So my first confession is that I wish I had an awesome intro that Liz did, but I didn’t know that you could actually climb in the cabinet before him. So first I want to get a read of the room and who’s here. I’m going to say some song lyrics and if you know the next part then you repeat them back to me and that’s going to help me out with my talk. Cash rules everything around me. Cream get the money. Oh, sweet. Okay. That’s good. Either way I was going to prove my point. So this is really exciting because often when I am speaking to my peers I’m speaking to a different set of peers. I am a member of Dream Defenders which is a grassroots organization like Liz mentioned that was founded here in Florida and often when I’m talking to my peers I’m talking to my comrades that are shutting down police stations, occupying capitals, walking with their hands up in the street and facing and being face to face with police and full riot gear when they’re just speaking up for black lives. But today I have the privilege and honor of speaking to a different set of my peers. My set of peers that are the communicators that are talking about the things that are happening that are strategizing about the social change that needs to happen and I’m really excited about that. Based on my specific placement and what’s going on in the world right now I think I might have some different perspectives in you all on some things so I decided to share some of those things today. I like to start anytime that I get an opportunity to talk by shattering and obliterating any expectations of what I say today might be totally terrible. I also want to absolve myself of the responsibility of speaking on behalf of all black people. Black people in the room know what I’m talking about. Today I’m speaking on behalf of Stephen Parkette. So where am I starting here? I know. Hip hop. I love hip hop. And I could have a full 20 minute talk talking about how hip hop is the most important and powerful global cultural force. But I’m not going to talk too much about that today. What I will tell you is that in my experience that this is true. There was a trip that I took with some of the people that I work with from Dream Defenders to Brazil and I was struggling to, even though I was in Brazil and people there speak Portuguese, I was struggling to remember all the stuff that I learned in Spanish 3 in high school to try to communicate across some sort of barriers to connect with these young people that were in a youth camp that was being coordinated by the MST. And sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. But there’s this one moment that I’ll never forget when there was a, he had to be like a 13 year old boy and he was like, oh, you’re from America. He’s like black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow. The Wiz Khalifa song was really big right then. It was like shocking to me that while that song was still a huge song in the US that it was a huge song to him in that moment. Another time was when I was on a trip to Palestine with some of my family from BYP100, Black Lives Matter, Dream Defenders, et cetera, et cetera. And we went to a refugee camp. The Haisha refugee camp is right outside of Bethlehem. And one of the things that they were doing in the youth centers there was actually teaching young people to rhyme, teaching young people hip hop as a strategy to build up their self-confidence and as a strategy to fight inner resistance. And then there was another sit down that we had with these folks from an organization called Project Chaos. And what they did is they built hip hop studios and refugee camps all across the Middle East to provide outlets for young people to be creative. And it’s just incredibly powerful. Now in the US context, hip hop is also really important. And I’m a member of a generation of a young black man. And young people of color are completely embedded in the hip hop culture, not just because we’re influenced by it, but we also influence it. Hip hop tells the story of our lives in creative ways. Hip hop takes the narratives and the words and the mottoes and the phrases that we use and then repeats them back to us in song. And then all of y’all love it too. It’s not just us. Right? It’s beautiful. It’s amazing. And we’re very much a part of it, but everybody wants to be a part of it. So I’ll get back to hip hop. Let me tell you about Dream Defenders. For folks who don’t know, Dream Defenders is an organization that was founded in 2012 when the state of Florida failed to stand up when a young man named Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman. And Dream Defenders was started when a group of young people came together and facilitated a 40 mile march from Daytona Beach to Sanford, Florida. When they got there, they locked arms around the police station and they said that you can either arrest us or you can arrest George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin. And shortly thereafter, George Zimmerman was arrested. And that started an organization. We’re about four years old right now and we’ve learned a lot of things. One high point in my story was when George Zimmerman was then acquitted in 2013. And it was a crazy moment because we were an organization. We had chapters all throughout the state of Florida. But as a young communications person, I was struggling to get any sort of recognition in the media. I remember how hard I had to fight to get the newspaper or the radio or to get blogs to cover us. And when that happened, when George Zimmerman was acquitted, we took over the Florida Capitol. You might have heard about it. It was epic. It was fucking epic. It was the 31 day, 39 occupation of the Florida Capitol. All day, all night, it was incredible. And my story changed forever. I went from the young guy like really trying to get somebody to cover the Dream Defenders to every single day, my phone, email, any way, Twitter DMs, any way that somebody could reach me was completely blowing up from every major media outlet. Not only in the United States. It was crazy. It was overwhelming. And that just started to take me through the fire to figure out what it looks like to be a communications professional, but not just any communications professional, not just for any nonprofit organization, but for an organization that was fighting in the movement that will change everything. I like to think about this grassroots movement that we’re seeing happen that’s led by black people, that’s led by black and Latino people and people of color. That’s the most important movement that’s happening right now. And I think that if you all think about it critically that you’ll see it the same way. And if you disagree with me, that’s cool. We’ll just disagree. But I think that this is the moment, this is the movement that will change everything because this movement isn’t just to end private prisons. This movement isn’t just to end the war on drugs. This is the movement to upend everything that fucks up everybody. This is the movement to dismantle the master’s house that is built upon capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy. And it’s fueled by young people who have absolutely no choice but to be creative and up in and dismantle everything. And we’ll rest at nothing to do it. And my story is the story of a communicator that has had to go through this process that has been a hell of a fucking struggle. In my experience, I’m behind on my slides, I’m getting caught up in this. In my experience, takeover of Florida was our hashtag when we took over the Capitol. But in my experience, grassroots organizations, it’s really, really hard to get a full budget. Every year you make this budget and you’ve got your line out of them and you’ve got your dream of what it would look like to be fully funded. And then most organizations like Dream Defenders don’t even have communications people. So I’m blessed to have a job or even a role. But the communications line items are always the last things that are fulfilled all the time, all the time. So we are forced to put our bodies on the line and to get all the way up into the action. But then we’re not funding the creative strategies to actually tell the story so that we can make sure that that story gets out there. And I think that it’s a shame. I think that it’s a shame that young people of color are not invested in in the organizations. And I think that it’s a shame that we’re not putting dollars behind the young communicators that you all understand are extremely important to take what’s happening in the streets and in the capitals and in those long and cessate meetings and on way too many damn conference calls and share it with the world. So I want to tell you another story. This is pronounced 6-0 if you ask me. And it really touches me deeply in my heart. I went to Florida A&M University. I studied public relations there. But a lot of what it meant to be a digital strategist working for a nonprofit organization I had to learn by going through the fire. And I was blessed to go to a number of different trainings, but there’s not really a program for the type of work that I do. But one program in specific was called the New Media Boot Camp. And it was held in D.C. There were about 40 people that attended. Of those 40 people, there were 14 black people. And as we were learning these skills, much of the training was centered and geared around electoral politics and communications, which really watered down and made us to think in a very specific frame of mind when it was about communications strategies. But the skills that we were learning and the ways that we were being invested in was completely mind blowing to us. It was just absolutely phenomenal. And there was a moment where all of us looked at each other. I’m going to lick a choosest because you could understand this moment. And it was like, whoa, these white people have fucked up by teaching us this stuff. And it formed a bond because we know what you all will all know, that the grassroots movement that’s happening right now, the movement that will change everything, that the young digital strategists, the young creatives of color are the leaders. These are the people that are really going to change the world. I believe that wholeheartedly, I’m excited to say that confidently in front of all of you. And that was a moment that we formed a bond. We call that network 6-0. Anybody knows code? That’s code for black. And there’s a deep sense of hope there. Now I’m blessed. I’d like to say that I have a certain type of privilege, which I don’t think that white folks in here should repeat as this guy said that he had privilege or whatever. I have a certain type of privilege because I went to a historically black college and now I’m the communications director in an organization that’s mostly people of color. So I have an experience where I have a lot of freedom to be creative and to implement strategies and to lead. But a lot of my other friends that are part of this 6-0 cohort are working at other organizations where every single day, their creativity is absolutely suffocated and strangled by the people that they’re working for. And that has to change if we really want to see change. So I’m about to go a little bit over time, but I have a couple of suggestions and thoughts that I wanted to share with y’all about the future. So here are things that need to happen. Number one, fund grassroots organizing and fund the communications apparatus that is either there or does not exist yet because those funds aren’t there yet. Number two, for many of your organizations, the most melanated people on your teams are also the lowest rank and the lowest paid people on your teams. You need to change that. You need to invest in the people of color on your teams. And also you need to let them lead creatively. You need to trust them. The strategies that they’re going to implement might make you uncomfortable sometimes, but it will help your organizations. And you might be uncomfortable because it might change your organization, but that’s a part of what needs to happen or your organization may cease to exist sometime in the near future. Also folks have a lot of thoughts about social media for social change. The Dream Defenders, last year we took a 70 day social media blackout, which was a hiatus from every social media network, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. We’re not really on LinkedIn, so that was easy. And in that 70 days we had a lot of time to think, so I really want to encourage you all to check out the writings that came out of that. You can find that on the Dream Defenders blog, dreamdefenders.org slash blog. You’ll find a lot of really, really thoughtful writing that came from this social media blackout. And I just want to echo something that Sister Liz said yesterday. You don’t always have to act. You don’t always have to say something. Sometimes you just need to support. And sometimes you just need to get the fuck out of the way. Thanks.