Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017. Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Welcome to Obama Summit 2017Z. hello! We're live at the Obama Summit in Chicago! Welcome to the first Obama Summit! You may know me from various exploits on the Internet or my show on on the food network, I heart food! Today is not about us, but about all of us which is what the Obama Foundation is about, community and engagement and powering those -- empowering those to affect positive change er change in that irworld -- in their world. We'll be joined by 500 civic lead fors working in breakout sessions to motivate and inspire one another in interesting times we live in. Hopefully that is what you think! Today and tomorrow they'll exchange ideas, explore creative solutions and pork together -- and work together.The there -- there is no one that can better explain the Obama foundation than their CEO themselves. I was going to go on about the organization but we have a man that should be here to talk about it Z. thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I can't think of a better way for you to engage as a citizen to bring the skills that you have to try to make your community a little bit better. This is our beginning. the best way to think about it, back in January the president was here in Chicago and gave a farewell address and was asking people to believe not in his ability to bring about change, but in theirs. That goes to the heart of who we are. Not waiting for change to happen from others. If you see a problem, if you see something that you want to change, you have a responsibility as a citizen, a member of the community, to lift up and do it Z. I absolutely believe that myself wholeheartedly. There is one question that I know is on the tops of minds of everybody here today. Why Halloween? So Chicago and Halloween is -- is there a real reason? Z. no. We were going to have a booth with candy but -- David, for you, what would you like to see the participants take away from this experience? I want to see them inspire one another, connect with one another and learn from one another. The president went to Chicago multiple times, Brazil, Berlin Germany in front of 75,000 young people there, Jicarta and he asked each one of the groups what they did that worked and what they did that didn't work. What we have done over the course of the past nine months is essentially took the list, invited people in the 500 people that you see here, they are either rising citizen stars or established change makers. So the experience that they're going to have with one another, my favorite example is Paul Green who has established a stem program in kids, sitting down with Sheldon Smith who is dealing with issues on the South side, what they can teach to one another, what they learn from one another, for us as a foundation, that's completely predicateed on this -- our programming for the course of the next year is informed by the conversations we hear today. I honestly believe that people give so much question to words but not enough credit to actions . It seems that every person you have inviteed here is someone that's proven that their words align with actions. They're using actions to motivate positive change. Right. What better environment to learn than from each other. That's exactly right. I also -- you know, you mentioned public schools, they hold a special place in my heart I do believe we need to start with education first and foremost and protect education as a sacred right. It makes me happy to hear about people getting involved in their own communities as opposed to just -- we're all -- we're all victim to doing this sometimes, but talking about how things would be different, talking about how things could be better , but not actually activating on it. This is at the heart of our theory of change. When someone works in their community around food desserts or not having enough access to public health services, those discussions among neighbors aren't democratic or republican, they're not left or right, they're people who are neighbors , who are citizens in a community saying what can I, what can we do to make something better. In the beauty of that, it is that we don't have to focus on the things that tear us apart. We can focus like a laser beam on those things that are comeen -- are common, our personal stories, what's possible rather than impossible the next 48 hours, what people will see, you can't help but be inspired by that. I think a lot of us are here for that today. I think we're ready for that. I can't see the comments, but can I get an amen Whatever you believe in!. So I think we're about ready to start with our first guest, I got the signal. David, I truly feel I could talk to you all day . So many things to say. Positive change in the community is at the heart a bipartisan issue. It is just about making your community better in any way that you can. Speaking of making your community better in any way that you can, I would like to introduce Greg who is here from the Kommer science and education foundation. Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. Greg, let's talk about you, what you do. Give us a brief summary of the work and how you got started in it? I have been working with the campus for the last 15 years, we're in Chicago's South side. We focus on holistic education and enrichments and college success for young people who most often end up being the first in families to go on to college. Wow. the first members of phelps to go to first members of families to go to college. Going on to college. Going off to a place like college is possible they're showing zag a few weeks ago Gary and the Obama foundation partner ed on our first Obama Foundation event. Gary, beyond the training, give me a sense of what the kids were saying after the session was over and why that was meaningful and impact ful for you. An important part was seeing them come in at 8:00 a.m. in the morning and seeing them leave at 8:00 p.m. in the evening. Some sleepy-eyed, you know, 18 to 24 year olds were ushering in to breakfast, then the sheer physical confidence and energy they left with at the end of the day. These are 150 young people that didn't know each other prior to this day. They dove in to significant community issues, they grappleed with the issues, they came up with solutions and they left realizing we can do this if we do it together. My favorite thing was when one young man said I could do anything. Which is the point of what you do. Can I ask you, Greg, how do you empower individuals that maybe felt they didn't have a voice to be active and engaged during those sessions? Sure. So at Komer we focus on meeting young people where they are at and giving them a whole host of opportunities to engage Sometimes it is through programs in the art room, sports, through our urban agriculture initiative . If young people can start to feel success in an area that they have a particular interest in, it moves them to figuring outweighs to -- out way s to have an impact in the community. Not everybody is ready to hit the streets right away. Finding those opportunities where they can engage based on their passions and interests. I think that confidence is one of the greatest resources that a young person can have. Confidence in their own thoughts and dreams and ambitions and taking a seed of self worth and expand it outside of yourself to create more worth for everybody in the community. Glare -- Gary, the work you do is rewarding and hard at the same time. Why do you do the work that you do? What is the spark that for you said, you know what, Greg, I'm Greg mooney , I'm going to do this. What is it that brought you to this. You know, 15 years ago I was inviteed by Gary Komer in the join a vision that he was performing, he grew up in the community we worked in in the 1930s. You know, years later, long after a long successful professional career he decideed to dig in to the neighborhood that was his childhood home. You know, he invited me to be a part of that a long time ago. It was a special invitation at that point. That always resonates just about every day in the work that we do . We tell young people -- one of our mantres is redefine possible, you can redefine possible, you are redefineing possible. I would say that the training day, this summit, it puts that mantre on really an international scale. This is no longer just about your community on the South side of Chicago. This is about so much more. I love the quote, what is it, everything is impossible until proven possible. You know, I think that's something that we don't -- you know, we don't teach our young people early enough in their life that this is something that you can do and make. You don't have to just live in the environment that you have always lived in, you can expand outside of it. Exactly. It comes through incremental steps. Building blocks. That training day was a pivotal building block. Wonderful. Lastly before you go , what are you most excited to get out of this Summit? You know, a few things. I'm excited to learn. I'm looking forward, expecting to be inspired and I think there's clearly a message that as a community we're going to come together and enjoy each other, meet some people and have fun. >> That's wonderful. Thank you. Happy summit! Happy Halloween. What a great day. I feel every guest we have here, I want to go after this is done and Google them and see what they're work is done. He gets up every day and does impactful work in a community that too often relies on the negative, but he finds that positive and lifts it up in an inspiring way. Amazing. Further inspiration includes our next guest who is a documentary film maker! Thank you for joining us! Thank you for having me! Can you tell us a bit about the type of films you make, the documentary heroin. It is a 39-minute film, three women on on the frontline of the opioid crisis, as fire chief, a judge, a street missionay, they're going out to help men and women that are suffering from substance use disorder. What inspired you to start working in the area of opioid abuse specifically? I'm from West Virginia. I grew up there. It is in the background? Right down the street, it is a part of the childhood experience to know there is a pill mill down the street. When it was shut down it went to heroin and now it is killing people like crazy. It is no longer just simpley opioids in the traditional sense we think of them. Yeah. It got to the point where owe obituaryiys, mug shots of friends were enough that I just wanted to explore something maybe more helpful through the lens of these three women. When you think of the individual stories that you saw and put in the dock ministry and -- documentary and the stories that were not put in, what makes you most hopeful based upon what you heard people talk about and say? I think that recovery is possible. Many of my own friends are in long-term recover y. You have to have resources. Unfortunately in this country it is difficult to get access to recovery in all shapes and forms whether it is 30-day programs, 6-month program , women with children can't take their kids to programs. You know, how do you get help if the resources are so limited? The helpful side is that people are working to change that, first responder, she revives five to six people every single day from a drug overdose. Every day? Every day. She is here right now. She's an incredible -- she gives me hope. In some -- somehow it is beyond humanity making these women stay positive through this experience and continues to get up every morning and help their communities. It is sad to think that the access to the drugs are so much easier, the access to the resources to recover from the drugs. Around what age did you see people first start to experiment I think jan said the youngest overdose was 1 and the oldest was 78. 12? Yes. That is devastating. How much -- how could a 12-year-old be driven to want to turn to drugs? It starts with drugs prescribeed by a doctor. It is not it hooked to heroin, when you build up a tolerance to pills and the doctor stops prescribeing them, they get sick. It is dope sickness, the flu times ten, it is bones aching, a terrible sickness, we don't have -- there is 8 detox beds in our county, that's where the women work, it is nearly 100,000 people. There has to be a better future in pain management instead of narcotics. When you talk about the people here today from all around the world, how each one of them has used a skill to try to make their community a little by the better, you're a storyteller. When you think about the power of story and what you're trying to do, talk to me about the pa ings that you have and -- the passion that you have and how it fits into positive change, not only in West Virginia, but in the country in the world. We have seen we're divided. We're being told we're divided. I'm just trying to tell stories that potentially connect us, that connect us in bigger themes we have in common, addiction, yes, you may yourself may not have addiction in your family or in your life, but you can connect to the Jan every day that gets up. It is about human ity. Story telling is about making connections between people that are from seemingly opposite ends of the world, even in America. What do you hope to get out of the summit today? The connection -- I hope to meet the Obamas! I think everybody here hopes to! Yeah! I'm honored! We're all honored to be here. We hope that people will come to the breakout session and give us ideas on helping all communities, not just through this crisis but others. We're happy to be here. Great. If you could leave with one message for those at home watch ing, what do you wants them to hear? -- want them to hear? If you want to learn more about the opioid crisis, watch our film on Netflix, heroin. >> We'll check it out. Thank you. Wow. Amazing! It is amazing and heart breaking. I think that's a lot of how the Summit will be Amazing, inspiring, also a cold shock of reality. Resiliencey. Yeah. I can't he. Absolutely. Our next guest, I for one am incredibley excited to introduce -- I know! Ladies and gentlemen, this is the founder of Head Space! Hey I use your app every day! Really? I really do! Thank you! Thank you! This is a huge moment for me. No! You were saying, the whole time, she completely ignored me for the first 5 minutes but to say that's Andy! I said excuse me, sir No. Andy, for those that may not yet know about the wonder that is head space, which is frankly I think my favorite app, would you give us a brief summary of what you do? Sure. It is important to say, head space grew out -- it was not designed to be an app originally. I wanted to make meditation more accessible. I'm a cofounder, so Rich, he's the cofounder. I met him. He's like this is amazing. We have to make this for everybody and put it on an app. I was like that's never going to work. We started to do events and overtime it grew to become what's now the app and it is essentially medication -- meditation and mindfulness made simple to use wherever you are. I have introduced head space to the most I guess, you know, hesitant to try meditation and I think that the way you have presented it, it is in an approachable, non-secular format , invite people into getting themselves into getting a bit of head space. the truth is, all of us, no matter what we do, where we come from, we all need that time in the day just to pause and to reconnect with calm and clarity that's easily lost in a very noisy world right now. In that moment of reconnecting with your own sense of self, who you are, talk about the connection between that moment and then community at large. How does that help bring others in? That's the thing. I'm most excited about, most passionate about, looking forward to speaking about tomorrow morning, you know, it is interesting. You come together, groups of people as well, so obviously there is meditating on our own and then we take that into the world. When we come together as well and when we put down our thoughts and put down our story lines there is no division. There is no conflict. We're united in silence. I think it doesn't matter if we're doing it together as a group like tomorrow or this afternoon. You know, any other time, when we meditate on our own, we then take that quality into the world and it is an opportunity to create space in the mind where we can listen to others, where we can better share with others, better learn from others and really kind of contribute to community in a way that I think is very difficult to when we are caught up in our own thinking. True. I love the analogy of the clear blue sky and I encourage you watching, if you have no idea what meditation is like, watch the video explaining what the clear blue sky that head space is made. I don't know exactly what it is called. At the heart of it, the more space you create, almost like the more space you create between yourselves, the more you have to give and to participate in this world. It is not as transaction al as giving, but it is that you are bigger than just your own stress. I think we tend to -- we tend to box ourselves in and to think of ourselves in a certain way and attach labels to ourselves and then we go on and live that way the more we meditate, the more we realize there is a huge amount of space and our potential is limitless. Together -- that's huge. We can do something really special in the world. Are you getting lulled in a medicine day active space. I could -- in a medicine -- in a meditataive space. What is your advice? Look after your mind, for the people around you, yourself, your community, take the time to look after your mind. It is important. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much Wow. Were you star struck? Yeah. >> You're like Hanna, I'm the CE O of the Obama Foundation. Our next guest is the founder of -- I'll say this in English, movement map education. Can you say it for me? Zap it is -- it is in Portuguese. (Speaking language other than English). It is an amazing opportunities to be here. I'm extremely happy All I know is (speaking language other than English). That's right. Can you tell us a bit more about your organization, how you got started in your work? Yes. I work with two social movements in Brazil. One of them we fight for equality education for all because our public schools are in general very poor quality. We mobilize young people so they can be civic activists for their quality education, we organize campaigns to make sure that candidates, voters, at the end government officials know that education is the most important way for Brazil to work. Amazing. What motivated you to begin this work? You began this -- it was a while ago. What was the spark? When I was a 7th grade, because of math Olympics, I got scholarship in a private school the school, it was an hour away from my house. I realized how unequal Brazil was and that that inequality started with the school system. Not only was the access to service different in the center and in the peripheral where I'm from. Also the size of the dreams that people had. So back at home people, they have drug addictions, they were involved with crime, they would dream sometimes to end high school. When I went to the center people dreamed of becoming doctors, astronauts, engineers. That's absurd. I got very passionate about education. I just -- I don't know, my mission started there. Yes. Absolutely. What do you hope to get out of your time here at the summit? I work in a political innovation movement also, in both movements we have a lot of volunteers. We have a lot of people back in Brazil that want to do things, want to but don't foe how. I'm really -- know how. I'm hopeful to make connections and meet people and get the technology and tools for us to coordinate the volunteers and to start a movement in the entire country. Yeah. This is precisely why we're having this summit so you and hundreds of others can learn from each other and then go back to your country, your city, and build on the good work you're doing already. What an inspiring story. Absolutely. >> Thank you. That's why I'm so happy to be here. It can feel very lonely sometimes. When you come to events like this you realize we share a lot of challenges, ideas, we share a lot of passion. I imagine if you get together, realize that we're not alone. This is a global and bigger movement. Yeah. It is like education is the seed , passion is the water, and then possibleility springs forth Opportunities to change this world. >> Absolutely. I got to learn Portuguese. Before we -- before -- it is lovely to talk to you, a message tore those watching at home -- a message for those watching at home? All of the opportunities and difficultyies I have had and faced I learned and understood that education politics are the way to transform our societies and we do that with more democracy, not less democracy. I think a lot of society has to learn that message. Wonderful. Were you saying that your family is from Brazil? How did you speak Portuguese now? My mom and dad are from Portugal . They immigrateed in 1969. I didn't speak English until kindergarten. So it is still -- Wow. Whenever I'm really upset or angry it just flows in Portuguese rye away! -- right away. Good to know! We're on to I believe our final guest here today. I would love to introduce everybody to the founder of my block, my hood, my city. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being here! No problem. For those that may not know, give us a brief summary about the organization. >> Sure. a lot of teens in Chicago never have been downtown , never saw the lake, they don't wait for a taxi, they never had a boarding pass, they order their food through bullet proof windows and I take these kids to different cultures, professions, different cuisines. Are you from Chicago? South side all day. When I ask you what inspired you to get started in the work? I was a volunteer through county jail to be honest. It was the jail where I asked teens, have you ever been downtown, they said no. Have you ever seen the lake? No. What do you want to be? I want to be a rapper, basketball player. I said, you know, I want to start exposing you to different career fields so hopefully you have more options to choose from when you graduate college. When I was little I wanted to be a DJ. You have great shoes by the way Thank you! We shared our mutual love of shoe game earlier! Thank you for pointing them out What do you hope to get out of the summit today? It is an unprecedented collaboration of thought leaders from 60 different countries for God's sake, I met someone downstairs from London who has a pet robot that's 5 foot tall and an I want to learn about simple solutions and how to incorporate the solutions in my community. The amazing thing, which is not amazing, but the same individuals, many like them, when they hear your story about how you began your path, how you do your work every day are as inspireed by your commitment to change as you are to theirs and my question for you is the work you do is hard every single day What is that spark that you have that you can fall back on that even on the days where you don't want to do it, you have doubt, you keep at it? You know, it is -- it is -- God put a battery in my back and I'm not willing to say no or give up . I'm a reader. I want to create change. Dedicate my life to creating change. You can save five years by reading a book, wow, that's how they did it in the 60s with no social media, there is no reason I should fail. I'm worried about being practical and talking to the leaders in the community, asking for advice. What have you learned from the leaders in the community? A main lesson I learned, it is about perspective. It is -- there are two salesman, one look s out, wow, it is raining outside, weather like this, no way to go out, make sales, another goes out and says it is raining bad, what a great day to make sales, everybody will be home. It is the same thing with community organizing. Some people in Chicago, they look out , wow, you know, the city is messed up, the weather is messed up, politicians are messed up, they don't create change. People like me, I look out, the city is messed up, weather is messed up, I go out, I create change. It is my perspective. Perspective to see potential rather than problems. Exactly. I have a wife at home and a little 6-year-old daughter . My dad ran off when I was 11. I collected flyers with him, collected signatures, I passed out the flyers, seeing president Obama tonight, that was inspiring. We have a wonderful video on the Obama foundation website of him doing his work in the community, it is a video we have that people flock to, not only because of the type of work but the way you do your work. >> Thank you. For me, that's why Chicago is the appropriate and right place to be the center of this movement for active citizenship You're a great example of it. You inspire every day. Thank you for coming to this city and whereor we're the epi center of community organizing, Chicago, I'm proud to be here. Thank you for having me. If there is one thing you want to say -- You have to go to the city! Go out to the city! Every hoodie helps teens go on educational field trips. We have hats. We have hats. We have to have shoes. Thank you so much for being here . No problem. Appreciate it. >> Man! Hey! Thank you so much ! Wow! I'm really excited for the weekend ahead! That's just a handful of the hundreds of people who all have those individual stories that are just the reason why I'm hopeful every single day. Wow. That's absolutely wonderful. Guys, I would love to spend more time with you, I believe there is something you all want to see, which is the beginning of this amazing summit starting momentaryily. I would like to say throughout the next few days come back to the live desk featuring additional interviews from the Obama Foundation staff and summit participants. If this is just a sampleer platter, I'm ready to dive into the main course! Good-bye, everybody! Thank you for watching! Now to the main stage. Welcome to Obama Summit 2017 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome president and Mrs. Obama . (Applause). Please welcome our host. (Applause). Welcome to Chicago! I am absolutely honored to be your host today whether you're in the room with us or you're joining% us from around the world, we're just so glad that you're here. Before we get started, I want to take a quick moment to acknowledge the magnificent performers from the people's music school -- hold on! Hold on! That was Amy, Kelly, Julia, Jason, Melanie. I want to tell you a couple of things, one,% they're Chicago public school students between ages of 12 to 17 and -- guys, it gets better! Hold up! and they learned that piece for you in this room, they learned that within the last 48 hours. Now you can give them a round of applause! (Applause). What a complete honor that the Obama Foundation brought us here together today. Over this next day and a half we'll explore together, I'll share ideas, we'll learn from one another. We'll dig deeper. So you may be asking yourself so who are with he going to do this fun stuff with! Let me tell you. You'll do them from people from 60 countries from around the world and from every single state in our Union, from organizers to educateors, journalists to scientists, small business owner s, the list just goes on and on and on. We're all in this room in the long shadow of the organizers of the activist of the optimists of those that came before us, those that really believed, those that believe in the promise and in the possibility that lies within our communities and within the power of connection and they believe that it was possible for us to work together despite our differences. As do we. Yes! (Applause). Yes. We do believe that. I want to challenge you. Over the next day in a half I want you to really go to a breakout section where you're unfamiliar with a topic, share a meal with someone S introduce yourself to someone you don't know. Wherever you see high in the next day and a half -- me in the next day and a half we can chat and I'll tell you about where to get the best deep dish pizza in Chicago. If you hear laughter, it is because those are from Chicago, they know this is a real debate and you can see me, I'll give you what the real answer is! I promise you that. So let's take a second, we'll build a community here. Take a second, introduce yourself to those around you, in front of you. Go ahead, take a minute. All right. We're coming back together. All righty. We're coming back together. In 5, 4, here we go, 3, 2, 1. Okay. for those of you that may not know, I was a former high school principal, don't make me come off this stage! Everybody move on back to your seats. Here we go. Coming back together!. Almost there! Almost there! It is like when I used to be a teacher. Calling the class back together. All right. Great. Got to know they friends. I'll tell you about me, I'm Liz Dozier and I was a former -- the procedure former principal of Finger High school from Chicago 's far South side. Thank you. It was in the Roland community and I'm founder and CE O of an organization called Chicago Beyond which we started 18 months ago. Chicago transportation -- Chicago beyond has built community leaders and we invest in investing in organizations, learn from and ultimately help them grow. We have so much work to do here in Chicago along with all of you. We know that we're just getting started. I don't have to tell you how hard that work is, each person in this audience understands that perfectly. It is about putting in the work every single day and showing up again and again and again. It is the relentlessness of it all which is what we're here to do to show up again and again to build community, to build bridges. In the words of the great poet Marge pierce my hope for us today and over the next day in a half is that we weave real connections, create real no des and build real houses. This is our chance. Let's make the most of it. (Applause). With that, I with an't to introduce us to an ex extraordinary thinker, he's the best person to start us off for today, Anand Giridharadas. He's amazing. He's an award winning writer that reports from deep within communities and will kick us off by talking about the latest book that he's written called winners take all. It is about people attempting to change the world. What we love about him is that his intellect is truly matched by his heart. Can Utah please -- can you please welcome Mr. Anand Giridharadas. [Applause] ANAND GIRIDHARADAS: 40 years ago this Autumn my family's American journey began. My father crossed an ocean carrying $7 and his parents' prayers, he plants ed them in American soil and soon began to grow a family with my mother whom he met in French class. They had two children, a son and daughter of Ohio. My father called us the original Cleveland Indians. It is funier now. Now there are children -- their children have children, the seeds they planted turned out to be perennials, an American dream in bloom. Whatever stories brought you into this room, you are here answering a call for citizens to change the world. I am here because the name Barack Obama sounds less strange when it comes after Anand Giridharadas. It is true! and because I spent the last few years reporting on people who pursue and who resist change. Today as the summit begins I would like to share what I have learned from both. I want to discuss why change is so urgent today. When meaningful change nevertheless remains illusive for change makers and why this is giving us fresh promise. First the urgency, with an assist we live in a age of magic and loss. Our globalized automated economy is full of magic, every day low prices and next day delivery on the single Gatorade you one- clicked, but it is also full of loss, of jobs, of the dignity of steady work, of chances to rise. Our technology promises the magic of constant connected ness but we're lost in being on separate screens trapped in filter bubbles of belief, Bobbing in a sharing economy where the technologyists seem to own all of the shares. Our society experiences the magic that occurs when pluralism flourishes and the marginalized assume their proper powers but loss stalks those victoryies as millions revolt against change and supremacyies resurface. the losses threaten the magic. We need to invent new systems, new economyies, new ways of life to seize the magic while addressing the loss. That's change's burden today. Why change cannot wait. Despite this urgency many of our most visible celebrateed attempts at change keep failing to alleviate the present inequalities and in my reporting I found real change escapes many change makers because powerful illusions guide their projects. First, the illusion that the world can be transformed one star fish at a time. Second, the illusion you can change the world without changing people. Third, the illusion you can change the world without being rooted in it. the star fish illusion is in a popular parable , there are thousands of star fish on the beach, one pick s up a few and throws them back in the ocean, the other staring at the multitudes say what difference does it make? The thrower replies it makes a difference in that one. In the usual telling the thrower is the hero making the change. the other guy, he's a grinch. I think the grinch is mis understood. I imagine he was just getting started with his questions. Why are the star fish being beached? Will the few rescues detract us from actual solutions? What if the thrower is a fishermen that dredges a sea bed or oil man whose work worsens climate change or a consumer of oil, now it is real! the thrower is making a difference to that one, yes. He's also part of the problem. Many of today's most prominent attempts to change the world are afflicted by this un easy duelty, it is a bank that recklessly speculates, helps causes a financial crisis that costs multitude a small business , pays a fine and is celebrateed widely in change making circles for a program mentoring small business owners It is a tutoring program for poor kids in a place like bridge port, Connecticut attracting affluent volunteers that would revolt if you funded those schools equally, not by equal taxes. It is a belief in changing the world as long as it costs you nothing. the stakeer fish illusion -- the star fish illusion focuses on the difference they make versus those they choose to help and at the risk of avoiding the cause of the disease and the remedyies that could occur it and avoid these things in part because facing them could implicate powerful people or perhaps even themselves. They lack the self awareness and self skepticism, the genuine change requires. the second illusion is that world changing doesn't require changing people or people changing. As our society fractures some change makers are drawn to visions of progress that don't bother with persuasion, I'm thinking especially of those of us that live in what we regard as the America of the future and who can think of ourselves as aware of injustice, committed to pluralism, willing to fight for it, as awokeness has percolateed from black resist ance into the mainstream, it is sometimes a test you must pass to engage with the enlightened, not the gospel that the enlighten wants to spread, you buy the programs, use the terms, expertly check your privilege or you are ir redeemable. Is there space among the woke for the still waking? Today there are million s who are ambulant -- amb bivelent between the the two, not woke but not hateful. Men up prepared by upbringing to know their place in an equal world. White people unready for a new day in which America must no longer mean whiteness. People anxious about change, about the depth of certaintyies the woke have a choice about how to deal with the ambulant -- amb ivulant to you build a fortress to protect yourself or a road to cross the mountain. a common answer to this question is that the people angry at losing status don't deserve help . They have been helped. I understand this response. It is hardly the fault of the rest of us that those wielding unearned privilege bristle at surrender ing it. It is our problem. the burden of citizenship is committing to the fellow citizens and accepting that what is not your fault may be your problem. That amid great change it is in all of our great interest to help people see who they will be on the other side of the mountain top. When we accept these duties we may begin to notice the ways in which o you are very different -- the way in which our very different pains arrive the retirery in Brooklyn that thinks that genderizeation is whiteening her bureau probably votes differently than those in Arizona who fears that immigration is browning his state, the worryies echo though When we learn to detect such resins -- things we gain the understanding of other people that is required to learn them over, not simpley to resist them . It is not enough to be right about the world you want to live in. You have to sell it . Even to those that you fear . Finally, there is the illusion that you can change the world without being rooted in it. Many of today's most great world changeers rarely attend local meetings, citizens of the globe who risk being what British Prime Minister has called citizens of nowhere. This is understandable when you seek to change the world at large its struggles don't accuse you. When you seek change at home you have to deal with all you have voted for, done, not done and quietly benefited from. Business thinking into change making fuels this escapeist citizenship. Many change makers no longer ask what they owe a community but where they can find the highest marginal impact . I wonder the values of optimizeation and effectiveness if it has caused some change makers to forget the value of loyalty. Once it was asked if we're not our colors, aromas are people, what are we? Nothing. You, you don't love your mother or country because she's quantifyiable certified as the best, I hope not! But because she's you're -- yours. This love is not spreadsheeted out of the work of change. When leader s if a I will to belong in this way communities are starved of leadership and leaders of what you learn from being a part of community. We may not have had such a fear some S. -- a backlash if we were listening. This does not mean ignoreing large problems or tossing star fish. When rooted, you observe how systems actually affect people. President Obama's aunt one said if everyone is family, no one is family. She told him that in Kenya. Not long after he had laid roots in Chicago. She went to work in this community, and married Michelle Robinson, a daughter from the South side, raised the citizen of the world, he became a citizen of particular earth, rooting put him on the path of leading the free world. I have spoken of illusions today because it has seldom been more important to see. the star fish illusion keeps our eyes on the few we can rescue but real change is systematic and self- implicating, urging us to see our role in vast complex problems. the illusion tells us to circle the wagons, but real change is missionaryies seeking to expand the circle. the global illusion tempts us to be thinly everywhere, not thickly somewhere, but real change is rooted and comes through bargaining with fellow citizens as equals. These days I find myself filled with a strange kind of hope when times grow dark the eyes adjust. what I see stirring in the shadows is people realizing that they have neglected their communities in an age of magic and loss. All around I see people awakening to citizenship, for decades we imagine democracy to be a supermarket where you popped in Wren ever you needed something. Now we remember that democracy is a farm where you reap what you sow. [Applause] for decades we thought of citizenship as a possession, now we remember that it is something you do, not something you hold. for decades we told ourselves it was better to solve problems privately, outside of the pathways of citizenship because politics was broken, now we remember that a country is only as good as its politics. the political decay is not an excuse to flee, but a reason to dive in. This moment makes it plain we need a new age of reform, not just a flurry of initiatives, that the best defense against hatred is offense and evangelism of love. Changing the withhold wide world must never be a refuge from tending to our own places. Look within, reach across, anchor down, great good has been known to rise from seasons like this. Let us seek it. Let us seize it . Thank you very much. [Applause] . To think we're just getting started! We're just getting started! Thank you so much, Anand Giridharadas. Our next speaker comes to us from Brazil, 12 years ago he cofounded an online community that is now becoming a leading online community of afro Brazilians. Welcome Paulo Rogerio Nunes. [Applause] PAULO ROGERIO NUNES: I was born northeast of Brazil. the African capital of the Americas a beautiful place with unique culture. a UNESCO heritage site . a place with a lot of culture. I will tell you one story. Brazil has the second largest black population in the world. We have received 4. 5 million Africans during slave trades and it was three times more than United States. We also were the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888. Brazil is a diverse country for sure. I was born in a place you see in this photo. All right. Not a simple place. On the poor side. There I see many problems like racism, violence, oppression. I have also learned about an important thing, resilience. That made me understand more about the roots of the violence. the roots of the violence is inequality. In quality generates problems such as police abuse, massive incarceration. That's in Brazil , this problem is even bigger than in the United States . Today I want to talk to you about another major problem in Brazil. Media representation. As you can see, in this photo, that's how the media in Brazil show our people, our kids, our ladyies. This is from a famous movie Brazil, another photo, it is from a TV show in our prime time , in our major TV, just a few years ago a guy using black face to represent a black woman It is not only Morley wrong -- m oraly wrong but they have to read more about our statistics. 50% of the Brazilian populations are descend descendants, a population with more than 3. 5 million people. a population bigger than France, U.K. or Germany. Then I'll give you another example of how this operates in Brazil, you see the media. You see there is no, no much black faces there on the news stand as well. In Brazil, a TV, a radio, an newspaper own ed by a black person, why are we so invisible? That's really wrong. But 12 years ago myself and a group of friends decide to create a black media organization to push for better representation of black people in our media. We started six years without any support and now finally we have some good partnerships and two years later we decide not to seek better representation in the media, but also to create our own daily news. Here is our website that covers stories that traditional media is missing every day. I'll show you some stories that we're covering right now. for example the government of Brazil is trying to remove historical a frican communities from their territory using their force against a community. Also, fundamentalists are talking about A if. Rica Brazilian allegiance online and also destroying their traditions , it is it is a clear example of religious intolerance . We also have in Brazil, we have sparked a big movement, in this big movement now they have a lot of YouTubeer s, createors, bloggers, that they're taking over the traditional media with new stories and new narratives. Guess what? Now the traditional media is looking to partner with us that this photo you see here, it is from an had event -- an event put together, a traditional newspaper in the city with digital influenceers. I'll give you another example, this is a friend of mine, digital influenceer, that's now on the morning show on the major TV in Brazil with her afro hair, beautiful custom and -- beautiful costume and big smile [Applause]. PAULO ROGERIO NUNES: now the media is learning from us. It is amazing. So we come from hundreds of years of disability and oppression in Brazil. Now finally we have been heard, we have been seen and hopefully we'll be more respected and represented. This story is not about only the afro Brazilian story. It can be relateed to what many other context in the world. We need to have more inclusive media that mirror it is the society we live in. Our voices must be heard. Thank you so much. [Applause]. LIZ DOZIER: thank you so much, Paulo Rogerio Nunes. Up next, we have Marieteje Schaake, a rising star of the principle parliament -- of the European parliament. She got off the plane from Kenya last night. She's been heading up the European union for a free and fair election. Let's please welcome Marieteje Schaake. MARIETJE SCHAAKE: politicians are disconnected from reality. People trust car sales men more than their representatives. I hear this is sounding familiar. Indeed, trust in politicians, is low. It is too low. It is a upon us to rebuild that trust. Yet, the promises of return to a Roman romanticizeed past is deceiving and closing borders and erecting walls is not the answers to today's global challenges. Instead of turning inward, we must appreciate that the public interest is also at stake in the global arena. At the moment when technology connects us worldwide it is a matter of leadership and civic duty to shape the society of the future. This on the democratic values that have brought people the highest quality of life in order to preserve that quality. The reality is that all politicians and each governments see influence flowing elsewhere from state governments to the local level to networks and multilateral organizations, from public institutions to private companies, from democracyies to authoritarian states. Some say from the positive side individuals have become so empowered that they no longer depend on governments. Isn't that great? On the downside, democratic principles are being erodeed and even replaceed with profit models and authoritarian governments. the digital revolution is leading to a re distribution of power that's not matched with the re distribution of accountable ility and oversights. So is this the end of democratic governments, algorithms, artificial intelligence and robots just takeover, will all politicians be fired? No. But we do need a radical rethink and reinvent democratic governance in a world where everyone and everything will soon be digital izeed and connected. While the role of governments is changing, global technology companies are now the ones confronted with challenges that traditionally landed exclusively on the desks of diplomats and politicians. Should media apply censorship under pressure? Who to call when the Internet is shut down entirely in an attempt to control people? Which legal checks and balances are in place before content is taken offline According to which law. Global technology companies are the new sovereigns but they're designed and engineered to maximize profits, not democracy the defect on norms they set will lead to conflict with the rule of law, also in democracy ies. a large social media platform recently removeed pictures of a century old statue in Italy sexually explicit, the same happened to the iconic picture of the Napalm girl. the video of a political speech I gave addressing the need to end torture was removeed, taken off line, labelled as spam. I know speeches in European parliaments are not always the most inspiring but they could not legitimately be labelled as spam and political speech must be free. Social media platforms have become political arenas and catalysts for junk news sprawling. They're also the only place where most young people see news. Probably the most far-reaching impact of digitalizeation and subsequent power shifts is the loss of the state's monopoly on the use of force. States are less and less capable of maintaining exclusive control over critical infrastructure and of defensive and offensive technologyies. Instead, they procure technology ies often with far reaching capabilityies and then they're not able to stop worldwide proliferation of the tools afterwards. We must urgently avoid that the digitalizeation of everything becomes the privatizeation of everything and the weaponize ation of everything. When every device from a hair dryer to a self-driving car can be used for malicious attacks, even without the user knowing it who is responsible for enforcing safeguards. With the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, the relationship between the public interests and private companies takes on an entirely new dimension. In short, technology companies have a growing impact on the State of democracy and states operate with the growing dependence -- dependents on technologyies.In this way, this applies to both governments and companies, they need it. No one can afford a breakdown of the global banking system for example. Now historically when new technical possibilityies arose and interdependence was stronger the momentum for global norms opened up. with the introduction of cars came the need to develop new traffic and safety laws. the law of the sea s was developed to ensure that free passage and governance of ships through international waters was arranged. and to avoid mutually assureed destruction or nuclear warfare, non-proliferation treatyies were born. So now is the time to develop the governance of our global online space. Without norms governing the ecosystem the legal vacuums that companies continue to operate in will grow wider and deeper. This in turn risks further erodeing trust, tech company themselves as well as in governments for whom the global players seem entirely out of reach. We already see push back against big Silicon Valley players who are accused of negligence to defend democracy. When global tech giants do take a greater responsibility for safeguarding democratic and public principles it will have a positive Ripple effect. We should aspire to see democracy going viral. There is no time to lose. with the growing ambitiouss of authoritarian tear Yan states to dictate normals of their own, wanting to bring governance of technologyies within their territories, the threat against the very promise of a global open Internet has never been bigger. So this is the time to build a democratic digital convention involving Civil Society groups, private companies and, yes, governments This digital democratic invention would develop a new set of norms that would be ascribed to no matter where a company is locateed. We must draw a line in the sand. Governments must be stopped from interfereing with people's rights and the core infrastructure of the Internet. Tech companies should be stopped when they interfere with core democratic principles. the alternative, an Internet ruled by the law of the jungle is un folding before our eyes. You see a science fiction version of 1984 with total control of people's every digital move. Leadership is key. Not only as a moral or civic duty but in our self-interest to deliver on on the promise of a network society empowering individuals and respecting fundamental rights online. So instead of promise ing to press the pause button on globalizeation and digitalizeation or dreaming of a return to a romantic past, it is our role to redesign governance in a hypeer connected world and to base it on the very democratic values that have brought people the highest quality of life instead of us adopting norms that others set rather for maximal power or profits. This global ambition starts with credibleility at home. Clearly retreating behind borders or walls is not an option when the world is more connected every day and when so much is at stake. Thank you. [Applause] LIZ DOZIER: thank you. Thank you so much. It is now migrate pleasure to continue the conversation about technology and democracy and the challenges we face and I would like to welcome on stage Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. the author of the book the Googleizeation of everything. Let's welcome him. [Applause] SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: thank you. MARIETJE SCHAAKE: let me start by what went wrong? There was such a promise of the revolutionary impact, the technology that it would bring, here we are. SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: you mentioned 1984. I would reflect on a different book, a different book, the brave new world. In that book the authoritarian mindset takes over not because we're afraid of some centralize ed power that surveys everything and instructs us through fear but in this book the citizens are lulled into play sensei, they're so entertained, so distracted, they're so fractureed that they don't care about retaining power in the people. So I think that that may be our greater fear. Remember, back in 2011, early 2011 as we watched on our television screens young people filling the streets of it. Unas, Cairo, we thought at that moment, my gosh, this is the story we were told, we were told that social media platforms were engaging and informing and organizing these uprisings and striking up a blow for democracy . We thought 2011 is in the 89 all over again! We talked about Twitter revolutions. Facebook revolutions, precisely! It was not accurate. It was not to be true. Not to be complete. In fact, what we have learned since, especially 2016 and '17 is that if you wanted to build a machine to spread propaganda for authoritarianism and nationalism, you could not do better than our current social media platforms. They're basically designed bore it. They're designed for it because they amplify powerful emotions, that's what the algorithms are designed to do. Every time we see something that generates powerful emotions we click, we share, we comment. We teach those algorithms to spread those high-emotion messages as far as we can. What counts as high emotions, what generates it, I can hurs of puppyies, children, hate speech. There is more to it, but -- MARIETJE SCHAAKE: quite a difference. SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: what have we seen? The rise of dangerous nationalisms that have been energizeed and guided and essentially performed on social media platforms in places like the Fillipeens, -- Philippines, India, in -- MARIETJE SCHAAKE: is this what people would label cat and mouse situation where agencyies mostly extend it. Yes, individuals are more empowered but so are governments or those who are in the board rooms of the big companies. How do you see that Is it really only exacerbating the very powerful feellings of hate in the cases of -- SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: any strong emotion. That strong emotion can be towards something that we may consider positive. Something that you could and we do see people use these tools to organize for Civil Rights, for Human Rights, for voting rights We have seen them at the local level, at the global level. It is not that -- MARIETJE SCHAAKE: I used it in my campaign. SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: it is tools for motivation but not powerful of tools for deliberation or debate. We have by structure in our political lives through these tools, we have rendered ourselves highly motivated, angry, and yet disconnected especially from those that may disagree with us. Is this emotion of anger stronger than an emotion of happyiness or -- The happyiness, the puppyies and the babeys, that's what social media platforms are createed to do. We all signed up for them because we wanted to see picture s of our cousin's babeys and other cute, lovely things. Since that time, since we first signed on, the whole idea driven by the companies, it has changed . the point where Facebook especially, it is now striving to be the operating system of your life. It wants to guide your commercial life, your intellectual life, your political life and your social life. by allowing ourselves to be so immersed and distracted, by allowing this company to reach 2.2 billion people around the world, we have essentially bought into the brave new world MARIETJE SCHAAKE: can you talk about the global differences? What you say, it is very powerful, we're talking about, you know, operating system of life, that's a -- you know, that's -- that's a challenging concept. of course, life in different parts of the world is very different. You spoke previously about where we have seen concerning developments, what do you think is the different impact, the specific impact in countries that are not as free as the democracyies of this world or where perhaps a different political system is governing? So many parts of the world have different media ecosystems and so much of the discussion is unfortunately guided by the complex media ecosystem of North America or Western Europe where we have multiple outlets. We may not get all of our news from Facebook, we may only get half of our news from Facebook which is bad enough, but in a place like this, where it has been a closed society for so many decades, and then only in 2014 did people get high-speed phone connections, data connections to their phones and immediately Facebook came into that society and introduced its sort of socially generous as it raises it service called free basics. People who use Facebook on their phones don't have to count that use against their data plans. Essentially there, Facebook is the entire information ecosystem , the only source of information, only source of propaganda. Those that would want to foster genocide are using Facebook quite effectively . MARIETJE SCHAAKE: I think also for us, policymakers, it is, of course, a huge challenge, how to make sure that we still aspire to get all of the Internet to all of the people all -- SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: what are the points of -- one of the points of resistance you see, it is resistances and hope in Europe or in Kenya where you were most recently working, people are working on platforms that can undue some of this, push back against it? Are there motivations and movements going on. MARIETJE SCHAAKE: I think the whole junk news, spreading of sensational stories is one that we see globally, alsos in Kenya where, you know, ethnic tensions are unfortunately very, very strong. Rumors spread like wildfire and it leads to actions . Its not a story you read online and go on with their lives but it leads to people taking to the streets and using violence at times as well. Indeed, I think also for us policymakers, European union, a bigger donor to development program, the whole notion of media literacy, pluralism, freedom of expression to have different voices countering each other, it is crucial so we don't leave it up to some minor initiatives where there is no diverse voices reaching people and where people may be confronted with technologyies where the education is not yet there. We're all struggling with that. Its not global South or developed world issue, I think that this educational issue is hugely important. That's a reason I'm excited about the idea of creating a global conversation about these issues about what you spoke about moments ago. Beyond that, I think that there is a lot that we can do. Yes. Let's talk about what we can do rather than -- Yeah. I want people here at the Obama Summit, what they can do themselves. SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: I have some answers. Let's imagine a week the amount of time you spend on social media and cut that in half and you took that time and devoted it to volunteering in the community or engaging with your neighbors in a positive way . Yes. Yes. SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: that contribution, that shift in your attention, this is really the thing. It is about the battle for your attention. Eventually we also need then to reinvest in the counter availling forces, the forces thats support science and education and positive political engagement, execute the Poal tick -- politics local ly, in the barber shops, a few blocks from here, it is the herald Washington library. It is one one of my favorite buildings in the United States of America. Its a symbol of all we can be and aspire to be. a place where communities can gather and Hash out difficult issues in their community. If you go in there any weekday you will see elementary school kids looking for a quiet well-lit place to do homework. You can see people seeking dependable information knowing that it is a hard thing to find these days. You can also see homeless people seeking a moment of heat or relief. Maybe a few minutes with a newspaper. That sense that all people in the city are welcome in that place, that that building is so we will constructed, well invested, that's a symbol of what we need to be spending our time in and resources on instead of social media. Given that, we have to actually actively reinvest in our schools, communities, especially our libraryies, also we have to reinvest in each other. It is so much better to offer someone a handshake than to offer a click, a like, a comment. MARIETJE SCHAAKE: that's easy. Thank you. Thank you!. [Applause] Thank you so much to you both. That was illuminateing. Our next guest is a world renown artist from right here in our own backyard of Chicago. His work is all about the revitalize ation of communities, specifically the South side. One of my favorite quotes from him is that beauty is a basic service. Please welcome Theaster Gates. [Applause]. THEASTER GATES: how you all doing. What's happening? I wanted today to talk about sticks and stones. Maybe sticks, stones and clay and abandoned buildings . for the talk, let's say sticks and stones. the City of Chicago came to me with a pretty big problem. We had 90 ,000 trees that needed to be torn down over the next five years, ash, beetle, infestation, there were trees all over the city, all over the region, parkways, neighborhoods, playgrounds, all would have to have the trees removeed. They came to me as an artist and they said can you make something with these trees? They were thinking five, six trees, I would do something poetic. the other 89, 966 trees would be mulched. the artist in me decideed that we should not make art. In fact , we should build a mill. the mill should be a place where 96,000 trees could come and the problem of the trees would become an opportunity for brothers and sisters who lived on the South side. I found some land that was adjacent to my house, there were a lot of empty lots. the empty lots were no longer imagineed as empty lots, they were imagineed as the storage space, the temporary storage space for my new vision Now, having a mill doesn't sound like a work of art, doesn't sound like an installation, doesn't sound like a new form of public work. But for me, imagineing that something ambitious and great could happen in my city on the South side in the face of what seems to be nothing but the seemingly negative. I was convinced that if I were to talk to a couple of brothers around d orchester, they would be eager to help me run the mill, that I would find a miller and talk to friends with a bit of cash and we would renovated this former Commonwealth Edison powerhouse, build a mill and start milling. So, in my artistic pursuit, I didn't learn how to mill. I think that the real -- the gift that I feel as an artist is that all the time I'm interested in two things. How to be as poetic as possible, how to be as pragmatic as possible. Yeahs that a big problem like 90 ,000 trees becomes a super sex y opportunity for beautiful things to grow on the South side . If you guys need wood, I'm not supposed to advertise anything like that! I got some extra wood! Many of you know I'm a clay guy. That was my training. I also just love raw material because I'm always thinking about how modular units had the ability to make really cool things happen. There was a church down the street from where I lived called saint Lawrence. St. Lawrence was going to be torn down. There is nothing I could do about the tear down because there was demolitionish, there was folks that were -- there were guys in the building, they were going to do interesting things about it perhaps. I asked the demo crew if I could go in and if I could have one last conversation with St. Lawrence and Jesus up there you could see the last supper, I said, hey, man, while you're finishing your chicken, can you just come down and help me figure out what we're going to do with this site. Is there a way that the holly -- that the H oly ghost may be into in my hands and as a result of it being in my hands that we find something to do with this land. I found out that St. Lawrence was a builder of churches and libraryies and I'll come back to Larry. I asked the demo crew if we could hire another crew on top of them and that we would then prioritize all of the bricks, clean the bricks up, try to make good with the remains. Make good on the sticks and stones. They said, yeah. We'll tell you -- yeah. We'll sell you the pallets and we'll Figure it out Okay. We'll hire some brothers. We found ourselves in the conversation of building. What would it mean to take these old bricks, the old sticks, and then reimagine them in a different context. I found myself with a mill and a brick manufactureing company when the walker art center asked me to do a piece of public art I said I would love to but you have to buy my bricks . That's economics! That's creative economics! for all you great people out there. the sticks and stones have allow ed me to then think about abandoned buildings and construction in new and interesting ways. I have to admit that when you work on the South side, if you're building something it is not like you have to work real hard to find help. the brothers will come up to you, hey, man, can I help you ? So if we think about the history of stony island, it was the once bustling, really amazing place. Around stony island on dorchester, all of those things, our buildings that we have successfully restoreed over the last 6, 7 years, but this building was the last of a particular kind of great building. It was in really bad shape. We started, you know, cleaning up the joint. You know , I asked the mayor of the City of Chicago can I have the building, he said yes. Many people think, you know, when you get a building for a dollar that the building is a dollar. When you get a building for a dollar, the building is not a had dollar ! -- is not a dollar!. What I found, if you're thoughtful about sticks and stones, you're thoughtful about the men and women who you hang out with, if you think about these deficits as an asset and start to train other people to help you out, really beautiful things might happen. [Applause] Now we have this thing, we call it the stony arts bank, we bought the land adjacent to the bank, when that happened, people thought I was crazy. You shouldn't be spending your money on this crazy land. I said that my values weren't their values, if stony island never had economic value, the fact that I live here is value enough. [Applause]. Now, it just so happened that this new foundation, this new center was moving right down the street. After the announcement of this center people started to call me a real estate mogul! A new real estate genius! Some kind of -- why was I taking the opportunity from other people who wanted to invest on stony island. Ultimately I was interested in using these sticks and stones to house the things of black people . That I wanted to have a beautiful place on the South side in black space where great things could happen and I think we're almost there. [Applause]. In my world of art, problems lead to opportunities and should lead to action. Thank you so much. [Applause]. LIZ DOZIER: every time I hear him speak it gives me chills. Our next speaker has spent her life advocating for all Americans to have an equal say in our democracy and equal chance in our economy. Heather McGhee is part of Demos and is currently working on a new book about the cost of racism to white people. Welcome Heather. [Applause]. HEATHER McGHEE: the economy is not the weather. Economic news may come to us like a weather report, the stock market going up or down like the temperature, but it is not actually unseen natural forces that dictate the way that the wind will below economically. a better way to think about the economy is as a massive multiplayer game where the most powerful players usual ly government officials and business executives are constantly able to change the rules that make it easier and harder for some players and some teams to score points. In today 's economy the name of the game is inequality and there just aren't that many winners. But, the good news is, it doesn't have to be this way. We don't just have to weather the storm of wide-spread economic insecurity. We can rewrite the rules of the game so that everybody wins. Back when my parents were born, the purpose of the game was different. the goal was to create a lot more winners. Bobby Kennedy summed it up this way saying it is the essence of responsibility to put public good ahead of private gain. So the players in power wrote the rules so that one man with a high school diploma and a unionizeed factory job could support a wife and children, buy a home, have healthcare and guaranteed retirement pension and even save for the future. If he wanted to go to college, he could get a free government grant, not a loan, and the CEO of his company paid himself about 25 times what he paid his average worker. Meanwhile, in Europe, nations were rewriting their rules to express a solidarity forged in the fires of war. All over the post colonial world independence was the rallying cry. the cold war was beginning to pit too nuclear armed super powers against one another in terrifying ways but the rivalry inspired unprecedent ed public investments in science and education. In the industrializeed world the path to a secure middle class life was fairly open and government paved the way with laws and programs to promote the public good. In the decades after the Civil Rights movement the more powerful players began to articulate a new purpose for the game. Ronald Regan's vision surplanted Bobby Kennedy's when he said he wanted "an America where above all people can still get rich" it became a bipartisan consensus that if there were more points on the board for some players the rest of the players would eventually do better. It hasn't worked out that way. My generation is proof. We make about 20% less than our parents did at our age, struggle with child care as a new expensive necessity and instead of pensions we have personal stock accounts that could disappear in a crash. We're less likely to own our homes and we carry 5- figure student loan debt because of the disinvestment from public college. Racist rules on who owns what createed a wealth divide that's grown over the past generation. for every dollar of wealth owned by phelps, black and latinos, they have less than 15-cents. That advantage is not about education . a white high school dropout has the same wealth as the average college educateed person of color. Half of American families couldn't pay a $400-dollar bill on their way that couldn't go in debt. a average CEO pays themselves 300 times the average worker. the unions, they have been under relentless attack and have retreated from one out of every 3 workers to just one in 13. The changes in the laws on capital and mergers have given rise to mega corporations and national chains that dominate the marketplace, Smith smother -- smothering competition and small businesses and climate change is a rising cost to our economy that goes un checked as fossil fuel companies are allowed to put next quarter profits ahead of the next generation. So what I'm saying is inequality , it is not just a natural buy -- bi product of demographic change. These phenomena, they're real, but there are circumstances that we in a democracy should have the power to shape and it control. the problem is the democracy has become as unequal as our economy . [Applause]. In the U.S.A., the least wealthy among us are more caught up in the needless red Tape among voting. In recent years we have had a rash of deliberate voter suppression, photo ID, cutting early voting, percentageing citizens from the roles all to rescue the electorate upwards even further. Then there is the money. Less than 1% of the population provides the vast majority of the funds that determine who runs for office and what issues get political attention. Maybe the donor class' influence wouldn't matter so much if they were a representative sample but research shows that wealthy donors have different policy priorities, particularly about the economy than the majority of Americans, even within their own parties. We can all feel it. There's something broken in the spirit of our democracy, in the root word of our democracy, in the demos, the people, I would like to argue it is no coincidence that the rules have changed to make it harder for the average American to get by at the same time as the face of the average American has changed . Since the Civil Rights movement integrateed our society and we lifted the racist bans on immigration we have had a deep and growing anxiety in this country about who is an American . . That has changed the purpose of the game. In a way what's happened to our entire economy is like what happened in the segregateed South after the courts ordered integration on public amenityies and the white-controlled towns drained their public swimming pools rather than let black families swim too. Destroying a public good they once enjoyed. for three generations now a political movement has stoked white anxiety on who the public is, successfully linking government and unions to un deserveing minorities and gaining support for cut backs in public spending and limits on collective action that end up generating higher, privatized costs for all of us. Too many of us have been conditioned to look at our fellow Americans and see other and not us. It is a phenomena happening all over the world as politicians pit communities against one another imagine when a society's economic policy what it would look like if our notion of us included everyone, everyone that calls a nation home. I think it would look like being proud to pay taxes because taxes are the investment that the country has made in your success and you feel like you need to help provide for our future even though you may not recognize what that future looks like. I think it would look like government, business, philanthropy working together to ensure that the basic of lifeves , a great education, an old age with dignity, they would ensure that these things are not out of reach for most people but are the minimum that we can guarantee for us all. I think it would look like CEOs of companies seeing their responsibility as not just to create goods and profits but to create good jobs, jobs with dignity, decent jobs for their fellow human beings. Why not start that here? the United States is the world's oldest ex exterior -- experiment , they have a tie to every community in the world, they met here with the audacious promise that we could become one people. Right now today politics is offering us two visions of why all of the people s of the world have met here. One in which we're nothing more than competitors and the other in which perhaps the proximity of so much difference forces us to finally admit our common humanity. There are those who are holding on, white knuckleed to a tiny idea of we the people, who are denying the beauty of what we are becoming. They are saying that demographic changes are the unmaking of America. No. They are the fulfillment of it. [Applause]. When a nation that was founded on the belief in racial hierarchy truly uproots that belief, then we will have discovered a new world. That is our destiny. to make it manifest, it will be up to our generation to rewrite the rules of our economy so that its purpose is to forge solidarity across lines of color origin or class, to give life to the notion that those that have more money are worth more in our democracy and economy. In the 20th century America placed a bet on its people and it unleash ed an economic force that changed the world. Today the largest most diverse generation in American history is ready for that same commitment, a commitment to the human capacity within all of us, to the idea that out of this nation of many we can become one people. a Dem os. Thank you. [Applause]. LIZ DOZIER: thank you so much to Heather! That was so powerful! Before we continue on with the next speaker, I want to make sure I give you a couple of housekeeping notes. If you take a look at the screens on either side of me, we'll show a couple of things. First, I want to make sure that you know after this session we're going right into breakout session 1. So you will know that from the schedule you got exactly where you're supposed to go, check the schedule. We're going to meet back in here after that session at 6:15. We're starting right on time. Come on back in. . Secondly, the dinner buses, they'll depart right after Prince Harry's talk. Right after that, we're going to be leaving right out and the buses will be right outside. Lastly, a quick reminder on the wi-fi, which is right up here, so that you have that for your wi-fi needs. Our ultimate speaker is one of those people whose presence makes you want to be a better citizen, she's beyond amazing, I'm so excited for you to hear her, she's the coordinateor for the national rule assembly and makes a really strong case about how urban cityies and communities have so much to learn from rural communities. Would you please join me in welcoming Whitney Kimball Coe. [Applause] WHITNEY KIMBALL COE: thank you. So I remember the day when I told my parents that I had changed my mind about everything . I was 20 years old, a sophomore at queen's University of Charlotte in North Carolina and I wanted to come home. Well, not right at that moment. I wanted to finish school, but after that, I wanted to find my way back to my hometown of Athens, Tennessee, population around 13,000 people in the valley of the southeastern Tennessee area. I was nervous to say it out loud. This was a complete reversal of everything I had been professing up until that moment since I was 6 years old, I had been conditioning myself for a life of great success in a big city somewhere. It was never a question in my family that I was going to leave, to leave my home for good. On this day sitting on the floor in my sophomore dorm room I called my parents to tell them that I changed my mind . This is the moment where many rural parents would likely hold their ground and say, oh, no, honey, don't you remember what it was like living here, we can't give you the opportunities you'll find out there, why don't you just think a bit longer about this decision. My parents didn't say that. Instead, they said we would love it if you came home to Athens. I was so relieveed to hear that. Because I needed Athens. I'm home now, building a life with my husband and two daughters. My parents live one street over and my brother and sister-in-law live me wind us, we call our corner the family compound. When I ran for a seat on athens city council our neighborhood was full of with whit signs. It didn't win the seat but I fell in love with my community all over again. Athens is pretty much the same as I remember. It still has a lot of the cultural markers of a small town. We like to stay within sight and sound of each other. a trip to the grocery store is like going to church. You know it is just going to take longer than you think it will because you'll see everyone you know. We're also an intergenerational place and everybody wears multiple hats, I can serve on the friends of the library board with my first grade elementary school and work backstage in the art center with my OB/GY, in. You don't have to belong to or attend church but people know who goes where and how often they're in the pews. When catastrophe strikes like the tornado that hit us in 2016 we pull out all the stops for our neighbors. There's nothing fancy or cutting edge about my community. We have more Heyman tys than some rural areas and less than others -- amenity ies. Rural people walk a hard line between despair disparity and abundance. In the U.S.A. we're 20 it% of the population and 80% of the land and we haves historically been bypassed by government and exploited by companies that have extracted our resources and left little investment behind. We know about trauma and addiction and suicide. We know about shuttered hospitals and crappy roads and under funded schools and spotty Broadband and we know that one in four kids live in poverty, those are our kids and our youth who are told they have to leave to save their lives. That's all part of the rural story. Also part of the story is what I call a practice of participation. We can't control the systematic barriers and disparityies that haunt us and haunt us. We can't control the forces of globalizeation and automation that have taken our livelihood, our jobs. We can control our response to the forces and usually that means we just keep participating. We keep showing up. At funerals, pot lucks, at PT, be a -- at PTA meetings and choir practice at football games and city council meetings, we keep checking out library books and performing in community theater productions. We make our plans for here and about here as writer Joe Carson says. That regular practice of participation is what characterizes our relationships and it gives us the ability to live and work and worship together in spite of disagreements. It helps us withstand the tangles of partnership too. It is hard to dismiss someone when you expect to see them tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. I hope you're not hearing me say though that rural futures are secure because we have community spirit. I'm not saying that. Rural people are pissed as hell at the shape of our mess and infrastructure and we're deeply worried about our children. There is absolutely a role for thoughtful government in this story, better policies and more investment are critical for our future in rural places, especially if we want our young people to answer the call to come home. What pulled me back to Athens, it is the deep knowledge that we already have something essential in place. I believe there's something incredibley powerful about the way we show up with each other in small daily ways, the way we stay within sight and sound of each other. It is a practice, that's the only word I can think of to describe what we do. James finley offered the lesson this way, find your practice and practice it. Find your teaching and follow it, find your community and join it. I watch ed my dad head to work in the dark hours of the morning most of my life. He's a community banker and he's retire ing today after more than 45 years. [Applause]. 45 years of investing in the people of our community. When he would get off work he would go to the next thing, Wednesday night choir practice, soccer practice with me and my brother or play practice at the arts center which my mother started. Often he would go to a board meeting at the local YMCA or economic development board, for 45 years my dad kept showing up Now that he's retireing I don't think he's going to be able to unlearn that practice. Consistent participation in community is simpley the hardest work we can do in this moment whether we live in a rural or urban place. It is hard because I think participation requires a certain kind of humilityity and a level of commitment that's important that tells us that individual identity is what defines us and claims us. What I have learned from living in athens is that participation in a collective future is what now rich -- what nourishes us. Its a desire for a meaning fillled life that is resonating with many. I have a cohort of 30 somethings in athens that are putting down roots and running the show at various community institutions. Lindsay, Lauren, jen, they're running the art center started by my mom. They were born and raised in athens and now they're back raising their families here. We have coffee and help each other raise the four daughters we have among us. Through my work with the center of rural strategyies and the national rural assembly I have been lucky to be a part of a network of young people who like me have in some way answer ed the call or the challenge to return home. Apalacha writer calls us home comeers, it is like a song. Home comeers. An artist and an activist, she returned home to work on her family's organic peach farm in Dell ray, California. Tim is a young man in the Mississippi Delta who is utilizing the power of Entrepreneurship -- yes -- to disrupt the racial wealth gap in his region. Anna is a leading civic dialogue in minnesota about the most politically polarizing topics of our time like climate change. Marlene works with vulnerable population s in communities along the Texas/Mexico border and another focuses on affordable housing issues on her resignation in Arizona. I'm a part of a local home comeer but enriched by others that are committed to practicing life in community. On the one hand we're not doing anything new or brilliant. We're just modelling the practices that we grew up on , but I do believe that we're doing the thing that's truly necessary right now and in this time of divisiveness and polarization across every kind of border, we're doing the hard work of staying in community. My mother loves this piece from play write Joe Carson, I live in harmony and good union with my friends and neighbors and I have kept a piece of earth in working order. I'm proud of that. We're facing huge challenges right now about how we'll continue to feed and fuel our planet, but even more important I think is this question of how we stay within sight and sound of one another. Across the barriers and borders we put up. I think rural people have something to teach us about repairing the breach. Thank you. LIZ DOZIER: thank you so much to Whitney. Our next speaker needs no introduction, ladies and gentlemen, the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama [Applause]. PRESIDENT OBAMA: hello, everybody! Hello! Hello!. Thank you! So that -- it is a little intimidating following Whitney an the rest of these speakers! I am not accustomed to being so intimidateed, but I could not imagine a better way to open the first Obama Fountion Summit. So we are in the South of Chicago. That way is downtown. This way I think -- I hope I'm pointing in the right direction -- is the South side. the reason that I'm so excited to gather all of you here today, and we have remarkable young leaders from every corner of the globe from 60 countries, from all across the states, people that are doing remarkable things in the community setting up health clinics or starting companies to provide renewable energy in very poor areas and beginning to advocate on behalf of groups that are left out and forgotten of communities. the reason I'm so excited to see you all here today in part is because this is where I started This is not where I was born. I was born in Kenya -- (laughter) no. That was a joke. I was born in Hawaii. I spent -- I had a bit of a mis spent youth, did some things that fortunately were not recorded because there was no social media, hence I was ultimately able to be elected president. In college I either began to develop a social conscience or at least all those values that my mother had whispered in my ear started to come back to me about being kind and useful and caring about people that were less fortunate than you. Being a peace maker rather than an I went interior of -- rather than -- trying to pull people up rather than put them down. I started to think how I can make a difference, how can I make a difference. If you're here today wherever you are from, whatever you look like, however, you worship, whatever the cause or calling, one thing that binds all of you together is at some point in your lives you have asked yourself the same question , which is how can I have an impact, how can I make a difference? I was inspireed particularly by the Civil Rights movement here in the United States of young people going door to door to try to register people who had never been able to vote before. Freedom riders that were willing to sit down and suffer all sorts of in dignityies in order for their societies to be transformed. There wasn't any movement around at the time. When I graduateed from college. I looked around and ultimately there was a small group group of churches on the South side of Chicago that were interested in dealing with steel plants that had closed and racial turnover that had taken place and had decideed to hire a community organizer to help them stableize their communities. They had no money, so all they could afford to hire was me. I didn't really know what a community organizer was. I arrived here and for the next three years I travelled all throughout the South side and worked with leaders anticipate churches and Block clubs and community organizations and we tried to build a new park in a neighborhood that had been ravaged by the drug trade and we tried to build after school programs so that young people could aspire to college and we worked on environmental issues in public housing project that was near a Landfill. I didn't really set the world on fire. I didn't lead a movement, but what I did learn was ordinary people in local communities can do extraordinary things when given a chance, when their voices are heard, when they come together, when they recognize themselves in each other. I learned everybody has a story in them that's sacred. That so often the stories match yours, even if you don't immediately recognize. Similar hopes, dreams, disappointments. and even after I left community organizing the lessons that I learned about people and about being rooted in communities and listening and sharing stories and creating power from the bottom up rather than top-down to bring real change, those lessons never left me. That was just a few miles from here, 10 minutes, 15 minutes drive close to where we had the pictures, close to wheremy sell -- where Michelle grew up. I carried those lessons with me, even after I became president of the United States and I started to travel all over the world and all around this magnificent country that I'm proud to be the citizen of. I would meet young people that were just like me. Maybe a little better than me. They had asked themselves how could they make a difference. Andrew had started sharing their stories and listening and gather ing stories in their communities and had begun to mobilize and organize and make things happen. Throughout my presidency, when I was down, cynical, when things got tough, the one thing that I knew would always pick me up, when I met those young people with that vision and that talent and that motivation, that desire to have an impact and to make a difference. When I asked myself after the presidency how could I have an impact, when I asked myself after turning 56, it is not too late, you can still have an impact, what should you do, the thing that was most exciting for me was the idea of creating a hu b, a venue, a place, a network in which all these young people across the globe and across the country from every background and race and religion could start meeting each other and seeing each other and teaching each other and learning from each other because if we could create an architecture, a platform for those young people to thrive and to grow and to scale up all of the amazing stuff that they were already doing locally, not to just root themselves locally but be able to germinate, seed change around the country, the world, then there's no problem we couldn't solve. There is no aspiration we may not reach. So that's the plan. That's the vision. Although we have good ideas as to how to get started, before we started rollling out a bunch of programs, before we starting to lock in and make investments about buildings and fellowships and internships and this and that and the other we thought why not practice what we teach and listen first and find out from a representative sample of all of these amazing young people what is it that would be useful to you, what is important to you, what excites you, how can you most effectively learn from each other and work with each other and stay connected and build a movement for change That's what the summit is here for today. Our goal is not to present some fixed theory of how change happens. Our goal at this session is not to pump you with a bunch of PowerPoints and data and information and a blueprint for how you are going to go back and do the stuff that you're already doing even better because in many ways we want to learn from you as much as we want to share some of what we have learned. In other words, this is a big brainstorming session, this is a big Hack-a-thon. This is an experiment in us trying to have a collective conversation which we will try to shape and direct so that it's useful to you, but you are my cocollaborateer, you're Michelle's cocollaborate er in creating what ultimately the Obama Foundation will become. We could not be more excited about it. Because in just seeing what you have already accomplished, if we can poll all the experience, knowledge, resources that's represented in this room, and we do have a few people who don't -- like me -- who still qualify as young, but have done a few things, I'm absolutely confident that we'll be able to together create something that isn't their -- isn't there right now. That's an architecture, a platform whereby all the young people around the world and who are coming behind you, will be able to either digitally or in person or in the local communities because you have gone back and createed something , that they'll have a little more help, a little more direction, a better idea of just how it is that they can harness their own power and have their voices heard and create the kind of world that we all want. Thank you so much for being a part of this. In closing, I just want to add a couple of points as you have noticed, we're going to have some breakout sessions, we'll have some plenary sessions back in here, there aren't a lot of rules. You seem like a fairly well-behaveed crowd, but I would offer a few guidelines. One, listen to the people you're with . Not just the folks on the stage, but in breaks, during meals, share your stories with each other and try to make a connection. Forge relationships . If possible, find somebody who is not like you who doesn't look like you, who doesn't think the way you do, who has a set of experiences that you don't on the surface at least share. Point No. 2, I want you to have a strong point of view and not be afraid to articulate it, make sure that you are not disagreeable. I thought it was put very powerfully, real change comes through persuasion and openness to others, and if your starting point is you don't get me because, you don't get me because you're not a woman, you can't get me because you're straight, you can't get me because your block, -- your black, you can't get me because you're white, if that's your initial starting point, you won't grow and you certainly will not help the person next to you grow. So new point of view, be rooted in your experiences and don't be afraid to share those but listen , be open, don't be partisan because our goal here is not to create a political movement. Some of you may be aspireing politicians, I believe firmly in politics but I also believe the moment we're in right now politics is the tail and not the dog. What we need to do is to think about our civic culture, because what's wrong with our politics is in part a reflection of something wrong in our civic culture, not just here in the United States but in many places around the world. Third, for Michelle and myself, this seems trivial but it is not , no selfies!. Now, I say this because if -- one of the weird things about being president, I found people were no longer looking me in the eye and shaking my hand because they approached me either like this or like this and it seems trivial, but it is not. We had a terrific discussion, debate about social media, I'm pro social media, I wouldn't have been elected president if not for young people organizing throughout the country through social media. It is an amazing tool but if it is blocking you from having a conversation or seeing somebody or recognizing them and listening to them because you are so busy trying to get a picture then you are -- I think in some ways contributing to to what separates us rather than trying to breakthrough. [Applause]. PRESIDENT OBAMA: that seems trivial but it is big, it will allow us to have actual conversations with you, which will be nice. the fourth thing, have fun, because the work all of you do in local communities, the work you aspire to do, it is hard and full of frustrations and setbacks, and every step forward you take, sometimes it feels like there will be two steps back. Part of what this potential community provides, part of you being able to meet and connect to people doing what you're doing with other places around the world is maybe to make you feel less lonely. to know that the noble pursuits you're involved with, there are a lot of other folks out there rooting for you, feelling the same frustrations that you do and sharing the Joys of those small successes that can turn into big successes and part of the reason why it is so important for us to incorporate folks like Theaster and writers, film makers, writers that are here today is because bringing about change is not just eat your peas. There should be some Joy in it. You know, that's an expression that maybe is too American. That means it is -- because in some places maybe people really like peas. (Laughter). It shouldn't just be a burden. What an amazing gift, what an extraordinary privilege to be able to make the world better, to work with others and to be able to look back after a year, five years, ten years, 20 years and say that child has an education because of the work I did. That person has healthcare because of the steps I took. That group of people who didn't have a voice now have a voice. That entire Society of Women now can do things that used to be exclusively reserveed for men. Those gay or lesbian young people no longer fear who they are. What a powerful thing that is. What a joyous thing that is . That's what you represent. So have fun. Thank you very much S everybody -- thank you very much , everybody. [Applause]. Please make your way to your scheduleed breakout sessions.
