then he asked, how can i get ahead on poverty wages and no benefits? last year, even though potbelly's had a mediocre year, the ceo doubled his pay to $2.3 million a year, a salary wage of $1,000 an hour. now, robert's not fighting for $1,000 an hour, but he knows he deserves to be paid more. that's why robert has joined with his co-workers in washington and all across the country bringing others with him to the fight for higher wages and the fight for 15. this fight has inspired millions of people who see themselves in robert's story. 106 million people like robert, one third of our country live below 200% of the poverty line, earning less than $47,000 for a family of four. so, how did we get into this

mess? between 1959 and 1973 there was a strong relationship between economic growth on the one hand and reductions in the poverty rate on the other. they broke apart in the 1970s. if they had stayed together, the poverty rate in the united states would have fallen to zero in 1986 and stayed there ever since. if wages had kept pace with productivity, america's lowest paid workers today would be making $17 an hour. so what happened? there's a simple problem and a simple solution, but for 50 years we've been lost in the haze of a tired and stale debate. conservatives blame the victim and promote trickle down and many liberals say that there's not much we can do about the inequality and poverty that's generated in the market through the market except some programs

to help at the margins. both are missing the big problem. we need to value people's labor in proportion to their contribution to our nation's bottom line. [ cheers and applause ]. the best anti-poverty program is a job that pays a living wage. we can break out of this stale debate that we've been stuck in for 50 years and reduce poverty by 80% in this country by taking three simple steps. number one, we can raise wages so that workers earn a living wage. wages catch up with productivity growth. the minimum wage goes up, not a little but a lot like they did in seattle. and we need to make it easier for workers to bargain with their employers through collective bargaining at the workplace. [ cheers and applause ]. number two, we need to eliminate racial and gender inequity in the labor market. poverty is not just an economic issue, it's a racial justice

issue, a women's rights issue. we need to tear down the obstacles for employment for the formerly incarcerated. we need to create workplaces that recognize that workers are actually people with families and clearly we need to change things so that your paycheck isn't smaller just because of your skin color or because you're a woman. number three, we need full employment policies in this country again. we've got to invest in key sectors of the economy from the green economy to early childhood education to infrastructure so that we can create millions of jobs and we need to make those jobs accessible to people who need them. this three-point good job strategy would reduce poverty in the united states of america by 80%. this is the moral crisis of our time and this issue ought to be at the center of progressive politics in our country and the 2016 election. we now know what to do. we need to build the public will to do it. big change in america comes through social movements.

social movements help to make the impossible possible. 15 years ago, few in this country would have believed that marriage equality or a path to citizenship for undocumented immigranted would move to debate. now it's a question of when they will be achieved not if. we can do the same on the issue of poverty. we at the center for community change are launching a ten-year campaign to do just that. join us. this is the richest country in the history of the earth. we can build a society in which everyone has not just enough to survive but enough to thrive. thank you very much. [ cheers and applause ]. >> anat shenker-osorio.

>> i am a repeater. i was here last year and it was terrifying. so i'm your token ma soj nis, masochist. i'm a rule follower, so i'm going to talk about innovation which is the theme, but i'm a rule breaker. when you look at how innovation is used in our language, talk about machines, apps tech. that's actually quite fitting because at this point we've subverted everything that's natural and necessary to this mechanistic view of the world. when you look at how we talk about how we basic human needs food, shelter, water, the stuff that human beings need to keep alive, education, an example i'm going to unpack a little more. we're fully in this mechanistic place. we used to have metaphor for education. the young folks will think i'm crazy, that was a garden. right? we would nurture the intellect. we would cultivate an interest. the intailments of this metaphor, what it implies is

that children are organic matter and they're all different and there's some known things they need in the analogy, soil, water, sunlight, but there's this magical al kamy that happens below the soil that the educators are responsible for. we've moved from this garden metaphor to the language of the factory. right? we have inputs and we have outputs and we ratchet up expectations and the kid is a product of a good school. the entailments of that metaphor is that children are like wij its. they're all uniform. why would they need art? and the teachers are factory workers and they do a thing to the kids and it's all the same and then they're on a conveyer belt and they move to the next one after they've been tested and stamp is put on their ass and none are left behind. this mechanistic language is so wide-spread that we have now monetized children. right? we invest in the future and we invest in our kids and they're too small to fail.

and we can kid ourselves all we want, but the prevailing understanding of the investment frame is financial return. that is how it is used in language. and so we are saying, the reason to do a thing, the reason it's right is because it's lucrative. we have fallen so far into this para dime that we've said that the basis upon which we decide something is right or wrong is whether or not it grows or shrinks gdp. we have wondered so far from the actual reasons that we exist as humans and believe as progressives that we're the adults in the charlie brown cartoon. what the [ bleep ] are we even saying? because i know that when i look in my sweet, sweet baby's eyes, this is diego and chi. i'm getting cheap points by showing pictures of my kids. i definitely think, man, i just love that sweet roi, cha-ching.

because that's how parents feel about our children, right? that's what we feel when we have children and think about children, we think, wow. that is some money. because children are not just giant money suckers. and, in fact, even within this monetary frame, if you want to hang out there, you don't believe me, the investment language is [ bleep ]. we are talking about minuscule sums for these social issues that do not constitute the foundation from which to expect returns. what we are talking about in adding to or more appropriately not taken away from food stamps it's not an investments it's a [ bleep ] catsup pact. it's insulting to the people who desperately need this food to call it an investment. we have wondered so far into this innovative paradime of loving the economy best that we are in plato's cave and we think we are looking outside and we are looking at shadows on the

[ bleep ] wall. and we don't need to talk this way. i'm going to give you one example because my clock is ticking. look at the place in this slide where the opposition is going away from us and where the persuadables are getting on board, where they love our message. this is a project that many smart people worked on. you know what's being said in this moment, i'll tell you, it's this -- america is a nation of values founded on an idea that all men and women are created equal. we hold these trues to be self evident. that all people have rights, no matter what they look like or where they come from. the idea that the reason we do things is because it's more or less lucrative, that that's the basis of judgment in our society is not even particularly innovative. we don't need to be saying that. we need to be saying, hey, i believe that all children have rights. do you? that's the conversation we want to be having and that's the conversation that our opposition is thrilled we keep letting them

avoid. thank you. [ cheers and applause ]. >> yes! i'm just going to say one thing. i'm going to say one thing that i think is a really good take home for all of us. we'll see a bunch of really interesting people with really interesting ideas here tonight. you've been at a conference full of people with ideas and projects. commit this year to be a pac mule for one other person's project in this room. commit to that person. contact somebody in this room whose idea you heard who you can literally be a grunt for that project. it's their voice. you love what they're doing. you are going to help them elevate it up. can you make that commitment? [ cheers and applause ]. because that's what we need to do. we need to focus on ourselves but we also need to focus on what we're doing because you can focus on your project can be the face but also be the legs and the body and the hands of

somebody else's. so, we're moving on. rinku sen. [ cheers and applause ]. >> when i was a little girl in india, preparing with my family to move to the united states, one of my teachers told me that the next time she saw me i would be an american. as excited as i was by that prospect, it turned out to be a lot harder to fit myself into my new country than i might have hoped. i watched hours and hours of tv everyday trying to figure out how to be american. i think that i was doing okay but then something would happen like the time that all of white girls who were supposed to come to my 13th birthday party didn't show up. i tried not to see color -- i know, right? i tried not see color but i was always really aware of my own and felt so strange every time my friends told me that they didn't see me as indian, i was just like them.

in college i discovered racial justice organizing. i had been taught that changing the rules around race had nothing to do with me. but something miraculous happened at that rally. for the first time in the 12 years since my family immigrated, i actually felt a real sense of belonging. that's when i understood that being an american wasn't about looking like marcia brady, it was about working with the people around you to build the most inclusive, most compassionate, most effective community possible. as our country's demographics change, lots of people imagine that racism is just going to fade away. we're going to fall in love, marry each other and have millions of babies who all have quote unquote exotic-looking skin and hair and eyes. but you can trust me on this because i have tried, we cannot just date our way to racial justice.

[ cheers and applause ]. what we can do is organize our way there. there are three things that i've learned over the last 30 years about how to build multi-racial communities and organizations. thing number one that's most important, it all starts with real and complete self acceptance. clear-eyed self acceptance. when i was an adult, i learned that the white suburbs in which i had grown up became that way because they had for decades explicitly excluded black families from being able to rent or buy or get mortgages for their homes. by the early '70s, indian middle class families like myself, which had been explicitly chosen by congress as being okay to immigrate because we were privilege back in our home countries were considered okay to move in. i felt really guilt about that for a long time. and i felt so bad about it that

what i would do is build community with all kinds of people but my own. but your multi-racial community has to include you with all of your privileges and oppressions and all of your limitations and gifts. lesson number two, we have to be able to talk explicitly about racial higher archiand discrimination. color blindness is a krups concept that's based on the idea that our brains can do something that they're actually not capable of doing. [ cheers and applause ]. in a context where the universal is white, we have to be really, really clear about who and what we're talking about. lesson number three, equity has to be our goal, not simple diversity. if you think of our project as a party, you can invite me to the party and i could be interested enough to go. but if the music doesn't suit me, i find it undanceable, it gives me a headache, it's boring and i have no way to change it

that i'm not going to stay at the party very long. in a political context, this plays out as people of color invited to the meeting and they come but nobody listens to a word they say. that's called tokenism. that's called tokenism. in an equity framework we can acknowledge that all the good things that are at the center of our society, the great education, the safe housing, excellent health care, all of our communities have contributed to those good things and deserve to have access to those good things. in an equity framework, we don't actually craft a strategy until all the communities we're concerned about have had a chance to help shape it. we don't set the play list for the party without asking the people what they want to listen to. working in multi-racial communities is a really beautiful thing. it has many excellent rewards. you get to laugh at everybody's jokes and eat a much greater variety of excellent food and

most of all you get to help unleash the innate power and potential that is present in every single human being. that's not just our job as progressives, it's also the key to a really great life. thank you so much. [ cheers and applause ]. >> s-amhita mukhopadhyay. >> why are you funny but your content sucks? i'm not talking about you or you, all of us, progressive, earnest do-gooders out there fighting the good fight. how is it that we make up such a dynamic hilarious group of people, but when it comes to putting out content about our issues we struggle? we struggle to find humorous ways to talk about the issues that we care about. instead, we often bang people over the head with jargon or

difficult realities or sad stories. there's a reason for that. the issues we talk about and work are on pretty serious and the solutions require some serious investigation. and aren't they not going to take us seriously if we're too funny? who has the luxury to laugh? i don't have time to laugh. well, think about this, humor gives us the opportunity to tackle difficult issues in new ways. francesca ramsey made a video, a viral video, called "[ bleep ] white girls say to black girls" using humor to talk about an issue that is incredibly difficult and pervasive. it was a viral success. humor also motivates us. it helps get people off their asses. sometimes they need a little extra push and they're more likely to do something if you make them laugh about it, rather than yell about it. we all remember the great

schlepp. and there's a science to this. they did a study of all their content that performs the best on the internet and you will not believe what they found. [ laughter ]. people love stories they can relate to. they like stories that have a hero and a villain. they like an underdog that emerges a superhero. they like to be shocked. and they like a goch-ya moment. the next time you're thinking about making content for your cause, think about how you can connect on a human level? what is something that happens every single day that you might be able to connect with somebody on? this is an example of a video that we did with the aclu on reproductive rights. this is a leng slay tor pretending to be a doctor, taking a hotly contested issue and bringing it to its logical conclusion. why can we all relate? because we don't want random

medical advice from bozos. think about your timeliness. this is a video we launched at christmas time where santa is pretending to the nsa. this was wide lly popular, turn out most people think santa ask as creepy as the nsa. don't be afraid to say what everyone is thinking. sometimes it's the most obvious answer that will get the biggest response and resonate the most. meet people where they're at. if they want cat videos, give them cat videos. remember, the internet survives off the systematic humiliation of animals. challenge yourself to talk about your issues in the simplest way possible. the majority of the people we're talking to don't know as much as we know. what's the one thing that they need to know when they walk away from talking to you?

try not to be too literal. yes, you're right. it is your reproductive health care decisions. when was the last time someone said, got to make those reproductive health care decisions? people don't talk like that. don't be afraid to use metaphors or laymen's terms to talk about complicated issues. think about what motivates your audience. why should i care -- what's the treat? why should i care about your issue, your state, and most importantly, your e-mail list? and remember, humorous content is just your non-sexist pickup line at the bar. how you follow through means everything. because we don't want to just make content for the sake of making content, we want to inspire people and we want them to take action. because if we want the numbers of people that we need to make the change we need to make, we're going to need to get new strategies to engage new people. i think making them smile is one of them.

but whatever you do, don't try too hard. and don't ever start your joke with -- [ laughter ]. i'm not a blank but -- because we all know where that's going to end up. do what you can to find your most authentic voice and use humor in your day to day life. i'm not saying it's easy, but neither is the work that we're doing. all the more reason to have some fun with it. [ cheers and applause ]. >> amy lynn smith. [ cheers and applause ]. >> hi, i'm amy. i'm an obama care success story. that's not a confession, it's a cause for celebration. i am one of millions of american's whose stories can help democrats win in november. obama care is a winning issue for democrats. it's been proven time and time again that the attack of obama

care opponents don't hold up under scrutiny. they can't poke holes in the success stories because they have the advantage of being true. democrats just need to tell those stories. but a lot of democrats aren't using obama care success stories to their full advantage. the fact that more than 20 million americans and counting are benefitting from obama care is awesome. it's what we have been fighting for. but that fact alone doesn't change minds. what changes minds, personal stories of how americans benefit from obama care. stories that demonstrate a value statement. what's in it for the voter? health care consumer? what is the value obama care delivers? when the cancer patient says, if it wasn't for obama care id be dead in 12 months, the value is obvious. obama care is saving her life. use stories to show what people get when they get covered. getting insured despite a pre-existing condition, getting routine screening is free. getting coverage that costs

less. getting to keep your doctors. getting the peace of mind that even if you're diagnosed with the most aggressive cancer imaginable, the coverage you pay for every month can never be taken away and will never hit a life time limit. let me demonstrate with my own story. i'm a freelance writer. always had to buy my own insurance and the costs kept going up. last year i was paying $1,400 a month. why didn't i shop around? because i couldn't. i have diabetes. only one insurance company will cover me. i'm also a woman, i can be charged more just because of that. obama care gives me the right to buy the same plan as everybody else. i no longer am discriminated against for being a self employed woman with diabetes, so i got the same coverage i had before for $900 less a month. [ cheers and applause ]. i did not gate tax subsidy so my $530 a month premium might sound expensive.

i would pay more than that. i kept all my doctors and i will never pay more than $5,000 a year in out of pocket costs. something my previous plan did not guarantee. i told my story at a collect blog and then i started other people tell their's like leonard and dawn. he lost her job and she has a part-time job so they couldn't afford $1,300 a month for coverage but couldn't afford do without. between them they take 19 medications for 14 different pre-existing conditions including heart disease. they qualified for tax credits so they got covered for $227 a month. dawn told me in tears that without insurance to pay for their medication, she wasn't sure how long they would last. she wasn't sure they would make it to their daughter's wedding this summer, but they did. then there's linda, whose husband charles's cancer treatment will be covered thanks to obama care. cancer treatment that was never interrupted when they changed to a plan that saves them $300 a month. coverage that let charles keep all his doctors. this is what linda told me. quote, i see these adds with

people saying they can't keep their doctors and i know that's bull crap. those ads are all about politics, not insurance, end quote. all her words. the truth needs no embellishment. pharmacy technician desiree will tell you the same. it's not a political thing. she said, it's a people thing. this college student knows all about people because she helps them in a pharmacy everyday and has not seen a single person prescription cost increase. she's seen a lot of costs go down. she helped one woman who hasn't had insurance her entire adult life. the woman gratefully filled a prescription to manage a condition that was diagnosed at her first checkup in years. a condition that was caught before it turned serious. other young people get it too, like ed di, age 3 is has a black mark on his krert record because he was forced to the e.r. for routine care. he pays off his $5,000 debt he got covered for $20 a month.

karen knows the high cost of getting injured. he avoided going bankrupt over a broken wrist because she has insurance she could only afford because of obama care. and let's not forget marian, the cancer patient who would have been dead in 12 months if it wasn't for obama care. her doctors gave her one year to live if she didn't get treatment. even with a part-time job she couldn't afford insurance until obama care. her treatment just started and now her doctors give her an optimistic outlook for recovery. so, as we head into the 2014 elections and beyond, tell stories like these. they can change people's minds. give voters a reason to choose a democrat who supports obama care. because people want to vote for the things that matter most to them. and one day, the life that saved by obama care may be their own. [ cheers and applause ]. >> christopher massicotte. >> you know, there's always been

gay people. we were just so deep in the closet we didn't know each other and then world war ii happened, we enlisted and found each other. in fact, san francisco was a major war-time port. now you know why the city by the bay is so fabulous. after the war, we took -- many of us took government jobs, an astronomer by the name of frank was fired from his job in 1958, simply because he was gay. well, rather than cower, he became an organizer and an activist and 50 years later, president obama would formerly apologize to him. on monday, he is going to sign an executive order banning any company that does business with our government from ever doing that again. well, how did we get here? at an era when lgbt americans were getting fired from their job in 1978 harvey milk became the first openly gay official in california. he was so gifted and so inspiring that a homophobic colleague shot and killed him. shortly after his death, an

american was confronted with the aid's crisis. it forced lgbt americans out of the closet to confront and protest a government that seemed to care so little about the rising death toll. imagine, if nearly all of your friends died in just a few short years. for many lgbt americans that's what the '80s were like. aids killed a an entire generation of gay men and gave rise to a whole new generation of activists who fight for the rights that even we have today. this is barany frank in 1987. that's me in 1987. barany came out that year. and he was re-elected another 12 times. i'm from massachusetts. that was the first time i had ever heard about gay people. and he was an n a place of power. and since then, there are ranks in washington have swelled. we have seven members of the house and one senator from places you wouldn't imagine like riverside, california, wisconsin, and even arizona. but we have a lot of work to do. we only have two women and only

one person of color and no republicans. oh, trust me, gay republican makes my skin crawl. but as barany frank would say, if you're not at the table, then you are on the menu. and they don't make it very easy for us either. this is state represent mike fleck, one of only two openly gay republican in the country. he came out of his re-election in 2012. this year he lost his primary to an anti-gay tea party. after the primary, some of mike's colleagues said, we knew mike was gay but he didn't need to m coout. if he stayed in the closet he wouldn't have these problems. that's the message that republicans send, if you come out, we will turn you out and that prevents any good lgbt republicans from ever getting a seat at the problem. this isn't just a republican problem. this is patricia todd from alabama. you heard me, alabama elected an out lesbian to their state house. but the democratic party actually tried to stop her. the party in the establishment

candidate that todd had beaten in the primary, they used a law that hadn't been enforced since 1988 to try to knock her off the general election ballot they felt her lesbian status would be too bad for the party come november. well, the victory fund stepped in and howard dean stepped in helped her mount a challenge, he won the right to be on that ballot and is doing great stuff for alabama ever since. [ cheers and applause ]. well, this is my first time in michigan. what a great state. but you're behind alabama. you don't have any openly lgbt state legislators you're going to change this. these are the four candidates that the victory fund is getting behind that will make history in november in michigan. want to end this talk on a very optimistic note. we have almost 500 openly lgbt americans serving in office today. i think harvey milk would be so proud of what they, of what we, have all accomplished. especially our biggest accomplishment to date, in 2012, we elected the first openly gay

united states senator. in her victory speech, senator baldwin said, i didn't run to make history. i ran to make a difference. and i think harvey milk would be proud. nowadays gay candidates campaign just like straight people by using their spouses and their children in their campaign ads. i mean, we just got the right to get married and now we're using it to get votes. and i think harvey milk would be proud. [ cheers and applause ]. >> i don't think he thought he would end up on a stamp, though. last month the postal service unveiled the harvey milk forever stamp. the first time an openly gay man ever had that honor. my partner drew and i went to a celebration celebrating the release of this stamp. drew works at the secret service. if it wasn't for the work of harvey milk and everybody that has come since he wouldn't have that privilege of working there. i think harvey milk would be proud and i know he's smiling knowing millions of americans are licking his backside.

thank you, everybody. [ cheers and applause ]. >> you know, i'm from minnesota and an incredible state legislator guy named scott dible. and if you don't know scott dible, scott dible is the guy who proposed the reason that we have marriage in minnesota. and scott and his partner have been friends of mine for a really long time. and when they tried to get the constitutional amendment in the minnesota constitution to have marriage be between man and a woman or -- you know, whatever. so exhausting. i flew back to minnesota to do some door knocking on the issue. no, this is turning into a funny story. i'm super fantastic, by the way.

and the give back that i do is epic. [ laughter ]. >> so bow to me, really. no. so i was going door to door and i was in a neighborhood that is one of those neighborhoods that is sort of -- it could go either way. sort of conservative white middle class and then there's some hipsteres and so you never know what you're going to get on any door that you knock on. so i knock on a door and this woman opens the door and she goes, oh, hey, come on in. and i'm like, okay. she goes, so why are you here? maybe you should have asked me before you let me in, but all right. [ laughter ]. and i said, i'm here to talk to you about amendment 1. i just want to know how you feel about it? if you've thought about it. she said, i'm so conflicted. and i said, okay. is there anything that i can tell you about it? about how it would make a better minnesota. and she says, well, here is my deal.

i'm not sure i'm okay with two guys getting married, but i don't want to be a jerk about it. [ laughter ]. and that is such a summary of minnesota and i wish a metaphor for the way that it works with people who maybe aren't psyched about this. she's like, okay, maybe you're not for it but just don't be a jerk about it. [ laughter ]. please welcome, laura windsor. >> thank you. [ cheers and applause ]. >> thanks, everyone. i was raised in the buckle of the bible belt in nashville, tennessee by a single mother who worked as a secretary. when i was 6, she married my stepdaughter a stockbroker and weapon went from working class to middle class. i was an overachiever attending a magnet school, graduating high school with honors and college credits, working two different

jobs. by the time i graduated, my parents divorced and it was clear that i would be on my own financially. i eventually moved to new york to get state residency i attended community college downtown and on my way to class on september 11th, i witnessed firsthand the attacks on the world trade center. after watching people jump out of burning buildings and running from their collapse, i spent a lot of time thinking about what america could have done to provoke such an atrocity. this experience fundamentally changed my understanding of the negative impacts of american capitolism abroad. i had grown up in the '80s, a child of capitalize with an unwavering faith in enter preneuroism. aynrand had been an favorite author. several years later, i had moved to l.a. at the on set of the mortgage crisis.

i witnessed it firsthand through my boyfriend, whose business catered largely to the sub prime mortgage industry. in many ways i became a poster child for the recession. my boyfriend's business tanked. i had a full-time job as an office administrator but picked up a second job cocktailing on the weekends. after taking on several new financial obligations, my mother was laid off and looked for work for three years, moving to four different states. during the holidays, she worked at target, but still didn't earn enough to go off of unemployment. she had a headache and she didn't have health insurance. doctors at a walk-in clinic forced her to go to a private hospital where she quickly ran up a $25,000 bill. she was slowly losing everything and there was nothing that i could do to help her. in 2009, i was laid off and i went back to school full time to compliment my bachelor's in

business degree with an associate's in fashion design. i worked two different part-time jobs but like my mother, still didn't make enough money to go off of unemployment. eventually i found a full-time bar gig but business was slow. at one point, i had three different part-time jobs and even then was scraping by. all of this while going to school full time, six days a week. the american dream seemed like an impossibility now. i grew up with the promise that if you went to college and got a degree, any degree, you would be set. but the 2008 financial crisis exposed that the game is rigged. the hope for justice on wall street evaporated as bankers escaped prosecution. the negative impacts of american capitalism that i had observed happening to people abroad were hitting home. and my anger, my apathy, rather, turned to anger. i started a blog called lady liberty.

i joined the occupy movement covering protests around the country. i knee evely thought that everybody would agree that we needed to reform the banks. when it was clear that wall street would avoid substantive reform that politicians were in the pocket of the financiers bank rolling their campaigns, i realized that the root of the problems was money in politics. i started a web show called the undercurrent with the young turks which led me to american family voices and here with you today. because i think that i have an obligation that we all have an obligation to try to prevent another ground zero. as we gather here in detroit, the heart of american manufacturing and arguably ground zero for the destruction of the middle class, we are at a critical juncture for more possible ground zeros, economic and otherwise. both the keystone xl pipeline and trance pacific partnership have been shelved until after

the midterms. you can be sure if republicans retake the senate, that these issues will skew in favor of the corporate agenda with catastrophic consequences for us all. at afe, we are creating video content to change the conversation to one of economic populism. videos like the trade-y bunch. and the ever-expanding powers of corporations. prioritizing corporate profits over people, deregulating across industries, shredding the social safety net, altering the climate past the point of no return, we know the root of all of these problems. now we must be bold and get money out. thank you. [ cheers and applause ]. >> feminista jones. [ cheers and applause ]. >> good evening, everyone. my name is feministic jones and

i'm a story teller. i use social media to tell my stories with the hope that my openness will inspire others in some way. over the last four years, i've received hundreds of letters from fans and readers and supporters all around the globe. they tell me that i helped them in so many ways. i'm going to share a few of those things with you. dear feminista. i've been following you on twitter for a while now. let me just say that you've taught me so much and will always thank you for that. i have family on twitter, so i haven't been able to openly share with you and other women. dear feminista. thank you for sharing your story of how you discovered feminism through hip hop music. you make feminism so accessible. your younger sisters appreciate you. i never realized that as a black woman i could stand up for being

a woman without bestraying my race. you helped me see that. thank you. feminista, thank you for putting a name on what i have experienced for over the last 20 years. i never realized that there were others who felt as bad about being harassed on the street as i do. i have had grown men try to have sex with me since the age of 10. and i gained almost 100 pounds between 18 and 35 in order to deter their attraction to me. i wish someone would have asked me if i was okay then. thank you. dear feminista, for the first time in my life, i feel strong enough to tell my mother that my stepfather raped me when i was 8 years old. reading your tweets today helped me more than you could ever know. thank you for your courage and sharing your story. feminista, i love reading about

your passion for writing. your articles help me realize that i have my own voice and you inspire me so much as a writer. can you help me get started? dear feminista, i'm a 56-year-old white woman from austin, texas. and you and i have next to nothing in common, but i wanted to reach out to you and let you know that listening to you on huff post live really opened my eyes. i'm not a feminist, but i believe in equal rights. i realize that i still have a lot to learn about you afro-americans. thank you for being you. hey, ms. jones, i just wanted to say that i really appreciate how candid you are when it comes to sex and sexuality. i never heard of pan-sexual before you started talking about it. you probably hear a lot about this, but i wanted to thank you personally for encouraging me to explore my own sexuality and be

more honest with my boyfriend about wanting to be choked when he [ bleep ] me. he thinks he'll hurt me, but how do i tell him i want to pass out? dear feminista, over the last year and some change i've lost 80 pounds. i'm well aware of your weight loss journey and the negative experiences you shared, many of which i can identify with. it takes a lot of courage to talk openly about weight . difficult for me. in 2009, my partner of 13 years committed suicide. i found her body one morning at 7:00 a.m. and my life hasn't been the same since. i gained 30 pounds and everything hurt. being part of the sexy shred community, i've learned that it is important to be deliberate about self care and that isn't selfish. thank you so much. you've done so much for so many of us. dear feminista, i'm just

e-mailing you one social worker to another, we need more people like you. your blog about suicide not being selfish came at the right time. i was at my end. i'm still there but your story about how you tried to take your own life was so important. you have no idea. i had no one to talk to but you wrote like you knew me. your words saved my life. two years ago, my son went to live primarily with his father because i have been struggling with depression. i love my son more than life itself. but i felt like a failure. when you talk about your son garvy, you help me realize i made the best choice for my son. thank you so much. feminista, you're always meticulous when explaining things to people on the internet. your level-headedness sets the bar. thank you for sharing your voice. thank you for being a constant inspiration. your tweets help me channel my frustration and sadness. words are powerful.

you never know when someone is listening when you share your stories. someone somewhere needs to hear what you have to say. even if you don't feel very strong about it. you have a voice. use it. [ cheers and applause ]. >> sara haghdoosti. >> i was born in iran, grew up in australia and moved to new york two years ago. my accent sounds all over the place, it has a hint of kangaroo, now you know why. i first came to the united states when i was 10 years old. i came here before september 11 and i remember my mom and i got to the front of the immigration cue, the officer took one look at our iranian passports and asked us to follow him. and to put this in context, i had just been lavished with toys and attentions from flight

attendants for 12 hours, so i thought this was going to be awesome and we were in for a special treat. instead, what happened was he took us to a small room, he started fingerprints my mother and took a mug shot of her and then he started fingerprinting me and had to find a stool for me to stand on because i was too short for the mug shot. i remember crying the entire time because i had only ever seen bad people in movies be treated this way. and i had no idea what i had done wrong. and i know that my story isn't unique in this room. i know that there are countless others who experienced racism and racial profiling on a day to day basis and fight back and i wanted to shout outthe people who are fighting against forefront of the immigration debate and say, how proud i was when they held the vice president to account on this stage. but one place where i think we

need to do more as a movement is in the realm of foreign policy. and we need to do more in the realm of foreign policy. when i talk about foreign policy and race, i don't mean white savior complex or clon yalism even though they're very important, i'm talking about foreign policy as a gateway that erodes our civil rights and that seems into your everyday rights here. a lot of us watched after september 11th as entire communities and countries were labeled as extremist, dangerous and hom oj nis. as a result, laws like the patriot act that said if you talk to anyone who we think is suspicious, we're allowed to take away your rights became law. as a result of that law, we saw mosque being infiltrated and saw it being applied to drug raids

and disproportionately affecting people of color. thanks to edward snowden, we found the patriot act became the legal basis for the government to listen into every single one of our conversations. and i just wanted to say that these things all come from foreign policy. that's not the only example. i know that many of us marched against wars in iraq and the wars in afghanistan. and i know many of us grieved when we heard about civilians and soldiers losing their lives in those fights. and it's great that those wars are coming to an end now and are winding down, but what is scary is that the military is donating their equipment to local police forces here in the u.s. and we are seeing tanks go down suburban streets and that's not okay. only a few weeks ago on a supposed drug raid a police

officer flew a flash grenade into the crib of a toddler here in the u.s. and it doesn't have to be this way. and this is why it's so important for progressive voices to be a part of the foreign policy debate. foreign policy is just what we allow our government -- how we allow our government to treat people who don't live in this country, who might look different, who might have different beliefs, and who might speak in different languages. and we can make a huge difference and that's exactly the work berin does. we work with people in iran and progressives outside of the iran and push for foreign policy that makes sense. that means we push for foreign policy that lets people in iran have the space to do the organizing, the really inspiring work that they're doing that safeguards our civil rights and ensures that money doesn't get wasted on useless wars in the

middle east where it could be used in our hospitals and in our schools. and that's the peace delegation we took to d.c. a few months ago. we're only a year old, but in a year, we're now up to 55,000 strong and that's incredibly exciting. and we only got there because of the support of so many others in the progressive community. so, i wanted to say thank you. thank you for this community. thank you for the work that you do. and thank you for being the type of people who stand up. i look forward to marching alongside you in the future. [ cheers and applause ]. >> zerlina maxwell. >> you are drinking. you are drinking. what did you expect? those were the first words someone told me when i confided in them eight years ago that i had been sexually assaulted. it was these questions about my choices as opposed to say,

choices of my rapist that were in some ways more painful than the violent act itself. i stumbled into rape culture. a world in which rape is seen as the norm and victims are blamed for their own asults. you see, there's many myths about rape. it's a myth that there are blurred lines of consent. it's a myth that rapes are committed by strangers jumping out of the bushes. it's also a myth that rape cannot happen to men. what's true is that rape culture is very real. and i know you've all seen this picture before, this picture is supposed to represent love and patriotism and romance. what you might not know is that these two people are strangers, which makes this picture an assault. fast forward to last summer, when robin thicke's blurred lines was the number one song in the country and feminists spoke

out and spoke up and said, no, enough is enough. i refuse to accept this and he went from number one on the charts to the number one creep just a year later. because when you see a statistic like this one that only 3% of rapists ever spend a day in jail, i want you to be as horrified as i am because this is not just my issue. this is not just a feminist issue. it's everyone's issue. last year when i went on fox news and said, i should not have to have an ar-15 in order to not be raped. i was told by the right wing and told that my statement was shocking and bizarre. and i'm here to tell you, no, we need to be teaching people about consent and bystander intervention. i should not need a gun on every first date to be safe from sexual assault. [ cheers and applause ]. the morning after -- the morning after the segment, i was sent this rape threat at 8:00 a.m. in

the morning and it was one of hundreds of threats. and i am here to tell you, i can't be out here alone, survivors cannot be the only ones speaking up and speaking out. that's where you come in. allies, okay? because rape snot an inevitable occurrence. it is not something that we should trivialize and it's not boys will be boys. advertisement like this one, you call it out in public. you don't just turn your say, hey, that's offensive. you sign a petition. you tweet that petition and you stand alongside me and say, no. because this issue is not just an issue for women or for feminists like i said before or for people who have survived it. it's everyone's issue. and boys will not be boys. this is ridiculous. and because rape culture is a

spectrum, it also includes street harassment. and i know i'm flawless and i woke up like this, but stop telling me to smile. [ cheers and applause ]. and when you see -- when you see someone cat calling a woman on the street, i want you to speak up and speak out and go up to the woman like feminista jones says and ask them, are you okay? and call out that harasser for their harassing behavior. don't just ignore it and pretend it's not a problem. because it is. and if someone comes to you and says they been sexually assaulted, do not say a unc administrator said to my friend, rape is like football. you might want to review your plays and see if you would have made different choices. no, you'll be more like john kelly and recognize and stand up and say, that rape can happen in any kind of relationship. he's the first person to testify about rape in same-sex relationships. or you need to be more like who

started the #survivorprivilege to talk back to george will who made that idiotic notion that being rape is somehow a privilege. that conveys a coveted status. she stood up and all survivors spoke out using the hashtag to say no. i'm here to say that you need to make your move now. you need to stand alongside survivors and you need to be allies in public. i know it is easy to be cynical. i know. but i'm optimistic because campaigns like this one from ucla are shifting the conversation away from what women can do to prevent their rapes and on to, hm, maybe we should change the behaviors of the potential rapists. [ cheers and applause ]. >> because i want to get to the point where the answer to the question that i posed in the title of this presentation, i want the answer to that question, how do we end rape

culture to be, we already did. thank you. [ cheers and applause ]. >> mansu gidfar. >> hi. all right, let's talk about corruption. so, when i say corruption, i'm not talking about the sleazy guy with the shoe what i'm talking about is corruption in the year 2014. i could show you all kinds of charts or numbers, but i think with the collective organizing and political experience in this room, everyone here already has an intuitive sense of this problem. if you can afford a lobbyist, if you can put money into campaigns, you get a better version of the government than everyone else, and it's why we keep seeing headlines like this. it's why no matter how commonsense the solution or how much public support there is, unless the money is there too, your issue gets stuck over and

over and over again. there's a whole shadowy network of money, and there's a big incestuous -- this is the reaction you get when you talk to people about money in politics. i do not want the face of this movement to be bender. god love him. so today i'm going to talk about the solution. i'm going to talk about how we win this thing because i am so sick to death of seeing this headline over and over again. of seeing the same great reform ideas show up in washington get some democratic votes, get zero republican votes, and then die the same slow painful death. let's talk about strategy. i really want to hone in on this third point. this absolutely has to be a bipartisan movement. i know what some of you are thinking. who is this asshole telling me we have to work with the party

of the koch brothers to get money out of politics? what's funny is when we go and talk about republicans about this issue, they say the exact same thing, but instead of the koch brothers it's george soros or the big scary unions or pick your lefty boogieman, but everybody is angry about the same things and if you look at the numbers more importantly, you see that both sides support the same policies we feed too fix this problem which is not a left wing issue or a right wing issue. it's an american issue. until we start treating it like one, we're not going to win. so when you are dealing with a problem this huge you can't just nibble around the ijz. conventional wisdom says let's take one at a time and pass some public funding here. if you put them all together in one piece of ledges lashgs it's actually more powerful together than it is alone. this is all stuff, by the way, you can do without amending the constitution to overturn citizens united.

it's not to say you shouldn't. that's to say that these two strategies work in tan dem because like the majestic voltron, we are so much more powerful when we unite as one. also that's an awesome picture, and i need an expense skoous to put it in the slide show. so we've got something called the american anti-corruption act. it's an anti-corruption act.org, and i don't have time to get into the policy stuff now, but i would love people to check it out on-line because the nerd stuff is important. i actually want to talk about the name. more importantly, it's honest because that's what this [ bleep ] is. i know what some of you are thinking now. it's monsiuer, you handsome i had wrot. do you expect this to get anywhere in washington? my answer is, no, absolutely

not, i don't. that's why we need to stop throwing ourselves the a brick wall at reforms in washington and start focussing on the 13 states in this country where tomorrow it is a game changer for two reasons. one, there are certain states where this is just good policy. there are states where money and politics is actually a bigger problem than it is at the federal level, north carolina i'm looking at you. and number two, it's good politics because every single win at the state level builds momentum for national reform. we've done the polling for a hypothetical state act. it has unprecedented support. our pollster has never seen higher numbers in his entire 30-year career. i am from the great state of coll so of course i'm going to be the guy who brings up marijuana legalization. here is an issue that 20 years ago was a late night punch line but using this strategy by building a right/left coalition, by going state by state, they've legalid