to ask any questions that you have of one another. But now that you've heard a little bit more about what's been going on. I've got some questions at the ready to but I think that you might have some things to say. Yeah, I'm curious for Kristen what has changed in your workplace. Since everybody's had this experience of going through the strike. Yeah, I mean, slow is always changes always slow. But, you know, it's our duty as union members to make sure that it's at least steady. And so, you know, there's definitely some things that administration has done to delay the changes that they've agreed to, or, or sabotage. But our union membership is so vigilant and they, you know, really are great about reporting problems or delays or asking why hasn't this happened yet. And so there's quite a few people who are very brave to always speak up and question the administration on what they're doing. But most notably, I've seen that staffing ratios are improving as a floater in the hospital. I know what it's like on a lot of different units. And so I just mentioned to the charge nurse on one floor. And the other day I said, Wow, you know, usually I really hate coming here but it, this is much better than usual. And she said yeah they have been trying to staff us a little better. So, so there, there was some, it was palpable change for me anyway because it's usually horrible place to work on that floor. So it was like I could just feel a small shift. There's more to come because they have they still have 200 people to hire. And once we have those, you know those extra staff that's, we also had the, the administration also agreed to give control of deciding where those staff go, where they're needed to the nurse care committee which is run by our nurses and our rank and file union members. So the control is really in our hands of, of where those nurses go and where they're needed. So that, you know, it's, it's evenly distributed throughout the hospital both inpatient and outpatient sides, and you know throughout critical care med surge and surgical areas, as well as like Pete's and whatnot so the fact that the control still lies with us it's not just the administration going okay here's, here's 10 nurses and they're only all going to the transplant ICU, which is a high gross money making area for them. So, you know, it will be fair and and controlled by nurses so that everyone's happy with the outcome of the additional staff. So I think, yeah, there is definitely change, but slow. In fact, the administration is attempting to delay the contract raises that we've won for ourselves but of course you know and open mouth never or closed mouth never gets fed so everybody's mouth is open and at the very least these administrators are hearing in their sleep are constant complaints and emails and calls about where our money is. So it's coming. So, and we do have adequate PPE they've committed to the PPE, they send us a report of what is in stock, and what is at the level of par that they've agreed to. And so there's definitely accountability, because we're receiving that data from them, I think on a weekly basis. Great, that's really cool that your strike did all that. I think that's that's really admirable and awesome. And, and you should be, you should be feeling it to be feeling feeling it owning it. I like it. So, I'm your engine. Have you guys have not yet reached like a final agreement or are you guys just waiting on signatures for your contract. We're still bargaining. It's very frustrating. I, you know, I think for the majority of members right most of them are not directly engaged in the bargaining process at all. Most of them don't have somebody on the bargaining team that's right in their department that they can talk to.  Of what they did had a big effect. There was a very dramatic, you know, very public change where the county had their board of supervisors meeting you know that the supervisors are the five elected officials that run the whole county, and ultimately fund and are responsible for the hospital system but have been kind of hands off for a long time. They put it into a separate kind of public entity called the public hospital authority, sort of semi privatized like to get around a lot of the regulations. And they had a very public meeting where they lined up all this hospital management like dozens and dozens of them, all to sing the praises of the current administration. And it was just, you know, a handful of union members, many of them like on a day off or like trying to get a break during work, listening through all this comment that was like the CEO is great I had lunch with him yesterday you know like I'm not exaggerating here I'm the parking lot contractor like I think the CEO is great and you know I'm the I supply the linens my people, you know like I hire 50 employees who supply the linen. And I think the administration is great it was like that kind of stuff.  And the strike basically pushed them to have to take public action in this really dramatic meeting. And that I think members felt and then also seeing all these executives resigned one after the other or get fired has made a big difference. The actual conditions of people's work hasn't changed that much. And that's I think you know where it's really painful to, to watch and to have to be patient and wait for bargaining to be done. The tone and tenor of bargaining has completely and utterly changed right so before the strike we went from complete standstill for basically a year of bargaining. You know, kind of like management saying we want to rewrite, we're planning we're going to rewrite a bunch of your contract they're even declaring things like we're going to start charging you in January for health insurance. You know we're not even bargaining about that we're just going to do it. All kinds of wild stuff. We went from that to we had the strike and all of a sudden they got rid of their bargaining team replaced them with different people who have this long standing reputation the county for making labor piece. And so now it's kind of like you know we're we're talking to a very kindly grandfather who's in his 80s who like what really wants to know what we care about and we're rapidly settling all of our issues. They're dropping their takeaways rapidly and we're down to probably like our last dozen proposals. So we're coming to a close, but it's frustrating that it hasn't fully happened. Yeah I know that felt really frustrating for us during the strike when we were still hearing the asinine requests of our administration sometimes. I know that that's got to be feel so vindicating that they have completely switched around their negotiating members and have finally started to listen to your needs.  And I think it's really worth repeating to our coworkers that, you know, like what we all did right like what 3000 of us or 6000 your case did is not anything that really any other person or group could have accomplished like there's no, there's no way that here in Northern California there's some politician who was about to like do all this right there's no way. And there's there's just nobody else that would have done this except for all of us that work there. And we literally accomplished it like we have. Now we have nurses on the board of trustees that runs a hospital that are our union members, like that's crazy we didn't have anybody like that before. It's a big transformation. You all ask the good questions. Thank you so much. Yeah, so with an eye to time and just wanting to sort of bring us to a close out and wrapping up I wanted to, to ask for both of you, like what are the, the biggest challenges and promises that you see ahead. Where you work you've both mentioned some of these things. But if you could summarize some of your thoughts about, you know, over the next six months to a year both directly where you work and maybe more broadly if you'd like things that you're concerned about within health care. What are the things that you're paying attention to feeling optimistic about or think that we're going to have to fight about.   Fighting, you know, the guy upstairs or whatever and and really just speaking up for the underdogs. You know, like that's a constant need and we can never not be doing that. Like it needs to be all the time. Even when you're tired, even when you need an app, even when you have a headache like that's, you know, even when you're tired of hearing yourself talk about union action and and participating in, you know, like fighting for what's fair for everybody. You just have to constantly do it and just be so dedicated and, you know, like if, if one person sees that you're not giving up then maybe they won't either. And so might make them feel like they can be the union loudmouth that they need to be, you know, and just expand exponentially. And everyone can do that together or support each other when, when they're too tired and pick up the torch and and keep going with what someone else was doing at our hospital immediately like definitely we always have to keep an eye on the administration that we're working with. That's through like, we have a process where we fill out forms like assignment despite objection to document inappropriate and unsafe happenings on the units and filing grievances. So every member is include is encouraged to like actually read the contract know what is in the contract so that when there are violations they can be documented and and fought against all the time. So, you know, our union is great about educating us on what to do when there are contract violations and how to proceed with them and then they fight like bulldogs to against those things and file the grievances. And they went all the time. So, even though it's like a slow process or an arduous process like they just keep going.  But the best that can happen is that everything can totally turn around. As far as like in the future and more broadly like, gosh, once they start getting these vaccines out won't it be so nice. Like now that we have an administrator at the very top who's like, Yeah, I believe in this. Even my roommate who you may have seen passing back and forth is a grocery store worker and she has been trying and trying and trying to get an appointment for the vaccine and even looking at driving hours away to try to get one finally was able to schedule hers. It's going to be a year this month. So, you know, like that, that safety of people being vaccinated and and people who are in charge listening to science and following safety protocols is going to be a huge thing and then it just opens up the door for more union action because it'll be safe to do it again. So like there's the sky's the limit, while we have the person we have so like we got to just keep going and do everything as much as possible. Cool. I can, I can answer that too I think, like in the workplace. What we have to look forward to is, is that we now have, you know, almost every single coworker has gone through this experience of going on strike. We had a lot of fears that people had that we had to address beforehand. You know, we learned effective ways to do that. But a lot of the fears that they have have basically melted the way and disappeared right we had like, you know, people going around just basically saying the sky is falling. If you go on strike we're all getting fired that sort of thing. And we had to remind people like hey the that benefits the boss if we all go around saying that and of course they want us saying that right. And it's just not true. Now everybody's got the experience we all did it. Nobody got fired. And we made a huge change that no one else could have made. So that's something that we have to look forward to what we have to guard against and be, you know, wary of that we see little bits of is people falling back into the same patterns from before the strike, where they think the union is like this outside entity like an insurance company that you pay to take care of your problems which is just not true or realistic. And, you know, and that they don't have any, any role to play in fixing problems in their own workplace or fixing things for patients or for themselves and their coworkers. And I think that's part of what we have to guard against. We have this, you know, crop of people that kind of popped up during the strike that we saw organizing their coworkers bringing people out to the picket line or doing interesting things to get people together like you know there are a couple people I can think of who were always the one holding the dance party down on the corner all day, right and they got people other people to participate. And now we need to be thinking about like hey you know, should we see if they're interested in a leadership role or being a steward, and how can we mentor them and encourage that. Are there, you know, are there whole departments that have been kind of missing and all this that we can now bring in. And I think that was real big learning experience for us too is people that cross the picket line like how do we approach them. Do we shame them and ostracize them or do we see them as potential people to join us next time if we have to do it again. And I think all that's been a growing experience for us, kind of on the macro level I'd say that, you know, industry wide what's going on is that in the public and private sectors budgets are being cut, which is really crazy What do you think in terms of like just on a human level what's happening is millions of people are dying. And we're cutting healthcare budgets, and that makes no sense that means less healthcare workers less capacity to respond to millions of people dying. And so, you know that's something that we're going to have uphill battle to fight, because we're fighting, you know, huge amounts of money and power that we don't all have. But at the same time, I think the potential for us to fight back is much bigger because there's, I think, better public understanding of the need for health care. I think it's closer to most people's kind of like hearts and heads and wallets and maybe families and friends they know that have died or been sick with coven that if we're having a fight about you know, like, hire more nurses or surgical clerks, people can understand maybe oh yeah I remember like you know grandma had to wait a long time, because there weren't enough nurses. So I think that you know it's kind of like it's both good and bad for us that that this is happening like as far as our potential to organize and get the public on our side. I think that's very helpful and also, you know, I think it's important to be level headed about the challenges ahead of us but also about the terrain on which we're fighting and that fights help us fight better the next time and be stronger for the next So I really just want to extend my like the real depth of gratitude to both of you to come out and talking tonight because I think it's been really amazing and I've really enjoyed this conversation. A third panelist was unable to join us tonight. Michelle from nice because she wasn't feeling well, not coven related just wasn't feeling up to it. But conversations like these I think are so important and making connections like these are so important just a couple quick plugs. I'm in a follow up email to everybody who registered to this I'm going to send. We have some labor notes articles about these particular struggles that I want to share if you want to keep doing reading about it. Plugging also that the labor notes website is a really great resource I think for learning more about other things that are going on in the labor movement but also finding organizing resources are books cover a lot of the type of stuff that we're talking about about building community support about the labor organization that I'm sure many of you who are attending this are already familiar with but always worth giving it a second look, and also, you know, if you're interested in continuing to think about these questions about organizing and building connections on organizing in healthcare. I would love to talk to you about it. My email which I will send in the follow up email is very simple it is Joe at labor notes.org. And I'm, we're always trying to think about how to deepen connections between unionists in different union sectors across across industries but also within industries. So, reach out we want to know what what fights you're up to we want to know what's going on with you we want to know how we can help and connect you to other people who have thought about similar questions. So, this has been fantastic it's been a great way for me to spend my Friday evening personally and I hope that you all have felt the same. I look forward to seeing you all at future ones. Really, again, John, Kristen just like so great talking with you and having you out and it's, it's really inspiring to be able to hear from you about this. Pleasure to be here and an honor to speak after Kristen and all the inspiration that that her strike gave our members. Thanks for saying that john. Thank you all for listening and, you know, like your support and solidarity could, you know, be the one thing that somebody else in a union who struggling needs to just keep fighting so like I really feel inspired by you john and what you guys are going through and from listening to my other compatriots who are also union members across the country and hearing about what they're doing. Also inspired me and gave me strength at the time that we were fighting so thank you so much and I was really honored to be asked to speak. Thank you. Beautiful ending. Thank you so much. Good night everyone. Have a great day. Take care. Stay safe. Bye.


So thank you so much. We're going to have a great discussion about a public-private partnership that is taking place here in the city. Ms. Gwen Wilson is gonna moderate this discussion, but I just wanna say thank you. We've had a great morning, afternoon, hopefully you've had some great business discussions at our six-annual Terran County Business Opportunity Fair. I know all of the panelists here, but Ms. Gwen is gonna introduce them, but I want to say as a forward native, this is truly a public-private city forward-engaged partnership. And that's what it's about. That's what it always will be about in terms of those successful projects. And so we'll have opportunity to hear those. Bathrooms in the back. We're COVID-sensitive here in city and forward, so if you need a mask, we have those. Thank you for your consideration and understanding, and at this time, Ms. Gwen Wilson, Director of Supplier, I'm sorry, Business Equity, Assistant Director, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Ms. Brooks, I'm sorry. Ms. Gwen Wilson, thank you. Good afternoon, everyone.  There's still a lot more networking to be done. And also, don't forget the workshops and stuff, but I want to introduce Christina Brooks, she's my boss. She's also the Chief Equity Officer and Director of the Department of Diversity and Inclusion, and I'm her Assistant Director over the Business Equity Division, and she'll tell you a little bit more about herself. Also, we have Scott Bennett. Scott is one of our partners with the Beck Group but also a supplier as well. So we're very happy to have Scott on the panel as well and to talk about the partnership that we have together. And then we have Ms. Demetria Bivens, she's the star. Demetria is the President and Founder of the National Association of Minority Contractors of Southwest Division or it's a DFW chapter. But Demetria is also a phenomenal entrepreneur, a DLB consultant. So we're excited to have her as well and share the relationship that we have with Demetria. So put your seatbelts on because you're in for a ride with Demetria. And then we have Mayor Pro Tem, the honorable Gina Bivens. So we're very excited to have her and her support of our group. And so we're very excited to have Gina on the panel as well. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, we'll go ahead and get started. Okay, all right. Okay everybody, are you guys ready to learn some stuff today? Okay, we have, as Gwen just mentioned, we have some really fabulous panelists for you. And we just wanna kinda take you through a couple of things, hopefully to give you some ideas to take back to your own community or your own business organization from the lessons that the city of Fort Worth has learned in partnering with private companies on public development. So we wanna walk you through our agenda this morning. And we're gonna go over quickly some learning outcomes because everybody should walk away with some new knowledge here. We'll tell you a little bit about who we are in the city of Fort Worth. And we'll talk about some of the opportunities that we believe are really on the table. Some of them we kinda hit on this morning in our introduction. I know both our Mayor Parker and Mayor of Arlington kinda touched on some opportunities but we'll go into a little more detail for you just so that you're aware of what's on the table right now and what's coming up. We'll talk a little bit about what we've done and then we'll get into lessons learned and along the way we'll stop and ask you if you have any questions, direct questions for our panelists in the course of the conversation. So does that sound good to everybody? Does that sound good to everybody? All right, all right, so let's get going here. All right, learning outcomes. We wanna make sure that at the end of this conversation you all can identify some locally active private firms in your particular area that are viable business equity firm capacity building partners. We also hope that by the end of this conversation you'll be able to measure economic impact of successful P3 or public-private partnerships and community development and then also we wanna make sure that you're aware of some of the challenges and lessons learned in one of the major projects in Fort Worth and that's happening right now in the legendary stop six neighborhood which just happens to be in the honorable Mayor Pro Tem Gina Bivens district. All right, all right. I believe in giving people flowers while they're still here, so please, go ahead. You can do that again. So I want to play a little game with y'all to kind of get the juices going. I'm gonna play a video but we're gonna play three truths and a lie. Is everybody familiar with this game? Okay, I'm gonna give you your options. I want you to watch the video and then after the video, y'all need to tell me which one is the lie, okay? So here it goes. Fort Worth has a lot of names. Which one is a lie? Panther City, River City, Caltown, where the West begins or Funky Town. Where's the lie? River City. Hit the video. Maybe I should start with which one is the truth. Okay, so now by reason of deduction, you know which one isn't true. Okay, so we have an idea of what Fort Worth is like today, right? We are a city now of almost a million people. I think the actual census count has us sitting at about 918,000 in some change. And every year we're adding about 25,000 people, right? And 20 years ago we were considered a small to mid-sized city with a little over 380,000 residents and now we're closing in on a million. So with all of that growth comes growing pains, right? And so when we think about Fort Worth, we are the home of the legendary Stop Six. We're also the home of Atatiana Jefferson. We are the home of Opal Lee. And we are the home of the Fort Worth Stockyards. So there's a lot in that, right? Our history is rich and it's deep and it's wide. And we don't run from any of it because every aspect of our history brought us to where we are today. Most of you realize that the reason why my department exists and the reason why my position exists was because a group of residents and concerned citizens got together after a very public event with Jacqueline Craig and Fort Worth Police Department. And they said, we're not satisfied with things as they are. We want to build a strategy for how we can be a better city. And they worked together for 18 months putting together the Race and Culture Task Force recommendations, 22 recommendations across seven key areas of criminal justice, education, economic development, governance, health, housing and transportation. Two of those recommendations are why I'm here. My position was created and our department of diversity and inclusion was created because the people said, this is what we want to see. And so when I say that we own our history, our history isn't always as great and as rosy as we would like for it to be. This picture that you see on the screen is a picture of actually a red line map from Fort Worth in the 1940s. And there are areas that were designated no-go areas where you didn't see a lot of development dollars, if any at all, going into those areas. And what's unique, well, not really unique because you see this across the country, but what's important to know is that the repercussions of decisions that were made in 1940 are still showing up today. Right, you can lay this footprint from 1940 on a map in Fort Worth and see where we need to do some work. And that's why we're here today, to talk through what we're going to do to make sure that Fort Worth has a different future. And so I wanna talk to you a little bit about before we get the panelists involved some opportunities. We mentioned some of these earlier when we first opened today's event, but there are some inclusive development funding opportunities and we hope that by the end of today you'll find your place in the supply chain and one of these funding opportunities and understand what these funds will mean for development and your business in particular right here in Tarrant County, but specifically in Fort Worth. So there are a couple of different things that are already existing, that are already in place, right? We have the Community Reinvestment Act or the CRA. And what that does is it requires financial institutions to put some money back into low income areas and low income development. And most people kind of stop when they think about construction, but it actually goes further than that, right? It's not just hard vertical or horizontal construction that can be included in some of those funding opportunities for large financial institutions. It can include workforce development programming. It can include healthcare and education opportunities. So there's a lot of room for us to kind of get our foot in the door for opportunity. Then we have the American Recovery Plan Act money, right? ARPA money. And in Fort Worth, I'll get into a little more detail about what that looks like in Fort Worth, but because of that ARPA money, the city of Fort Worth is using about $3 million of that to build a CDFI-friendly Fort Worth, which would provide sustainable access to capital and funding for businesses just like yours. This is an area where traditional financing, they really don't wanna play in that pool because they don't make enough money. But CDFIs, this is what they focus on, it's their sweet spot. So they are looking for opportunities to fund businesses just like yours, to make sure that you can stay in business, that you can grow and expand if that's what you choose to do. And then a couple of other things that are in the future coming down the pike is Bond 2022 in Fort Worth. I know a lot of organizations that are here today also have bond programs that they are about to step into as well. So make sure that you're making the connection between the money that is allocated in those bond projects and the work that you're gonna be doing. And then who knows when the infrastructure bill is gonna be passed? But they keep saying it's gonna be today and then it'll be tomorrow. But we hope that it'll be coming soon. All right? So quickly, Bond 2022 in Fort Worth, we have a couple of goals. And this is important for you to hear. Number one, we wanna make sure that we're using that about $500 million in bonding to maintain and improve existing infrastructure and address equity issues. We're also looking at mobility in city services and enhancing the active transportation plan and recreational corridors. But we're also looking at ways to allow for flexibility in partnership opportunities. So we are going to fund and look for opportunities to fund what we're gonna be talking about today on the panel. Next, we have the ARPA funds. And I don't wanna spend a whole lot of time on this because just to make a long story short, I wanna get to our conversation with our panelists, but there are really two buckets of money, right? And the first bucket of money for Fort Worth, it was approximately about 92 million and we'll get a second bucket next May, 2022, for the second half of that funding. So there's a lot of money out there, just the ARPA money. We're not talking about the 500 million in the bond of money and possibly that infrastructure money. So we wanted to look at ways that we can partner with some large private firms in Fort Worth. How do you identify who these potential partners are? And in Fort Worth, we've got a couple, right? We don't have them all, but we've got a couple. Two of them just happened to be in Mayor Pro Tem's district, American Airlines and Bell Helicopter, but we've got Deloitte and GM Financial, but we've got Beck, we've got Beck. And in having Beck as a partner, we'll tell you a little bit why that was so important for them to come forward. We do a lot of things in the city and probably this isn't gonna be earth-shattering or new, but Fort Worth has lots of incentives, tax abatements in Chapter 380 grants, both of which those programs commit or require companies to commit to a minimum of 15% of all construction costs, and that's hard and soft, going to what we call business equity firms, so minority and women and disadvantaged business firms. So now, let's talk about the rubber meeting the road. And this is where I want to bring in our panelists, Scott and Gina, to talk a little bit about the Dickies Arena project and how that developed and what came out of that project. What did we produce from building that relationship with Beck in the city of Fort Worth? Is that my cue? That's your cue. Can I give my background, my honest story background? Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you very much and thank you all for being here too. This is really important for us as a company and important for us as a community, so thank you. You know, the arena for us was an incredible project and we were really grateful to have been awarded that job and the partnership with the city and events facilities for Fort Worth was a really incredible collaboration, but for me, I learned a tremendous amount on that job and that process personally as well as professionally as we were going through the pursuit process and one of the things that we were told when we were pursuing that job was yes, it's gonna be big and schedule and cost and we also have a minority business commitment that we need to achieve and at that point in time, all I can see is Fort Worth Arena. Oh my gosh, this project's incredible, I gotta win it. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And once we got there, the real gravity of that commitment hit me and it really set in stone for me something that has been a critical part of my career going forward and that the partnerships that are required to create these investments are the most important thing that there is and as a company like Beck, it is our responsibility to not just meet a goal, but to really strive to exceed that goal, but also do it the right sense of purpose and that requires the right team and for us, the city of Fort Worth was an incredible partner in that and I remember our original meetings when we were meeting at City Hall and I learned a lot about getting into the community and really helping lift up a lot of the companies that could be involved because a lot of these jobs that come out, they're big and you take a smaller business and you say, all right, here's your opportunity, bring your bid in, come on, let's figure this out and there's just too big of a gap, a gap in understanding, maybe a gap in systems, a gap in practices, bonding requirements, I mean, there's a whole lot of very intimidating factors that goes into getting a small business set up and put in a position where they're ready to take part in a project like that and one of the incredible things to come out of that process, not only did we hit the goal, not comfortable with it, we always wanna do better, project by project, we wanna do better, but what came out of it was a great idea and a collaboration between the City of Fort Worth and Beck on the Beck School of Construction and this for me has been one of the things that I've been most proud to be a part of in my entire career. We're in our third year, we have our graduation next week, Tuesday, for our third class and it is a program where we partner with the city and we go out and we solicit the interest of smaller companies that have the interest in really gaining exposure to a larger contractor and we work with them through 11 months, one of those is a graduation at 11 months to really understand how a company of our size, Beck, acquires and delivers work, whether it be business development, marketing, accounting, legal, bonding, project management, project supervision, the whole bit, pre-construction. It's really, really important for us as a builder in this community to help find those potential partners and help grow the community, not just because we need the help, but because it's the right thing to do. But I will tell you right now, more than ever, we do need the help. I mean the construction industry is lacking in the right amount of resources to get the amount of work that's coming up done. And so education and training, collaboration, mentorship is absolutely critical and I just, the city of Fort Worth for us has just been a dream partner in this. So thank you, Christina, can we go in? Andre, back there was a part of it, Gina. So Scott, who can apply to be a part of the Beck School of Construction? There are thresholds and what I will do is you can look at it on our website or the city of Fort Worth website, but what we're looking for is smaller companies that really are below a certain revenue threshold to come in, it's given us an application, talk about what you wanna do, have some sort of connection to the design and construction industry, but also be within a certain scale that you could truly benefit from the class. I mean I think that where we've seen the highest benefit is too when you have business owners or leaders within that organization that wanna come in and take part because we cover a wide range of the business practices, but we're really looking for those companies that can come in a little bit lower and that we can really help develop into a larger company. So companies that are ready to scale? Ready to scale. Ready to scale. And you touched on a little bit, but what are some of the classes that you think are the most pivotal in the Beck School of Construction? You know, that depends on the student. It depends on the company in a way because a lot of times you see companies that have something great going on, but they haven't been getting out there and getting exposed. Or they've got a great reputation, they've been doing some great jobs, but maybe they don't have the accounting support that they need to scale up or handle the management or the paperwork or even staff. And so that's why for us this year program is really important because it exposes them to all facets. And then the most important thing here is relationships. I mean, it's why we're all here today. You look at this room right here in Fort Worth for being the 12th largest city or nearing it almost a million people now. This is a manageable room. This is a tight community and it's an important community. And the best thing that we can do is develop relationships with one another because right as we're getting to it, we're thinking in mind, all right, you know, who do we know? Who are those people we can go to? Who are those reliable partners? Who have we met? Yes, we have our pre-qualification process and that's very important part of this also, but the relationships that we can make are critical. And one other thing that really was the benefit of the process, especially on the arena is the idea of mentorship. And we would see a lot of smaller companies come in and, you know, hey, I can handle a half a million dollars or a quarter of a million dollars worth of volume and that's where I'm kept, but I really want to get in there. How do I help? And some of the best things that we've been able to do is not only provide exposure to Beck, but also help build the relationship with a larger subcontractor or a larger vendor that says, hey, we need this partnership too. You come with us, we'll show you how to do it, and it really helps mitigate that risk, mitigate that bonding requirement. Awesome, okay. I'm going on and on, I'm sorry, Christian. Yeah, so what happens after graduation?  No. What happens? I mean, that's one of the special things and honestly it's good for Beck and all of our industry partners as well. I mean, let me just say, this is not just about Beck. This is about growing the community. This is about growing the community for all of our industry partners of different sizes because we need the companies. But after these classes, we learn about 30 new companies each year. We have 30 new relationships and we've got another great pool of people that we can really go to when we have these projects that are coming about. And we really urge everybody to go get pre-qualified with us and other GCs. We help that process and again, leveraging the relationships with other subcontractors so that when these projects come about, those partnerships and those knowledges and relationships are there already. All right, so you've heard a little bit about the class and who would be a good match for this type of partnership program and what you would get out of it. But let's talk about measuring impact, measuring outcomes. So this is where I'm gonna bring in our fearless Demetria at the end of the table. Because of the Beck School of Construction. Our next speaker that you're gonna hear from was a member of the Beck School of Construction cohort. And I'm not gonna tell her story. I want Demetria to tell us what the Beck School of Construction set her up for coming down the pipe. But before she does that, I just want y'all to know that in those first two cohorts, just the first two, we haven't even done the final calculation on the third cohort that's graduating next Tuesday. But in the first two cohorts, $14 million in contracts came out of those two cohorts. $14 million in awarded contracts. That is the kind of impact that you wanna see in your community. Demetria, tell us about your experience with Beck and what are you doing? Good afternoon. Demetria Bivens here with DLB Consultants and also I wear two hats. Name Act, the National Association Minority Contractors. I made a few of you guys earlier today at the Name Act booth. But my story on the D-Bivens Consulting DBA DLB Consultants. But I wanna, before Beck, I wanna, because Tony got mad at me when we were in San Antonio, I wanna first give a shout out to Tony Arps because that's where my journey really started with the DOT, with his program. From there, I came to the Beck School of Construction. And for me, it's been really, it's been very impactful and it has really made me grow as a business owner. And it really, you heard Scott talk about the marketing, the business development, the project management. And even when you may have a company that's trying to get a quarter of a million dollar job and they may not be able to because they don't have the insurance or the funding or whatever that case is. But this is what you'll get out of the Beck School of Construction because they will bring in a broker like Drew Green with Baldwin and Cox. They'll talk about the insurance, the bonding capacity. And then Drew, he'll even keep it real because I've heard Drew speak in Tony's program again in the Beck School of Construction. I remember calling Gwen and saying, dang it, the light bulb is freaking came on with me. I know what I need to do now. So I called Drew and I go, you know what, send me the application.   Here's mine. Here's the information. I send him this. The funniest thing for me is the balance sheet, my P&L and balance sheet because they all want what your credit look like, what's your P&L, what's your balance sheet. So I did most small businesses. I go into QuickBooks and I print it out and I send it to him.  And I'm like, I don't know, I just print it out. So with that, it really resonated with me. I'm like, man, I really don't know anything about my business and what's going on in my business. So I went, you know, got me on counted, a bookkeeper, got really serious about everything. I got with Mickey Esquivel on the credit side, started looking at my credit and just started putting things in order. And I tell you guys what's happening for me now, even now, because even from back school of construction, I went on to do 10k small business and some other things, but just putting things in order, your credit, even though it may be all jacked up and you don't want people looking because that was my thing. I want people out of my business. You know, I don't, man, why you need to know this? I'll just go pay cash for it. But all of that is still messes you up because you're not building any credit, but it feels so good now when you get a new project and you can go fund that project and you can go to your bank and you can say, here's my P&L, you know what COVID hit, some of my projects may not look good right now because all my money going to labor because I want to keep these people on board, but it feels so good because my banker here recently just told me, he goes, you know what, Demetrius? It all balanced out. And to me, that was a huge win for me, just to hear, oh, it balanced out. From the first time I sent it out, and Drew's like, what the heck is this, right? But that's not exactly what he said, but what is this, right? So for me, that was that financial piece because we can't do anything if you don't have those financials or can't get the funding to pay your payroll by the supplies that you need. Because we already know you get a new project, you're gonna be waiting 60 days before you can get your first check, right?  The other thing for me is the project management. And even just speaking, we did this back in San Antonio a couple of months ago, I think I've even grown since then because I've had more experience because I went from in my painting division, I went from zero people to seven and they want payroll every single week. So I had to grow again in a different area. And again, I had to take those tools and those resources that they were giving me and then on to, I don't know if I should, but I did mention the 10K Small Business, I took all of that, SBA Emerging. Matter of fact, I'm graduating today at three o'clock from the SBA Emerging Leaders Program. It's just, right now I'm just hungry. I wanna be better, I wanna do better. I don't wanna go to a Beck or any other large company to say, you know what, Demetria? You just don't have the capacity to do that. I don't ever wanna hear that again from no one. You know, like what Scott said, if you got the resources and you guys that are asking the questions about the Beck School of Construction, I mean, do it. Everybody's doing a lot of classes, but this one here is the real deal. And you know why it's real? Because Gwen and Christina is making, they're making them accountable. They're tracking, you're not just going through their program and going away. No, and by the way, we are doing business with Beck. We're doing business with Beck and you know, the relationships are great. There were some things that they said in a course, you know, even if you're estimating, you want someone just to take a look at your numbers. They wasn't lying, send it to the estimator. When they tell you something, just do it. You know, just don't think, I mean, get their contact information, be it Scott or Graylin back there or whoever was teaching that class, get their contact information, go, hey, I want you to take a look at this. Amount on the right track. Hey, this is my work in progress, you know, on the construction side, there's a lot of paperwork versus just what you do on a consulting side. So, you know, I can go on and on and on, but I really appreciate what I've learned, what I'm gonna continue to learn and how I will apply it. And those relationships will just last forever. All right, so Dmitri, you talked about what you've been able to accomplish since the early days with all of the learning opportunities back included that you've been a part of. Now I wanna get into Mayor Pro Tem's baby. And can you talk a little bit about what your role has been in stop six and the neighborhood development there? What are your takeaways? What went well? Where were the challenges? And where do you see us going in the future as a city that is literally investing arpa dollars in building more partnership relationships like this to build companies like yours? Thank you. Well, I wanna first think, because this is Ms. Gina Bibbins, we're not even related and Gina got home story with, I met Gina probably about five, six years ago. So in the stop six of my role with the project that's happened to be in her district, keep in mind we are not related, I met her five, six years ago at Nicole Carrier's office. I don't know, do you remember that? It was at a text doc. I do, I do, I do. Why was I there? We learned about the corporate inclusion plan that Royce West had rolled out. I forgot all about that. So anyway, the stop six, the project came out and they were looking for a customer, a construction support consultant position that came out. So I went out, looked at it, I had some experience with some of the requirements, section three, certified payroll, of course the MWBE, compliance piece of that project, and then just some knowledge of who's in this market as far as trade contractors. There's several of you guys in here right now that's on that project, wanted to be on that project and still pursuing that project, because it's a big project.  So my experience with the project is, you know, it was been very interesting, it was very challenging, because one, if anyone's ever done business in Fort Worth, you know, Fort Worth is not like no other city in North Texas. I mean, they're just not, they have neighborhoods. I mean, in their neighborhoods, they have neighborhood associations. There are churches on every corner that's involved in what goes on in those communities. And if you don't know that, when you come into Fort Worth, you got some issues.  So my experience and one of the biggest challenge on this top six, because even I felt like an outsider, because I'm not Fort Worth. People from Fort Worth, they're gonna tell you what high school they went to, what church they went to. They're gonna tell you all of this. I mean, it's just that serious. You know, and I learned that years ago because back in 2001, I actually had an office in Fort Worth in my first business. And so I learned Fort Worth many, many years ago. But one of the things that I truly learned from this project, you do not come into Fort Worth and not get their community involved. You don't get their leadership. You don't get their city council. It's a no, no, it does not happen that way. Are you gonna have issues? But I'm gonna let Gina speak on that because I had to learn something like that for myself. But the thing is, it's about local participation. If you go to any of their pre-bits, outreach, they're gonna start off with, they're looking for Fort Worth companies. They're gonna search Fort Worth first and then they're gonna go around to the other counties. Am I right? When? Christina?   You know, and I'm just gonna leave it like that. All right, Gina? Is my mic on? Do I have to press a button? No, it's on. I think it's on. Okay, I'm gonna address your setup, but I gotta make sure people here know about my council district because it's quite complex. Many layers. I have people in my district who survive on four figure annual incomes. And I have people who thrive on annual incomes, 12, 13 figures and above. It's very, very diverse. My council district is bigger than the city of Tyler. It's bigger than Ulyss. We have 109,000 people who live in my district. And I am never confused about who I represent. I represent them all. I think the difference when I came to office in 2013 is that I made sure the businesses that Christina mentioned knew I expected engagement from them as well. And so my district is home to Bell Helicopter, as you heard. It's also home to American Airlines. And part of the airport is in district five. I'm gonna ask you guys a question. And I think I see Benny Tucker here. Benny, is that you? Okay, well you can't answer, so just keep your hands down. How many of... You know where I'm going. How many of you know where Mosier Valley is? Please raise your hands. How many of you know where the Garden of Eden is? Garden of Eden is not in my district, but they're both home in Fort Worth to where freed slaves first settled. And so I am very protective of Mosier Valley. And if the redistricting map that's underway right now gets a side off, I'll have Garden of Eden too. Benny Tucker knows the story of Mosier Valley. If you watch news during February of every year, you'll see a preacher who held off the Klan with a shotgun. And we have these traditional black history stories. But I'm gonna tell you some more stuff about my district and how we got to where we are. When we hired city manager David Cook, he wanted council members to take him on tours of their districts. I made it a point not to take him to anywhere progressive. I didn't show him Vail, didn't show him American Airlines, didn't show him Trinity Boulevard. I took him to Stop 6. And that's where I was born and where I live today. Now they called my neighborhood Remy Place. I call it Stop 6 with Brits. Stop 6 is really a state of mind. And there was one point in time where nobody wanted to be from Stop 6. We even had an African-American fire chief who's deceased now who talked about my community. He had no idea he was really pissing me off. But he talked about who wants to live in Stop 6. He just assumed I live somewhere else. And so when I took city manager David Cook on a tour, we went to streets that looked like alleys because of city neglect. Do you guys know the name Ramon Romero? He said, Ramon took me on a tour of my district when I got elected. And we argued about a street called Booker T. And he said, Gina, this is the first thing you should do, get city staff to fix that alley. I said, Ramon, that's a street, that's not an alley. No, Gina, that's an alley.  My dad's church is right up the street. So he got out and walked, found the curb, he said, you're right, but it looks so bad. Nobody knew that it was a street. That's neglect. When I took him to an area where there were about 30 duplexes on one street, only four of them had people living in them. And so I saw one guy parked at a duplex, boarded up, got out of my truck, the city manager got really afraid. He didn't know what was gonna happen. He said, are you getting out? I said, yeah, I'm getting out. And so the guy's smoking crack in the truck, daylight, and I'm knocking on his window, his eyes get this big. And I said, man, what are you doing here? When I'm moving, my family was his response. Amaris, and by this time the city manager's getting out because he did not want to account to remember getting killed on his watch. And I said, man, you're not moving your family from a boarded up house. And if I ever see you again, I'm calling the cops. And so he left. This is the condition of stop six. We had streets that had been fixed probably five, four years, four, five years ago, already incomplete what they call failure, meaning it rolled like a boogie whip. So he saw the neglect. He saw burnt out structures that were unsafe, had just been left there. And so that is what started what we call the neighborhood improvement strategy. And I have taken that story at the national level for National League of Cities. And what we do, we take out some money every year and grow that fund, and we pick the next neighborhood that needs that kind of help. We were able to start building homes in stop six after I changed zoning. And that was a real fight. But I had no idea why developers didn't want to build in stop six. We had zoning in place that I considered detriment to development. It was, I guess designated as historic district overlay. Nothing was historic, but the dirt. But we had been saddled with this designation from 2006. And from 2006 until 2013, less than 300 homes had been built. It's awful, totally unacceptable. So we changed the zoning and the building started because my philosophy was if you own land, you need to have the right to build what you want on the land you own. But here's the deal. When we started building, we realized not everybody wants to build what I considered nice homes. And so I put in the requirement for the overlay. You're going to give me brick.  And the people started moving back. People are shocked to see 5, 5,500 square foot homes being built in stop six Texas. We could have had a millionaire's row, but for the state representatives in 2017, they stabbed me and everybody else in the back and said, you can't make people build brick. You can't make people do anything. And so in come the poverty pips. And that was confrontation I had with the builder because he was building what people call plywood homes. Now that's stop six. Let me tell you about the importance of recognizing community. I have a group of people, if you look at me sideways, they're going to come after you. That's my John T. White Routy Neighborhood Association. So when you come into Fort Worth from Dallas or Arlington and you see the East Chase exit, well, on one side is where Bishop Jayce lives in Kirk Franklin and a whole bunch of other people with money. And on the north side of I-30 are people who have not that much money, but still okay. You are not changing their zoning. We like big lots. A-43 is the zoning. And if there is any way to get people to buy district route up, just try to change the zoning. So that's one thing you need to know. In terms of what's happening in stop six now because of the neighborhood improvement strategy, because of the availability of land, we now have a neighborhood that is so attractive that people from other parts of the city are trying to change the boundaries so they can be a part of the neighborhood improvement strategy. On one call, and Demetrius, you were on that call, I think, there was a neighborhood, a neighboring neighborhood association led by a former council member. And one of those spokesperson asked, well, can we change the boundary so that all of StalCup is in, you know, Rose Hill Park, I'll just call it out. But they didn't know that the stop six neighborhood president was on the line. And he said, oh, no partner, we're gonna keep this like it is. And so what's happening now makes me so very proud because we've got a bond election coming up in 2022. And I will tell you for the first time, oh my Lord, in decades, we're going to have what's called a, what's that big word? Natatorium, swimming pool is what it means. Yes, swimming pool. We're gonna have a natatorium in stop six. But I have to make sure people know it's not just for stop six, it'll be there, but it's gonna be a city-wide facility. I will tell you in closing, I was very concerned at first because not everybody, and this is where you guys come in as contractors, you have to make sure everybody is on the same page.  And that's where, was it section three? Section three comes in. Don Weber's former HUD Regional Administrator, bless his soul, educated me on the importance of section three. And what that meant was, if you're gonna be building in any community getting HUD dollars, they have a right to get some of that money. Well, we had and have a contractor, a very, very well-respected contractor, but was not in sync with us. And so I think he made the mistake of saying, I'm meeting HUD guidelines while ours were stricter because we had to make sure Pookie, Bubba, JoJo, this chick found folk under trees and was able to get them lined up to get some of that money. And so what I would say to you, it's a very stark difference in the relationship with Beck. With Beck, we were working hand in hand building relationships. They knew the rub that the community felt and all the money going that they thought would go elsewhere. But what Beck has done has ensured sustainability, capacity, because I promise you, anyone who goes through the Beck school, if they've got children, they see, oh, construction can be cool. Construction can feed my family. Construction can send my kids to college and there's two and there's two and there's two. And so it's important that when you all are looking for dollars, make sure you understand everything. And the final thing I'll tell you is, don't come to my district, buy some land, not knowing what the zoning is, and just thinking that we're gonna change it. It doesn't work that way. And so we have filled up city council chambers at Fort Worth over proposed zoning changes. And the worst thing any builder can tell my office is, oh, she's just gonna leave that land vacant? Yeah, I'm good with that, because I respect my constituents. And so that's the message I have for anyone coming to district five. We've got several neighborhood associations. Yes, Dimitri, we do have a church on every friggin' corner. And you have to make sure they're all in the loop. So thanks for inviting me. Christina, let me look at one more thing, because I wrote down some stuff I wanted to make sure I mentioned. Oh, we were able to get a bank in my district long before I got on board, but it was bank one. And that bank branch was the smallest they had ever built in the nation. And the reason why is because it was coming to an inner city community. And they just didn't think there was money there. When that bank opened for business, their daily projected number of transactions quadrupled what they thought they would get. Because people brought money in from planted in the ground, in some old mattresses, paper bags. And it has, the first time it got robbed, the only time was about five years ago. They also thought it would be robbed all the time. So don't take for granted that you know an inner city. And in stop six, we are very diverse as well. So Christina, that's all I got. Thank you so much, Mayor. Mayor Pro Tem, Gina Bivens. Let's give our panelists a hand. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Christina Scott, Demetria, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, love you, thank you.