Darren walker to do serving as president of the Ford Foundation and will be the 2020 stanford distinguished lecturer and given all of his extraordinary accomplishmentshou whoever introduces him has their work cut out for them. Born in louisiana one of the first children of the nation to benefit from the Headstart Program he went on to earn a scholarship at the university of texas austin where he would graduate with degrees in government, speech communication and lobby for pursuing a successful career as an attorneyyst and investment banker. For the past three decades, mr. Walker has been one of our nations for most philanthropic executives. s serving as chief operating officer as the Largest Development Corporation Vice president of the rockefeller foundation, cofounder and chair of thehe us Impact Investment alliance and for the past seven years as president of the Ford Foundation. He oversees an endowment of 13,000,000,000. 600 million of annual grant money. He is dedicated to tackling the most difficult issues in the world and among the most committed supporters of residents of new orleans after Hurricane Katrina and led the way to building a more just and financially Sustainable Future for the city of detroit and as president of the Ford Foundation contributing to the empowerment of tens of millions of americans across the country including here in the south in a groundbreakingre 201515 essay and more recently in his book generosity to justice he calls upon americans to rethink the way we look at the charity minded approacht to one that addresses the inequality that necessitated the charity in the first place in that spirit he has announced the Ford Foundation is giving only projects that address and a quality. Tonights introduction he will be visiting duke several times this spring working alongside with partnerships here to combat in justice in the south he is a leader of uncommon vision and purpose i am delighted to have him here please join me to welcome darren walker. [applause] good evening good people welcome again to20 the 2020 distinguished lecture i have the honor and a pleasure to share the stage with mr. Darren walker as president of the Ford Foundation in the interest of time not overwhelming you with repetition of his accomplishments to address the introductions i will take a minute before tonights event we will share the stage and directed conversation for about 35 minutes and then entertain questions from we will comeers to you if you raise your hand and we ask you first stand if you are approached and that you try your best to have a concise and wellformed questio question. Thank you in advance. As discussed while truthful and honest discussions like inequality and domination and injustice by their very nature are likely to be discomfiting for some of us we hope our exchange this evening will be in my end and hope you dont miss the Important Message associated with this discussion. If you read the book or have seen previous interviews you already know that compelling story as well as the groundbreaking work at the e. D foundationcu tonight we propose to merge these two perspectives and as someone who has emerged from the communities frequently proposed mr. Walker benefits from a unique constellation to that characterize differently from those brought to bear of philanthropic organizations and how Lessons Learned from these experiences with a vision plan with the Ford Foundation mission as well as they hold wellbeing in the world and finally the topics and questions we are discussing is collected from collaborative meetings as well as faculty at a recognition for that perspective associate with the contributions to indicate those questions that were conceived of in advancerh,. Lets talk with a big picture question you open the book with a statement written by Andrew Carnegie and in it he cites the importance to address inequality the previously referenced North Carolina championed by Terry Stanford funded by the Ford Foundation 57 years ago from your perspective what if anything about the nature of inequality and how philanthropy proposes to adjust it has changed since the current ag on carnegie operation from today . Good eveningg everyone. I feel really blessed and enormously grateful for the invitation for the Terry Sandford lecture this semester with the opportunity to come to this amazingly magical place that seems otherworldly with its beauty and its excellence you cant help but feel this is a rich place. [laughter] and it reeks of it. [laughter] and it is an interesting thing we get to in a moment but i do want to say it is just always such a warm embrace when i come to durham and thats way when my friend Joel Fleishman intervened into my life so i could be named a stanford lecturer i readily accepted i think your question of andrewew carnegie and the fund for North Carolina today is a very important one that first of all we have to acknowledge Andrew Carnegie he was a radical for his day and Andrew Carnegie believed that everyone should be literate and have a library and Library Books and he actually didnt have a problem with the quality and believed it was just a natural phenomenon and the real question was those who benefited from the natural hardsu work in their superior intelligence and all the things that brought them their wealth what do they do with that wealth . To benefit society . He was a radical but he doesnt look like a radical today. The fund for North Carolina that governor sanford ledno was also a radical idea a disruptive idea because it challenge the status quo and demanded that institutions look at the ways in which they existed and engaged with poor or low income or black communities. And we have to acknowledge well we in this country have made tremendous progress , everything has changed. And nothing has changed. We have been unable to upscale, sustained the progress, that is to my mind the greatest ngallenge because we actually generally speaking know what works. , name a social ill, a challenge that we face as a country and there is a demonstration or a series of demonstration that show was what work. Name something. , how to increase student achievement for young black boys. We know how to do that in this country and there have been randomized controlled trials out the wall zoo to show us where it has worked. Those have been demonstration, we have been unwilling to scale them, to invest in them and to sustain those investments. So my challenge is to all of us and through the lawyer and to be is to demand that we look at the root causes of one the problems that we arere identifying into, what is the root cause of our inability to invest in, the things that we know that work, andrew believed in literacy, he did not question that the negro libraries that secondhand books or notebooks at all, John B Rockefeller was a radical to establish Spelman College to take what had been a Small College for negro women into believe that negro women should have a four year degree was a radical idea, now, he was not creating a Scholarship Program to said the scholarships with his daughters and there was a curricular design for those women that was different from the caligula that was designed for his daughters but he believed that they should be educated, but the root causes were left unexamined and part of the reason the root causes were left unexamined is because privileged people do not like being made uncomfortable and to engage in a root cause interrogation makes the beneficiary of the very systems and structures that produce their advantage, it makes them vulnerable and one of the great things about privilege, ive lived with privilege and i lived without privilege, living with privileges really goodd because what privilege is supposed to value is insulation from being uncomfortable. , how many times have i m heard parents say ive worked hard so you can have the privilege that i did not have. So those things that i had to worry about you dont have to worry about, you can take for granted, that is privilege and every parent wants out for their child, particular parent who grew up hard or poor but that privilege then insulates them from actually engaging in these really difficult conversations. Thank you. It sounds like youre talking about different but perfec perst manifestations of inequality enduring inequality. So the second question is into nidthe title is inequality from justice, there is a rapidly evolving literature that 11 in the academy that addresses different types of inequality for example, economic, racial or structural, theres also ultimate definitions of the different types of inequality based on the response that you gave, can you share with us what type of inequality you believe is the root cause and how you propose to define that type of inequality. I think the root cause is racism and classism, i think w we it becomes incredibly uncomfortable, first because in this country we believe, i believe i believe in america that i am certain there is no place in the world where someone with your background or my background could have experienced in one generation the level of social and economic mobility that we have experienced. I was born in the bottom deciles and i am absolutely right in the 1 . And i am grateful for that, but that does not bind me to the reality ofhe the historic racism that is imbued and are very isfoundation. And how we in this country have that conversation where we both are comfortable with the contradictions of who we are, rather than a romanticized version, i am i love Thomas Jefferson and i get hell because i opened my annual letter a couple of years ago with a quote from jefferson to his friend Samuel Dupont in 1816 and he wrote Samuel Dupont and said the work of america is to build a just nation. So i included that and i got some people saying on twitter, why would you be quoting that, all the races, all that stuff. Because jeffersons words were brilliant, they were absolutely brilliant. Now yes he was a hypocrite, absolutely. But we i want to hold jefferson to his word, i use his words to demand of him that he deliver on those words in spite of his hypocrisy and to hold his hypocrisy and his brilliance at once because in spite of the fact that our founders were racist, they also left us the tools to fix what was wrong, so, i think where we have to begin in this country is to have inability to manage the complexity of both of the narratives in the nation where we have only had a narrative of deification. We had a narrative that is romanticized idea of america, and that romanticized idea, i hold that to, but i also hold a reality that is the lived experience, certainly of folks of color, poor white people in that to me is what is critical to our ability to engage in a think what happened in our o society today, too many of us are taking oppositional positions on the narrative continuum and some feel that it is important to protect in some feel that we have to tearte it down and i believe, we have to be able to bridge because we are like the soul any of us, if you have any religious tradition or you believe anything i grew up in the south and the baptist, we have a soul, our souls need nourishment and we if left to our own will will do things that are harmful to her soul and souls need healing, i think thats what this country needs. So how do we think about the kinds of conversations that help us heal, understand you have to be able to diagnose what we healing from, that is a part of it. D you open by referencing jefferson and the move towards a just nation. Can you give us the definition of what that would look like and how you imagine that came, what is justice look like, what is the pathway. I think p the pathway is to recognize that our democracy is defined by a set of systems, structures, cultural and social practices in those systems beginning with Economic System is designed to get us what we got. So there is no facet of our life in this country, there is no social problem that we should be surprised about the outcomes. So none of it should be surprised about the fact that we are the most overly incarcerated nation in the world on a per capita basis, that is a fact and we have designed a criminal Justice System to get us that, i am not surprised, if you look at the input and two outputs, it is actually a perfectly designed system to get us that. And so every aspect of our life, those systems in the design of them will get us more justice or less justice and i think we have to focus on every system and ask ourselves, is am system designd to generate more justice, more fairness or is it designed to create more injustice, this is not a unique phenomenon, the Foundation Offices all around the world and inequality is a function of the way societies and particularly those who are privileged designed society, i was in her office in Eastern Africa and the head of our people said we have got to hire, we have hired an overabundance of cuckoo yes because the ethnic groups in the office feel like the cuckoo yes are already a privileged enough society and why is that the asset is in power et cetera. Too many of my colleagues, they are all black and east africa, how hard can it be. , they have inequality too, it is designed by the privileged ethnic group to benefit them. In the minority ethnic tribes and groups, it can be like a conversation in harlem in 2010. The conversation is about how they are excluded and have a privileged ethnic group at the top of the pyramid makes it hard for them to enter and have access to the economic benefits, the benefits for land, the benefits for agriculture, whatever. You go into the urban slums and you look at whos in the slums and then you find out there ethnic, it is often both technical tribes who are rural, minority, you go to the nicer neighborhoods and see whos living in those, this is because people design structures that are based on historic that are intended to create hierarchy and that is a global phenomenon, in the United States it has absolutely manifest in the way ifin which racism and White Supremacy was designed and everything around that, it is regrettable but is a fact and if that fact makes us uncomfortab uncomfortable, deal with the uncomfortable the discomfort, in order to solve what we have to understand how to get it out of her system. If im understanding correctly, youre suggesting inequality is foundational to the construction of the nation, its attached to the structural manifesto manifest in institution and either promotes or constraints justice. Ss lets take a look at the practical example of this. In your book you mentioned worldwide improvements in birth outcomes of how justice and for movements can improve social conditions and reduce inequality. You ask however, particular Maternal Mortality increase with higher income and more formal education and in fact White American women who have less than a High School Education have better birth outcomes than black american women who have college degrees. How do we square that circle to you, what does that reflect about the social order particularly the state of affairs on the inequality and injustice. It reflects the depth at which reese correlates with progress. Race, not income because income is not necessarily an equalizer. And so the conundrum of how is it that you have black women with a fouryear credential, with higher income achieving Poor Health Outcomes than white women without a fouryear degree with less, how else can you explain that. I think the data in the research on this, the way in which racism has prevented constrained, Even Economic gains do not translate into better social and health outcomes, it does not translate into more social mobility, it does not translate into less social isolation, i think we have to ask ourselves in that again what we do about that, one of the real challenge is for white people is often who were on the journey with us is to say, what do we do about that. I think its one of the frustrations for all of us, the diagnosis is not the hard, the data is pretty clear, its the what do we do about this and i think that is the hard work, that is the work of this nation. Thank you. Can we talk about relationships between different groups who invested in offsetting these inequalities, from your perspective, what are the essential characteristics of a just or in Just Partnership between funders, universities and those individuals, families and communities were living by extension just proportionally impacted by the inequality phenomenon funded and researchers like you and i are interested in proposed to stand and offset, how do we get those perspectives and this is a Community Generated question. I think one of the real important ways that we achieve that is first by recognizing and owning our power and the power imbalance. In the resource imbalance, and how that can distort our behaviors. We in philanthropy sometimes have a false sense of humility but its a fake sense of humility and that we simply are saying were justhe here to help i think that is harmful if we are not willing because in order to get to a better relationship and engagement with community, we have to recognize the power and balance and therefore how we own that, how the way in which we engage in it first has to be that we dont privilege credentialed knowledge over the lived experience in the perspectives of people closest to the challenge. Dont say that we are going to bring experts in because the people who were in those communities are the experts too. I remember before i went to rockefeller and i worked on the very different harlem then today. We were practically giving away brownstone and we could not get people to move to harlem. But there were times when we felt like we were the guinea pigs, the lab rat, you know when you feel a sense of being observed, being monitored, being analyzed but never being at the table as a full partner and i just think part of that requires from day one the design of whatever thege engagement is should have viewed the preambles to whatever the interventionist. One funding opportunities and mechanisms in the existing that informed that perspective, how do you get the folks who have boots on the ground, and represent the perspective of thoseiv populations, do you have those and this is also a Community Member generated question. My former trustee who knows all about the foundations in the design of these initiatives will tell you that one of the things that we have learned from his organization and the organizations like you, is the thing in terms of resources that nonprofits need that they cannot get his general support, but the first kind of funding that matters most, this is to inventor enterprise is flexiblee capital, what philanthropy provides the least is flexible capital. So to my mind, that is like an indication of how you see strategy and your partners. So one of the things that we initiated the trustees approved five years ago a 2 billiondollar initiative, a new initiative that is all general support and that funds a set of key institutions that we believe are on the frontline of fighting for racial and gender equality. In what the house meant, we have gone from our report, we were 21 of our spend was general support and we are now 75 as of last year. , it should be hundred although my colleagues say itll neverere 100 because theres certain things but i say that to say, we had to change her strategy to because if you are going to do general support, your strategy has to be stripping those institutions or funding. So your whole headset has to change as a foundation where you say our work is to invest in the institutions and people, that is our work and thats hert strategy. Now most foundations including florida, the strategy has been something thats been designed, not my design in a Conference Room but its been designed and there are outcomes and we fund organizations to do those and get those outcomes. That is admirable so we fund an organization to reduce teen pregnancy, i believe if we fund the organization, our outcome should be attached to their outcome, we should be informed by saying if we are working on and we want to reduce racial inequality and there are a set of organizations Whose Mission oto do that, so get them in a room, the Legal Defense fund, name all the organizations doing that, design a collective strategy that is about strengthening each of those institutions, developos indica indicators, develop the outcomes for those groups and give them general support to doo that. And give the multiyear general easupport, this again is getting into the weave but i say this to my Foundation Friends because this is one thing that makes me crazy about foundation, that is the board approves a budget, one year budget, when you asked someone why cant you do multi multiyear, they say my board only approves of one year budget, the florida board only approved one year budget but it could approve a five year budget if itro wanted to. There is nothing that says you cannot approve a multiyear budget. I understand why some organizations conservatively and otherwise in terms of fiscal management that there are ways and scenario plans and worstcase scenarios and know that you will have the money to pay out. Why dont we do more ofdo that. In order to get, we dont have a 2 billion budget but the trustees after a lot of work with our cio in the financial people felt comfortable, thats those fiduciaries that they could approve a five year budget, that was 12 billion and so we can start paying out those grants right away. So the good news for grantees is that some of the organizations, the larger ones that 10 million and some of them we gave them 6 million in year one and 4 million in year two of a fiveyear grant, we can do that. I guess im just saying, there are ways in which if you believe in community beyond the rhetoric that you manifest that in your programming. When you came to the Florida Foundation, you sold the existing Art Collection and use the funds to replace it with pieces from a significantly more Diverse Group and temporary orders. You also oversaw the purchase of a video jet collection and donated them to archive of the museum of africanamerican history. Why did you makemu those change. The art. [laughter] there was a wonderful Florida Foundation in a collection that mr. Florida, henry florida the second when the headquarters was built amassed, it was a beautiful collection, we had run war, monet, it was really quite lovely, i would say art historians would say we had a lot of names but it was not like anything was investor anything, but we had a lot of names. So when the trustees and i as we started to reimagine the building because this is part of a larger strategy to move the building from being a fortress into us being a Community Destination when the space for nonprofit and other things. I said to the trustees, we have in our collection letters all white men, mostly european and there was one woman and were foundation that just approved a new mission to focus on inequality and diversity in the world. We should sell the art. In the good news is the Florida Trustees are a Remarkable Group of people, exceedingly distinguished people who are relentlessly focused on advancing a foundations mission. I think they really understood that so we call not to everyones pleasure but we did reassertion the art until the collection and that made it possible because we did not want to use grant dollars or any budget, that in turn made it possible for us to acquire a new four collection, the first pieced we acquired is an 8foot tall who did a portrait of president obama that is quite remarkable portrait of a woman from brooklyn, it is gotten a lot of media because its amazing portrait to have in our lobby but now our collection is about 80 of women of color and people in queer and diverse and lots of different ways and i think people notice it and its been written about a lot and gotten a lot of attention i think because it does reflect our sense of who we are as aha foundation. Thank you. We have reached the point of our session where we will take questions from the audience and please remember wellthoughtout precise questions. We have mike runners who will be making the round. Raise your hand if youre interested. Otherwise they have additional questions and we will continue to dialogue here. No questions. We have one great. My name is emily hadley, thank you so much for having tonight, i really enjoyed your conversation. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about early on we know what to do but we just dont do it, i i think sometimes were on foundations and corporate and has a lot of resources but at the end of the day it is the limited compared to the government for example, can you talk about what you see as the limits of foundation and when you see the governments role playing and how Florida Foundation works with the government and in what capacities. Thats a great question. I actually dont believe that the Florida Foundation or fulllength or be at large can achieve any of the solutions we would wish upscale. We know a foundation can do that, not the Gay Foundation or the Florida Foundation, consequently, we have to believe in Public Policy, we have to believe in the potential of government to act responsibly, to scale to both experiment and to be a partner with philanthropy, but ultimately if we want to scale a large public challenge, government and Public Policy are the pathway. And unfortunately we have allowed in this country the idea of degrading government, of degrading public goods, anything that is public becomes negative, there is something negative associated with it, Public Housing, public transportation, public schools, public parks, all of these things are public assets and when we start to prioritize them and say the solution is privatizing the public, i believe that we will regret that, i believe that that can in fact accelerate the kind of inequality and i think has contributed to accelerating the inequality and fulllength or preroll should be shining a light on that, actually lifting out of which is not always easy because we sometimes participate. So will take my own city, we have an amazing park called central park, it is funded 100 by private wealth. , the worst days of new york city, bankruptcy, a group of amazing private citizens proposed too the city that they would take over the revitalization of the park and they have done an amazing job and they should be commended for that. But the central park conservancy, success, some would argue have contributed to the degradation of parks in the bronx and queens and Staten Island because this idea that actually we do not need a robust public park system in new york, look at central park, look at the hardline, those are unique situations that exist because of the geography of those parks. And to extrapolate from that, a Public Policy that says, you see we just need to allow the privatization because those communities in the south bronx and on Staten Island dont have billionaires. Living on them. They dont have the wealth and dont have people who say i want to make sure when i t take my ks into the playground on the park that it ise clean. They have a aspiration but they dont have the wealth. So if we go back to all the systems that are public that are being privatized, philanthropy should be in the role not of accelerating that but of calling that out as itself a contributor to the very problem were trying to solve. Thank you very much for coming tonight. I really enjoyed this. I missed something along the way. There is a word of their that is justice and they dont understand exactly how you interpret that word, can you help me with that. Justice for me, is rooted for me in my religious teaching. The idea of social justice of fairness, of every human being being worthy of dignity, of not experiencing indifference because of some physical or other quality that renders them the other. And to my mind justice, and this is why i worry and philanthropic because in philanthropy, justice as it is in our society more broadly is a contested term, the number of Foundation People that ive had the last year, two president ial fix Foundation Say to me, my board would never be comfortable with all the social justice stuff that you talkou about for. Really. , your board know we talk about opportunity. We talk about leveling the playing field. So lets dance around in the language that makes us comfortable, when in fact the court issue, yes we can talk aboutk opportunity, lets talk about who has and who does not. But if we are actually going to deal with the core issues, we have to do it justice, and billing of the prei am surprised by how often i find resistance, when we started to say at ford we were a social justice the lancer p, not because we were cool or anything but is actually social justice fulllength or predemand something also fails. , 1968 when doctor king talked about philanthropy and he had a different idea of rockefeller, he said the only answer. As commendable but it should not allow the fulllength or pissed to overlook the economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary. It was a very different idea than carnegies idea, it was an idea that said actually, philanthropist, you need tois interrogate the ways in which you have become so privileged that you have all this money to give away when so many others do not the subsistence of the life of dignity. And how do you as a philanthropist think about engaging in that conversation and so justice to me looks like philanthropist engaging in that conversation to interrogate those systems and structures, rather than investing in the things actually affirm your advantage, that is really hard to do. I was at a dinner party in new york city with a group of progressive super successful people. Black and white, and most of them had gone to private schools and ivy league and someone said i read yours and it was really good and i said did you read the part where i said we should do away with legacy omissions. , to anyone including all the black people at the table who themselves were all first generation said absolutely not do away with legacy. , how do you think we will address inequality, so one of my friends who is a very successful banker on wall street, africanamerican, prep for prep grip and Public Housing said im not worried about your children, im worried about who you used to am be. I want your kids your kids are going to be fine, there is an and Ivy League School in america who will not accept at black kid who went to dalton who does not need Financial Aid and father legacy. , im not worried about your kids. The kids who we all used to be. Thats who we should be worried about, do they still have opportunity in this country, can they still dream the way we dreamed. And so to me thats what justice looks like, when peoplee like that start to say, we need to not get back, we need to give up and thats the difference in what im talking about. In looking at the lancer p from the standpoint and looking at her own personal behavior which is again work its really hard because we started with this point about privilege, the whole point of privilege in the whole point of you being able to donate a lot of money to a private school and have a leg up for your child is to buy that for them. And youre going to step aside and give that up, who is going to do that. Good evening, im an independent consultant, thank you for all that you have brought, all the truth telling that you have brought in particular im grateful for your affirmation of the value of people who have lived experienced in creating concrete avenue for people to participate in in that spirit and wondering if you can speak to the importance of bringing grantmaking to life and moving some of the decisionmaking an avenue for addressing inequality. A great question. Participatory grantmaking is something that we are interested in and experiencing with, we have done a couple underweight of experiences, one with a disability rights program, and another with a group of foundations working in three or four communities. I am very curious about this idea of participatory grantmaking. And i think its another way in which we can think about democratizing 30, and the innovation that mean that we share more in power and process, and decisionmaking. But let me be really clear, the Florida Foundation is never going to turn over our endowment to the community to manage and may grant off. I dont pretend to be something i am not. The way we will get better in the way the lancer p gets better grantmaking is to have more people in leadership positions who look like the communities we are seeking too serve. Because the more authentic understanding of the problems in the proximity of those problems that we have in oure boardrooms and our executive offices, i believe the better we will be as fully in the p. In the participatory grantmaking is one way in which we can do that, what i would not want to see is the demographics of philanthropy remain the same wall in ten or 20 years we have 10 of her grantmaking in a Participatory Fund or something. To me again, it is not a distraction but its much easier to take five or 10 of your budget and say we will do the participatory grantmaking thing over there and nothing else has to change. What im saying no, we need to change, we need to look at our boards and we need to look at theoa senior staff of foundatios and asked those questions and not allow things that are important but that can actually become trojan horses or something else. Of the question here. Hi my name is jesse, im an alum and them also with the board of social justice, thank you for being here. My question for you is a bit of a personal one, its a twopart one, you mention the word healing and thats a word that has a deep residence for me, just thinking about my journey and being a kid coming to duke leaving my family and what its meant to stay here remain engaged in community and my journey coming out at queer remaining connected to my Faith Community has been dynamic it is ongoing. I would love to hear as you feel comfortable sharing, what healing is meaning for you but also i would love to hear what do you think about collective healing and what that means on a broader public level, the last thing i w would add in the sout. [laughter] that is a qualifier of in the south as a southerner, i resonate. So i think this question of healing is one that is so deeply important for us now because we know that in some way we are broken and we feel it in our spirit and we sense it and we have to be able to first hope that our leaders can model for us what healing looks like and that we in our daily engagement with people contribute in very granular ways to the kind of healing that we need, i think there is no doubt that for africanamerican, queer people that the burden in her own community of homophobia is profound. Im reminded of something i havent thought about in a long time but when i went to work at the church in 1993, i had my desk in the basement and there was a picture of my partner on the w desk. And someone said to reverend, he has a picture of a white man on his desk in the reverend called me and said give a picture of a white man on your desk and i said yes, thats david, yes i have a white man at home. And you know, i think in some ways it was culturally in a black church in harlem in 1992, that was nonnormative thing. And what is the journey and reverend and i have had this conversation on many occasions, we know theres always been queers in the black church. Always. And the way in which that has been acknowledged or not has really contributed to some of the dysfunction of walkman and black women who are queer. It is compounded by race and i think that we have reached a point, i know on my own journey in my own journey at the church where a few years ago david and i were at church and the reverend calls out at the pulpit as you know the happens and all of a sudden he calls her name out, that sort of thing happens on black churches. And hes like i see you and david have shown up, where have you been, we havent seen you here and im like oh my gosh i cannot believe this man is church. Me out and now you know he would notot have done in 1992. He would not have called out to men, a couple sitting on the fifth pew on a sunday morning at 11 00 oclock. So that is the journey in that journey with his journey and my journey it was informed by the experience of living and working together in a shared mission, the work of the church, and so i think its a process and i think the collective work is the work that comes when people come together and have the courage to stand together. And that is not easy because today too often courage is discouraged. And taking the risk to stand up and stand out is not something that many people want to do in the twitter cancel culture time in which we live. , i would just encourage you to do that. We have time for one more question. His hand went up enthusiastically. Would you like my mind . Hi i am. Reporter a local position in the area. Hi. Reporter hi, this is a question about community healing, some of our local residents that live in Public Housing have been displaced for approximately a month because of underfunded maintenance issues. In many of these residents feel like secondclass citizens in our society. , how or from your experiences with katrina and recovery, how did you integrate many of the citizens back into their communities and include them so they did not feel like secondclass or less than citizens and how can bystanders in the Community Engage people that have lived in the terrible conditions . I think that this issue your question is a metaphor. There should be rage in the streets over that injustice. In the rage ought to be as intense from the privileged part of town where people are living in a nice big houses covered with ivy and nice cars in the driveway as much as it should be from the residents who are living in temporary shelter. And that is often the challenge. Is that the people who were calling city hall, who were calling the Public Housing authority, are not those people. The people who are doing the other people themselves who are the most formable and often have the least power and resources, again i come back to the question of what do we privileged people say and do in a case like that. I will only say that new orleans, law there is much to be proud of in new orleans, not all of those people in Public Housing got their housing back after katrina. So we should also be really clear that the process of addressing the solutions to challenges like Public Housing is multilayered and very complex. But in the specific instance, we had a situation in queens a few weeks ago in new york and we fund housing advocates, there is a lot of advocacy going on but how do we get people who are not themselves necessarily proximate to the problem, to own the problem and again, i dont want the burden to say, if youre privileged, you should be working on Public Housing, that is not necessarily whatt im saying but i am saying, we cannot choose to look the other way. Even if you arent going to be engaged in that specific, be engaged in some way that does matter to those communities. Otherwise what we know will happen is there will be indifference to those communities because left on their own, they do not have the power because that is difficult and uncomfortable but it is true. And being truthful in dealing with the reality is often uncomfortable. Thank you. So we have come to the end of our time for this evening, please join me in thanking mr. Walker for coming. [applause] journal washington continues. Host we welcome to the program dr. Michael sagg,
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