Innovations are far less successful. As we wrap up this event, were going to take a look at how all of us can play a role at building equity in society. I would like to thank qualcomm, the International Association of realtors for their support of todays program. Special thanks to the National Association of realtors for supporting this particular band of programming, and its going to be a great, great band. Stay tuned. Lots of cool stuff. Particularly my next speaker. Some of the leading minds in civil rights and social activism are with us this afternoon to discuss how intentional actions can lead to positive and constructive change. Before we get underway, a few housekeeping notes you can tweet us at thehillevents. Well be speaking live. If you have any trouble with the livestream, just refresh the page. Hopefully that will fix it. Our first guest is a proud fifthgeneration mexican. Thats a cool way to frame it. Deb holland serves the 5th congressional district. She is cochair of the native american caucus and vice chair of the quality caucus, and we may be seeing her in a Biden Administration soon. I dont want to jinx it, but i hope you come back and talk to me no matter where you sit in government. Congresswoman holland, its great to talk to you again. Weve been talking about diversity and inclusion, and i want to make sure we dont have any blind spots as we think about this issue. You talk about diversity broadly, but you also are very worried about the native american community, Indigenous Community of america really being left out of these conversations. How do you see it . Absolutely. Well, we need more voices. We need diversity across the board, right, and thats why im super proud to be one of the first native women in Congress Alongside my dear friend and colleague, cherise davis. We need people speaking for their own community so we get that perspective at the table. Thats absolutely important, yes. Youve been pushing some legislation as Building Blocks of this. I love the name, the not invisible act, the native American Business incubators programmatic, the progress for Indian Tribes act. Tell us what these Building Blocks do, and secondly, who are the villains trying to stop them . Let me just say that Indian Country i mean, look, we have been working to overcome so many of the federal governmental policies through the years. The boarding schools, the reservation systems, the dawes act. I mean, these are all things that essentially did not allow native americans to live their lives, right . And so the not invisible act, that is addressing the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women. This is an issue thats been happening just the last couple of generations. Its been happening since the europeans came to this continent to begin colonizing the native americans who were here. And so when we start chipping away at these issues that have been happening for a long time, for example, the not invisible act of 2019, it will start a commission that will study this crisis and make sure that we know how to move forward with it, how to keep our native women safe from this crisis. And thats just the beginning, though, right . When you have an issue, a crisis thats bienemaeen manifesting i for 500 years, its going to take more than one or two pieces of legislation to remedy. So thats what well begin working on. You know, representative holland, i usually dont go into my own story, but in the mid1990s, i was a Senior Policy Adviser to jeff bingham. I was in new mexico all the time, visited schools on, you know, native american schools, and lets just say that my concerns back then, over 25 years ago, about structural neglect and the impact that it makes on the psyche of children and families, the Health Challenges that were existing, now, i havent made a lot of those trips, you know, at the same frequency since, but it horrified me. I guess my question to you is, is that improving or is that structural neglect still as palpable as it was back then when i experienced it . Well, i think were improving in some ways, but in some ways were not, and ill give you an example of that. You know, this pandemic, its hit communities of color especially hard. Indian country are some of those communities that have been hit hard by the pandemic. You know, there are indian communities with no running water, with no electricity, no opportunities for telehealth. Their water is polluted. There is all these challenges that communities of color face. Native communities are absolutely some of those communities that are the most hardest hit. In new mexico, were about 11 of the population, and at one time over 50 of the positive covid cases. So there are disparities that are being suffered by so many communities, Indian Country in particular, and so, yes, we need to keep working hard. And i think this year, looking at the political side, more native americans running for Public Office than ever before, not just for congress, but for state legislatures and county commissions and other offices, i think thats absolutely going to help make sure that our voices are heard on every level. Thats what needs to happen. We need representation at the table where decisions are being made so that people have a voice. Do you think the incoming Biden Administration has that well set in place . I know youre being considered for a cabinetlevel position, but i dont know how to frame it, to be honest. Sometimes you bring in people because of the identities they represent. That doesnt necessarily mean they get it. Do they get it . We were talking about operation warp speed earlier, and if there does become a safe, efficacious vaccine that people can eventually trust, theyll still have communities out there that dont see themselves talking about the vaccine. They dont see a trusted ambassador. So in your conversations with the Biden Administration about covid, about this community, do you get the sense that their commitment is structural and real . Absolutely. President elect biden has a tremendous, tremendous policy platform for Indian Country, one of the strongest pillars of his platform is tribal consultation. And i trust president elect biden to make sure that he is bringing tribal leaders to the table for those important decisions. He is not going to make decisions that affect Indian Country without talking to them first. And that will be a breath of fresh air compared to what this Current Administration has done, blasting apart sacred sites, for example, to build a southern border wall and texting the tribal leader two hours ahead of the time that dynamite is being implanted in the ground. So the Biden Administration will absolutely have the best interests of Indian Country at heart and the best interests of communities of color at heart. I have every bit of faith in joe biden and Kamala Harris to ensure that they are bringing those voices to the table. And im actually looking very forward to it. One last thing, president elect biden has promised to reimplement the tribal nation summits every year. Thats where he brings Indian Tribes to washington, d. C. To make sure he is talking directly to tribes. So i look forward to us having a voice in this administration, and i think its very heartfelt, i think its very real. Deb, just in the last question, i want to squeeze one more in. 73 million folks voted for president trump. You work in congress, you work across aisles. New mexico is a crazy place. There is every dimension of politics there. How do you talk to people . How do you bring them over to get empathy, to get understanding to break some of this gridlock . Well, of course, i would like to say that you start with things that you can agree on. Indian country, those are some issues that some of us can agree on. And, in fact, i am i was the highest rated freshman for bipartisanship. Most of my bills had cospons cosponsorships from across the aisle, and i worked with my republican colleagues to move our country forward in a lot of areas. So we can absolutely agree on things. Were all humans, right . We can agree on things. We need to find those things, and we need to start with those things and push them forward, and i have every faith that we can do that. Well, representative deb haaland of the great state of new mexico, cochair of the native caucus, vice chair of the tribal caucus, i hope you come back and talk to us soon. Thank you so much. Reverend william j. Barber ii is cochair of the campaign a National Call for moral revival and pastor of the greentree disciples of christ. Drawing on dr. Reverend Martin Luther kings values. They work with hundreds of partners nationwide to advocate for communities of color, immigrants, the poor, women, the lgbtq community, children workers and the sick, a big lift of this organization. Reverend barber, im so grateful for you joining us today. I admire so much what needles youre trying to move in our society where Structural Racism has been part of the fabric of this nation. People dont like to talk about that to some degree, but we are now. So as a new president ial administration is coming in, i just want to ask you, what marks do they need to hit and what would disappoint you with this new administration coming in if they dont get it right . Well, thank you so much for having me. I think first of all, we have to align systemic racism and systemic poverty. When we talk about race, we have to talk about it in all these dynamics. Black people but not just police brutality, a resegregation of public schools, economics, mass incarceration. We have to talk about racism and how we treat and still do not have just immigration policies for particularly latino brothers and sisters, and we have to talk about the continued mistreatment and refusal to fully treat our indigenous brothers and sisters right. But we also have to deal with the fact that we have, before covid, 140 million poor people in this country, 4 of the nation. And 60. 9 of black people are poor, 26 Million People. But we also have 66 million white people who are poor in wealth. Thats 41 of white people. So we have to first of all talk about race and poverty together. We have to deal with the 62 Million People who work every day without a living wage. We have to deal with the fact that over 50 are black people who work every day without a living wage. Those being the facts, then there are some things we have to make sure. This president elect ran on three critical things that have to happen in the first 100 days. He ran on 15 in the union. If we pass 15 minimum wage, 49 Million People will be lifted out of poverty and that will have a positive impact on the africanamerican community. He ran on expanded health care, and we know health care is a critical issue, particularly among covid, among poor people who are dying at a larger rate, and black people. But many of the black people who died at a larger rate or poor and in ill health. And they ran on systemic racism. So the issue of passing the Voting Rights act and restoring it and expanding Voting Rights and dealing with Police Reform and dealing with more full funding of public education, those things are critical. Making sure that we have a just immigration policy, making sure that our indigenous families nations are treated properly in policy and are protected on their federal lands. Those are the kinds of things that must happen right off the bat early in the administration because people did not vote for normal, they voted for change. Im interested when you talk about the parts of society that are right now theyve been looked down on, theyve been demeaned, theyve been gut punched in the 20082009 financial crisis, so when you look at the broad array of people youre trying to lift up, its inspiring, one, to hear such a critical statement, but who are the villains youre trying to take down that are trying to prevent the progress and the empowerment of that part of the equation in our country . First of all, look at the policies that are villainous. That is a 2017 tax reform law that gave to the greedy and the wealthy. But this hurt poor communities and black and brown communities by creating situations that forced more money to be cut from education. Lets look at the fact that we have a bloated military budget while we spent 54 cents of their discretionary dollar on the war economy. What a republican eisenhower called the congressional military industrial complex. And less than 16 cents of their discretion was on infrastructure and health care and wages. If we just took a portion of that money and directed it toward ininfrastructure, toward health care, toward public education, we could fundamentally shift the lives of poor and low wealth people, and that would in a major way shift the lives of black people, brown people and indigenous people. By the way, it would impact poor whites as well, that racism is against black and brown people and indigenous people, but it actually is antidemocracy. Lastly, we have to look at the senate. Mitch mcconnell has called himself the grim reaper. Some people say trump is the mechanic, but Mitch Mcconnell is the getaway driver. He has not allowed bills on minimum waste to come to the floor. He has refused 1700 things sent for seven years since 2013 to fix the Voting Rights act and expand Voting Rights. We have to stop this. We cannot allow that. Because not even having a debate on these things is contrary to what we call ourselves as a democracy. Let me make a connection here. Everybody in this country that we trace i come from a state the that has massive Voter Suppression toward black and brown people. In fact, the courts, all the way to the federal courts, said it was a certain intent. People like Lindsey Graham and thom tillis, once they get into office they vote to block health care, they vote to block wages, and it hurts more black people in numbers. It hurts more black people percentagewise but more white people in numbers. This is the racism targeted at black and brown people and indigenous people, but it ends up hurting all people, especially lowincome whites, and its against the democracy. Thats why we say in our campaign the only way you can deal with diversity and racism is you have to bring black, brown, white, and latino people together for the ecological denial of health care, the war economy and the false analogy of racism. I like the framing that some issues are not left versus right but right versus wrong. I know youre bringing back moral mondays and gathering people to go to talk about covid, talk about the crisis, go talk to legislatures around the nation. I guess my question to you is, in this framing, do you find you have unexpected allies . Do you find that there are people not just democrat republican, but they get the message youre saying . Is that an opportunity that our listeners today ought to be aware of, that we need to be aware of typecasting people by political party, but when you put it in right versus wrong, there may be more opportunities than we see . I think the descriptions of left and right is too punitive. The left and right comes from the french revolution, so i dont know why were using it in the 21st century. I dont know what a centrist is. What i believe politicians should be doing is dealing with whats at the center of peoples lives. Whats causing them misery . Whats causing them pain . I said to president elect biden, the hope is in the mourning, mourniourning mourning. If you address whats going on in the nation, youll heal the soul of the nation. You have to speak to the issues people are dealing with. Now 62 of republicans want expanded health care. Over twothirds of the country want an expanded minimum wage. So what needs to happen if a breaking firm left and right and republican and democrat, centric and conservative, why not have as a goal establishing justice. And the bookend to that is promoting the general warfare. Why not take every single policy, lay those four principles, tranquility provided for the common defense and add the protection of the law by the grid of whether you say this is good policy or bad policy. People are ready for that, so much so that, yes, we organize people in appalachia and in alabama. We brought together white farmers and black fast food workers. Weve seen poor black and white republwhite, republican and democrats, gay and straight come along with these issues, the devastation of the economy and nationalism. We had a moral march on washington. We didnt come to washington because of covid, but nearly 3 Million People showed up online in this past election. We contacted 3. 1 Million People pier to pier, infrequent pouring and black voters. Over 75 decided to vote early. 50 voted for the biden harris ticket. We saw 16 come into the electoral this time. That means 25 million didnt vote, but thats the only way to expand the electorate. If year going to change the south, change the country, were able to study how voting is power. There are ticks in georgia, florida. If we get less than 19 , some in states less than 10 , the number of voters who didnt vote in 2016, they can easily shift where they are. Yes, its happening all over the countries, happening with the Poor Peoples Campaign. If they will maintain, and not listen for people saying you need to move away from what you ran on, that would be a mistake. They move away from health care, they move away from 15 in the union, and move away from systemic racism and follow this strange notion of being a centrist. I dont even know what that is. What they need to focus on is whats in the center of the constitution and whats in the sternt center of peoples lives, whats hurting people. If you speak to their pain, that will unify people. That will show them they need to leave the division alone and they need to come to a place where there is the ability to deal with their issue and mourning. Face the peoples problems and pain like delano roosevelt. Have nothing to fear but fear itself. Focus on the peoples pain and lift them out of their pain, especially in the middle of covid, and thats where we will see healing of this nation. Dr. William j. Barber ii, president of the repairs of the breach, cochair of the Poor Peoples Campaign in the National Call, im so grateful for you to bring this set of views, because your perspective is so compelling, but i have to say that its one that i know all of our viewers may not get r day, and im so grateful for you to bring that inclusion so much more real in this country, so thank you very much. One step forward and not one step back. Take care, man. He is the president and ceo of the National Urban league. Over the last 15 years, mark expanded the services that serve communities of color. Hes also the former mayor of one of my favorite cities, new orleans. Mark, great to see you. Thanks for having me. When i was a young lad running around los angeles beginning of my career, i knew a guy named john mack and he was executive director of the urban league. I dont know if you knew john, but he was like a giant. He taught me, in the programs we were doing way back when, he said, you know, our people, people were working with are powerful and you dont know it. You have to build a network, you have to build businesses, you have to build different dimensions and its going to take time. I have a huge amount of respect for john mack. I guess i would ask you, when you look at the dash boermd at the opportunities you have to basically rectify bullets, but what did you put in line for changing the day, if you will . First of all, thank you for having me, and the late john mack was a mentor, a friend, a member of the National Urban league board of trustees on my during my time, and the man was enormously talented, a great leader, a passionate fighter for civil rights and social justice and we like to think of the National Urban league through the lens of national empowerment. That means that central to our work is the racial wealth gap and the racial income and economic divide that exists in this country. Its significant. On the wealth side, its 101. On the income to earnings side, the average black family brings in about 40,000 a year. The average white family, its nearly 75,000 there are a year. Those are the economic realities that have been frozen in suspended an marpgs. And thats the lens to which we look to what will narrow these gaps. In this Racial Justice environment, with this new Biden Administration, it is crucial that economic policies be intentional in their design and in their impact on closing the income divide, closing the racial wealth divide and addressing the longstanding fundamental issue that black people, when it comes to the economy of america, are like a caboose on the train. If the train speeds up, the black community may speed up, but its still in the caboose position on the train. Its through that lens that we look at the programs we run, we operate, we design. Its through that lens that we look at the policies that we champion and the thought leadership we provide. Mark, a lot of the people weve had on today, weve got a guy coming on shortly, thomas mitchell, very interesting guy talking about asset building. We had a franchise person talking about whats growing out of what shes doing. We had a reporter today look at the issue of redlining. You go to these communities and sofrt lo sort of look at the real estate world. Real estate is how most middle class americans over the years put together their socalled nest egg, put together assets in building. I guess my question to you is, are there opportunities to i dont know how to say it leapfrog, to change the asset game, to get people in . When i talked to the woman who set up her franchise, she said the bank wouldnt give her a loan. She found other ways to do it. When you look at that when it comes to capital, when it comes to investment, to people starting. And you know what happens in Silicon Valley if you fail . You get another chance. I guess my question is, is any of that changing . Let me talk to you about the problems and the solutions. Fundamentally and the ability to bring in lots of money, to not only take care of basic needs of life, but also to save for the down payment of a home. So you cant separate or divorce earnings, things like a 15 there are minimum wage tied to inflation that brings the large number of black people some maybe 40 of lowincome workers from Home Ownership to asset building to business formation. Thats number one. Number two, i think what weve learned over the last 50 years, and particularly in the last 20 years as weve lost ground, particularly since the great recession, the black Home Ownership rate has depressed from nearly 50 down to where its just hovering above 40 . Where it was in 1968, the year the Fair Housing Act was passed, its going to take, in the new Biden Administration and in the new congress, intentional efforts to create, if you will, more opportunities. You have to address the credit scoring system which has biases built into it. You have to provide down payment assistance and second mortgages. You have to initiate to an Infrastructure Program a plan to build new units of both affordable rental and Affordable Homes for ownership, and you have to address this loan denial rate, this disparity in terms of how banks and others provide capital by not just fixing the loan side of the Capital Formation equation, but what i call the venture and risk side, the equity side of the Capital Formation equation. Are there things that can being done . I have some hope that this Biden Administration is going to recognize it. The president elect has lifted up Racial Justice, the need to do Something Different when it comes to economic policy. Can we leapfrog . Can we jump . I am certain we can make progress, but it cannot be business as usual. And these policies are going to have to step away from raceneutral thoughts to more specificity around how these programs are designed in order to address this. This is what well be championing. I tell people, look, if we want to solve the problem, lets solve the problem. If were dealing with 20th century issues, lets not be constrained to use 20th century solutions. Mark, is the Biden Administration talking to you at a high level . Yes, im very excited that Cedric Richmond who i know from new orleans and ive worked with for many years will be taking on a senior role. Weve had discussions with various members of the team. Were looking forward to a discussion with the president elect, the Vice President elect and the members of his team. Number one, the commitment to a diverse cabinet, a diverse white house staff and diverse appointees is carried through. We need to see historic diversity. Africanamerican voters play an Important Role in the president elects coalition. Let me point out a few things. In milwaukee, detroit, philadelphia and atlanta alone, the number of voters who voted in 2020 compared to 2016 was an additional quarter of a million votes. Many of those were africanamerican voters. But for those voters, the president elect would not have carried wisconsin nor michigan nor pennsylvania nor georgia. And i heard all these pundits with their spin. What they are not recognizing is that that turnout differential in those communities made the difference in these swing states. There were many other factors that went along, but i would say that that was the decisive factor in providing an important win for the president elect. We want to see a diverse, if you will, cabinet, white house, people connected to the community. Number two, when it comes to Racial Justice, we want to see some important early steps. Yes, a minimum wage increase, i think its time for congress to pass that. I think the president should champion it in his 100day plan, a Voting Rights advancement. An infrastructure plan for houses and communities built into provisions for africanamerican workers and latino workers and latino workers have an opportunity, a real opportunity, to participate in the upside of such an investment. So we are looking for meaningful criminal justice reform. We think the joe biden that i know is a person who takes his commitment seriously. And i think this is a moment like maybe 1932 or 1964 where this country is poised, this country needs. It needs real action. It needs pros siegressive pragm. Lets be honest with everyone, the president elects coalition which is suburban, black and white, spanish and asian, the president elect has the young and old. Its in the northeast. He won particularly in the south. Its across the sun belt of arizona and nevada. Its one of the broadest coalitions assembled by any president that has, in effect, defeated an incumbent president in modern america history. The popular vote, i think, confers a mandate for progressive action, yes, on covid, yes, on the economy, yes on Racial Justice, and we are looking forward to that. Mark morial, president and ceo of the National Urban league. I appreciate you sharing your views with us. I hope youll come back. Thank you for being with us. Yes, well be back. Thank you. More than half a century after the Fair Housing Act was implemented, Racial Discrimination is still preventing some americans from achieving the cornerstone of the american dream. Our next two guests are in housing rights. He is the director of real estate and Community Development law at texas a a m university. He recently was named the 2020 mcarthur fellow. Lisa preserves and broadens housing for equal opportunity housing for underserved americans. Both of you, im fascinated by the question of how communities of color have been blocked for so long on the asset building, wealth building side of this. My previous employment, tanahasee coates wrote about generations and generations of exclusion in communities. You wrote this petition of urban rights act. My predecessors had this for centuries. Youre going to share what happened to this family. Basically a piece got lodged out and something came along and they were forced to sell this home that had been in their family for years and years. Tell us what the injustice of that is and what youve tried to do with it. What i think of as kind of the original sin after the civil war, americans had filed a reciprocity. There was something between 1600 and 2000 acres. The property wasnt considered prime real estate, and these new landowners essentially had no access to formal Legal Services. There was a lack of attorneys in the country at that time, and white attorneys were hesitant to represent this class of black Property Owners. As a result, they didnt do the type of things that Property Owners who have access to excellent Legal Services do. They hire lawyers to structure their ownership to make sure there is constant overseeing at all times. Unfortunately, once you fall into this type of ownership, its nearly impossible to extricate yourself, because it takes 100 of the family members to agree to a better forum. I think you had, as a result, this most disfavored form of what in law we call common Property Ownership, the most unstable for heirs property, and under that structure, any one of the common owners when i say common owners, its like owning shares of a corporation. Nobody owns any particular piece of the property, they have a fractional divided interest in the entire property. But the law permits, and this, unfortunately, is the most disfavored form of common ownership you will get if you dont make a will, allows any one individual to go to court, file this action called a partition action and then request the court to order a forced sale of the entire property, even if everybody else in the Ownership Group wants to maintain ownership, even if the person ownership, even if the person that sought the sale they own o1 interest. As long as they had some interest. That process had been abused by decades by Real Estate Developers who preyed on these families. Took their properties, and the sales were things we called Auction Sales or sheriff sales which youre lucky if you get 50 of the market value of the property. So the families lost their property and then they were stripped of a substantial amount of real estate wealth in the process. And for africanamericans and latino americans, their portfolio has real estate holdings. So its a double whammy. I appreciate you sharing this. When i saw it and experienced it, i was outraged and disheartened by the situation. Until i read about you, i didnt know that, in fact, there was someone or a set of laws beginning to sort of look at how you begin protecting those. I hope people are listening. This is a serious issue. And if it happened next door to me, its happening next door to a lot of other people. Lisa, i guess i would ask you, just make you the problem sol solver. Weve been talking a lot today about how communities of color, now black housing, the cards have been stacked against families and people for a very long time. And even in the areas you worked in so much, you know, i was the Fair Housing Act passed 7 days after Martin Luther king was assassinated. There was a moment there to try to rectify a lot of these things. We still have massive problems out there. I guess my question to you is how do we begin seriously unstacking the deck . Thank you again for inviting me to participate in this really important discussion. I think i should provide a little bit of information as a backdrop. So first, since before the inception of the United States of america, most of our housing and finance policies were race based, and were specifically designed to provide opportunities for white americans while simultaneously denying opportunities for africanamericans, native americans, and other people of color. The laws were racebased, right. And so what happened is during the 1960s and 1970s when we passed the Fair Housing Act and the equal credit opportunity act, right, we said Going Forward you cannot consider a persons race or gender or National Origin when you are making a housing or finance decision. Right. But what we did was we left in place the structures and the systems that the discrumb discriminatory systems, the unfair and racist systems we left all of those in place. We left in place residential segregation which is not a natural construct, its not a natural bye product of how co consumers act. Segregation was forced on us by policies and actors. Its an engineered construct. When we passed the civil rights laws we left residential segregation in place. Its what helped facilitate the development of the dual credit market. We left the dual credit market in place. So we passed the civil rights laws that sort of helped to address individual discrimination. But we left systems of inequality and racism in place. And those systems are performing their job. Theyre doing what they were designed to do. Residential segregation we say all the time is the bedrock of inequality and residential segregation is still driving inequality today. Thats why we see the despaispa outcomes to the covid19 crisis, because theyre systematically tied to race and the fact that many communities of color do not have opportunities, they dont have amenities and services, people of color disproportion e disproportionately are living in health deserts, credit deserts, wealth deserts, water deserts. So these systems are just performing their function. You know, i that is such an incredible articulation of the challenges of what have to be done. Ive seen that, its not just housing, its an ecosystem of a neglect and opportunity. Let me ask you both, thomas if you go first, when we have now a new administration coming in, theyre going to come in, you know, when you look at have you had hud, and the way hud has been managed. Were here today, the combination of forces, finances, the issues that lisa just described that has gotten us to this point im not naive to think an administration can shift this. But if youre going to front end things that you think are really important in terms of changing what i would call the asset building, owning opportunities, taking what lisa was talking about which is these zones that are deserts and with a change in president ial administration, what would you front end, lisa i would like to ask you the same thing. Thomas . First of all, since you were interested in my work, i was the principal drafter of this to address this abuse, something given zero chance 17 years ago, were up to 20 states in every region of the country, new york passed it because of abuses in new york city where real estate was preying on black families. We have that in place. Theres a federal farm bill that has provided some recent assistance to farmers and ranchers who own this property. But i think that can be built on. One of the things youre looking at in terms of for example theusda you cannot deny there are decades of systemic discrimination, almost unrele unrelenting. Theres a reason the usda is often referred to as the last plantation. I think at a macro level that type of discrimination you find that has permeated the usda has to be addressed. Theres the whole civil rights complaint process that has been broken for decades. It needs to be repaired. Without repairing that and addressing that head on, youre going to continue to see cycles of discrimination. Let me tell you, theres three senators who have cosponsored this bill, i think it will be filed at the end of the month, mother jones has an article on it today, cosponsored by senator booker, gillibrand and warren called the justice for black farmers act. Its the most exciting bill because it says we need to address the entire history of discrimination against black farmers and recognize as a result of the federal government it drove huge numbers of black farmers out of the agricultural industry, constituting one in seven black farmers in 1910 to half a percent of farmers today. The mother jones article highlights some of the key features of the bill which would give land grants to black farmers, it would train apprentices and give them the Technical Skills on their pathway to become farmers. And i just think this is the most exciting bill i have seen in my lifetime. Ill say the last thing is that in my work, there is an incredible lack of access to affordable Legal Services that has negatively impacted those who want to become Property Owners, who are, you know, people of color, and has undermined the ability of those who are protoowners to maintain property and protect their wealth. Its a massive problem and theres a role for the federal government, the state governments, foundations, theres a role for law firms in terms of their pro bono work. So i would emphasize that need to fundamentally improve and upgrade and provide substantially more and robust Legal Services. Thomas, not only am i going to check out the major jones article, im going to see if elizabeth warren, cory booker want to come on. Lisa, what would you front load if you were talking to the administration saying here are the priorities to come in, i guess let me spice it up a little bit. What would be the wrong way to start . So, steve, one of the things that weve been listing with the administration is they can just use the tools that are already at their disposal. One of the reasons we still have inequality in america is that the laws that are on the books now have not been effectively enforced. The Fair Housing Act does contain a provision for helping to address inequality. Its called affirmatively furthering fair housing. It helps us to address the issue called systemic segregation. It hasnt been enforced in over 50 years. So weve been telling the new administration, enforce the affirmativety furthering fair housing provision of the Fair Housing Act, reestablish the president s Fair Housing Council established under president clinton and then disbanded and that elevates this issue of racial equality to the level of the white house. It centers it at the white house. And forces the white house to focus on this issue on a daily basis. So the thing to do wrong is to keep ignoring the tools that are already at the disposal of the federal government to bring about racial equality. Theres another tool embedded in the equal credit opportunity act called special Purpose Credit programs. This is a tool thats been available to us since 1976 and we havent used it. So lets use tools like affirmatively furthering fair housing and the special Purpose Credit program in order to address systemic residential segregation and to address the challenges we have because of the dual credit market. Thank you. I want to thank you both. This has been a fascinating conversation. I wish both of you well in trying to, you know, move this these challenges in a different direction. Thomas mitchell, codirector Community Development law texas a m, mcarthur genius, is that appropriate to call you that . And lisa rice, president and ceo of the National Fair housing alliance. I hope you come back. Fantastic comments and i know this is not going away overnight so i hope we can continue the discussion with you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks very much. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend. Tonight we hear the experiences of three women who reflect their time working on the apollo space program. Watch beginning at 8 00 eastern and enjoy American History tv every weekend on cspan3. Every weekend go inside a Different College classroom and hear about topics from the american revolution, civil rights, u. S. President s to 9 11. Thanks for your patience and logging into class. With most College Campuses closed due to coronavirus, watch professors transfer teaching to a virtual setting. Gorbachev did most of the work to change the soviet union but reagan met him halfway. Reagan encouraged him, reagan supported him. Freedom of the press i should mention, madison called it freedom of the use of the press and it is indeed freedom to print things and publish things. It is not a freedom for what we refer to institutionally as the press. Lectures in history on American History tv on cspan3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Its also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcast. House and Senate Leaders talked about their bipartisan plan for a covid19 relief bill during a News Conference on capitol hill