Welcome to the Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to the Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to the Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to the Obama Summit 2017 _. >> Thank you for come coming we have placed you in boxes based on your race which you may or may not like. You will be asked a question. If the answer for you is yes, you will step forward over to this wall. >> Uncomfortable. >> We welcome your reactions to the experience. >> A couple of the questions kind of really dug right in there. >> Were you ever teased because of your race or the way you look? >> It gave me an immediate shift in perspective so remember that there are other people going through thing no matter what you are going through. >> Do you distrust police officers? >> The amount of people like I realize that don't trust in the cops, I don't think I ever really opened my eyes to that before. >> When the question was asked have you ever saved a life or has your life ever been saved? >> A lot of people saved some lives and a lot of people got their lives saved. >> That was pretty epic. >> Have you had sex this past week? >> Well, my mom was in the room So the whole sex in the past week one, I was like no. >> Congratulations! >> Some of the questions that I felt like the energy got a little bit more serious. >> Have you lost a loved one to cancer? >> I felt a sense of wanting to comfort the people who stepped up for those and at the same time feeling grateful that I haven't had to deal with that particular challenge in my life. >> It was a practice in how we all really connect in different ways on different topics across the board. >> Is there a question that resonated with me most? I loved the dancing question. >> We all look different and have different identities, but we are all beautiful and we are all strong. >> I feel like love actually is the root of all happiness. >> Do you feel we are stronger united than divided? >> Even though we all come from different backgrounds, different races, different parts of the country, we are all the same somehow. >> Honestly, I felt like this is true America. >> 100% of us on that wall together. >> I just put my arm around her and she put her head on my shoulder and it was beautiful. And I'm really glad I got to be a part of it. >> I wish we would do an exercise like this as a nation. Somehow if we could get the 300 million people in one room. >> We have so much in common. >> Barriers were broken down quicker than what I thought they would be. >> I learned it's more than important now than ever to live from a place of compassion. >> Please welcome our host, Liz Dozier. (Applause). Lylyly so glad you are here. That was an amazing piece by our friends at a brave new films and it's an edited version of 40 strangers, 50 friends, it's this powerful illustration of despite the differences we may have, we have so much in common and we are so much more alike an we think. So I have one question before we get started. Has this amazing or what? I mean it's been like, right? (Applause). I want you to raise your hand if you can say you learned something new, you explored a new idea, you made a new connection, like you were walking away fired up. Raise your hand. All right. Look around. Amazing! I hope this has been a time for you of just explosive learning and true relationship building, but guess what? We are not done -- I appreciate, he is like what. Thank you. Thank you. We are not done. That's the exciting part about it! We have one last opportunity to really expose ourself to some of the most gifted civic leaders of our time to explore new ideas. We are going to spend time over this next hour or so just really getting into how do we organize ourself? What is the collective power around that? And how to really make our communities better. We have a very unusual lineup, and we thought this was important because we are in unusual times, and it requires unusual thinking, and unusual collaboration. So I'm excited for us to dig in. So first off, we have Eric Liu. And he has really dedicated his life to reinvigorating the social sector, Eric is the CE Citizen University and he is the author most recently of You are more power than you think. A citizen's guide to making change happen. And on a special note, it's Eric's birthday today, so please give him a warm round of applause. Eric. (Applause). >> Happy birthday dear Eric, happy birthday to you! ERIC LIU: You guys rock! Wow All right. I'm done. See you guys. ERIC LIU: Thank you so much. If I may ask the time keepers not to charge that time against my eight minutes. I'm so glad. Thank you for that warm welcome and for those wishes. It's so great to be here. You know, I often think about an image. One of my favorite photographs of President Obama, before he had the title president when he was professor Obama teaching law. It had this image of him at the black board with this piece of chalk and he has written the word power. I love the image. It's an inspiration to me. I don't have a black board, but I do have a formula I would like to share with you that distills pretty much everything I know about citizenship, and it goes like this. P plus CH equals CI Power plus character equals citizenship. Let me unpack that for you. Power. All of my work is about trying to insure that -- ensure that more Americans fluent and literate in power, what it is, how to name it, how to claim it, how to practice it, and how to understand three of the basic laws of power and civic law. Law number one, power compounds It concentrates toward monopoly if you leave it alone. Law number two, power justifies itself at every turn. Incumbent holders of power will spin elaborate narratives about why it ought to be that way. Now, thank goodness then for law number three, which is this. Power is infinite. Power is infinite, and by this I mean that in civic life, it is entirely possible even in the most seemingly unequal situations to generate brand new counter veiling power out of thin air through the magic act of organizing, inviting one or ten or 100 other humans in a common endeavor. You all know this. You are doing this. This is part of the story of our times. It's occupy, the tea party, it's the dreamers, Black Lives Matter. It's the populous revolutions that have up ended both of our major political parties. It's the incredible surge of political activism we have seen in recent months but there is another part of the story too, which is that at the same time, so many millions of people in this country feel so utterly powerless and utterly cynical. Our republic is bleeding legitimacy, and we who know a little about the body politic, it's our job to stop the bleeding. I invite you to take inventory of your power and privilege, your people power, your money power, your ideas power, your ability to shape social norms. Take that inventory and think about it. You came into this room maybe with a little. You will leave this room with a little more. And when you take that kind of inventory of your power, you face a pretty simple binary choice. Shall I horde or shall I circulate? I choose circulation. Let me tell you why so that you can tell other folks we you choose circulation, because hoarding kills. Hoarding kills everybody, including eventually the hoarders themselves. But circulators thrive because circulating power turns people who are left out on the outside into cocreators. It activates and an animates the talented. And this kind of inclusion is not altruism, equal justice is not chart. This is self-interest properly understood because we are all better off when we are all better off. (Applause). Now, what I just said there is a statement of character. It's also a statement of scientific fact in ecosystems, but when I talk about character, the second part of my formula, I want to tell you what I mean. I'm not talking about individual virtues like perseverance or diligence as important as those are, I mean character in the collective, how we live together, how we live in public, how we hold a community together . Sharing of sacrifice, service, contribution before consumption. Humility, simple empathy. Now, if all you have is fluency and power, but you are untethered from any moral sense or grounded in character in any way, then you are just a highly skilled sociopath. But if you know how to couple your knowledge of power with a commitment to making that knowledge work for everybody and not just those who already have power, well, then, you are a citizen. And I want to talk today about three ways that all of us from every walk of life can cultivate more character in civic life. The first is this. We have to set in motion and start a cycle of responsibility taking. The psychologist Terry Warner describes this universal pattern of human relationships in which I accuse you to excuse me. It's everywhere this accuse to excuse cycle. It's in our arguments at home, in politics. There are some days where it's pretty much the entirety of my Twitter feed. I will shirk responsibility for my side's failings and shortcomings by attacking you for yours, and you then return the favor. There is only one way to break the cycle, it turns out, and it is to break the cycle. Even when you are absolutely certain you are in the right, when you own your piece, you make it possible for the other part to do the same. You set in motion of responsibility taking, not shirking. Try it. I tried it recently with Glen Beck, who as some of you may know over the last year and a half has been in the course of this very public taking of responsibility for his part in feeding our toxic, poisonous, polarized politics. He opened, I reciprocated and we began a conversation first off air and then on air, and we have become friends. Now, we still disagree on just about every issue, but what we have learned to do is to shed that reflexive, instinctive need for defensive self-justification. We have learned that taking responsibility doesn't burden you. It doesn't weigh you down, it frees you. Well, the second way that we can all cultivate character in civic life is simple, start a club, any kind of club, on anything, as long as it has at its heart mutual aid and the desire to be useful to someone other than yourself. Because forming character isn't done in isolation. It's done in the company of others by inviting people in, indeed by obligating them. For years at Citizen University we have been running the civic collaborate fore, it's the network of civic all different sectors of civic work from across the left and the right, but it's not just a network. It's a mutual aid society. Every time we meet, several members of the group take turns in rotation, and they present to the rest of the group a project they are working on, and the rest of us have to offer not just common Terry or critique, but hard commitments of help, investments of capital of every kind, social capital, intellectual capital, relationship, institutional, even financial capital. Why do we do this? Because in the best possible sense, what goes around comes around. Mutual aid makes great citizens. Well, the third and final way we can cultivate character in civic life is this, create shared rituals of spirit and purpose. Think about how we broke bread together last night Think about that. So many people in this country and beyond are so hungry right now just just for slow food but for slow democracy. We yearn for experiences that are intentional, that yank us out of the enclosures of the private self. We need a public culture now that asks more of us, that makes more of us. Last year our team a few days after the election started a regular gathering called civic Saturdays.Zyic Saturdays is a civic analog to church. It's not church. It's not synagogue or Mosque, but it's about American civic religion, about our creed, our stated ideals. And it has the arc of a faith gathering. We sing together, we talk to the stranger next to us There are readings of text that you might think of as civic scripture, grace Lee Bogs, Martin Luther King, Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln. There is a sermon, and what we have learned from civic Saturday is this, character is contagious. It is wholly possible for everyone in this room to set off a cascade of civic character today by taking a stand or by taking a knee. We have learned too that character like power is infinite. It's infinite. When you put character into action, when you serve, when you sacrifice, when you risk your own capital and privilege to benefit those who are currently disfavored, when you challenge and confront the structural systematic inequities in our society that lie and betray our nation's creed, in short, when you show up for others your moral core doesn't get spent and burned down and disappear like fuel, it increases. It expands with use, like imagination. It generates more of itself from itself, like art or like love. And that in the end is both the beauty and the burden of my little formula. P plus CH equals CI. We who are gathered here today, we know something about how to practice power. We know something about the cultivation of character. Take a good look at each other. Look around this room. We believe still, and we know that America is still possible. For love of country then, let us circulate what we know. Thank you very much. (Applause). >> Thank you so much to Eric, it's to great to have his leadership in this space. Up next we have two artists, two sons of hip-hop, if you will, in conversation. The first is Lynn man well Miranda, I'm sure you have never heard of him, of course, the tiny musical he did called Hamilton. And we have common who is a socially conscious wrapper who is known for his lyricism as much as social justice work. Can we please give a warm welcome to Lynn man well and common. Northbound thank you all. >> It's an honor to be up here with Lynn, and I'm the C to the double OMN from the City of Wind. >> We have to be careful. This will become a rap concert if we don't stay on top of it. I'm here with Chicago legend, common, might meistro, thimpg you for being here you are one of my inspirations. >> You are, you are. I got to say, I mean, when you see a piece of art that's created that you feel like it's life changing, you remember that moment, it's like the first time you heard one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever made. And when you first see do the right thing, certain things just affect your life where you are like, man, my life will never be the same and it had that impact on so many people in our lives and on culture, and it was like eye opening for me to see all of these people from different walks of life being brought together to tell a story about a person prevailing through life and prevailing through life and over coming situations. It's amazing for me because out of the genius of your brain, you came up with this and correlated that to hip-hop, the story of Alexander Hamilton, and I'm not asking you a question, to be honest, I am just letting you know how grateful I am. But I will ask during the writing of it, was it something for you to put so many multicultural people, to put all of these different colors of people as heroes in American history, because that was one of the things that really opened my mind and heart. >> Well, first of all, I want to make sure everyone is recording so I can watch that later for when I'm old and gray. Yes. You know, I read Hamilton's story, and I got to the part where he wrote his way out of the Caribbean, I mean, talk about full circle, a hurricane destroys St. Croix, and Alexander Hamilton writes an account of the devastation he sees and people take up a collection to get him off the island, get his education on the main land. That could not be more full circle than today, but I also thought, well, that's hip-hop. That's what I love about hip-hop. It's about writing about your struggle so specifically that anyone can find their way into it, and anyone can find the universal within that particular struggle, and that's what inspired me about his story and he does that, at every point he writes his way into the next situation, and I'm glad I get to say this here, the fun for me was in matching, not just writing it as a musical, but matching flows to what I thought the founders were. Hamilton wants to have the smartest guy in the room. He is the son of pun and M and M, I'm passionately smashing, all of that. Then for George Washington, he was the only guy everybody could agree on as a moral leader with unimpeachable moral authority and I thought he has got to be comet. So that's totally modeled on your flow, and so that was like, to me, George Washington was like John legend and common's flow smashed together, so you are a very much a part of the creation of that, and you were very much on my mind. COMMON: Damn. I know I don't resemble George but I will take that. >> And then Tommy kale elevated that to the brins will with the casting of the show. We want this to look like our country does now and the voices you had in your head. That's why it looks the way it does and tells the story it tells. >> . How did you know you willed a voice that deserved to be heard, because that was the first thing I felt hip-hop gave me. When did you recognize that and know, man, I got a voice, my voice deserves to be heard somewhere. We were talking this back stage,. I'm a New York ki, but chorus line is a period piece by the time I'm grown up in the 80s and so is Westside Story, so I was like, oh, this takes place in the village. You are allowed to write musicals about now. Let's go. But then also those classic hip-hop albums, you know, for me when I heard the far side album for the first time, I heard passing me by, I was like I am allowed to write a hip-hop song because I can't get any girls to notice me over here. When I think about your work and I think about waiting for the Lord to rise, I look into my daughter's eyes and realize I'm going to learn from her, the Messiah might return from her, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to change the world through her. That's this man here. (Applause). Common chon thank you. >> I had the good fortune of getting to hear snippets of your album before it came out and it's so relevant and so speaks to the times we are in. What was the process of making that and does your activism bleed into your work and where do you see your responsibility in that respect. >> Well, the project Lynn is talking about is called black America and it just so happened one day I was in sound check, and an artist I work with because talking about Sandra Bland and for somen I started thinking about Sandra Bland and was like this was a human being who was a sister, a daughter, and we talk about her and we hashtag, you know, we protest for her, but her life in the physical form is gone, and it kind of hit me on an emotional level and I was thinking black life had been removed from this earth just for being black. I'm a hopeful person so as I kept writing it, I started to say black America again is us rewriting the story, and that's why I started off here we go. Here, here we go again, Trayvon will never get to be an older man. Black children, their childhood stole from them, robbed of our names and language. Stole again. Who stole the soul from black smoke Made us go through the back door and raffle black bodies on the slave blocks. >> I told you it was going to be a rap concert tonight. >> No, no, but, okay, this voice and stuff, it started from us being on the block and when I knew that it was relevant was when I was rapping and like you said, I found hip-hop to be something relative to my life. I was like, wow, that's me looking at rock him, looking at run DMC, looking at KRS1 and big Daddy cane. So I was like I started expressing myself and I realized that the voice could be turned into activism when I had people come up to me in my shows. I did a song called retrospect for life about Lauren Hill and it was about abortion. It was my story. I had a gentleman come up and say, you know, Common, I decided to have that child because of that song I decided not to have an abortion. It shook me. I'm thinking I'm rapping songs to entertain and I'm doing it because I want to be dope. It was like, no, this stuff affects lives and then right after that I had two guys that were gay that came to me at a show and said, yow, Common, when you use this word, it makes us feel disrespected and we love you. And those two incidents changed about the way I looked at what I would do for rap. Because I was speaking from my heart and growing as an adult but once I realized that the music affects lives and our voices mean something, that's when I was like, this is a part of activism. One thing I have to say, Lynn, and I see you doing it in many ways, when does the art, when do you take from the art and start really being an activist, because I see you now, what you are doing for Puerto Rico, what you have done, the way you speak out, that's activism. That's not just only the art. So when does that -- >> Well, I mean, it gets back to something you said just now, which is writing from a place of love and being a hopeful person You can use any source of fuel to power your craft, right? You can -- rage is a fuel source. Joy is a fuel source. Anger is a fuel source. Love is a fuel source. I find that love burns slower and longer. I need it to write musicals. They take a long time. You know, Hamilton took me seven years and the heights took me seven years. I can't write a musical on rage. I can write three angry Tweets on rage. I can't sustain that energy. That's the kind of fuel that blows up the ship. I feel worse at the end of the day. I'm too exhausted to go on. When I started writing almost like praying it was before there was any government response to Puerto Rico. It was just the hurricane hit Wednesday night and Thursday no one had heard from anyone on the island. And my social media feed and my emails and my texts were has anyone heard from vegata, is there power in San Juan. And there was this terrible silence we experienced on this side in the mainland, anyone who had friends or family on the island And art is how we enter the world. That's how we -- that's our way in. I started writing, all right, let me see if I can make, put every town into a lyric, if I can get all 78 towns in, pull up Wikipedia, check it against the tourism site, make sure I got all 78 and start writing this song, use it for relief efforts right away. This was before there was a response It was just when we were waiting to hear word. I wanted to fill the silence with music. I think most composers or songwriters want to fill the silence with music. I wrote it as mast as I could the day after the storm was and I called up every famous Latino person I know and Tweeted the onessed I didn't know and everyone to their credit said yes because everyone was looking to do something, to help, and so I said where are you, and we flew to L.A. and Miami and we got it turned around two weeks and 100% of the proceeds go to relief efforts in Puerto Rico. (Applause). Thank you. So it's a classic example of when art meets, you know, a need to do something, because, you know, that's going to be my first impulse to right. >> That's the important piece you are talking about because as artists we sometimes really want to do something. I remember ambassador Andrew Young at our first rehearsal at Selma. What are you willing to die for? Live for that. He said we were willing to die for freedom, and western willing to die for justice and equality so we live for it every day. When he said that, I went home that night and I was like, okay, I got my foundation. I speak to the kids, I do things, but am I really living to the title of activist and it made me want to do more, but part of the element that I said was an important piece is sometimes as artists we don't know where to go. We had a great meeting with our great President Obama one time and it was a bunch of artists sitting around and we were brain storming on ideas and just trying to get direction and he said, man, we got to be politically educated, and that was part, that's one component that I feel like as artists that we had to find, but another piece that you brought up that was super important was that it's connecting with people. Recently I did a song called let it to the free for the documentary 13th. And I was like, man, if I'm rapping about mass incarceration, I got to do something. I got to do something. I can't just be rapping about it and talking about it, I got to be on the front line doing something. Well, for ten years a gentleman named Scott Butnick had been telling me I need to be in the prisons. He had brought formerly incarcerated people to our shows. All of these years I wasn't like engaged in it. I was just, but at this time, it happened, divine time and when everything opened up, when I found out mass incarceration was affecting young people in our inner cities of Chicago because when you take the father away from the family, then it becomes a cycle. So when I started realizing it was touching home in that way also, I just connected with Scott Butnick of art and we went into prisons in California recently and sat down with inmates and I had some of the most enlightened conversations I ever had. We went back and performed and then had a concert at the capital of California with 30,000 people, Andrew Day, and we went the next day and became part of the policy change by helping these bills, SV394 getting juveniles to no longer be on life without parole. I'm bringing this up only to say my gateway into that, my entryway was connecting with somebody who was already doing the work. Sometimes, you know, I think we, from our own seats have to come up with the solution, come up with the answers. I think it starts with the desire and passion and when you seek that out, you take one step, God takes two steps towards you, so then you go for it, boom! I was right there with Scott and we are moving it, right? We are moving it. Let's go. >> That's incredible. And I think, we are here talking about civic engagement. That's why we are here, that's why we are at the summit and it's the root of all other things to be engaged, to be aware. People ask me about the political ramifications of Hamilton. I think if there is any political take away, it's, you know, the limit of our representative democracy is that we get to choose who goes in the room where it happens. We don't get to say what they do in there. And but we get to say who goes in that room. That's the beginning of it. That's being engaged, getting to the ballot box, voting, but also being engaged in the issues and the people who are really on the front lines of those issues. That's such an important part of the conversation. >> And I know so many of us become discouraged in many ways, but it's like, man, once I started realizing we can affect things on the state and local level and just from the grass roots perspective, like I always, some of the biggest changes I have seen in my communities come from grass roots things and for a long time honestly I wasn't like a believer in the political spirit in that way, but, you know, certain things brought hope to my life, and that was obviously us having President Obama, that changed my perspective a lot in ways in how I wanted to participate in politics, but it's so many levels that we can contribute to our country's progress and poo people's progress and to the world's progress, so it's like whatever level you choose, wherever you sit from, you don't have to be an athlete. You don't have to be a world renowned playwright that's changing the world. An actor. >> Totally, and to piggyback on that with Puerto Rico, and the work we have been doing, some of the most important work didn't cost a penny. It was people jumping up and shouting. It was, hey, there is a 70-year-old law called the Jones act and we can't get the supplies to where they need to go. This is getting to the people, and everyone screaming about that until they waived the Jones act It was about us screaming about white fish and I company with two employees a $300 million contract. So our voices can affect change. If you don't have a dollar to spend, you can make your voice heard and make an enormous difference because that's what we have. There is enormous power in the plurality of our voices. >> So we only have a little bit of time. Why don't you start it off with a free style or something. >> Oh, good gracious. >> Come on, Lynn, give them something, man! >> Oh, my gosh. With this squad sitting here up tight with the Chi town God, it's Lynn again, sweeter than inna mon, sitting with CO double MON. >> Rock him I came through the door thinking of something that was hard core. I told you all before I was inspired by Hamilton. He said I was the new form of the gorge Washington, and that's how it is, we got biz, you know what time it is, I pass it to my man, Lynn, so we can say it again, manuel, check it out, I jam well. Back then we used to be down with the gang bangers, but now things is changing making it even better so Lynn, put some more rhymes together! >> Damn! I don't know how we do it, he really keep it fluid. I'm trying to learn from it, hear at this Obama summit. But I have become it. It's amazing What the hell! >> Ain't no stopping, we still hip-hopping. This man is doing hip-hop and Mary Poppins. >> Comment. >> I don't know he in the Mary Poppins movie coming up. >> And common is in every other thing you are watching on television and in movies and he is shy of a Tony, and I am shy of an Oscar so we will work on something back stage. Thank you so much for coming out. >> Thank you all. Blank. (Applause). Lrve LIZ DOZIER: That was epic, I mean, epic! Unbelievable! Our next speaker is the kind of person who really believes in the power of just everyday people showing up to solve problems. She took one of our country's most seemingly ire retractible problems of having over 100,000 foster kids waiting to be adopted and she began to solve it. Welcome the pioneering advocate, founder of Generations of Hope, Dr. Brenda Eheart BRENDA EHEART: I'm going to set the stage for you. It was 1982 and the crack cocaine epidemic was tearing families apart. Children were pouring into the foster care system. I was a researcher at the University of Illinois, and I was studying families who wanted to adopt some of these children At the end of our three-year study, most of the kids were back in the system. Now, for my story. It began two years into our project. I received a phone call from one of the families telling me that their beloved Sammy had been met by a stranger, a social worker, after school. Removed from their family and taken to another foster home, to more strangers. Sammy was terrified, he didn't know what was happening. He thought he was going to be adopted and wanted to be adopted by this first family that called me. He was screaming I don't want to go. Please don't take me. Please! Sammy was seven years old. My daughter was seven years old. They were born on the same day. All I could think about was if this had happened to my Sarah. It was unthinkable. I knew then and there I had to do something other than just be a professor. I had to do something to try to change this system. It was child abuse by the system. Not by parents and families, by the system. And I thought about the families and our study, and they just did not have the support to parent these children with their troubled pasts. And so I imagined putting, having 12 families live beside each other, each one committing to adopt up to four children from the foster care system. Many of these kids were part of sibling groups and they would be there to support and learn from each other. That meant I had to start finding housing. I knew nothing about housing. I eventually found it on a military base that was slated to close a year later. The Pentagon told me you can't have 12 houses, Brenda. We are dividing this base into subdivisions and you are going to have to take 80 housing units, then they told me we have no rules for negotiating with a non-profit. I had started a non-profit. All I could do was think of Sammy's face and they were not going to stop me. Little did I know. So I had found the housing, I went to -- I didn't know what to do about the issue of the housing, and so I heard about a program where college students were living in the homes of older adults for reduced housing cost, they were providing companionship and doing household chores. That allowed the seniors to remain in their homes. It was a win/win. I turned that idea around in my mind and it was in an aha moment! I said that's what I will do with the housing that we don't use for our families, we will put older adults in it, and they will get reduced housing costs for providing support to our families and children, for being grandmas and grandpas. But then there was the issue with the Pentagon and their negotiating with me. They were mighty stubborn and they kept saying we don't have the rules. The rules are the rules. I had placed over a year's time, this is the truth, 1,000 phone calls to them and they still wouldn't budge. It was one year, I mean, it was one week before the base was to close, and it's housing director said to me there is one more thing you can do. What's that? She said send off a presidential inquiry. I didn't know what that was. Three hours later I was sending a very brief fax, that's what we did back then, to then President Clinton asking him if he couldn't please intervene, please make it possible for us to negotiate. To my complete and utter amazement, six days later, one day before the base was to close , I was in a room with seven men from the Pentagon. They told me that we could have the 80 housing units for $225,000. The State of Illinois had given us a million dollars for this project, and so we said, yes. (Applause). and then that was only preparation for the real work which was to begin. Families and seniors began to move into Hope Meadows, the name we used for our little subdivision, and one of the first children from foster care to move there was Kenny, who was as cute as a button, five years old, severely neglected. He did not have a sense of self. I had never seen anything like this. He could not use a personal pronoun. He couldn't say the words I, mine, my, and when we asked him to draw a picture of himself, he would draw a stick picture, you know, the line for the body, the arms, the legs. He never could put a circle on top for his head. He was really troubled, and he would run away a lot. Thank goodness grandpa L lived next door to him and always seemed to know where to find him, and he would listen to him, and eventually they would walk back home together again. Fast forward to Kenny's senior year in high school, he had finally learned to read with the help of some retired school teachers who had moved to Hope, and he was reading to grandpa L a lot. Grandpa L had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, but Al was saying to me as he had for many years, I am here for the children and Kenny was now saying to me, I'm here for grandpa Al. Who was helping whom? And I'm always asked, do the kids graduate from high school? Yes. Do the kids go on to college? Many of them do. Some don't. Some have graduated from some very prestigious schools. Do they have jobs? Most of them do. But here is the thing. What's most important to me is that these kids have grown into young adults who are masters of care, kindness, and compassion. (Applause). Every one of you in this room would be lucky if they were your neighbor. And why not? They spent the time that they spent in Hope Meadows growing up, every day they were surrounded by acts of care by their neighbors regardless of race, regardless of income, and believe it nor -- or not, regardless of their neighbors' political beliefs. If you can imagine this neighborhood, there were ordinary people as President Obama said yesterday doing extraordinary things, being there for this specific reason, to help solve some of our most intractable social problems. In this case, foster care. And there were vulnerable children who were thought of as assets, as contributing, as Kenny did, not as problems to be managed. And there are a lot of older adults who instead of being, thinking of themselves as being used up had a life full and rich with meaning and purpose. We call this the basis of this community intentional neighboring, and now we have those leaders are starting to apply this to communities they are developing, and they are applying this to not only kids in foster care, but to young adults with disabilities in the State of Washington and immigrant families. In Wisconsin they are wrapping in a generational community around people with dementia, and we have a fabulous program in New Orleans for the young men and women coming back from military duty, and Vietnam vets and others are moving there to support them. The people who live there are beginning to echo the words of miss Irene, a beloved senior at Hope Meadows. She said once, and now she is in her 90s. I feel useful. I feel I have a purpose. When my life is over on earth, I know I have left something of value behind. You, the change agents of tomorrow, the leaders of tomorrow, wouldn't it be great if you could help the people you care about, the people you work with be able to one day say those same words. Remember, I fought the Pentagon and won. (Applause). I have to believe anything is possible. I hope you do too! Thank you. (Applause). LIZ DOZIER: Thank you so much, Brenda. Next up is is an Nigerian entrepreneur who runs a leading media company that regularly engages over 30 million young people from across the African continent. Can we please welcome Adebola Williams. (Applause). ADEBOLA WILLIAMS: Good evening! It's good to be here. President Barack, thank you for the opportunity. I look forward to not saking a selfie with you, but shaking you and hugging you and looking you straight in the eye. You see, Africa is an exciting place to live as a young entrepreneur. In Nigeria where I live, a very attractive place to build business. But it wasn't always like this. I was inspired like Paul we heard in the first session yesterday to use the media in 2004. We know the stories, young people desperate to leave the country. All of this negative stuff. There was a pungent smell of helplessness. There was no talk of youth enterprise. No signs of youth engagement in politics There was very little to be inspired by. In my travels across Africa from Uganda to Somalia, from Ghana to Senegal, I found that many were faced with this common enemy, helplessness. Helplessness because we are mostly dependent on government, but this government is not dependable. When you have consistently seen careless display of incompetence by leaders, absence of empathy and concerns for citizens, and failure to execute important infrastructural projects, it is easy to feel hopeless. It is easy to feel like you don't have a chance to compete or collaborate with your contemporaries around the world, but in despair lies several opportunities, especially to be pioneers, especially to be great. When we were 18 two friends and I started an initiative to combat the helplessness directly. We found a company called Red. It's social business that inspires young Africans to take social and political action through the power of story telling. You see, there is no one force stronger and more powerful than an inspired, empowered human being. Likewise, there is nothing more dangerous than a human who is hopeless. He is a ticking time bomb with nothing to live for because he sees no value in himself. What we wanted to do was to build a critical mass of young hopeful people who believe in the power of their own gifts to create a different future. The currency of this generation is talent and president Barack Obama and Michelle believe in that. In our work, the focus has been to build a critical mass of active citizens who believe and deserve more and will challenge systems, approach oppositions, find and ultimately become the leaders that we desire. Case in point, five years ago we led against the national assembly of Nigeria a match called enough is enough To demand that the then vice president be made acting president, in the absence of our president who was ill, sick, we didn't know what he was. Merging pop culture with advocacy, a potent strategy to attract mass youth action. We moved to the city capital with top actors and musicians. This, of course, helped to attract many young people, but mainstream media didn't pay us any attention, but using the power of social, we Tweeted enough is enough at such volume it started trending all over the world. The entire slates of media started calling from CNN to the Al-Jazeera. They all wanted in. That day the government realized there was any new generation of young people they have to negotiate with, but most importantly, the young people realized that we wielded a new kind of power. Immediately after the March, the president joined Facebook, and one year after that he came from the city cap a to Legos to court young professionals. This was unprecedent the. It asked us to build media we could control so we set up a premium youth perspective platform that gives citizens a voice. You see, I like to say that the media is the most powerful estate in the world. The media shapes, the media defines our colors, or choices, it dwerms what brands you buy, where you live, what you do. It changes society from women to now behind wheels in Saudi Arabia. (Applause). It's to teach a critical mass of young people to think, to act, and to grow. Media must drive agendas, media must shape the conversation. Media must provoke action, and as you realize this, more questions arose. We ask ourselves how do we help people get the governments they desire? How do we get people get the leaders they believe in or the whole systems that are no longer wanted? So make progress on these questions we needed to build a structure that is capable of influencing the caliber of leaders we needed for our collective future, and that was our craft, our mission building company was born. With sted craft we have been part of three successful elections, but the winning is never truly about the candidate it's the fact that the votes of the majority counted, the fact that the voices of the people were heard and when Nigeria did it, Ghana latched on, now Kenya is cheering hard at it. I look around the continent and my heart beams with joy. Innovation, advocacy to governance, still growing economies, but Africa is woke. Finally, I learned and if we have learned anything in the last two days, it is that nothing can be more powerful as Margaret immediate said, that a -- Margaret Meade said, that a committed group no matter the size. So the task before us, we must continue to demand. The citizen must never stop demanding of those we have contracted to supply of governance, especially because we have seen the brightest of the hope bearers go to sleep as soon as they get the power in their hands, to hold ourselves and leaders accountable, hope is our weapon. Media is our tool. And action is the remedy. The highest office in the land, ladies and gentlemen, is not the office of the president. The highest office of the land is that of the citizen. It is you Thank you. (Applause). LIZ DOZIER: Thank you so much, Adebola Williams. In the wake of hurricane Maria, our next speaker fed more Puerto Ricans fresh homecooked meals more than any other relief organization. Two million in total. In his day job, he just runs 26 award-winning restaurants and a food truck. Please welcome Chef Jose Andres. (Applause). CHEF JOSE ANDRES: Hello. People of America, people of the world, my name is Chef Jose Andres and I am a cook. When I was a young boy in Spain, every summer my parents invited friends, and I always wanted to help, to help my father to cook a pig piaa of a rice dish over an open fire, but my father put me in charge of gathering the wood and making the fire. But what I really wanted was to cook. One Sunday after many years of making the fire, kind of my frustration exploded. I want to cook that. He tell me go away. We will speak later. Well, after the meal was over, my father put his hand on my shoulder and said, son, what are you feeling bad about? Taking care of the fire is the most important thing. If you control the fire, then and only then, you become a cook. I became a cook thanks to my father showing me how to control that fire. Find your fire and then, only then, you can change the world. Oh, yes. (Applause). That's what we did at D.C. central kitchen 25 years ago when I joined as a young volunteer peeling potatoes with the homeless, ex convicts, ex drug addicts and sharing stories while feeding thousands each day. That's the power of food to change our world. My hero, Robert Examplar, the founder of DC central kitchen always tells me too often charity is about the redemption of the giver, not the liberation of the receiver. We need to change that. And we are changing that right here in this room. This woshedz were very much on my mind when I first visited Haiti weeks after the earthquake and again after hurricanes, one after the other I showed up with one simple inedges to feed people, but more important, I show up up ready to learn. I landed in San Juan four days after hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. And I'm going to tell you, you know it by the news our fellow citizens had no electricity, no cell signal, no gasoline, no fuel, no diesel, but even more critically, they had no clean water and no food. And I was kind of not able to figure out who was supposed to do this job, to feed the people I knocked on the doors of the government, the NGOs, and everybody told me, Jose, relax. We have it under control. They say they have decades of experience and yet the American people of Puerto Rico were hungry and thirsty. So I called some Puerto Rican chefs right there, many friends, we differ on expertise. As others were planning and meeting, we started cooking. We started with San Gocho, a Puerto Rican hearty soup. The roof was leaking. We prepared and delivered a thousand meals the first day. A week later, 25,000 people per day. We were responding as quickly as we could to the need, hospitals, elderly homes kept knocking on our doors and we couldn't say no. We didn't even know how to pay for everything, but the need was more important than the how. The movement became chefs for Puerto Rico, and we became an Army of hope, one plate at a time. Our data force for volunteers. Our slights were social media and radio. While other people still were planning, we kept cooking. (Applause). Sometimes plans get in the way. Sitting and talking sometimes is not a solution. In the urgency of now, you act first and adapt as you go. When they first flew down to port Puerto Rico, I expected to spend a few days, cook a few meals and go home, but there I saw the people willing to feed the people. What do you do when life takes an unexpected turn? Don't follow no recipe. Central kitchen builds impossible dreams from one restaurant we went to 18 kitchens, from two cooks we ended with hundreds. With ten foot we ended with 200 volunteers releasing 150,000 meals a day. Someone you know ran a campaign spreading a message of hope and change. Let me tell you, it worked. Because hope and change is what we cook in Puerto Rico. And if a group of cooks and volunteers can do that, every one of you in this room can do that too! Oh, yes! The challenges we face today, hunger, poverty, inequality, war, have been around forever, but that doesn't mean it always has to be this way. We need you to come up with new solutions, and to do that, new recipes for success must be written. I want to leave you with this photo of these two girls, rose el angel from an African community one hour away from San Juan in loifa. They inspire me and give me hope in humanity. Every day they showed up for three weeks. They never ate, they never drank, they never had their Apple until every single elderly person in their community was fed. These girls understand what it takes to change the world. Success at this point is less about your career plan, but more about finding your fire, our fire. Sometimes the urgency of now has a simple solution, stop planning, make your fire and start cooking one plate a food at a time. Thank you very much. (Applause). LIZ DOZIER: Welcome to Chicago! One more time for Chicago! (Applause). >> Over this next day and a half, we are going to explore together, we are going to share idea, learn from one another, dig a little bit deeper. This is our chance, so let's go ahead and make the most of it. >> For decades we thought of citizenship as a possession. Now, we remember that it is Lrve >> Right across the hall in ball room E, Chef Jose Andres has worked with the Marriott team to prepare a special Puerto Rican meal. Give him a round of applause for that. It will be amazing. I want to make sure that you head on over right after our last speaker. Next thing just to remind you that the community event is going to begin tonight at 8:30, so please give yourself time to make your way there and also to take your seats. Our next speaker was born and raised in Stockton, California, and at the very young age of 26 became the first African-American and youngest mayor of Stockton, California, can we please welcome Mike Tubbs (Applause). MICHAEL TUBBS: I absolutely hate the holiday of Halloween. And I have a sweet tooth. I know for many people Halloween is about dressing up and trick-or-treating and being in community, but for me, seven years ago Halloween became synonymous with anger, with pain, with a sense of nihilism. On November 1st, 2010 started like any other day. I was 20 years old and so honored to be an intern in the Obama White House, so I woke up early, way too early for my taste to make sure I got into the office on time because Ms. Jarret liked her clips bright and early, and while there, my mom has a tendency to text call and email me incessantly, but it was different when I was at the White House. She respected it. She said I will wait until you get home. Then and then I got a call from my mom, I looked and said she would never call me at such an important call and my mom generally doesn't cry, but there was something different in her voice that day. It was barely above a whisper and she told me my cousin had been murdered at a house party in Stockton the night before in Halloween. In that moment, I was angry. I was up set. I had the sense of powerlessness and nihilism and also a sense of futility. What was the point of being at Stamford or being at the White House when my own cousin was murdered back home in my hometown? I'm flying back to Stockton, the same feeling stuck with me and I realized that that narrative was not just a narrative of my family or my cousin but of far too many young men of color and communities throughout this nation. Far too many young men and communities throughout this nation, so going to the funeral, being upset, being angry, I sat down and had a conversation with my family and with God about where do you move from here? I think when bad things happen, when things don't go our way, it's easy to sit in anger. It's much more difficult to drive towards action. So I had a conversation with my mother. I said how do you move from pain to purpose. There has to be a bigger lesson in here for the family in this. And she said, well, you have a couple of options. You could continue on the path you are going and make a lot of money. So we had a conversation about whether it was more important for me at 20, 21 years old to make change or make dollars, and for some reason that's funny, but for us it was real, because we were poor and not doing much better now, so it was a real consideration. The second thing we had to consider being 21 years old, coming of age in the time of social media was this idea was my fear of embarrassment less than or greater than my love for the people in the meaning if I decided to step up, decided to run for office, all of my Facebook rants and my Twitter rants at 20 years Olds, all of those things would become public knowledge and political fodder, and often times when you put yourself out there as a public figure, you also make yourself a public target. That was the second thing I had to consider. The third thing I had to consider came from one of my favorite sermons from Dr. King. He talked about the Good Samaritan parable, and he said the Good Samaritan was special because everyone else thought who would happen to them if they helped the man on the side of the road, and he said the Good Samaritan flipped that question and said, if I don't help, what happens to them? So the other folks were like what would happen to me, my wants, my sacrifices. But the Good Samaritan said what will happen to them if I don't help. And then the last kind of question I had to ask myself was this question of chair ritety versus justice, at that time I was running non-profits, doing programs, speaking at fund-raisers, I was in all of these charity things and after the death of my cousin and examining the structural violence and communities throughout this nation and make it so young people don't get the opportunity to sit where we sit nor reach their full potential necessitated something a little bit more, injustice. So me and my friends said is it by charity or justice? And it came to me that charity is necessary but not sufficient to create the world we want to create. When kids grow up in communities with limited opportunity, some of us have to step up and demand a seat at the table. (Applause). So in 2012 at 21 years old with no money, even less experience, I decided to be motivated by the death of my cousin and to run for city council in Stockton, California. Stockton is a City of 315,000 people. It has a lot of assets, but also like many communities had some real structural issues to deal with, and running wasn't easy. There was no guarantee that we would win, but now being in the loom where it happens like Lynn Manuel provides an opportunity to pup purpose to the pain and policy solutions that come not from something I read, but from something that I live. I share that because I know you all out there have the same lived experience, the same passion and maybe you just need someone to tell you to run. So run. And five years later, so many things have happened in the great all American City of Stockton, California. We are not perfect. Everything is not fixed, but in five years by listening, we have been able to close down problem liquor stores and establish fresh produce for folks in my old neighborhood. We were able to bring in the first bank to the under served parts of the community in the last 50 years. In five years we have been able to start and pilot a universal becausic income demonstration and we are working on the college promise and the good work didn't just happen. It took people. It took someone accepting up and saying I may not have money, I not have the answers, but I have a lot of anger, a lot of pain and how do I put purpose to that and do something with it. So I started seven years ago and I went in there. So after the death of my cousin, my internship in the White House, I was on another journey on freedom rides with some of the original freedom riders, and one guy, Bob Singleton, he said two things that stuck with me that I want to leave with us because I think they speak to the point of this convening. The first thing Mr. Singleton said, and it was shocking he was 20 years old when he got on the bus and for some reason, maybe because I'm slow, I thought he was 70 when he got on the bus and 70 again in 2010 and I did the Math and he was actually 20 and he said he had a decision to make. He said there were a lot of great moments in the civil rights movement, but it took collective impact and collective power to change those movements into a -- moments into a movement. He said I was arrested on August 4th, 1961. Michael, why is that day important? And I said, well, you were arrested and if you weren't arrested I wouldn't be on this bus and we wouldn't be having this 50-year reunion. And he rolled his eyes and said something very powerful, on that day Barack Obama was born, and he said he had no idea as a 20-year-old with no power, less opportunity than we have now, with the wholly segregated system, the choice he made at 20 years old would pave the way so a child just being born will have the chance to be president 50 years later. And he locationed at me and left me with a question that motivates me every day and I she should motivate all of us. Was this summit just a moment or is it a catalyst to a global movement in reclaiming our time, our communities, and making our world look like what it should? And the final question is this, what are we prepared to do today? So that 50 years from now a child born on November 1st, 2017 has ever opportunity we have had and even more. Thank you. (Applause). LIZ DOZIER: That was amazing. Thank you so much, Michael. Our next guest is at the very center of the conversation about how media has changed and how it needs to change. Please welcome Tina Rosenberg. (Applause). TINA ROSENBERG: Here is a new way to imagine journalism. Three years ago the major paper in Cleveland started work on a series about the intersection of led paint, race and poverty. It wasn't the first time that the plain dealer had done such a series. In fact, this was the third such series in the last few years. The first two had established that Cleveland had one of the worst led problems of any city the country and documented in detail how badly the city had failed its children. So what was the fallout from those first series Well, not much actually I lot of talk from politicians and a few minor reforms so this time the Plain Dealer did something different. Yes, they did the traditional investigative work about the problem, but they also asked another question, who is doing it better. This allowed him to do work on what was going right in cities such as Rochester, Akron, grand rapids, to make it painfully clear that Cleveland had no excuses, the paper published a chart that said here is what successful crit cities do, and here is what Cleveland does. And this time their series has had a big effect. The city has greatly increased its budget and its staff for dealing with lead paint. It has adopted many of the best practices found elsewhere. For example, for the first time Cleveland is proactively testing its school children for lead paint. So what was it that created change in Cleveland? It was journalism holding local officials accountable by telling you better is possible, and here is what better actually looks like I'm cowriter of the fix column in The New York Times which looks every week at a different response to a social problem. I'm also cofounder of an organization called the Solutions Journalism Network which I will talk about in a few minutes. Most of us in this room are in the business of behavior change. We all know that simply pointing out someone's shortcomings is unlikely to get results. If you want me to change, I need to know that change is possible, what change looks like, and that people just like me have done it. And that is also what societies need. Journalists, however, tend not to cover what's working. Our job as journalists should be to hold a mirror up to society to help society change but we are holding up a distorted mirror. Now, covering what's wrong has not always been our major focus That took place since water gait and the Vietnam War. The switch back then to investigative reporting was healthy because up to that point journalists had given too many people in power a free pass, but wince water gate the uncovering wrongdoing has become practically the only thing in our job description. Now, that pressure for change is very important, but as in Cleveland, people also need to know that better options are possible. In a country as big and diverse as ours, this should be pretty easy. Any problem that's widely shared has many different people working on it, and some of those responses are going to be more successful than others. Innovation is everywhere, but we don't know about it. Journalists should be like Bees cross pollinating, highlighting innovation so other people can take advantage of it I'm not saying we don't need watchdog journalism, we certainly do and now more than ever, but the definition needs to expand to also include rigorous reporting on potential solutions if for no other reason than because if we feed society's sense of outrage every single day without feeding society's sense of efficacy, we create passivity and does despair. My own light bulb moment. I write a lot about public health and I used to do it in the old fashioned way, here is how terrible things are Back in the year 2000, I pitched my editor at the Sunday magazine at The New York Times on a story about the price of AIDS drugs in poor country. In countries where the AIDS burden was the highest, very, very few people could afford life saving drugs. That was widely known at the time. What was not widely known was why. Collusion between farm institute cal -- pharmaceutical manufacturers and Washington to put trade pressures on countries that sought to make or buy generic drugs. Pretty good story, right? I pitched it to my editor and he said, no, too depressing, we cannot inflict other 7,000 word article on our readers about how everybody with AIDS is going to die in Malawi. So I went back and rethought it There was one country that was defying this pressure from Washington making generic antiretrovirals and providing them for free to all of their people and that was Brazil. So I turned the story inside out, I said everything I wanted to say about the bad behavior, but through the frame of what Brazil had to fight off in order to save its people. So this was a much better way of telling the story. It was fresh. Our readers did know that people with AIDS were going to die in Malawi. They did not know that those people were not dying in Brazil. This was a story about AIDS that made readers feel powerful and energetic rather than fatalistic and depressed. And it may have had some effect It helped to shift the debate from can poor countries treat H.I.V. to how can we do what Brazil is doing? That story will be on my gravestone. At the Solutions Journalism Network, we help news organizations do these kinds of stories. When we started five years ago, we got a lot of, oh, that's not real journalism, but we don't hear that anymore. We have worked with 150 news organizations across the country and we are starting to work internationally. Now, many journalists don't like writing negative story after negative story any more than you like reading it, but they are scared to write about what works, lest it come out looking like advocacy or public relations. So our job is to show them how to do these kinds of stories with rigor and high journalistic standards. The Plain Dealer series toxic neglect is a great example of that. Another one is the Chattanooga times free test in Tennessee, their piece the poverty puzzle. This series looked at how difficult economic and social mobility was. It was set in various places inside Chattanooga were people trying to solve a problem like a church, school, social service agency. Now, the series was candid. Failure was much more common than success, but looking at what made the difference between success and fails you're and how desperately people were trying made readers cry and care and hope. The lead reporter on the series said she couldn't believe the civility of the Facebook comments. Journalists are accused of many different kinds of by bias, but the most toxic is our bias towards negativity. This is something that has made many people in the United States stop trusting journalists. I recently asked a group of people in Alabama what they thought of mainstream media coverage of their state. And they said, you guys always choose stories that make us look like ignorant Yahoo!s. If someone comes to Chicago to cover communities of color they will invariably be writing about poverty and crime. Now, these stories are not inaccurate. That isn't the problem. The problem as we all know is that they are not the whole story. People are more than their pathologies and stereotypes and covering them through that lens robs them of air agency and blinds the rest of us to what communities are doing to actually solve their own problems. (Applause). It's not just trust in the media that's declining. Trust in all American institutions has plummeted. In 1972, 46% of Americans surveyed agreed that most people can be trusted. By 2012 that number was down to 32%, and we especially don't trust people who don't look like we do. During the election campaign, we were told that crime was at record highs, even though at the time it was at near record lows. We were told to quake in fear of immigrants even though they are more law abiding than other people. People believe these statements because they fit with the picture of the world that we see every day in the media. 9 we consume a diet of failure and corruption. We have been speaking for the last day and a half about how to engage more people in civic life. Imagine how engaging it would be if journalism was different, if alongside reporting on problems, journalism also told us true stories of people working together effectively to make measurable change. Imagine the intelligence this would unleash, the energy it would produce. Imagine if journalism told us better is possible. And here is how. Thank you. (Applause). LIZ DOZIER: Our next speaker has dedicated his life to helping the poor, the condemned and the incarcerated. He successfully argued several cases at the United States Supreme Court and just won a historic victory that ruling that mandatory life without parole sentences for those 17 years old or younger unconstitutional. (Applause). please welcome Bryan Stevenson. (Applause). BRYAN STEVENSON: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so thrilled to be here. This has been so exciting, so energizing, so affirming, being with all of you in this room has been incredibly inspiring. And I am per persuaded that we have the people in this space to change the world. I'm serious, I believe we can do it. I believe we can actually create some dynamics in the world that force things to change and I know you have had a lot of wonderful things to put in your head and your heart and it's been powerful for me too. I want to offer a short prescription as you go out and try to change the world because you will get to moments where things feel difficult and challenging and overwhelming. You will have a lot of people in your ear telling you to go this way and that way. I want to offer you something. I believe if we want to change the world there are four things we have to do. The first thing we have to do is get proximate and stay proximate to the people we care about, the people we serve. We have to get closer to the disabled and neglected if we are trying to change how we deal with the problems of refugees we have to stay close to those displaced. If we are trying to change how we deal with those addicted and coming out of jails, we have to get proximate to those communities. We cannot change the world if we stay at a distance from the problems we are trying to fix. I believe when you get proximate to people who are suffering and excluded, people who have been treated unfairly, you learn things you cannot learn from a distance. When you are proximate, you hear things you can't hear from a distance, you see things you can't see from a distance, I believe there is power in proximity, and you can't wait until you have solutions before you choose to get proximate to those that are suffering, you have got to get proximate and the solutions will come. My grandmother was one of these amazing people. She was a classic African-American matriarch. She was tough, refs strong, he was loving, she was kind, she was loving, she was the end of every argument in our family. She was also the start of many arguments in the family And my grandmother would come up to me and give me these hugs and she would expweez so tightly I thought she was trying to hurt me and she would see me and she would say, Bryan, do you still feel me hugging you? And if I said no, she would jump on me again. Every time I would seize her, I would say, mama, I always feel you hugging me and she would smile this smile and I didn't appreciate what she was doing until I got older. And she was a domestic her whole life. She fell, she broke her hip. She was dying, and I went to see my grandmother and I was sitting there pouring my heart out because I loved her. She was the daughter of enslaved people. She taught me about the world and I was holding my hand and pouring my heart out. And before I left, my grandmother squeezed my hand, and then she opened her eyes and looked at me and said, Bryan, do you still feel me hugging you. She said I'm always going to be hugging you. I didn't appreciate the power of that until I had to stand next to condemned people, I didn't understand the power until I held children 14 sentenced to die in prison after they had been abused and assaulted. I didn't appreciate the power of that until I got into difficult places but what I realize is we can all hug someone, we can get close enough to the people we serve and embrace them and you should not doubt the power of what you can do by just holding onto the communities you love, the people you serve. There is power in proximity. I'm the product of someone's choice, I'm not here because I'm special or smart. I began my education in a colored school. In my community black kids couldn't go to the public schools. There were no high schools for black kids. And lawyers came into the community and they made them open up the public schools and because the lawyers got proximate to poor black kids like me I got to go to high school, college. I was a philosophy major in college. I looked in graduate school in history, English and political science and I didn't realize until I looked into it that you have to know something about history, and political science to get into graduate school. It came clear to me that you don't need to know anything to go to law school. I signed up for that, but I was struggling in law school until I got proximate to condemned people. There are power in proximity. Get close to the people that are suffering and excluded, the people we want to serve and we will find our power. The second thing we have got to do, we have got the change the narratives underneath the issues. We can win the debates, we can win policy discussions, we can win some of these issues, but if we don't change the narrative, if we don't win the narrative struggle, the policies may not be sustained. There is a narrative underneath these issues. We have mass incarceration in America because we adopted this misguided war on drugs. We decided to put people who were drug dependent, people dealing with addiction, we said they are criminals and put them in jails. We could have said they are people with medical issues and used the healthcare system to address that, and we didn't do that. And the reason has to do with the narrative. The people in power were preaching what I call the politics of fear and anger. They wanted people in this country to be afraid and angry, and they used the politics of fear and anger to justify these policies and I have to tell you fear and anger are the essential ingredients of injustice. No matter where you go in the world you have got to find that narrative and fight it. Go any place where there is oppression and abuse. If you ask the oppressors why they do that they do they will give a narrative of fear and anger. We have to change the narrative about race I can't come to Chicago without talking about the burden that we still face in America. We are not really free in this country We are not. We are burdened by a history of racial inequality. It's kind of a smog that's in the air and we all breathe it in. We have got to change the narrative of racial difference that we have inherited. Our parents should have done it, our grandparents should have done it, but we have got to do it. We have got to talk about things we haven't talked about. We have to talk about in this country the fact that we live in a post genocide society. There were native people here before the European settlers came and we killed them by the millions through famine and disease. It was a genocide. We didn't call it a genocide. We said news naivessive people, they are savages and we used that narrative to justify violence. That's the narrative we relied on to sustain two centuries of slavery. I don't think the great evil of slave ray was forced labor. The real evil was the narrative of racial difference, this ideology of white supremacy that we made up to legitimize the enslavement of black people. They can't do this. They can't do that, and that narrative of racial difference, the ideology of white supremacy, that was the true evil of American slavery. If you read the 13th Amendment - (Applause). If you read the 13th Amendment it talks about ending involuntary servitude but it doesn't say anything about ending this narrative of racial difference and because of that, I don't think slavery ended in 1865, I think it just evolved. It turned into decades where we had terrorism and people were pulled out of their homes and burned and mutilated. And older people of color come up to me and say Mr. Stevenson I get angry when I hear people talking about how people are dealing with domestic terrorism. They say we grew up with terror. We had to worry about being bombed and lynched and menaced every day of our lives. The black people in Chicago, the black people that went to Detroit, Cleveland, Los Angeles and Oakland didn't go to those communities as immigrants. They came to these communities as refugees and exiles from terror in the American south. And that narrative continued. We had a brilliant civil rights struggle in this country, but we won the passage of the law, the Voting Rights Act, but we didn't win the narrative battle, and today that narrative still persists and black boys and girls have to overcome these presumptions of dangerousness and guilt. The bureau of justice predicts that one in three black male babies born in this country is expected to go to jail or prison. One in six Latino boys is expected to go to jail or prison. There is this presumption of dangerousness and it doesn't matter whether you are a talented student, it doesn't even matter if you are the president of the United States, you have got to deal with burdens that other people don't have to deal with because your color is black or brown or red and we have got to change the narrative if we truly want to be free. I think that means talking about these things. If you go to South Africa you can't spend time without seeing the legacy of apartheid. In low Wanda they make you here about the genocide. In Germany, you can't see 100 meters without seeing markers and stones that mark Jewish families. We don't talk about slavery. We don't talk about lynching. We don't talk about racial justice and we have got to change that narrative. My project in Montgomery, we are putting markers at every lynching site in America. We are going to open a museum next April that you are all invited to. We have created this memorial to peace and justice. I want you all to come because we are trying to change the narrative. We have got to do something about the narrative. Third, you can't change the world by changing narratives and staying proximate. The third thing is stay hopeful. This has been an encouraging and inspiring summit. I want to enforce this idea that your hope is your super power. Don't let anybody or anything make you hopeless. Hopelessness is the enemy of justice. Injustice prevails where hopelessness persists and your hope is your super power. Hope is what will get you to stand up when other people tell you to sit down. Hope is what will get you to speak when people tell you to be quiet. Fight anybody that tries to take it away from you. It will help you change the world and fourth and finally, we have to stay hopeful, we have to get proximate, we have to change narratives, but the fourth thing is we have to be willing to do uncomfortable things. We cannot change the world if we are unwilling to do things inconvenient or uncomfortable. We can't be in spaces where people affirm what we think. We have to go into spaces where people are pushing back. Our capacity to do the uncomfortable opens the door to changing the world. I have learned something about doing the uncomfortable, and with this I was giving a talk in a church and the older black man came into the church in a wheelchair. He was sitting in the back staring at me with this stern, angry look. I couldn't figure out why is he looking at me like that. He was looking so intensely. It was distracting me through my talk because he had this stern, angry look and I got through the talk and people came up, they were nice and appropriate but the older man kept sitting in the back. When everybody else walked away, he wheels himself to the front of the church and when he got in front of me, he put his hand up and said do you nose what you are doing, and I just stood there. He asked me, do you know what you are doing? And I stepped back and I mumbled something. And then he asked me, do you know what you are doing? And then he looked at me. He said I'm going to tell you what you are doing, and that older black man looked at me and he said you are beating the drum for justice. You keep beating the drum for justice, and I was so moved. I was also real really relieved because I didn't know what was about to happen. This man grabbed me, he pulled me into his wheelchair and said I will show you something. He said you see the scar I have behind my right ear. He said I got the scar in green county Alabama registering people to vote. You see the cut I got this cut in fill dead, Mississippi 1974 getting people to vote. I got my bruise in Birmingham, 1965 trying to register people to vote. He said I'm going to tell you something young man, he said people look at me and think I'm an old man sitting in a wheelchair covered with cuts and bruises and scars, but I will tell you something, these are not my cuts, they are not my bruises. He said these are not my scars. He said these are my medals of honor. And I think, I think to honor what we have learned, to honor the energy of this space, to honor the legacy created by the summit, to honor the calling we have answered to change the world, we will have to be willing to do uncomfortable thing, willing to be the community of people that gets nicked and scarred but we should know we are not doing it alone. We are together in this If we get proximate, change narratives, stay hopeful, if we do uncomfortable things, I am persuaded that we really can change the world and I want to wish you the very best in that pursuit and let you know that when you stand, I will stand with you. I hope when I stand, you will stand with me. When we each stand we should wrap each other's arms around ourselves and let the world know we are here for change. I wish you all the best, thank you very much! (Applause). LIZ DOZIER: Wow! Well, it is official. Our time is coming to an end. But in the words of what our president said yesterday, this is really just the beginning. It is just the beginning. And there is only one person, one person who could bring us to a close. Please welcome the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. (Applause). BARACK OBAMA: Thank you! Thank! Everybody sit down. We have work to do. AUDIENCE: We love you! BARACK OBAMA: Reverend Stevenson just gave us a sermon, so I don't want to try to compete against that. I have just got a few orders of business to do. The first is I want to acknowledge all of the amazing presenters, both here on this big stage and in the workshops throughout the last couple of days. Can you please give them a big round of applause. (Applause). Can you guys stand up? All of our presenters, stand up? Just the presenters! (Applause). Thank you. You guys were wonderful. All of you were wonderful. I also want to acknowledge the Obama foundation staff led by somebody who has been back stage the whole time with a headphone, and has been working non-stop this entire time, Logan McClure as well as my Chief of Staff, Anita Decker Brackenridge, and all of the team that has worked overtime to execute the coch amaim any idea I had a few days ago give them a round of applause. They were fantastic. So I, some of you noticed I popped in and out of as many workshops as I could. And I tried to sit in the back and sit small and sometimes people didn't notice me walking in and sometimes they did. But I could not have been more inspired by what I saw and what I heard from all of you. I saw prominent world leaders and business people sitting on a floor next to a bunch of young people with post its on the wall trying to design and plan how we were going to build a global cadre of young leaders that could support each other in their efforts at change. I heard from a pair of young women who had taken digital tools and automation in order to help young people in crisis, and to change laws all across this country in how we treat victims of rape and sexual assault. I saw artists who had decided it's not enough just to have a piece of work in a gallery. We are going to create public art that anybody can pull down, modify, change, work with in order to lead a movement, and send a message. I watched some of you sit in circles, pair up, tell each other your stories, and then have the other person have to tell the group the story they just heard and through this amazing alchemy, friends and relationships were created in a matter of moments. What I saw was the possibility of change. What I saw was the promise of a generation that is coming behind us. And so when we set out to set up this Summit, the goal was not to have solved every problem in a day and a half, it wasn't to give you a rigid curriculum, but rather we had confidence that if we just brought this many people together who were doing this many magnificent things, that they would teach each other and inspire each other and teach us how we could be helpful in the work that needs to be done. And on that front, I, for one, think it's been a success. (Applause). Because you have inspired me and you have been inspiring to each other. Now, here is the only thing. This is the easy part. There was a wonderful workshop that paired up the activists of the past, although I noticed that they are all still active and vibrant and doing amazing things, with some of the activists of today and tomorrow An intergenerational conversation. And one of the things that one of the panelists said about the current generation is I'm worried that sometimes we feel that fierce urgency of now, we deeply want to be engaged in the pursuit of justice and equality and sustainability and all of the things that have been discussed at this summit, but it feels sometimes like it's hard for us to keep our attention. Things move so fast, we get so much information, we are constantly checking, we are seeing what's next, and it becomes tough to sustain things. And I thought that was a useful insight. Particularly because one of the other panelists was somebody who 50 years ago had worked in the civil rights movement. And it reminded me of something that I would tell my staff in the White House, and that I would tell my team during campaigns and that I, myself, had to learn when I was 23 or 24 or 25, and that is change is hard. Change is possible if we put our shoulder to the wheel, but it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen in one fell swoop. It requires sustained energy and focus and commitment and most of all, it requires resilience. That's where hope comes in handy . People always misunderstood sometimes that slogan we used. Hope, the audacity of hope. Hope does not mean that tomorrow everything is going to be better. Where hope comes in handy is when you have put everything you have into something and it hasn't worked yet. And it hasn't worked the week after that and the week after that and six months later And a year later, and one of the most useful things about that intergenerational conversation is reminding people that something as basic as the civil rights movement in this country, and I'm not even talking about abolition, I'm not talking about Harriet Tubman, I'm talking about the civil rights movement within my generation, it took decades of legal work to get the seminal Supreme Court case of Brown Versus Board of Education to be heard by the Supreme Court to overturn the notion of separate and equal. That That happened in 1954. It took another ten years from that point for the Civil Rights Act to be passed basically just giving the federal government tools to enforce what had already been decided was the law. Another year after that to get the Voting Rights Act passed. And then several decades after that to get to the point where you could actually see meaningful relief on the political front, not yet on the economic front in terms of trying to heal some of the wounds that had arisen without of that tragic past. That's 20, 30 years which to all of you seems like a mighty long time. But in the arc of history is yesterday. It's within my lifetime. So change is possible and actually can happen relative to human history incredibly fast today, but for each of you who are going to be out there working each and every day, it will feel sometimes like a really long time. And it's going to be hard. And the high that you get from the summit is going to on occasion dissipate. And I say that to you not to bring you down from the high that we are on, but rather to validate and fortify what you feel later so you are reminded that when you go back home to your respective communities and you go back to your projects and efforts, you won't be alone because of this summit. Because everybody else in this room is going to be feeling some of those same frustrations, will occasionally feel a Tinge of why am I doing this, you may have to talk to your parents or grandparents who say why don't you go make some money or why do you keep on hitting your head against the wall, and that's all right. Because you have got a community of people, not just who are in this room, but who have been watching the proceedings, who have been following what you have been doing, who have been taking a measure of hope from the successes you have had, who feel pain when you falter and are there to pick you up. And I'm one of those people. And if you, if nothing else, I want you to take away from this summit that sense that you are right there ready and able to transform the world. My friend, Lynn, was up here who has written several magnificent plays, most recently Hamilton. That's the one that allowed him to pay a lot of bills. And he mentioned one of the hallmark songs of this production for those of you who haven't heard about this, this has been a, at first a broad way sensation, then it became a cultural sensation. And one of the songs is called the room where it happens well, I have been in that room. I have been at the head of table of that room. And here is the secret I want all of you to know is that most of the folks in that room are no more inherently qualified to decide what happens in this world than you are. They are not inherent ly better equipped to spread the kinds of values that I think are most important in how we treat each other. There are wonderful people sometimes in that room, but there are also people who are there because of luck, because of circumstance, because their Daddy was so and so or they were willing to do things or compromise in ways that most of us wouldn't, so you belong in that room too. You don't get there right away. You don't get there automatically. And most importantly, if you do get in that room, it better be because you are there to represent and enable and empower those voices that you care so deeply about now, but you will get there as long as you are persistent, as long as you keep on believing not just in yourself, but believing in the power of other people in your ability to connect and work with them. So with that it is my understanding that each of you have one of these cards in your seat. If you don't, it's stuck to the back of your pants. This is sort of a classic organizing tool that we used to use. You remember these? And it's very simple. Sometimes you just want folks to make a commitment. The act of writing it down and handing it back somehow makes them feel like, you know, I kind of, you know, I put it on a card. This is actually a commitment that you are going to be making not to me, not to the foundation, but to each other and to yourselves And it's very simple. On the back it says as part of my renewed and ongoing commitment to community engagement, I will, and then it's blank. And the last task before you get some outstanding Chef Jose Andres supervised food and before you hear an amazing concert at which our Chicago's own Common and Chance and others will be performing is, no, no, you don't get to the fun part until you fill out this card. And you are going to turn it in. And it doesn't have to be I'm going to, you know, employ every low income person in my country or I'm going to end mass incarceration. I would advise it be something that you will be able to accomplish, and it might be something as simple as you hosting a dinner with some folks who you haven't talked to before and need to hear from in order to broaden your circle of influence. It might be something as simple as I have looked at my organization, and I realize, I need more women at the table because otherwise I'm going to be stupid. It might be, it might be that I am going to figure out how I'm going to get a workout in like Michelle told me to so that I'm in for the long haul. But whatever it is, I want you to fill it out, and I want you to turn it back. And what's going to happen is we are going to collect these and we are going to record them not for me, and not for the foundation, but for you. So that you are reminded of what it is that you think you need to be doing. And if it turns out that a week in, a month in you are having problems meeting that commitment, it turns out you now have a massive support group from around the globe that will give you encouragement and support and advice and training and resources in order for you to be able to meet that commitment. Because ultimately all of the talk is fun, and it's nice, but we are here to act. And in order to bring about the kinds of structural changes that we are looking for, in order for as Anon pointed out for us not only to be throwing star fish in the ocean, but us figuring out how they can stay in the ocean in the first place, we have got some big things we are going to have to do, and the good part is I'm confident that all of you are going to be able to do them You could not have given us a better start to this process and we have learned so much from all of you. And for that, we are all extraordinary grateful. Thank you, everybody, God bless you! Go at it.:let's get to work!.
