Dreaming Big in Our Own Backyards: Bold, Local Action in a Hostile Federal Environment At The 2025 Just Economy Conference; a conversation about systemic racism and structural inequality and how communities can take their power back.
Speakers:
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Pulitzer Prize Finalist; Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University
Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, Executive Director, Terence Crutcher Foundation
Sonya Harper, State Representative, Illinois
Alonzo Waheed, Program Director, Equity and Transformation
Sabrina Terry, Chief of Programs and Strategic Development
Transcript:
NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.
Terry
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back. Okay, we got to stay upbeat. We may be the last panel or last plenary, but we’re definitely not the least. So I’m honored to welcome you back to this discussion on advancing economic justice by leveraging history, data, advocacy to drive real change at the state and local level. So while us, economic justice advocates – all of us in the room – are facing significant challenges by the impact of federal actions and so forth. We also can’t stay there. We can’t stay in a hopeless space, right? And we have to acknowledge that there’s also a space for us to be bold, to champion innovative action in our cities and states. And so as we all know, local communities have really been at the forefront of the harms that have happened, but they’ve also been at the forefront like repair. And today we see communities continuing to step up, using all of the resources that are available to them to push for reparative policies and restitution. And our rock star panelists are leaders in this work. They have not only documented injustices, but have also forced decision-makers to act. And so we’re gonna hear a little bit more from them, and before we get started, I would like each of them to introduce themselves to you. We can start right here.
Taylor
Hi everyone. Very glad to be here. My name is Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. I’m a professor of African American studies at Princeton University. Also author of the book, “Race for Profit, How Banks in the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership.” And I write about contemporary race and politics for The New Yorker magazine.
Crutcher
Awesome. Well, first of all, let me just say it’s an honor to be here and serve on this panel with these rock stars. I am Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, founder and executive director of the Terrence Crutcher Foundation, and also a founding board member of Justice for Greenwood, out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’m also a direct descendant of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and so I’ll just stop there. I’m looking forward to having this conversation.
Harper
Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Sonya Harper. I am a state representative from Illinois, representing the sixth district in Chicago. I was the chair of the Legislative Black Caucus. I also created the Economic Opportunity and Access Committee in the Illinois General Assembly, and I serve as the first person of color to ever chair an agriculture committee in the Illinois General Assembly. It’s an honor to be here with you guys today. Thank you.
Waheed
My name is Alonzo Waheed. I’m the Program Director with Equity and Transformation. That’s EAT Chicago. And our mission there is to build social and economic equity for the Black workers that are engaged in their informal economy. In case individuals don’t understand what the informal economy is, it’s a group of work that’s done outside a regular nine-to-five, where individuals had to figure out, how would they survive without a regular nine-to-five. And one of the things that’s our bedrock principle is that that we always say that you’ll if you do not eat, you will starve. So what are you going to do to eat? And that’s that’s the work that we build upon right there.
Terry
Great. So we’ll start with Keeanga.
So we’ve seen a significant shift from a time when acknowledging racism, and I’m calling that, because that’s truly what it is, and addressing systemic failures was a priority. All these people were coming out, all these companies were coming out to, you know, address this issue, to a climate now where there are federal efforts to dismiss, downplay, or even normalize this racism. And so how do you see the shift in impacting or how do you see the shift impacting the fight for economic justice? But more importantly, what do you believe is necessary to combat it?
Taylor
Thank you for that question. And I think the first thing, I stick a couple of things, but the first thing, I think, is to understand why, and I say that because it’s easy, especially with the people in power, to think that it’s just about racism. And while I do think it is about racism. I think it’s about something more than that, and part of understanding that is to understand the power, really, of the 10 years of Black Lives Matter organizing and the impact that that had in this country, which was most forcefully, I think, demonstrated five years ago, throughout the summer of 2020 when upwards of 30 million people participated in what has been determined to be the largest protest in American history. And you know, five years later, I think it has become too easy to dismiss how impactful those demonstrations were. And really, I think that what we are witnessing is a tremendous backlash against what those protests exposed. And part of what they exposed was that the connection between what people then were describing as systemic racism, the structural inequality in the United States and its particular impact on Black communities. Obviously, the murder of George Floyd was an extreme example of that, but also the systematic way that Black people were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 was also the kind of twin issues propelling those demonstrations forward. And part of exposing that and making a connection between racism and housing inequality, racism and a lack of access to well-resourced schools, racism and the connection to good housing, to good jobs, to a good life in the United States, part of what was important about exposing that was the demand, and the demand was that something be done about it. And the something was investments, was new policies, and basically that it wasn’t enough just to, you know, kneel with the Kente cloth in the in the Capitol building, or express good vibes and good feelings, but that something had to be repaired, something had to be fixed. That if the government had a role in breaking it, if the private sector had a role in breaking it, then they needed to play a role in fixing things. And that is really the crux of the issue, because what you can see now is that these people don’t want to pay for things. They don’t want to pay for anything. So it’s not just about racism as an abstract idea. It’s about the recognition that you actually have to do something about it and that, I think understanding the why is important then to figuring out what it is that we do next and just tiny about that, it can’t just be defensive and reactive to what they do. It actually has to be about putting forth a positive vision of what it is that we want and what are the forces that we need to connect with in order to make that happen.
Terry
Dr. Tiffany, I want to get you in on here, because I feel like this is a good segue into the work that you’ve joined, especially when you’ve mentioned the four key principles that guide your efforts. I mean, many of us in this room are aware of the tragic history of the Greenwood massacre in Tulsa, but I don’t know how many are familiar with your Foundation’s work and how it has shaped by this lasting impact of historical injustice, this compounding issue, as Keeanga like described, can you talk a little bit about how your organization addresses that?
Crutcher
Yeah, absolutely. And I think Keeanga framed this conversation perfectly, grounding us in our why, and everything you mentioned is my lived experience. When I think about the name of our foundation, the Terence Crutcher Foundation. It’s named after my twin brother who was tragically murdered with his hands in the air unarmed on a North Tulsa street adjacent to the historic Greenwood district. And when I think about Terrence’s killing, I can’t help but think about my great grandmother’s community, Rebecca Brown Crutcher, who had to flee from racial terror, violence and fear of her life after a mob of white rioters, fled into Greenwood, one of the most prosperous economic communities a generation removed from slavery, right there in the grim days of Jim Crow, they built something incredible. I mean, they didn’t have to go outside of their community for anything. The dollar circulated over and over and over again, hotels, lawyers, doctors, schools, culture, arts, theaters. I mean, we had it all. And because of jealousy, because of White rage. It was destroyed in a matter of 48 hours. And so I’ve been able to draw very stark parallels from what happened to those, those beautiful people, my ancestors of Greenwood. Black men killed indiscriminately with their hands in the air. What happened then? The same state-sanctioned violence, the same Police Department, almost 100 years later, in 2016 killed my twin brother. We always say, so much has changed. It so much has stayed the same. But I decided the night that his killer was acquitted, after nine hours of a jury deliberating that I would not rest and that I would organize, organize, organize according to the Declaration of Independence, because whenever any form of government becomes destructive of its means, we have the right to organize our powers. And I have been doing that every single day for nine years. And we didn’t really think that we would get anything done in this very conservative, this ultra red state in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but just November 5, we elected the city of Tulsa, elected Its first Black mayor. Y’all can clap for that. And because we didn’t rest, because we didn’t stop organizing now this mayor will be the mayor to disrupt the inaction after 104 years. And on April 6, coming up, next week, he will roll out his plan for repair, for respect, for restitution. Yes. He just announced that June 1 will be a local holiday, a day of service, a day of observance, a day of remembrance. We believe in Tulsa that remembrance is a radical act of love. And so those principles, that blueprint that our ancestors created was rooted in self-determination, rooted in love, in ownership, land, ownership, wealth, education and resilience. And so we haven’t taken injustice lying down lightly. And I’m excited to say that we will have a victim’s compensation fund. He will compensate the two living survivors. I have to say their names, Mother Leslie Benningfield Randall, who’s 110 and Mother Viola Fletcher, who will be 111 on May 10. He’s going to compensate those we have to say their names, and they’ve been fighting. They’ve been fighting. They’ve been in courtroom after courtroom, fighting for justice, and we lost a survivor just a year ago, and they traveled right here to the nation’s capital to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. And I remember Hughes Vanillas, a World War II veteran, saying, ‘Please don’t let me die like the other survivors, the hundreds of survivors without justice.’ Unfortunately, we lost him, but we’re taking on his charge. We’re continuing the fight, and because the people organized and said we are tired, we elected this champion, and we’re hoping that we will be able to close that racial wealth gap and transform our communities, one neighborhood at a time.
Terry
Amazing. Well, since we are talking about elected officials, I feel like I should turn it to the elected official on the panel. You know, you’ve worked on repair and reparations ideas in Illinois for a long time. What have you noticed about how people who are accustomed to power react to you and your work? What has it taken to build the political will to make these ideas reality?
Harper
Got it. So you want to know how people accustomed to power have responded to my work. Have you seen my bills? How much time do I have? Well, I believe people accustomed to power have reacted in various ways to my work, some positive, some not so positive. I have experienced – well, first, I want to say I believe that there are so many people in so many industries that benefit from Black people staying exactly where they are as a whole in society and do not want things to change, and it would hurt their bottom lines, both for-profit and non-profit entities. And so from the things that I’ve taken on, I’ve experienced a lot of retaliation in many forms, be it politically, be it personally, be it financially and even professionally, in direct response to a lot of the things that we would call legislative and policy and funding achievements for vulnerable communities such as mine. And also surprisingly so, because opposition has come from places where I did not expect it, I have learned that your work can sometimes offend someone who would normally be on your side, but will not, simply because in some way, they view your work and your effectiveness as a threat to them retaining their power, whatever power that may be. And so whether it was making financial institutions mad by shutting down the predatory payday loan industry in Illinois, by making colleagues in my chamber, thank you, by making colleagues in my chamber mad, by getting $2.5 billion budget allocation on behalf of Black and vulnerable communities. Whether it was writing the social equity components of our cannabis legalization bill and making sure that communities harmed the most by the War on Drugs are repaired with a majority of the tax revenue and even creating the Illinois Reparations Commission, introducing the Enslavement Redress Act just this year, and even standing up for Black farmers. All of that work has elicited some type of response, mostly negative, from those in power or those with the perception that I shouldn’t have so much power. And so I think that building the political will to accomplish an agenda that truly attacks systemic racism and seeks to repair those who are set back and have been left back on purpose. This is an everyday, ongoing struggle, right? Every impactful law that we make is attacked every session in Illinois, even from those in our own caucuses. Every couple of years, I find myself having to educate a new crop of lawmakers on the progress that our chamber has made on any certain issue that pertains to Black and vulnerable populations, because we consistently have to stand up against legislation that seeks to take us backward and undo the work that we’ve done. And so I also think that in order to build political will, we also have to bring others along during the law-making process and teach them their role in helping us to pass laws that eventually will help them. That’s why, for example, this year, I will be hosting my third annual Black Farmers and Growers Lobby Day, where I bring farmers, growers and advocates together to come down to Springfield to advocate for healthy food access, but also advocate for repairing the damage done by discrimination to Black farmers, you know, and how important that is to our public health, to our economy. So those are just a few of the things that I’ve been working on, what the response has been, again, yes, some positive, but a lot of negative, especially from those in power who really have the authority to move the needle forward. So I’ll stop right there.
Terry
Well, I’m glad that you’re able to still continue to advance that work, despite all the pushback. Like that’s just really incredible. Alonzo, I want to turn it over to you, because I believe that you represent a segment of the population that obviously has been primary victims of institutional racism, formerly incarcerated individuals who have had to build pathways to resiliency, you know, just out of necessity, right? I think on our prep call, you talked about it, having to operate outside of some of these systemic support systems, out of these other resources that are commonly available to others are not an option for many of the people that you work with. So can you share a little bit more about what EAT Chicago does and the vision behind your work and how that plays into some of the reparative efforts that are going on.
Waheed
So let me do this the right way. First of all, I want to say thank you all for having me here today. I never thought that I would be on this stage, not in this space anyway. And I want to thank our fellow panelists being here, and every time I’m with or next to State Rep Harper, it’s always enlightening. It’s like the match that lights the stick of dynamite. So let’s do this. Our organization is founded and led by formerly incarcerated individuals. So what that means is that we’re often not allowed to even come to the table, to sit here and have a discussion. We’re the individuals that have been thrown away, cast out, looked at as though they’re the scum of the earth and that they need to pay. But what individuals don’t realize is that we’re also highly, highly, when you look at the statistics, the majority of a group of people who came over to this country as capital, and don’t forget when a capitalistic system. So what that means is that these are always be the individuals that the rest of the country would be able to get built upon. So when it comes to disrupting that system, what we had to do was look at this in a point to say what happens when not when we’re not able to sit at that table. It means we must now create the table for ourselves. So what that looks like is now we have to work with nothing to get everything. What that looks like is now being able to redevelop ourselves. Be very instrumental, that nobody is coming to save us, and since nobody is coming to save us, we need to do any and everything we can to survive. If you don’t eat, you’ll starve. So in 2018, all right, that was the first year that we started from that. There was the passing of HB 1438, which Sonya Harper lifted up. We could not have done that without her, right? That was our champion. We got that passed. That what that was, was the legalization of cannabis. When we was doing the research, what we found out was this right, and I heard it lifted up. Do you recognize that we was just talking about farmers? We was just talking so that’s tied to agriculture, right? We also was talking about individuals being able to organize, right? Which is all right. You understand that. But what happens is this, there was a time where farmers could not organize. You know why? The individuals that was leading agriculture was the slaves, they was the ones that was harvesting everything, and they did not want them to organize. So since they could not organize, there was a penalty. It was criminalized then. But what we decided to do was say, let’s look at every industry that people of color was actually leading in. Every last one of those industries was criminalized. So what that looks like is, first, you could not organize if you was a farmer, right? And then they came in with the black codes. After the black codes, right? You get Jim Crow, then you move forward. Now we got, we start going to prohibition, right at the prohibition then we have what anybody ever heard of the numbers game, all right? Now they call it the lottery. It’s the same thing, though, right after the lottery, right? We moved to cannabis, right? These were all industries that were dominated by people of color, and they were criminalized. Again, you’re only able to be our capital. So we looked at these things, and we said, what can we do to disrupt that? So as we won the cannabis legislation, what we wanted to make sure is that individuals that was already involved in that trade would not be cast aside, right? So for you to be able to receive one of those licenses, you had to be an individual that was incarcerated already involved, right? So, but what ended up happening is, after the implementation of that, but we’re still working on it, right? Because it did not come out in our favor. But what we was able to research was the UN’s definition of reparations, right? And with the UN’s definition of reparations, it’s not true reparations, unless you get hit all five pillars. What those five pillars look like, is rehabilitation, restitution, compensation, a guarantee of non-repetition. And why these things are important is if you’re not hitting all five of them, and I’m not going to go into the satisfaction, because it’s not up to us, right? Because we did not commit the harm, but the individuals that did commit the harm have to apply that level of satisfaction, and they have to keep on applying it until we say that we’re satisfied. This is what the UN says, true reparations. So me, as the program director of equity and transformation, I personally have developed the Black Wellness Program. With that program, we’re able to give individuals a direct investment where we’re going to invest in and we’re not asking them to go to Springfield with us. We’re not asking them to join our organization. What we’re saying is we understand the harm that you’re carrying, and we’re saying we want to invest in you. So through that six-week program, individuals are able to figure out who they really are, who they are, where they are, why they are. They’re able to learn physical dexterity. What are they eating? What are they putting into their body, and how is it affecting their quality of life? After that, they learn educational advancement. Have you actually figured out what you want to be, not what grandma said you should be, not what the community told you should be? Because right now, they’re telling them they should be thugs. They’re telling them that they should be gangsters, right? This is what the media is putting out there. Have you figured out what you really want to be? And then after you figured that out, how have you connected that to be able to financially benefit you, right? So that’s where the financial literacy piece comes in. Then after that, you can’t keep all of that for yourself. So then we open up that organizing part. Now you gotta go share that through the Social Development. And through this, right, we’re able to build up black wellness because we look at it that is not just a physical part, but it’s holistically that we have to rebuild our communities. It’s holistically that has to be a multi-pronged approach, right? It’s not just this one thing, because, guess what? It’s a lot that happened to us, and nobody is actually talking about all of that. We also wanted to make sure that there was a true guarantee of non repetition. What individuals may not understand is that after incarceration, after incarceration, after you signed your time, there’s still about 1,600 barriers that’s standing in a way you to have a better quality of life. So we in Illinois were trying to remove those things right then we also through equity and transformation. We said, what would it look like for individuals actually to realize that their existence did not start in slavery? So let’s take them back home. Let’s take them back to Africa. So we have a fellowship, the restore fellowship, where individuals are actually able to go back home, right? And then with that, thank you. It was also lifted up that throughout the time of COVID, right? Y’all remember they were saying, Go get the tissue, go get the water, right? Individuals were going into the store, snatching everything. Imagine a mindset where you did not have those stores in your community to even go get those things. Or you did not have a place where you could actually stay in place, right? That you that you was always a worker that had to work 24 hours a day, right? So with that, what we did is we made sure that those communities were able to receive free food, right? And what that food was, was fresh vegetables. Fresh vegetables, because that’s what you needed to do, was build up your immune system. And how we did that is we connected a direct pipeline for the great migration to Chicago, and we went backwards, and we found our brothers and sisters in the south to make sure that they was feeding our people up in the north. Right? So this is some of the work that we do. These are some of the programs we have, and this is how we was able to be innovative and say, if nobody’s going to come to save us, we’ll do it ourselves.
Terry
So we have a couple more minutes here. I want to tease out some of what you guys said, because you guys have had some amazing feats, right? But I wanted to talk about the little the nitty gritty that actually got you guys there. So I’m hoping that we can start here with Dr Tiffany Crutcher and some of the great work that you’re doing, and then maybe push it over to you Rep Harper about how you’ve been able to foster partnerships to actually make these achievements. And then I’ll ask you about the more of like the ecosystem and some of the best practices that you’ve identified. Does that sound good? Okay.
Crutcher
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s so much I don’t even know where to start, but, you know, I was on the Hill yesterday. We’re working rigorously to get Congress to designate the historic Greenwood district as a national monument. We got very, very close, and this is an effort that’s been going on for a few decades now. We believe that our story should be cemented in American history, a story of community resilience. But also we just purchased a large property because one of those principles of Greenwood was ownership and property ownership, land ownership, and so we just purchased a 65,000 square foot property on the northern boundary of the historic Greenwood district where we’re creating this economic hub to create spaces for Black entrepreneurs, a food hall, because North Tulsa is a food desert, co-working space, financial institutions. Our headquarters will be there. So we’re really, really excited about that. You can go to Greenwood north.org to check that out. We just finished phase one of demolition, but also the development of the framework for repair, for restitution. And I don’t know if Greg Robinson is in this room. He’s on our board, but he’s one of the brains behind the Beyond Apology Commission. Our mayor established a reparations Commission also, and it’s centered around housing equity and getting money into the hands of descendants to restore their homes, to pay off taxes and so on and so forth, to again, close the racial wealth gap. And we’re hoping that we will build this trust, this Victims Compensation Fund, where we can run scholarships for descendants, through it, small business grants for descendants and so much more. And so we are doing a lot of that repair work. And then last, I’ll say the remembrance work. We cannot forget about the remembrance work. There is an attack on our history. They don’t want us even teaching what happened, and it was practically erased from my history book. So my foundation will build the first comprehensive memorial dedicated to the victims of the massacre, in partnership with Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative. And we’ve also partnered with HPN Robin Hughes, as you all should know, and she’s partnered with the city of Tulsa to help us with that housing equity in that framework. So lots going on in Tulsa. Get there may 31 to June 1, for the commemoration of the 104th anniversary, we will be hosting the Black Wall Street Legacy Fest and a mayor’s reception to observe that that local holiday. So thank you so much for having me.
Terry
Absolutely. Rep Harper?
Harper
So one of the common things that, um, we’ve been speaking up here is about organizing. And I’m a former organizer from the Inglewood community, and that’s what it’s going to continue to take to get a lot of these initiative passed. For example, I just introduced the enslavement error Redress Act, which basically would make any businesses applying for state contracts required to disclose any historic involvement in the holding or trading of enslaved people, and if they were they must disclose that information and create a statement of financial redress. But it’s not just enough to get the bill introduced. I have to get it passed. But for some reason this year, my bill wasn’t even assigned to a committee. We didn’t get a chance to get a hearing, right? Yeah. So that’s the example of the type of organizing that needs to be done, by way of the advocates, by way of our community organizations, by way of the very people who are impacted to come and tell their stories and testimonies on how passing this bill will do the things that we need to do in society. And so whether it’s on the issue of reparations, whether it’s on the issue of creating a local healthy food system throughout the state, because I also have grown up and currently live in a food desert. Whether we’re dealing with education or just regular old civic engagement, getting people more involved in knowing what politics and what lawmaking is about. That’s the constant work to be done every day, but the more people that we have involved, the more power that I have behind me in Springfield to get a hearing, to actually get my bills called, because otherwise I got to keep getting re-elected every single year to come back to try to pass the same bill that it shouldn’t take that long to pass, if we are really true about again, repairing certain communities in this country.
Terry
Absolutely.
Taylor
I’ll just make two quick points. One, I hope people can see the discussion, the examples and the work that that this panel represents, and understand why there’s also this relentless attack on history, because history is evidence. It’s a lineage. It’s a line that connects the past to the present, and they believe that if we don’t know about the past that it undermines our efforts in our struggles today. And so we have to make space within our organizations, within our organizing, to remember the past and to keep the past alive, because it really makes sense of what is happening today. And then the second thing that I would say is that the demonstrations from five years ago were extremely powerful and not enough. And so everyone has wondered about, where is the resistance that existed in 2017 when this administration first came in, and why are people not in the streets in the same way? And there are probably many explanations for that, but I think one thing that is important is that it’s not just about the physical demonstrating against things, even though I think protests and demonstrations are incredibly important. But we also have to have the space within our organizations to talk about why things are happening and also what is it that we want to be different? What is it that we are actually fighting for? And how do we build coalitions bigger than those who are already committed to these issues? How do we develop solidarity between different communities who may not think that this is their particular issue. Because they have made it easier, I think, for us to see how we are all connected, and we have to bring those connections to the surface so that we are building bigger movements and struggles where people are deeply committed to issues that most think might not have anything to do with us, and that is about developing the bonds and connections of solidarity, and not just seeing issues as connected, but that we all have a shared invested interest in fighting for a different kind of a future, and that we have to make the space to talk about that. And it’s not just about the mobilization, but it’s also about the ideas and the politics that are bringing us together as well.
Terry
We are way over time. I’m not gonna lie, but I was really enjoying these insights, so I just wanted to make sure that there’s any last thoughts that you all have a chance to say it really quickly.
Waheed
Yeah, I’ll say this. They’re always well, I’ll do it like this. I got a quote by MLK, and the quote reads, I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective. The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly. By now widely discussed measure the guaranteed income right? So with that understanding that we have to finally deal with what we have to deal with. Equity and Transformation has started its own Guaranteed Income program. The reason why I bring this up in this space at this time is that I don’t want us to believe that we’re far away from racism or we’re far away from redlining. Because we took a million dollar check to a financial institution. We didn’t ask them for any money. We was bringing them money, and they looked at the area codes of the individuals that they would be serving, and they said that those individuals were high risk and they would not be able to serve them, right. So they turned us away. So what I’m asking you all today, because I was in I had the privilege of hearing the honorable Maxine Waters speak this morning, and she had said that, she said something that resonated in me, and she said, Not on my watch, not on my watch. And I say to you all today, this is on our watch, and what are we doing? All right…
Terry
Thank you.
Waheed
Because the truth is and now it’s time to be truthful as we speak truth to power, we have financial institutions in this room right now, right that they’re funding both sides, and our side is losing. It’s like we’re giving a slingshot against an individual that you funded enough money to give a cannon to and you’re saying, go ahead and fight, have the good fight, and we’re on your side. How? How? Because the receipts show that a financial institution, and then we’ll just say it, all right. Bank of America itself gave $1.5 billion over five years. All right. Saying, you know what, this money has to be allotted to these individuals and through let me make sure that I’m doing this the right way. All right. Saying, racial equity and investments right, $1.5 billion but right after that, here’s 25 billion for stock back, back, buying the stock back, to make sure that the investors, right, was going to get that money 25 billion versus 1.25 billion. How do we fight that? I’m asking you, How do we fight that, right? How do we win? And this is on our watch. So if anything you all take away from this is that we’re fighting for our lives out here, and it’s on your watch. What part are you going to play in it?
Terry
All right? Well, I don’t know how to follow that up and be honest with y’all, but I know you’re speaking truth to power, so I want to just personally thank each and every one of you for coming and joining us, for lending your expertise, lending your experience and your insights about this, and showing us how to continue that fight at the local and state level. Thank you guys so much for joining us.
Speakers
Thank you. Thank you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
