Welcome to Gainesville. Hope you’ve been enjoying the sights and the sounds and the scenes and I love our city. It’s a big little city. It’s little because if you know a few people through them you can probably know the entire Gainesville and it’s big because we have a huge music scene. We’re multicultural. We have amazing museums and more importantly I think we’re a sending city because we have people that grow up here come from all over the world experience the University of Florida, Santa Fe College, the tech industry, innovative jobs and they take those gems of experience and they’re able to go and give those away to people in places all over. I came here in 1994, went to the University of Florida, got my MBA, became an ordained pastor, got involved in non-profits. My friend Mike wanted to start a non-profit and create one to benefit musicians because he got paid two bucks after playing a gig one time and I said well let’s create the city we want to live in and benefit as many people as we can. So we started working with local musicians, local artists, local causes, local venues which led to us making events at different places including the bull which then I eventually bought which is a pub downtown. I went from doing not-for-profit work to not making profit work and so I still need lots of advice, got lots of advice at the beginning and one of those pieces was from my friend David. He has a very successful software company in town. He said treat this like a kid. I have two kids. I feel like I have some knowing how of parenting so I adopted this kid, the bull that was already pretty great and I began to see what does it mean for this kid to behave. Well that’s the big learning curve of oh gosh licenses, fees, health codes, fire codes. You can’t light candles unless you’re considered a sacred space and I leaned in to listen because we don’t want to just tell our kids what to do. We want to hear their feedback like what do you want to do and so maybe my job is to love, nurture and care for this space and when I leaned in I heard things. I heard hey Jacob this comedy night that you’re doing it actually triggers some people that have had some unsafe spaces in their life and the punch lines. It’s like oh okay we’ll change that up a little bit. Hey Jacob the open mic. I love it. I know there’s only six people here but we’re creating singer songwriters and poets and encouraging musicians. It’s now our biggest night. Jacob I know money is really tight but if you take care of the nations and the people that have been pushed to the margins I’ll have them take care of you. And in a couple weeks I was booking three different parties for Gainesville’s oaking now in population. 50 people filling the bar. On the busy days when I’d forget to pack a lunch Eugene who experiences homelessness was coming in to feeding me multiple times. And the value of being a safe space became a verdict when I was asked to be the LGBTQ plus allies meetup space, safe space cafe Gainesville. And I can see this played out many times on the stage where these artists poets and storytellers are practicing vulnerability, transparency and authenticity and it marinates the walls of this space when people come in as guests they participate in the same thing with each other and with strangers with their bartender. And I see a space where there’s differences that happen. Plumber Mike who we all know voted for Trump. He’s a real person. Is giving advice to the new hipster couple that’s come to town and helping to give them repair advice on their new but dilapidated home. It’s a place where these differences are made to build bridges and not build barriers. As a community pastor the bridge is the name that we just gave our new church property which we bought the old boys and girls club that was shut down a couple years ago and we’re restoring it back to be a community center in a sacred space. And I find myself in another opportunity to create a space as long as I keep a posture of listening and learning. A couple years ago I was on the racial disparities committee think tank where I had some great ideas but an African American woman on our team would remind me Jacob that’s a good idea but it won’t work and she would let me know about her neighbors and educated me on history and mindset. And I learned the present situation is that 50% of our third graders weren’t graduating in some of these zip codes which is what the state uses to determine how many jail cells should be available when they become adults and that the unemployment up to 40% of the people that did have jobs would go to sometimes two hours on RTS bus system before they could get a job that wouldn’t pay for their child care. And I learned that this game of creating space is a long game. It’s a collaborative game. It’s in a game of equality where we come together and maybe creating a community space and a sacred space is the same thing. Maybe I should light a candle at the bull. So maybe we all, may you all, find yourselves experiencing these spaces and as much as it’s been given to you may you create such spaces so that we would all find ourselves creating equally and living in the cities that we all want to be in. Thank you.