Matt Helmer  00:06

Welcome everybody. Sorry for a little bit of a delay. There are just some tech issues on the back end. But glad to see you all here. My name is Matt Helmer. I’m the Director of Job Quality and Worker Well-being at the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program, and it’s great to see you for today’s conversation, conversation Building New Narratives on Work and Opportunity in the South. This conversation is part of our Job Quality and Practice series where we try to look at different ideas, policies, practices that can help improve jobs and workplaces and address this kind of ongoing crisis that we face around job quality in the United States. Before we get started, just a quick review of our technology. Everyone’s muted. Please use that Q&A button at the bottom of your screen to submit and upvote questions. Share your perspective, your ideas, your examples, your resources. Related to today’s conversation in the chat, we encourage you to engage with one another. If you want to post about this conversation on social media, our hashtag is talk opportunity. If you have any technical issues like we’ve had, please message us in the chat or email us at [email protected]. As always, we are recording this event, and we will post it on our website, and you will also receive an email letting you know when we have that recording available. Closed Captions are available as well. Just click that CC button at the bottom of your screen. So this is the first part in kind of a mini series that we’re doing that we’re calling, kind of Fixing Work in the South, and it’s bringing together members of our job quality fellowship who represent different types of organizations from across the South and who are really on the front lines of trying to improve work and improve access to good jobs in their communities. As I said, these fellows kind of span a variety of sectors and organizational types that come from employee ownership and economic and workforce development and worker organizing and philanthropy and business lending and advising and on and on and on, but they share this common kind of mission, this common pursuit of trying to make sure that all working people share in our economy’s abundance and that everyone shares in the fruits of their labor. So through this series, we’re asking fellows to really explore the barriers to good jobs in the South and how we can transform work, and we’re going to examine promising strategies emerging from their practice and emerging from the field, and really try to challenge some of the conventional wisdom about what economic policies and business models, we really need to build an economy that works for all. 

Matt Helmer  02:45

Today’s conversation is specifically kind of on the role of narrative in the South, and how that narrative kind of shapes policy and outcomes for workers, for communities and for businesses. And I want to be a little bit clear on why we’re focusing on narrative, because I think we all recognize the stories that we tell about how the economy works, about what creates prosperity, about who deserves what these stories all shape what policies get passed. They shape where investment flows, and they shape how business practices evolve and what business practices get normalized. And ultimately, at the end of the day, these narratives shape whose lives improve and whose don’t. So let’s start a little bit by kind of naming the dominant narrative that we’ve often heard in the South, but also that has, you know, spread around the country and around the world, in some sense, and you’ve heard it before, right? Prosperity and good jobs will be created if we just cut taxes, if we remove business regulations, if we loosen worker protections, more jobs will come if we curtail unionization, or if we give companies large tax breaks to come to our community, I think boiling it down, it’s really about making it cheap and easy to do business, assuming that prosperity will trickle down to everyone. This framework kind of gets different names at different times, right? But I think some people have come to known it as like the Southern Economic Development model, and it’s driven really policy across the region for a long time, and it’s been bipartisan. It hasn’t been questioned very often, and it’s been exported, like I said, beyond the South, right? We see this around the country and around the world as some of the arguments for how we should approach kind of our economic policies. But obviously the problem is, is that we now have pretty good data showing that these policies haven’t created this wide, widespread prosperity. Poverty rates in the South remain high, higher than other regions. Wages are pretty low and have stagnated. We’ve seen worker protections eroded, and while some communities, I think, have seen growth, the growth hasn’t translated, like I said, into into broad based prosperity or economic security for many working families. And instead, in some sense, what we’ve seen is a race to the bottom, where states and communities too often compete for the lowest wages, the fewest regulations and the largest corporate giveaway giveaways, with really workers, families, taxpayers, kind of footing that bill. 

Matt Helmer  05:23

So the question we’re asking today that I’m really excited to hear our fellows speak to is, what are the new narratives we need to win support for policies and practices that actually improve job quality and create a fair economy for all? So I’m going to introduce a few of our job quality fellows now and bring them into this conversation. Who do we have first here? I’m just looking at my screen. So as I said, we do have some technical issues. So the first person I want to introduce is Dr. Shuh-Marraka Johnson. She’s Principal Consultant at Deep South Strategies. Hopefully her video will work, but you may just see a still image of her at times, but we’re super thrilled she’s able to join us at all after some of the issues we’ve been navigating in the past 10 minutes, we have Dom Kelly, Founder and President and CEO of New Disabled South. Rachel Merfalen, who’s the Executive Director at the Tennessee State Center of Employee Ownership and Founder of Good Future, and Dr. Alexis Tsoukalis, Senior Policy Analyst at the Florida Policy Institute. So I’m going to ask the fellows to get started by introducing themselves and their organization, and as you introduce yourself, maybe just talk a little bit from your perspective, about the current moment we’re in. You know, I think we’ve seen a lot of challenges over the past few years with Covid, kind of the murder of George Floyd, we’ve had deep political and social division, and we’re now seeing, you know, a lot of like social political kind of unrest and division occur in places like Minneapolis and other places. So as you introduce yourself and your organization, please talk to us a little bit about the current context and why you think this work is still important given that. So I’m going to start with you. Dom, welcome and please introduce yourself.

Dom Kelly  07:16

Thank you. It’s so good to be here. My name is Dom Kelly. I’m the Founder, President, CEO of New Disabled South, based in Atlanta, Georgia, but we work across 14 states in the South, really working to build power for disabled people across a wide spectrum of issues that impact the lives of our community day to day. This is, I mean, I think we’ve been talking about for many years that this is one of the most consequential moments for marginalized people across this country. And I probably true for for this moment more than any other, this for people with disabilities in particular and especially in the South, the lived the realities, lived realities of being disabled in a region like the South are just really, really under the microscope and and really, really spotlight in a way that it hasn’t been for a very long time, particularly as we see funding for Medicaid cut significantly, and that will directly impact our community over the next decade.  Increased attempts to add work requirements to things like Medicaid and food assistance, which also disproportionately impact the disability community negatively. The realities of this economy that folks across this country are feeling day to day, imagine being a disabled person who relies on government benefits to be able to survive, but not being able to have more than $2,000 in a bank account at any given time, otherwise you’ll lose your health care and or the little bit of money that you make. You know that that’s the reality. That’s the reality for disabled people across the country and in the south, we already have the highest, some of the highest, poverty rates in the country, we have 1/3 of all disabled people in the US, down here in the South, so it’s exacerbated, and the work that we’re doing, I feel it has never been more important than right now. So that’s who we are, and yeah, why this is so critical right now.

Matt Helmer  09:41

Thanks Tom.  We lost Shuh-Marraka unfortunately, but hopefully we’ll have her rejoin here in a bit. But in the meantime, we have two other fellows to introduce. So Rachel, I’ll go to you next. 

Rachel Merfalen  09:52

Sure, thanks, Matt, and thank you again all for for joining us as well. I’m currently the Executive Director of the Tennesee Center for Employee Ownership. We’re one of 25 state centers of employee ownership across the US, and we really do the work on the ground through place based strategies to expand awareness of and access to employee ownership as a business succession strategy, as well as a broader economic development strategy that builds really strong, competitive and prosperous businesses, but it also builds local ownership, and it creates better jobs for workers, and then, through that ownership that’s taken on by these individuals who work and own locally, it anchors wealth and opportunity in local families and in communities. I’m also the founder of Good Future, which works at the intersection of Workforce Strategy, Job Quality and Narrative Change. And so this is a really timely conversation to be having as my worlds are colliding, and as sort of a newer resident of the South, I’ve been in Tennessee for about three years, one of the things I’ve come to understand is the South is not short on growth, but it is short on shared prosperity, and that gap is as much of a narrative problem as it is a policy problem and an economic development challenge. And we know this. Right after Covid, there were labor shortages, supply chain shocks that are happening more recently, and then this increasing political polarization, which is not helping the situation, but working people are prioritizing agency and well being just as high as economic earnings and retirement security, and we’ve seen it in the workforce world for the last five years. But also business owners, especially those private business owners and local owners, are quietly asking different questions about succession, retention and culture, because this economic development model and the way that businesses and workers work together isn’t really working for them and their businesses either. And so this is where we’re investing in this area, this area of like, how do we do alternative ownership structures? Employee ownership being one of those, these are no longer fringe ideas that employee ownership has received very broad bipartisan support, and so there’s a movement building around this. Employee Ownership is a really pragmatic response to an economic and demographic reality that’s taking place right now. We have a huge number of retiring business owners. We have fragile local and especially rural economies and a lot of workforce instability, and that’s where we come in with these different kinds of ways of doing business. And if we don’t tell a better story about what drives durable prosperity, this whole like low taxes, low wages, big incentives narrative is going to keep winning by default, so I’m excited to have this conversation with everyone.

Matt Helmer  12:47

Thanks. Rachel. Appreciate it. Alexis?

Alexis Tsoukalis  12:52

Hi, thank you. Yes. So as you introduced me, I’m Dr. Alexis Tsoukalis, I’m a Senior Policy Analyst and Macro Social Worker by training and education. So what that means is, instead of going the clinical route, or, you know, LCSW route, like a lot of social workers do, I knew early on, I wanted to focus on communities and social change, but my professional journey did start in direct care, specifically child welfare. That’s kind of what opened my eyes to the issues, both with, you know, just society and how much people struggle economically and how many problems that causes, but also the way that those of us who were in the fields were being paid and treated. And I also waited tables for years on and off. So I’ve always kind of had this like working class chip on my shoulder, I guess. So the organization I work for Florida Policy Institute. We’re a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, basically, and we advocate for better policies and fiscal priorities for everyday Floridians. And we’re also part of a network of 42 total states. So you know, like minded organizations all kind of corralled under our national partner, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in other states. So it’s likely many of you watching this have an FPI counterpart in your state. And I’ll just say too I started in 2019 to focus on immigration work. That was what I was originally hired for, because our current governor was making that a priority anti-immigrant work, specifically, anti-immigrant policy, specifically so there was sort of a gap in, you know, analysis and research on how these issues would realistically and fiscally impact, you know, everyday Floridians.  But early on, given kind of the background that I told you about, I expanded to worker justice, and some of that is because a lot of immigration and worker issues are entwined. But also we were, there were just, you know, broader economic concerns that we wanted to look at. So other things I work on are like the minimum wage, making sure child weight, child labor laws do not get changed in our state, talking about wage theft, domestic work and how important it is and how little it’s valued, for example. And I’ll just, just to wrap this up, I’ll say kind of why. I mean why this is so important. I think the one thing too, and this is not new to Southerners, but just for those who aren’t from the South, you know, yes, we are in a divisive time. Yes, we’re hearing a lot of anti-worker, anti-immigrant narratives, but that is not new to us in Florida. That is not new to us in the South. You know, we’re one of the first states to pass the right to work law, which, it’s a misnomer, really. It sounds nice, but it’s really an oppressive anti-union law. So there’s various ways that it’s important to understand, kind of the historical lens of, like you said, the Southern economic model now being spread further. Last thing I’ll just say is, you know, throughout history, when economic times are tough, immigrants almost always become the scapegoats. So, and the reason is, you know, so so that instead of working people, especially those who struggle the most, uniting and focusing on the real culprits, like, you know, powerful and wealthy, undue influence and societal inequities. This is a way for us to be pitted against each other, and, you know, kind of not focus on better narratives like solidarity and shared prosperity. So it is very important to keep this work going. And unfortunately, it’s cyclical.

Matt Helmer  16:43

Thanks, Alexis. Well, let’s dive in a little bit to just talking about narrative some more, and kind of the current challenges. And as as you know that Alexis, even the historical challenges that we face here and Dom I want to circle back to you a little bit to talk a little bit more about New Disabled South. But, you know, we’ve talked a little bit, and you kind you’ve mentioned that, you know, Georgia has kind of framed itself as the best state to do business. So tell me more about New Disabled South, and kind of this new narrative that’s that Georgia is pushing, and kind of, you know, how your organization is responding and the challenges and opportunities around that. 

Dom Kelly  17:22

Sure, I’ll start with the with Georgia’s narrative, which unfortunately, is not a narrative that is unique to Georgia, but is one that our state seems to continue to push, which is this Georgia’s number one for business. In fact, last year, it was Georgia’s number one for business for the 12th straight year. And that may be true, but when you look at the data and the reality of what it means to be a worker in Georgia, Oxfam put out their annual report, their annual report on workers, and found that we actually improved a little bit. Last year in Georgia, we moved up from like 51 or 50 to 40 number 49 for overall like quality job, like quality for worker, quality includes wage policies, worker protections and rights to organize. So Georgia is not good for workers, and yet this narrative gets pushed across our state and it influences pretty much every aspect of whatever policy decisions are made during legislative session. When it comes to budgeting.  Really, in election time, you hear it a lot more. So it is deeply harmful. It’s deeply harmful, and for a number of reasons. But if I’m thinking about the lens of disability justice, and also the work that we do that very much does not take into account what disabled people face, of course, are the ability to access a quality job or a job period is significantly more difficult for disabled people, especially if you don’t qualify for SSI Supplemental Security Income, or, you know, you don’t qualify for Medicaid, right? You you are, you don’t meet that eligibility, and you’re somewhere in the middle. So you need a job, but you can’t necessarily work, you know, a regular 40 hour job. You can’t work a job where you’re on your feet for long periods of time, right? You might need different accommodations. It’s a whole other conversation. But the point being is that disabled people are often not taken into consideration when it comes to first like where states rank on workers to ensure, if you did, I mean, we’re pretty much right near the bottom, but we’d probably be at the very bottom. But also, if we’re talking about states to do business in, and it is, it is significantly more difficult for disabled people to even be business owners in the first place. Lack of access to capital, lack of access to networks and resources, just even access to education, to be able to learn how to be a business owner, right? Like there’s so many different things that come into play. So what, what we do, a big part of our work, is really making sure that the disabled person’s narrative is is out there, and combating so much of so many of these harmful narratives that actually influence policy. And I know we’ll get into a little bit of discussion about sub minimum wage in Georgia specifically. But it is, it is a big reason why for so long, sub-minimum wage was the law of the land in Georgia, and is still the law of the land at the federal level and in most states across the country that disabled people can legally be paid, sometimes 25 cents per hour, because the narrative does not include the lived experiences of our community. So that a big part of our work is just really making sure that disabled folks are their stories are front and center, that they’re out there, that they’re influencing policy, and that they’re shifting mindset. So we can hold people, you know, like the Governor of Georgia, whoever is is perpetuating these narratives, we can hold them accountable to actually tell tell the truth and include our community in that truth telling.

Matt Helmer  21:56

Thanks Dom, yeah, I think that. I think there’s a lot of states that have claimed to be the best state to do business, right? And so it’s a common phrase that I hear, kind of across the board out there. I don’t hear any states saying they’re the best state for workers, necessarily, unfortunately. But maybe, maybe someone out there is trying to claim that a little bit, I hope. Alexis kind of, kind of circling back to you and kind of state policy work that you’ve been doing for a while in Florida, you talked a little bit about scapegoating and the cyclical kind of nature of that, and that’s definitely true. If you look at the history of the United States and the labor movement, build on that a little bit for me and talk about some of the inaccuracies, myths, or just even attacks on kind of this notion of good jobs or or worker protections that you’ve had to counter in your work.

Alexis Tsoukalis  22:51

Yeah, um, I mean, there’s been a couple pivotal points, I guess kind of three, that I think of first I started noticing a lot more obviously, around Covid 19. So you are hearing a lot of lip service for frontline workers and needing to keep the State open for them, the Free State of Florida, but not recognizing, you know, the exploitative conditions and their historically low pay, and also how many immigrants and women of color make up that work, especially being a state that has so many healthcare workers and domestic workers. Second kind of point that came up a lot during Covid that we had to push back on was that, you know, those who are getting unemployment benefits, oh, they’re just lazy. They don’t want to work. And I remember I had a conversation with just someone randomly at Autozone while he was like, changing out my battery, and he said something similar, like, we can’t get anyone works. They’re lazy. And I told him, I’m like, you have the maximum benefit for unemployment insurance here in Florida, and this is the max is $275 a week. You know? That’s $1,100 a month. That’s not going to cover most people’s rent anywhere, let alone anything else. So, you know? And he was actually kind of like, Oh, interesting. So. And then in 2021 we started seeing so, so what happened in Florida? And the reason that we’re one of the few states that in the South that has a higher minimum wage is not because of our legislature. It’s because we have a direct ballot initiative option. And so that means, you know, the people, if they get enough signatures, can get something on the ballot. And historically, when a minimum wage is put to the ballot, you know, regardless of party lines and age and gender, it passes. So it did pass here in 2021 but there was so much pushback and disinformation coming out before that. You know, it was, you know, the theme parks were coming out, big companies in the restaurant and hotel lodging, and they were saying, this will kill jobs. If we raise wages, what about our poor tips workers? They’re not they’re going to get less tips. Everything’s going to get more expensive. And luckily, because this has happened in other states, and we had a really strong partnership with EPI, Economic Policy Institute, we already had some idea that some of these talking points are coming down the line, and we’re able to push back on those to at least shift the conversation. And then the third thing, which I’m I’m just going to talk to him briefly, because I’m talk more about this later, is in the past couple years, the legislature has been trying to roll back child labor laws, including the hours they can work and also where they can work, you know, like on construction sites, for example. So those narratives we were hearing were, well, this is what they want. These workers actually want less regulation. They feel restrained, and work ethic and experience is important. And then another big one was, well, the federal government can step in where Florida doesn’t. That’s what we have OSHA for. That’s what we have a Department of Labor for. So yeah, those are some of the ones that we were pushing back on and continue to.

Matt Helmer  25:56

Great, thanks Alexis. Shuh-Marraka, looks like you made it. Yeah, well, let’s, let’s bring you into the conversation a little bit. You didn’t get a chance to introduce yourself. So then you ask you just to introduce yourself a little bit. And you know, we’re kind of in this point of the conversation where we’re, we’re talking about the challenges of narrative in the south around job quality and worker protections. So I know you’ve done a lot of work too on thinking about tax subsidies, labor policies and in corporate decision making that kind of shape opportunity in the state that you’re from Mississippi. So as you introduce yourself, maybe also talk a little bit about some of the arguments and narratives that you hear in your work kind of against good jobs or job quality that you’ve had to navigate.

Shuh-Marraka Johnson  26:46

Okay, hi everyone. I am Dr. Shuh-Marraka Johnson. I am a Researcher and also a Planner at a private institution here in Jackson. And just to talk a little bit about Mississippi, and some of the research and things that I’ve been seeing around narratives in Mississippi have been that Mississippians should be grateful for the jobs they get, that they should just take whatever is given to them. And another narrative that I’m seeing is that we should not ask for fair wages. Because, I mean, if we’re getting a job, then that’s it. Then why should we ask for fair wages? A lot of Mississippians are often left out of the conversation. And who does that benefit? It does not benefit those that are actually working these jobs. So that is something that I’m really seeing a lot in Mississippi.

Matt Helmer  27:46

Thanks, Shuh-Marraka. I’m glad you’re with us. We’ll circle back around here in a sec. Rachel, one of the things we mentioned kind of up front was kind of the field of economic development, and I think this kind of continuous focus that we’ve seen, I think, for many decades now, of really trying to land the big fish, right? It was like, let’s get the big warehouse. And now it’s like, let’s get the big data center. There’s millions of billions of incentives really spent by state and local governments trying to lure kind of these big facilities to the communities in the hopes to create good jobs. But I think, you know, oftentimes the good jobs part of that is missing when all is said and done. So what’s, what’s been your observations and perspectives on, kind of this use of economic development incentives and the economic economic development field, and kind of what’s what often gets missing from those conversations and stories, that is that gets used to justify some of those investments.

Rachel Merfalen  28:50

Yeah, I think, I mean, you covered a lot of that right off the right off the gate, but we measure sort of economic development wins in Tennessee and elsewhere in the South, and really across the United States by sort of these announcements and ribbon cuttings and good PR and really like kind of pit regions and states and economic development organizations against one another to compete for these big opportunities, which in some ways can drive investment and growth to a region. But the question that we’re not asking is, you know, we might be bringing in jobs, but are we bring are those jobs for the local people who live there, or are we also importing the skilled talent that we need in order to build those facilities? Like there are jobs, but who are they for? What kind of wage growth is happening for locals, and are we actually creating opportunity for the people who live here? Because what often happens is that these local taxpayers then subsidize these facilities, and workers remain asset poor, including job poor. Often they can’t compete for those jobs, and especially with some of these big bills like data centers, they might have a flush of jobs at the front, but few enduring opportunities, long term for locals. And so I think that that’s that’s just a really big challenge, is we, we treat capital attraction as economic strategy, but we’re not asking the questions about capital retention as well as how this is, how this is retaining, how are we not just attracting businesses to the region, but then sort of that alternate strategy is, how are we retaining the businesses that do exist in the region? And so I think that’s a challenge for those in the economic development space, is to think about, how do we have a both and strategy? It’s going to be hard to shift this model, but like, fine, go after the big fish. But what are you also doing to retain local businesses in your region? What are you also doing to make sure, as you’re negotiating with those big companies partnering with your community, community development folks and with with those who are representing the people in the community say, how are we also benefiting from this? And I think that that also just ties into this other thing is that there’s this invisible crisis in the South. It’s not just associated with low wages, it’s not just associated with lack of quality jobs, but it’s also this ownership concentration. And so when we bring these big businesses in, the the ownership class of these businesses is elsewhere. It sits out of state, and so no one there locally is benefiting from the wealth that business and enterprise ownership builds. And then when you also don’t have a legacy business retention strategy or a way to support small businesses entrepreneurship that creates ownership opportunities in the local economies, then we’re just sort of believing that ownership concentration out of the state?

Matt Helmer  31:43

Yeah, you’re exactly right. And I think a shareholder 3000 miles away is going to make different decisions about the business operations and how they show up in that community, versus someone who’s a local shareholder holder and who lives there, right? And I know you have a lot to say about kind of business retention and employee ownership as both an economic development and business retention strategy. And we’ll, we’ll come back to that in just a minute. So I want to start to turn the conversation a little bit to talk about an optimistic future and a more hopeful future, and how we can, you know, kind of create new narratives that start to drive new policies and new practices towards towards an economy that works better for everyone. So Shuh-Marraka, I want to, I want to turn back to you a little bit here. You mentioned up front, you know you’re, you’re a researcher, and I think a good deal of your research has been about, about about narrative and work and opportunity in the South. What have you learned as kind of effective strategies or messages that have helped to engage and convince others about the importance of thinking about this good job, job quality dimension and what real opportunity looks like for people?

Shuh-Marraka Johnson  32:59

I’ve learned that numbers alone don’t move people. We need stories too. I think just having the data as a researcher, just having the data, that’s just one factor. But also, if we were to pair the data with actually lived experiences, I think that can kind of move the needle just a little bit more, and just having people in the room that are actually, again, working these jobs, and people in the room that are actually going out and doing all of this hard work, because, again, I mean, like Rachel mentioned, I mean, those people million, not millions, But miles away, those individuals don’t really care, but people in the community, they do care. So just having those lived experiences and understanding what those people go through day to day, and just having someone to advocate for those people, I think that’s something that’s really important for good jobs, and I think that’s a real opportunity that we need to dive deeper into.

Matt Helmer  34:02

Let me ask just a quick follow up. I know you spent some time with Jobs to Move America, and I think one of the positive stories coming out of the south in the past few years has been this community benefits agreement that got created with new flyer, I think was in Mississippi in part, or was 

Shuh-Marraka Johnson  34:20

That was Alabama.

Matt Helmer  34:23

That was Alabama mistaken on that front. But I’m just curious, given your time and kind of jobs to move America and kind of working on community benefits agreements, are there other other things you would add kind of to this conversation about kind of engaging community and workers in these processes of when companies are relocating, or just economic development strategy overall.

Shuh-Marraka Johnson  34:47

Well, in my work at JMA, I did not focus on CBAS. I’m more so focused on local hire policies, and so with local hire policies, we were able to get one successful in rolling fork Mississippi with. We were able to have a certain percentage of individuals working the living in the within a 20 mile radius of rolling forward to be able to have first dibs on the job. So I really can’t speak to CBAS, but I can’t speak to local hire policies. But even with the local hire policies, that’s something that that’s a real opportunity. Because, I mean, if you’re having, if you have a facility, or if you have something, some type of manufacturing plant or something, come into an area and you have people 30 or 40 miles away coming into the area to take those jobs from the local individuals, you know that’s not opportunity for those people in those communities. So again, I can’t speak to CBAS, but I can’t speak to local hire policies. And I’ve seen local hire policy. I’ve seen I have seen a local hire policy be a real benefit for community.

Matt Helmer  35:52

Thanks, Shuh-Marraka. Dom, kind of circling back to you a little bit. I think there’s all kinds of workers right, who have often faced unjustified, incorrect, you know, kind of disparaging narratives, often in ways that make it seem like not everyone should have access to a fair wage or a good job, as if everyone’s not deserving of that right. Or is that, as if it’s their fault in some respect. And I think people with disabilities have have been the victim in many instances of that type of messaging. So talk to us more about, you know, kind of your work on the sub-minimum wage in Georgia, kind of the some of the resistance and narratives that you met, and tell us about how you eventually won on that front.

Dom Kelly  36:42

Sure, so I’ll just start with a little bit of a little history as to why we are even fighting this, this fight in the first place, the fair labors to Fair Labor Standards Act. It created 14 C’s, 14 C certificates, which allows for businesses to pay sub minimum wages because of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 basically to incentivize businesses to hire disabled soldiers post war, and they were thought to be less productive in the workforce, which is unfortunately still the the pervasive narrative today, and the intention of 14 C and sub minimum wages was for people with disabilities to enter the workforce through 14, to 14 C program, through places called sheltered workshops, which are like segregated workplaces, specifically for disabled people, particularly people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and psychiatric disabilities. And the intention initially was for those folks to then be able to move into mainstream employment by getting, you know, skills, you know, be able to get a job elsewhere where they can be paid at, you know, the same level as someone who’s not disabled. Unfortunately, the data shows that that is pretty much universally not what happens. I can’t remember the exact number, its 90 something percent of workers don’t actually move into integrated employment, or, quote, unquote, mainstream. So this has been the law of the land since 1938. 

Dom Kelly  38:49

What unfortunately has happened is that the narrative has been sort of like led by, oftentimes, parent groups, parent-led groups. You know doctors, even you know a lot of these sheltered workshops and a lot of these places that employ 14 C certificates, they have very powerful lobbyists, so they have really been able to grab hold of the narrative. And the kind of narrative you hear quite often is, you know, when you speak to people who earn some minimum wages, there’s my arch nemesis, this little bit of an exaggeration, but a woman who’s very problematic in our space says, I think the money is almost never the point for these people that that’s like her narrative and and it’s just, it’s just wrong, right? It’s just wrong to pay anybody below minimum wage, which we can’t even talk about, the fact that minimum wage, the Federal minimum wage is extremely low as it is, but it’s, it’s the type of of labor that folks are doing to be able to actually earn, in most cases, on the average, like $1 an hour, is, is, is horrifying. So what really, what we really worked to do in Georgia. And I’ll say it wasn’t just us. This was a coalition of organizations, people who worked for years, years and years to get this legislation passed to phase out some minimum wage in Georgia. But I think where we our unique role in that was that we were able to bring other folks into the mix, like we were able to get other groups who didn’t focus on disability rights or didn’t have that lens into these efforts to make this happen. And so just last year, that legislation was passed during session to phase out some minimum wage. And the other piece, and I’ll stop talking, was we also really made sure that when we were talking to people on the ground, that we talked to them about not just the fact that it’s not fair to pay people $1 an hour, but we wanted to uplift and center the stories of folks who were directly impacted, to make sure that their narratives were heard. So that storytelling piece that shamarka just talked about was is so critical, and that I think really helped move hearts and minds, and then helped move our legislators as well. So there’s a lot more we did, but it was an effort that is now we’re working to make this happen in other states in the South.

Matt Helmer  41:52

Alexa, while we’re kind of on this chain of talking about, you know, legislative victories and and sometimes the legislative victories, you know, just making sure something doesn’t get passed, right? And sometimes it’s making sure something does get passed. But talk to us maybe about one of the issues you’ve been successful on as of late in Florida and and what that tells us about kind of the important role of of narrative, and how you use narrative to to get where you wanted to go,

Alexis Tsoukalis  42:22

yeah, yeah. I’ll say in Florida, most of our legislative wins are most of our work is defensive right now, until we get a change in leadership. So either killing a bad bill or the next best thing, getting a bad if a bad bill is going to pass, getting it watered down so its harms are less so. So that’s sort of what happened. I guess the most recent case to talk about and most impactful would be what when the legislators tried to roll back child labor laws in the state. And I’ll talk so I’ll talk about that a little more in depth. So just for context, in 2024, two sessions ago, actually, before the legislative session even started, so they tried to slip it under the radar. The house introduced a bill called HB 49. So as filed, it would have allowed employers to schedule 16-17, year olds overnight for unlimited hours and without breaks even on school nights. And the intention was to treat these teens as if they were adults, even though, under then current law, you know, they could already work during the school year, there were just certain guardrails. So the idea was, get rid of the guard rails. Now, since this bill, you know, we found out it was part of a larger national push to weaken child labor laws, we were really concerned about it, so we, we made it a legislative priority, and we formed and led a coalition with key labor, education and child welfare partners. And so, you know, some of the, some of the narratives we pushed back on. So they would say kids should work. We would say they already care, but they need a balance in education and safety. They said, these are youth workers. We said these are children. They said, kids need the choice. We said the choice is going to be on the employer, not the kids. They said, business is hurting. And we said, well, we weren’t about this when he started kicking all immigrants out of the state. And also, some businesses are hurting because the jobs aren’t quality. You know, it’s kind of so one of my favorite FDR quotes about this, you know, who think we luckily have the federal minimum wage thanks to him, is, it seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. And by living wage, I mean more than just a bare subsistence wage. I mean the wages of a decent living and so, you know, there’s also this philosophical idea is, if you’re hurting that much because you’re not taking care of your workers or paying them, well then maybe, maybe you don’t deserve to exist in this country. So while we weren’t able to kill the 2024 child labor bill entirely, we were able to water it down significantly over six months fight, and then, building on that, last session, they tried to reintroduce the bill again and make it even worse, applying it to those as young as 15. And then a huge win. We completely killed it. They did not pass it, and this year, they did not even bring it up. So we’re thinking they are at least for now, they don’t want the headache. And I’ll just say, You know what this tells us about narratives is a lot of misinformation was going around, and hardly anyone was countering big you know, these big businesses and their lobbyists talking points on this. So we wanted to make sure, just like with the minimum wage issue, that you know, the public had the facts and they understood the nuance of this policy, but in a palatable way. So, you know, it’s always a consummate challenge here in Florida and in the south, but this time, our resistance and our shared messaging paid off. And just as an example of that, you know, we did radio shows with call-ins from the public, think our work and our testimony got picked up by international media from, you know, the Guardian in print to to television. Swiss radio, at one point, was calling, and I remember they’re like, What is going on? I’m sorry, yeah. And it’s just like, oh man, we are laughing stock. But it was, it was really interesting to have a complete outside perspective looking at this and talking about it. So last thing I’ll just say is, you know, by countering kind of these harmful narratives and getting partners to help us develop, you know, our own counter narratives. We took an issue that legislators tried to slip under the radar, and we made, you know, a symphony of noise about it. And on the floor, the sponsor herself said, I really don’t think this bill would be so controversial. So, you know, we, even if we weren’t able to kill it in 2025 even if we hadn’t had that when, just, sometimes it’s just we made a big fuss about it, and that’s a win in itself. So I think that’s where narratives can really come into play in these policy fights.

Matt Helmer  47:10

That’s great. Alexis, it reminds me of this event we just had in November on kind of this rising push to roll back child labor laws, and we heard from this labor leader in Iowa, Charlie Wishman, who, I think is the Director of the AFL CIO there could be getting his title wrong, but he kind of painted a similar story of like, you know, we just needed to raise hell, so to speak. And and we did, and as a result, they were able to accomplish something similar in terms of watering down that bill and that state as well. So Rachel, circling back, back around to you and giving you an opportunity to talk a little bit more about employee ownership, which is, you know, I think as those of us in this space know, getting a lot more traction and momentum, as you said earlier, but I think it’s still kind of one of these hidden secrets, right, that not a lot of people know about, particularly business owners, right, that may be looking to retire or to pass along their business. It seems like a ripe opportunity to really build a narrative around that, right? And I know a lot of people are engaged in that work, and I know you’re thinking a lot about it, but talk to us more about kind of some of your early work at the Tennessee center of employee ownership, and how you’re engaging businesses and community, and what narratives you’re using to speak to them about the opportunity that employee ownership can offer them and their communities.

Rachel Merfalen  48:37

I feel like you all set me up so well for this conversation. Because I think one of the narratives that I like to challenge most, and I have a background in workforce, so I come from a space where, you know, in the workforce ecosystem, there’s a term that’s thrown around, which is like businesses are a necessary evil, right? But I think the narrative that I like to challenge the most is that the interests of businesses and workers are diametrically opposed to one another. And this is evidenced in all these things that we’ve been hearing from Dom, from Alexis, from Shuh-Marraka, these things that’s like, how do we bridge the gap between the interests of a business and the interests of owners? And I think that for those of you who work in the policy space, I’ve heard this a lot lately, you might agree with me that this is resulting from a misalignment of incentives. And so in this prevailing approach to business, right? How what is, what is a successful business, it’s all framed around the economic output of that business, the profits for shareholders, etc. How do we increase profits, increase productivity, keep wages flat, cut costs, and then pass the costs associated with maintaining a workforce on to social services, social security, the healthcare system? In this existing framework, employees are a cost center for businesses. And then on the other side. Workers are also experiencing more and more this strong aversion to the J, O, B, right, just like Alexis touched on, their experience is one of being used up and thrown out. They’re not cared for in the way that we used to with pensions and retirement balances in the US. That living wage piece is something I like to use often in my work. A living wage is not minimum wage. It’s actually what does a worker in a specific geographical area require in order to pay for reasonable all of their reasonable expenses, from, you know, housing and food to childcare and just basic necessities.  That doesn’t even include savings or vacation or discretionary spending, and right now, over half of working Americans aren’t earning a living wage. And so when that’s happening, and the average retirement balance in the US is $4,000 it’s hard to argue that employment isn’t providing the opportunity to working Americans that it promises. And this is where employee ownership steps in and presents a really strong narrative, because when employees are sharing ownership of the enterprise, the incentives of businesses and workers are now aligned. When the business does well, the employers also do well. They get to share in the value that their work is creating, and they’re going to work every day, they’re creating the value. Why? Why shouldn’t they also share in the value of that? 

Rachel Merfalen  51:25

And then when the employees experience the benefits that come with ownership, not just the economic agency that comes with with good wages and a retirement package and good benefits, but also voice participation, agency, employee, well being, and these things that come with having a collective goal with your other employee owners and with the benefits and the outcomes that you want for the business. This is where we’re aligning incentives. And so this is one of our like, real primary narratives. But then our challenge is, how do we get the word out to these different audience segments? I need to hear that, have to think about different narratives in the south, because one of the prevailing narratives in the employee ownership space is that employee ownership is something that you should do for the good of your workers, but it’s really it’s not a charity case, because it’s actually really, really good for businesses as well. And so we need to begin to identify that we can have shared outcomes, we can have shared benefits, and the incentives for businesses and workers can be aligned, and employership is one of the most promising tools for that. 

Matt Helmer  52:27

Great, so I want to stay with you for a second, because we got a question from the audience that I think kind of build on, build on your remarks a little bit. This question is from Anne Stapleton, but I think it’s a little bit of like, well, how do we take the examples of local businesses that are beloved, that we know, you know, treat their workers well and are also successful on the business side? How do we take some of those stories, and I think there’s lots of stories like this, of employee owned companies, how do we reframe and remarket those to be more recognized and valued and and I think point the way towards that being the norm rather than the exception. I don’t know if you have any thoughts about like, how you’re viewing using successful stories of employee owned companies in your work to try to shift the narrative.

Rachel Merfalen  53:17

Yeah, I think a lot of this is that you know some of the folks that have been on the avant garde of creating employee ownership have come at it from a job quality standpoint as well. But what is not as often communicated, or need, I feel needs to be communicated more, is the business case for employee ownership, and that especially is a narrative that we do need to lead with in the south, but in within business communities and economic development communities is that this isn’t like, like I said, it’s not. This is not charity. This is a really good, strong economic strategy that builds really resilient local economies, and that we need more people, whether they care about workers or not, to acknowledge as as something that builds a really strong economy in terms of storytelling. So that sort of gets into some of my work that I’m doing at good future, which is building this narrative movement for the employee ownership and really the broader ownership economy. And I’m not the only one doing it. There are quite a few individuals and organizations that are working on storytelling initiatives, because so far, a lot of this conversation has stayed in in these spaces, right the the Aspen employee I did, employee idea, Employee Ownership Ideas Forum. There it is. And then these sort of halls of policy and academia, and we’ve got some really great research from Rutgers that comes out, but we need to start creating stories that ignite public imagination and that are distributed through channels that everyday people are going to are going to encounter. And so that’s some of the work that we’re doing with state centers, as well as, how are we evolving our outreach models to not just reach out to the business community, but how are we leveraging the power. Or of storytelling through film and podcasts, through partnering with influencers on social media to show these people who are very what’s the word I’m looking for, very disillusioned about the opportunities that exist, to show that there is a way to do that, and I and I will have more to share about that later, if I have time, Matt, but a lot of that is through centering the stories of owners and workers and letting them tell their stories. Because right now, it’s been a lot of people like me telling like saying, hey, everyone needs to pay attention to employership, but we need to hear it from the people who are living it every day, and that becomes a really powerful tool for igniting public imagination and building some change there, social change, narrative change, and that will support economic and policy change.

Matt Helmer  55:53

Yeah, well, you, I think you all have kind of hit on this theme varying times in today’s conversation of the importance of centering those voices of workers or business owners and others that have, you know, kind of lived experience, and that can really talk to the challenges they’re experiencing and what they need to solve for those challenges. So I’m just curious from all of you like, are there particular stories that stick out to you from your work that were really impactful, one or two like, tactically, how does that kind of evolve and play out in your work with trying to make sure that those, those voices are heard and and shape shape the work.

Rachel Merfalen  56:39

I’m leaving space for other people.

Alexis Tsoukalis  56:44

I’ll just say briefly. You know this, I always think about this given my social work background, and you know our code of ethics, and you hear this in the community organizing space too. There’s these concepts of you’re advocating both for and with those who are you’re trying to empower and better, because it’s important to respect people’s dignity and their right to self determination. And also, the another social work concept is, you know, meeting people where they’re at, not where you think they should be, so that could be with their understanding or whether which policies they support on what they need. So that’s always been ingrained in my values, and it’s forefront in my mind. And, you know, I love to see that there’s more social workers in policy spaces, but that wasn’t that wasn’t always the case, and so for me, how it shows up in my work, several different ways. You know, one is in everything I write, as much as I can, you know, data providing try to keep a racial and gender equity lens into what I’m doing, and then a big way is I was the first person on my organization to actually start putting stories and quotes from actual people who are impacted by these policies in Florida into our work. So, you know, we have all of our data and our fiscal analysis and our charts, and that’s lovely, but we also have that qualitative piece and that personal piece, and I found in all of my pieces, but in most of my major reports, I do that. And the other thing I’ll say is, you know, working in coalition space, I’m very lucky that, especially in the immigration space, our coalitions are headed up by groups like Florida immigrant coalition and its member LED. So these are grassroots groups, and so their legislative priorities are directly informed by what their clients and what the communities want and are responding to on the ground. So it’s easier for us, not only to know that we’re not just pushing something that nobody else wants, but also when we do need to go up and testify, it’s you know, we’re not just showing up out of nowhere and saying, Hey, can you come talk to the legislators about this? I know you don’t even know who we are or what this is about. It’s, you know, this is a long game, and we’ve been able to do that. And the final piece of that, working kind of alongside and advocating for and with people in order to keep empowered people’s stories. Forefront is really knowing when we’re not the right messenger and when to step back and, you know, staying staying in our lane. And I think that’s been really important too.

Matt Helmer  59:33

Thanks, Alexis, I saw you come off mute. 

Dom Kelly  59:35

Yeah. I just thought of a woman named Bianca in Alabama. We actually just we have a series, a docu- series called Dual: The True Cost of Care that the final episode actually premiered today. And that series follows people who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, and many of them navigate. Nate the really difficult realities of finding employment, keeping employment, not being able to have employment, while navigating the systems. But I think of Bianca’s experience in her episode is the one that actually aired today, because she went from being a nurse with, you know, a degree and a lot of experience to needing to rely on both Medicaid and Medicare and not being able to work at the same level that she was having her having her eligibility called into question when she wanted to be able to work part time, not being able to get the accommodations in the workplace that she needed when she was starting to get sick and her disability was starting to show up in a different way. So all that to say that like share, telling her story, which is unfortunately, not unique. You know, one way we do it is through through video, but we we really try to uplift these stories to the folks who are making policy. And, you know, our docu-series, that’s one example of like, how we shape the public narrative, how we educate people on like this is a real thing, maybe you didn’t know existed, and here’s how it impacts, you know, all of the all of the different best of people’s lives. But her story in particular is one that I think can really move policymakers. And so I think it’s just critical for us to think about like, where and how do we use stories in a way that helps shape the narrative but also move the needle on things that are tangible? And so just thinking about her story right now is just really making me want to get down to the state capitol in Alabama and, like, make some noise, and, you know, make our legislators there do something.

Matt Helmer  1:02:08

Rachel, did you want to talk a little bit just in terms of how you’re thinking about kind of different levers you see for kind of expanding the narrative, and how these different voices show up in those stories?

Rachel Merfalen  1:02:19

Yeah, and I think I’ll go one step further and say, like we’ve talked about how we need to center and share the stories of the people in the communities that we are serving, and let them tell their own stories. But we also within sort of our job quality workforce, economic development, change, making nonprofit space. We also sometimes like to hear the stories the way we want to hear them. And so we also have to think about, how do we tell how do we help steward the stories that exist for these individuals and tell them in a way that other people besides us need to hear? And so you do have to do some storytelling that’s very specific, if you’re working on policy, policy work or reaching sort of what I call our channel partners, economic development, state organizations, government. But I, I’d like to challenge us to start thinking about, how do we tell stories that the people whose stories they are and their communities want to hear? How do we how do we translate into their language and remove all of our advocacy and policy language and jargon and acronyms from those stories? And I’m thinking specifically about, sort of this you might have here, the silver tsunami, this, this business owners, this crisis of retiring business owners. And like, how many jobs are associated with all of these small business owners that are getting ready to retire or have retired, then we’re losing a lot of those jobs and those opportunities. And so one of the things we’re doing at Good Future is saying, like, how do we tell these stories to this audience in a way that you know, it doesn’t just fluff our own feathers, but actually creates the narrative movement that is going to make something that they want to they want to share. And so we actually have a story right now. And I would invite you all to go to good future dot group and sign up for the film premiere, which is us telling the story, stewarding the story of a business owner here in Tennessee who sold his company to his employees, and it speaks to a narrative also that I think we are trying to acknowledge that business owners themselves are also held captive by a narrow narrative like that when it’s time to retire, there’s only one or two ways out, like you can pass it on to your family if you have the opportunity, or you can sell the business, and they don’t even know that employership is an option. But if we can show a business owner talking about their story that creates the way through this peer recognition. Oh, John, did it? Oh, John’s asking the same questions that I’m asking now, and we’re talking about not not just the outcomes and the benefits we like to talk about in the space, but the emotional journey that an owner goes on, and what other owners out there might be experiencing, and how we can speak to that moment in time to sort of Ignite interest and spread the word.

Matt Helmer  1:05:20

That’s great. Thanks, Rachel. Shuh-Marraka, you know, we’ve, we spent a good chunk of time today, I think, focused on, like, some of the harmful narratives and stories that we’ve seen emerge from from the south over time, right? But obviously, the South has, like, this deep historical, cultural tradition of storytelling, of narratives, and some of the most famous orators of our times have come from the south and pointed us towards things like the civil rights movement and and other positive change that we wouldn’t be where we are without some of Those stories and orators that have come from the south. So I’m curious, when you kind of reflect on the history of the south and kind of where we’re at in this moment, what lessons from that narrative tradition should inform how we think about kind of economic justice and and job quality today?

Shuh-Marraka Johnson  1:06:20

Um, I would say, as I’m sitting here, I thought about another narrative that people kind of put on the South, one thing being that the South is too hard, the South is too resistant. I’ve heard nonprofit leaders say that Mississippi is too hard, Mississippi is too resistant. But I like to think about an article my old supervisor, Angela Dawson, sent me some time ago, and it was about the black washer women in Jackson, Mississippi in 1866. They were the first union that was recorded, first labor union strikes recorded in Mississippi, and if they were able to organize, hold mass meetings and do all of these things one year post emancipation in 1866 again, I’m reiterating that, then what can we do in 2026 like I feel like the sky is not even the limit. I feel like the limit does not exist. I think from the very beginning, workers have, you know, kind of push back, and workers know what they want and workers know what they need. I think it’s just a lesson for me that economic justice in the South has never been about charity. People just want to be people just want to have dignity. They want to know that they can pay for whatever they need to pay for. They want to know that they can afford rent or mortgage. They want to know that they can afford childcare. They want to know that they are able to do the things that they need to do to be successful in this world. I feel the South is not too hard. Well, I know the South is not too hard. It has always been organizing. And the question is whether our modern history, our modern narratives, reflect history. So I think that’s how we should move from now. 

Matt Helmer  1:08:22

Yeah that’s great.  Well, I want to wrap us up here. And you know, when I talk to you all, it always gives me great hope and great energy. But when I look in the South in general, it also gives me great hope and energy. I think, you know, we had a question come in around, kind of the resurgence of union organizing in the South. What we’ve seen in Amazon warehouses and in the auto industry over the past several years, it seems to be, you know, rising up a little bit from the bottom. And I guess my final question that I’d like for you all, maybe just to spend 30 or 45 seconds speaking to is like, what gives you hope in this moment in the south about kind of change around jobs and work and opportunity?

Dom Kelly  1:09:11

I have a lot of hope, actually. Weirdly, it feels weird to say that right now, but I think to kind of what you said, Matt, that their workers are coming together. They’re organizing. I think there is more class solidarity in this moment than there has been,in quite a very long, a long time in class consciousness, more class consciousness. We did a whole report on the impact of surveillance tech on workers, and the disabling impacts of those on workers and warehouses. We’ve been doing a lot of organizing with those workers in the south, and just to see how people are mobilized and aware and politicized is just really incredible. So it’s painful right now. And it’s amazing to see how people are just like, fed up and wanting better and realizing that we deserve better. So that’s really, really giving me hope.

Matt Helmer  1:10:09

 Thanks Dom.  Rachel?

Rachel Merfalen  1:10:16

Yeah, I I also have a lot of hope. I believe that the future is good, and I think it’s interesting, because you mentioned earlier, the South is often like a testing ground for, say, deregulatory policy, but it can also be a testing ground for, like, really transformational models, for how, for how we’re doing things differently. If we’re feeling the effects the worst, then let’s be the ones to drive the solutions for change. And I’m just really, really energized right now by there being a lot of momentum for sort of owner like ownership economy and alternative ownership enterprises at the federal level, also at state levels. The Work Act was just passed and funded, which will help allow states to apply for funding to set up employee ownership enterprises, you know, supports for their residents. And I just, I think it’s really good. There’s a lot of momentum building. And I think that, you know, I’m encouraged to be part of this amazing group of fellows and to see how job quality and better work and opportunity is being driven across all of these different non siloed practices, I think that that connective tissue is being built here.

Matt Helmer  1:11:36

Love that.  Shuh-Marraka?

Shuh-Marraka Johnson  1:11:39

Um, I would say that I feel hopeful. I know people may disagree about policy details, but I feel that people are tired. People are exhausted, and I think that is that is going to be the change we need. We need people to be tired so they can come together and do what needs to be done. But overall, I’m hopeful. At this moment, I’m like, Sam Cook, change is going to come. So that’s, that’s how I am. That’s how I feel.

Matt Helmer  1:12:10

Yeah, Alexis, I’ll give you the last word?

Alexis Tsoukalis  1:12:13

Lucky me. Yeah.  Just to throw another quote out there. I’m a big Les Mis fan. It feels like, you know, French Revolution does seem weirdly prescient right now, but Victor Hugo has this line about, you know, there’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, and historically, we’ve seen, you know, yes, we’ve had scapegoats when there’s been downtime, downturns economically. But also look at what happened during the Great Depression. You know, once, once, things really started to impact a much larger swath of people. And I mean, let’s be real, white people, middle class people, people got mad and angry and started wanting to actually, really do something about it. And I think we’re in a similar moment here, where people are starting to see that, you know, let’s not fight each other. Let’s, let’s, let’s fight the man you know, let’s fight, you know, the powerful and the wealthy and figure out a better way for all of us. So that gives me hope and just the people I work with every day. You know, for years, I wanted to leave Florida because of some of you know, the way that it’s I see it as backwards, but you know, we have our little progressive bastions, and in throughout, you know, like in my city, St., Petersburg, also Orlando and Miami, and just kind of finding my people and seeing what they’re doing and how much, you know, we keep, we keep going, really, just yeah, gives me a lot of hope.

Matt Helmer  1:13:40

So. Yeah. Well, thank you Dom, Rachel, Shuh-Marraka, Alexis, I really enjoyed our time today, and I think all you in the audience can probably see why we selected these people to be to be fellows. We had asked them feel very fortunate to be able to work with them and and learn from them through this fellowship, you’ll get a chance on March 5 to meet a different set of fellows for other fellows in the group in a conversation around worker and community led strategies for a fairer economy. So we hope you will join us for that event. Hopefully the registration will pop up on your screen here shortly. But thank you all for joining us. Thank you to my team, Tony Francis, Nora, Maureen, Maxwell, Finney, Colleen, Sinan. Takes a lot of work to put these events together, and they’re always super on top of it. So we’ll see you next time. Thanks for joining us.