Change Agents: A look inside a new collaborative podcast series (CJS2022 Day 1)

10:00PM May 25, 2022

Speakers:

Joe Amditis

Stefanie Murray

Spanish Interpreter

Attendee

Judith McCray

Podcast Audio

Jesus Montero

Christian Aldana

Alex Torres

Keywords:

journalists

community

alex

people

story

organization

talk

journalism

chicago

season

sources

build

project

question

episode

community members

voices

organizer

relationships

involved

The next conversation that we're having is about a program called change agents in Chicago. And when Judas pitch this session for this year's summit, I knew immediately it was something we wanted to feature because it really showcases how working at a grassroots level with community members and media makers can do something that is really impactful. So I'd like to turn the microphones, the fake microphone over to Judith, and her team to talk about changing.

Thank you, everybody, for coming back from lunch and skipping the cookie, you're on time.

As all of us know, too often conventional media and conventional journalism does a pretty lousy job of covering communities of color, particularly or more people of marginalized communities. And if they do cover this, let very little about the actual acts of empowerment and change that are going on within those communities, or is going in executing and going out without building relationships and without necessarily even knowing who are the right people to talk to because these are sources that are not Google or not have been part of our source material as journalists. And nicely. Now there seems to be more attention towards hyperlocal journalism, engagement, journalism, participatory journalism, solutions, journalism, and collaborative journalism, that at least, the doors into those areas, which is why we're here this evening, this afternoon to talk about some of the best best practices that we've engaged in for change agents, which is a podcast series, two years old, and production workshop, merging, working with communities of color and marginalized communities, caring with emerging journalists predominately of color, to tell the stories of grassroots activism that are so overlooked and are very rarely authentically told from the voices of the community members. And Judith McCray, and my production partner and I'm always sailing down in first row, created the I came up with the idea for do change agents. In 2019, after we had done a podcast series for a nonprofit that was working with people of color in violent, quote unquote, violent, violence prone neighborhoods, we're wondering why we're more and more This voice is not available on media of these particularly young people and their experiences. And we're able to get some funding and put to a lot of luck and connections with a lot of people here, we're able to launch the first season of change agents in 2020. And we are in the middle of our second season now and hope to continue going forward.

But before I get started, I want to introduce some of the change agents producers. Speaking as part of my presentation, about how did we do this? And what are some of the best practices that we think are replicable for anyone who's interested in doing a collaborative media collaborative journalism project? It's not just working with other media organizations, but literally, it's how do you build the relationships? How do you build the trust of the authentic and representation with the journalistic integrity of telling stories that are a little tall? So first is we know who is a producer and a graduate student at DePaul University? Have the story no history no self Chriselle Donna is CO executive producers co Executive Director.

Anyway, she's with Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago, who was paired with me to write about the passage of the TEACH Act in Illinois, which is mandating starting this year, Asian American history being taught in all of Illinois public schools. And then hey, Soos J. Montero is a also a grad student from DePaul University full disclosure I also teach at DePaul, who was in the first season to change agents and his partner, Alex Torres, who is home ill but it's come Welcome. Nice to come in who is an organizer with organized communities against a quotation and we'll talk later about their partnership and telling their story taken away. So I have a few slides if you want to go the first one.

There it is.

You can play the so the series is right now there's two seasons nine episodes in the first season four episodes to date on the second season. But if you click that clip, the short trailer would you get an idea of some of the storytelling that's in the series?

Change agents, I call it my baby sister because Kira was a fireball. That girl is all consuming fire.

Play it louder?

He's

and I could see the markings and some nights. I dream about it.

This community is going to be an up and coming community and we can rebuild our community together.

And I'm meeting phenomenal people right and I'm meeting them here and these phenom

Little narratives and I'm like, wait, these stories are not told change agents.

Business

Joe's part of our act.

So to be brief, what we do with change agents is three things we collaborate, we identify and partner with community based organizations or organizers, this first season within the city of Chicago in terms of who we're serving marginalizing what we're specifically looking for actions that will be taking place on what are changes that are being made in the community on a number of different social justice issues. And then we combined those partnerships in a workshop training emerging journalists of color, who to tell authentic stories of neighborhood transformations, and we weren't doing anything unusual. We were doing good journalism, but it was also like, how do you go find the we often would say, the right grandmother on the porch, to be able to have the right sources or the correct information on the number of perspectives in the community. And so the series itself then focuses on every story is very different. They average in range from 20 to 30 minutes long, but they focus on these mechanisms for social change, and mostly focusing on the individuals who are making it and how that is happening. Next slide, please.

So the four elements that I think is we've kind of reached and I wrap their heads over, like what's working, what's working, it's we're two years old and we're constantly tweaking is that we think is replicable is our building trust, identifying, developing and vetting primary sources, when you don't know who that is? authentic representation with journalistic integrity so that we're not doing press releases or just promotional work? And then how do we build and maintain those trusted sources going forward, as well as not leaving those communities once we've had a realistic imprint?

Next slide.

I want to back up because I mean, I'm from old school of journalism, where there's always like talking about what's objective and subjective. I'm so glad that much of that conversation is going away. But what we're doing is not unique. And actually in the SPJ Society of Professional Journalism Code of Ethics under seek truth and report it, there's two things that often get overlooked. Only tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience. Seek sources with voices we seldom hear. And this has been since the 30s when they created that, and then avoid stereotyping. Journalists examine their ways, the ways their values and experiences may shape their reporting. So another thing we were very intentional in the use of length, as well as

getting away from as many stereotypes that we've come to accept in the media, as well as examining our own biases in the course of the workshop. Going forward, we are better humans, but also better journalists. Next slide, please.

So how we set it up is a little bit different with each season season one, which was hey, Soos, and Alex are representative, we actually paired Hey Soos, as a journalist with Alex as a community organizer, and they went through our 12 week workshop together, working very closely together and determine what's the story, what's the story that hasn't been told, crafting it, edit it and revising it. And we kind of war Alex out a little bit. But we were and that story, which we'll hear later was also about was about long term detentions and the work of organized communities have been still deportation. And a horrifying that isn't how most of us don't know about it. And actually Alex's own story, which she got comfortable with to tell was about his own situation of being imprisoned literally for 18 months, called long term decision. Second season now we've shifted a little bit and paired the journalist with a new organizer contact where they were not as in depth deeply involved, because they had full time but more than full time jobs, but can maintain the contact point for the journalist and we and his partner, Emily, not here, we're able to work with Chris and race at a CJ AJC

to follow and have found the documentation and get leads into the sources of the communities, organizations and individuals that were very important in passing this bill that went through amazingly fast through the Illinois legislature to make this unfunded mandate of something that's implemented right now. So part of our setup though, was creating the relationships or finding and vetting the organizations to find out not just that they were doing good work, but it was work that would be demonstrable, within a short period of time, just like a deadline. All of our journalists had anywhere from different times now from as little as 10 weeks to 12 weeks to 16 weeks to develop and tell a full audio doc

documentaries and 20 to 30 minutes. Next slide, I think. So, one of the first principles was with what we felt very was very important was building trust. So how do we do that? We did our homework, we had a coalition of organizations that we worked through to try and find organizations to introduce ourselves to, you know, I've been living in Chicago over 20 years, Maurice has been in and out of Chicago, we have a lot of connections between us. But we also want to find the right organizations that had the story. When we started doing this full disclosure in 2020, the middle of pandemic, a lot of the organizations are actually doing either service projects and making sure that their constituents have food, or are very rightfully involved in this justice, protest and work going on. So some of our original slave ended up not working for our particular series, because they were doing other than their missions, but serving their constituents, because of the

setup with COVID. And the situation after George Floyd was murdered. So that and then maybe once we made the context of being persistent and honest and full and transit transparent, and what we were doing, and why are we doing it, and why we were not coming into extra pay, but we were building long term relationships, even if that did not mean episode, that particular time period. And we really emphasize and emphasize for ourselves and our journalists, this act of listening, I mean, really being one of being prepared to be vulnerable yourself, and to present yourself fully in the conversation, but to really listen without a presumption of what the person of what's going on in the community or what the issue is and how people are handling it. And then we will always set up or try to clearly identify the expectations of our role, the journalists roles, the organization's roles, as well as as best we could, the time commitment that we're asking everyone to be part of. So as an example of that, one of our first episodes in our first season, we went into Inglewood and worked with this organization called RAID. And if you're from Chicago, I'm sure you're gonna miss the Southside organization. Inglewood on the Southside of Chicago predominately black community. Work with the resident association of greater Inglewood who went as we investigated in our reporter Natalie way, met with them. One of the things that they were most angry about was this horrible perception of Inglewood as being shy RAC and because of the shootings, but there's never any stories about the community and people who live there. They're loving living there, and are working actively to not just beautify the neighborhood, but to make this a safe and healthy place for the residents. So they decided and with Natalie's work decided to call that episode, reframing the narrative because all of their work was about we're changing the narrative and claiming it for our own and not with all this negative, toxic negativity that's directed towards invalid. So if you play that day,

That's why we did our vacant lot. We made some make mainly art, it lifts you up. That's Aisha Butler, co founder of rage. She's also known as Mrs. Inglewood. You can't come in a community and just stick you just got to revitalize, and people hate their communities. So what do you do to make people love their community fall in love with their community, and then you get to rebuild it and rebrand and re revitalization. And that's where we're at right now.

So basically, she said something like that. So for those of you can't hear it, I know on Zoom, you can hear it. But if you can't hear it, this means you can go listen to the entire episode on your pod on the series changes the podcast.com, which I'll have at the end of this. So

second principle was how do we identify and develop as I said earlier, primary sources, most people we were talking to are not Google or are not on semi source list, enemy organization. So that was were in the partnerships and the pairings of just doing good old fashioned journalism are journalists, we do research we call people would check on people would find out who else do I need to talk to who else has a different perspective, who is the same perspective and spent a number of weeks trying to figure out who are the right voices as they understood the context of what the issue was going in and what people were doing about it. And then from there was just kind of became like, what we call the interview industry, you know, he talked to one person and that leads to another person leads to another person kind of builds out, and then background checking as much as possible. And then very keep going back to the community organization. And going back to the members of saying is this the right person? You know, is this is this representative of what we've come to understand is it what i've what I'm understanding is that accurate of always checking back because this less to court, these Padres are journalists also we're not members of those communities. So we're being very, very careful that we're being invited in and that we were becoming trusted because we were asking questions more than we were saying this is what I think the story is about.

Next slide. So that example that is no history, no self, which we am Chris worked on, in which they visit earlier, had a coalition of organizations and then

Nigel's moving to pass this law to bring Asian American history into Illinois public schools. So lean and to hear it, you play the clip.

I am really proud of the work that we did to pass teach. This was a grassroots effort. So when you look at the folks who have been involved, we have educators from K through 12. We have people who sit on local school councils, we have students along with like multigenerational community members. You know, it's not community organizing, if we just like pulled one or two people that we were close to, and we're like, hey, work with us on this, we, community organizers make an effort to be out there in community and making relationships with the people who will be most affected by these things.

You still have to go back and listen to all the

...volume controls...

[INAUDIBLE]

So and then, our third point is how do you then authentically represent someone and community of color with the same journalistic integrity where we're not just caught up and telling only their story. And again, that went back to our active listening, consultation and the feedback loop back and forth to the organizer or the organization. And then really, really, almost painfully, sometimes looking at ourselves, and recognizing where our biases might be, and being comfortable having those conversations with the organization, or at least being aware of it to catch ourselves in the use of our writing, and word choices. And we were not reinforcing those biases. So next clip, and this is examples taken away that was produced by Jesus, and Alex who's out in the ether someplace, but if you play that, go ahead and play the clip.

Getting to know Alex, there are many conversations he often held back with sharing, it was difficult us concern, talking about things would bring back old demons. But throughout our conversations, Alex opened himself up to talking about things that nobody should have witnessed. It was very late at night, because I was often the one person who translated for other people, I was called down this man, he tried to hang himself, he still had the sheath wrapped around his neck and his face was purple. And I could see the markings and some nights. I dream about it.

Thank you. And our last principle, before I introduce our producers, was once we finished a prime episode, or once the journalists phase is how do we continue to maintain these trusted sources, both in terms of relationships, we've built that we liked each other, and we felt very deeply about the work that was being done. But as we build out, trying to continue and grow change agents, building out sources by being trusted going forward. And some of that was just looking, looking for story ideas from a wide array of media sources and killing like next door.

Staying in contact with our CEOs and their organizers, as well as the sources they found, making more connections, deeper connections with a variety of hyperlocal journalists here in Chicago, as well as we're hoping to expand this nationally. One of our stories this season is a story in St. Louis. And then basically overcoming our shyness about knocking on Windows or making phone calls. And thank God for zoom during the pandemic to say hi, I just want to know you think you're doing really good work, that just that kind of old fashioned getting over our own out of our own way to just continuing making connections to finding the stories and finding the organizations is has become a mainstay of how we are building and growing on stories. Next slide. So I'm going to shut up and I want to introduce change agent producers, so they can tell you a little bit more. And we can take any questions you have about how did that really work? First, I want to ask we and Chris just like so how, as you came into this partnership, how did you to build trust? I mean, what was what was the magic formula?

I can start? This is a sorry, this is a very interesting question. I don't know if I've ever told you this, Chris. But from the early stages of our collaboration, Emily, my co producer, and I were just like, This person has a real job. This person is putting this bill together as we speak, and we are bothering them. And we are taking time out of their day to talk to them and ask them to talk about something that they're currently working on. Which means they would be spending more time talking about it instead of working on it. And so if we're going to be you know, taking up this person's time asking them to share their experience, asking them to share their connections and their expertise. We knew that there was pressure to create a story that would accurately but also like, fully and authentically represent the experience of what it was like to pass such a historic and monumental bill, not just in Illinois and throughout the country. And so it was

It was a lot of constant outreach, it was a lot of building relationships. It was a lot of conversations that had nothing to do with the project that we worked on. It was a coincidence also that while we were just discussing the project that we found out that we went to the same high school together just a couple years apart.

We ended up having that interesting connection. What was your perspective? Like?

You know, shout out to journalists everywhere who tried to talk to community organizers, because y'all have incredibly busy schedules and so do we. So every time we are able to connect for like, a length of time to collect that information.

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Persistence

Kiddle.

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...and Emily. And like the foundation of the trust that we built with each other?

What was your process? Or two, you went to more you we and Emily, in terms of vetting the sources? I mean, because because Chris, you gave us a lot of information. A lot had been done a lot of and past everything, like there was a history, right. But then in terms of what was what were the steps in terms of like, just going through all that material. And we and Emily actually had a much shorter timeframe,

which is a different story for another time. But to be able to that and make know what was credible. Yeah.

If any of you have not listened to the episode before, please feel free to check out later. We're really proud of the work that we did. But I will tell you firsthand, there are at least five voices that we interviewed for that project. But I will tell you right now that even if we didn't get any of those sources, Chris could tell that story single handedly. So it wasn't a question of finding the right material, Chris had all of the material in front of us. We had an hour and a half of footage the first time we went into the studio to record for a 30 minute episode. So it was a lot and very eloquently and very passionately. And it was useful material. It was amazing material.

But

we knew that we had to get a bunch of different perspectives in there to showcase just the breadth of folks who were involved in this project. It was like Chris said in the in the clip that you might have listened to. And it was a grassroots effort. So that means you had people from all across the community that were involved in this project. And we needed to capture that we had a high school student who is an Asian American high school student who grew up in, you know, a school that did not have many, many folks from her community. And she felt isolated, she felt estranged, she didn't get to learn anything about her history, until she joined the youth groups that fencing justice put together. And so it was important to get her perspective on that because that was someone who was actively being affected by the work

that they were putting together a bill like that would be putting in place and high schoolers of the future who actually get to experience what it's like to learn that history. So that was really important.

We talked to folks in the Illinois District School Board, because we also wanted to get a sort of institutional perspective on how someone who isn't as passionately involved with the project would see this project and how they planned on implementing it, because it would be on their shoulders to make sure that this would be rolled out well. And so just capturing every step of the process and seeing who's involved in a way that was tangible. And that was important, and trying to get as many of those perspectives together. I think that was the most important priority, because and obviously also relying on your contacts connections. I would have never gotten any of the steering committee members. If Chris hadn't also texted them behind my emails to be like, Hey, you're gonna get an email about this interview project. Look at it and see what you think. You know, it was it was collaborative in every way.

Before I talked about surprises, I'm gonna go to Jesus and Alex. We have Alex, are you there? Yeah. Okay, good. So

Yeah, same question. Jesus and Alex, in terms of, and different than this story a little bit mean, Alex's story. Turns out he was a primary character in the story of looking at long term detentions.

And how did your relationship build trust in terms of Alex where you felt comfortable sharing some very painful things that you really hadn't shared before? And then Jesus, how did you handle that in terms of crafting the story?

I, for me, I think something that primarily happened was, Jesus and I became a great team, because of his oozes.

Willingness to be, like sensitive to the issue, I was dealing with a lot of things at the time that I probably didn't even notice. And he's loses patience. And I think, his love for journalism, it really helped, because he knew exactly what to do. He at no point at all, you know, pressured me, and I think that we did have a time constraint. And even though that was the case, Jesus really, really took the time to take a step back and, you know, just kind of hang out with me and get to know me in my own environment. And just, you know, listen to me, I think we got together a couple of times, before we started actually working on this story, without even talking about the subject, just so that I could have, you know, a little bit of

leeway to feel comfortable talking to him. And I think that for me, went a long, long way. But I think that didn't come. I mean, obviously, he was to say, very,

very nice, gentleman, you know, very, I can think of the right word but compassionate, he's very compassionate.

But he's also very passionate about his craft. And I think that that really took us the extra step.

So

So Jesus, how did you find balance with that, as well as you also included your your voice in the story? So tell tell us a little bit about.

That was very sweet.

Very kind of, I made Alex cook for me, that was the

No, I just before? A little bit louder? People in the back? We're good? Okay. Excellent.

Really, really sweet. And to what you two were briefly mentioning, I think journalists and community members are a little bit insane, right? Both of us in this group, right? We picked a career that it's not a traditional nine to five, right? You clock in clock out. But both these groups, you know, sometimes works follows you home, right? Sometimes you have to wake up mad extra early, or stay up late to get what you need to get done. And then you can work on your real, you know, full time project, whatever.

So, working with Alex, I had to keep that in mind, because

of the trauma that Alex went through. And his experience in ice incarceration for so many months.

Like Alex kind of alluded to it many times, we're behind deadlines, for a lot of checkpoints in the project. But my investment with Alex was to make sure he was comfortable enough with me to share this story. Right, as a young journalist, and keep in mind during this time was 2020, right, the summer of unrest here in Chicago, but also elsewhere in the country, the result of the killing of George Floyd. So at that time, you will see these journaling institutions just really screwed up community reported right, diving into these groups, getting the sound by leaving.

That's what I didn't want to happen in this project. So with Alex making that investment, taking that time with him speaking with him,

just asking him about his likes and dislikes, where you still work. And it wasn't until a first few meetings in where Alex would, he previously mentioned to me before he was a cook

is a cook and so made them cook me a meal.

And it was a delicious one better than today's lunch.

So it's poised to be intentional.

And as for the journalism ethics, I think it's you know, especially these past few years on how these systems are, you know, rooted in the foundation of J schools and also what you're supposed to do according to like, rules that you know, older, wider newsroom leaders directors created.

I think that's that's a that's a silly thing to kind of live by.

So for this project, specifically is like well, this is it's that old say like, well, you treat others how you want to be treated, but also more importantly, like Alex's experience as an ice detainee. Somebody that spent time incarceration is a cautionary tale for a lot of different people, different communities, especially here in Chicago, right?

It's always it's always a fear. So I always put myself in Alex's place when if I was out with answers my brother would balance was my cousin. I think we all may have them

not know somebody personally, but also try to envision ourselves where they were. So like, how would you like to be treated as, as a community member or as a journalist coming in? Like, how would you like a journalist to come in? And like you mentioned, like they came, you know, ready, they did their homework. With Alex, it was investing in emotionally, the person. Thank you. And next slide. So

I want to leave room for questions. But I wanted to

leave in terms of one of these, we're also very cognizant of as restructuring, and the program, the workshop, and our community and our relationships is that we weren't just doing this to be a cool podcast series, that is intentional that this has stories that are impacting communities and individuals of color. But that also went back there. So for instance, with no history, no. So there, the work that has been done in Chicago to get the T tag pass has actually triggered other states to now have laws on the books are passed, to have Asian American history taught. And at the end of each episode production, once it's posted, we work with the community organization to have a community engagement event, or what we call because it started doing COVID And everything's on Zoom, these virtual town halls, we had one with a XC day, as an a number of educators and people coming in from all over the country wanting not just to hear the podcast episode, which is excellent, you should listen to us, but also the information that they can take back into their classrooms or into schools. When we completed taken away,

that was our very first virtual town hall in February 2020 2020. Right, it was a 2014. It was a long years long COVID 2120 21. On the day I

explained to the name.

She told me, she had coming out of the shadows, and was the day that organized communities against deportations around the country post that day to encourage people who have do not have what's considered proper documentation to speak up. And so we hosted it with a Seuss and and Alex on the panel, another young man who had been had still been deported to Mexico, not Mexico, somewhere in South America, but to be able to talk about the cruelty and humanity and humanity of what ice is doing. To make that a more of a nationally known and we had I think, okay, had like 1500, we had I think 50 people on the call, just excuse me, Facebook Live. And then they distributed through their social media networks are over 1500 people. So it's as important to us and telling the story gets out not just to the canoes involved, but to the rest of whomever that doesn't know about it. They just don't just sit as a podcast episode.

So I have five minutes for questions.

You mentioned at the beginning that one of the tenants was to continue relationships in the communities where you could demonstrate power, how is that be maintained to go from doing hard work and sweat and time. I mean, that's where the resources don't match up with our intention. So it's more slow going at it actually, when we started this out, we'll talk to foundations who are one of our country's Chicago Community Trust as a,

as a

change-makers fund that our initial idea was just to work with people who can pet it in terms of we're doing solid grassroots activism, what we found when I was 2020, George Floyd had been murdered, there was a lot of unrest, they were involved in that as well as COVID. Relief, but also they were like us, you know, one or two people. So didn't have the bandwidth at the time to work with us. So then we kind of started spreading. So it has been slow growing, because it still is basically a recent i with a little bit of grant money and a lot of pokes fun energy and work weekends, that that we're very intentional about. That's where we're intentional about creating and maintaining that work so that it does grow beyond just our own efforts.

If I can actually add on to that question, right? If you are able to be like, when he Sue's and build a really good relationship with one community or right, we all know each other, like my organization works with OCAD and so many other orgs then if y'all ever approached someone else in community, like we could then vouch for you and say, like, yeah, they're actually really great to work with. So investing in that one relationship, and that episode opens you up to so many other organizations in the community.

Yes, yeah. I was just curious if you had any evidence or can talk about how it's been received within the community.

Um, yeah, you go first, I'll tell you what, we've gotten back and...

I mean, our community members were, I think, really thrilled to have us pull back the curtain. You know, there were a lot of community members

involved in the passage of the TEACH Act. But then for the folks who have just watched it unfold to actually hear about all the work that was done to pass it, I think was really affirming for people.

One question from the audience virtually chipped at the back. So the question is, what kind of compensation of any was there for CEOs and journalists involved in producing the podcasts?

So we were intentional. We had a stipend or honorarium that we gave to each of the CEOs who were involved, or the activists, as well as the journalists also, were given a stipend, not a huge one. But enough, they've made it more than $20 an hour for their time.

So no, we didn't ask anybody to just give up time for free as well as for the virtual events that community engagement, there was additional an additional stipend couldn't be organization, and to be a journalist producers.

In a my experience of one of the benefits that the organization's nonprofits had, speaking with them is amplifying their stories. Right. So Alex was one of the experiences and nice attention to also got to speak to two other individuals, a member of OCAT, whose brother was actually deported, and then needed the service of the nonprofit.

He has now since been released, and is now back here in the country, after bits, being jailed and spent two years in Mexico away from his family. But highlighting these issues in these communities, there's something that they they, you know, they they want, they want more more eyes, they want more ears, they want to be able to collaborate and also to in the first season, the group was able to learn a little bit about podcast editing, how do you audio engineering, so then then themselves in return for their organization can do that, for their content for their for their work for their social media. So that was a that was a benefit for them to also learn from us as well.

And we intentionally also have an incubator for the journalists where they met either journalists who were mainstream or other independent who had been in careers longer.

Led job contacts to have the season one journalists are now ones working full time at WBEZ. And other ones working for a national disparate national online magazine, news or operation. So we were also trying on both ends of one's

writing stories that hadn't been shared and communities of color on grassroots activism, but also giving our emerging journalists those color, an opportunity to have steps inroads into the journalism field without it to being just another internship or just another occasion, but it's a step towards actually having full time employment, more roads into other independent and hyperlocal work and or just a successful freelance.

Yes, I guess that's the last question I can take.

We had probably

wanted to say something with Alex wanna? Thanks, Alex.

Yeah, I just really quickly wanted to be bagging the backing on what do they just say just said, I think for us as an organization. And I imagine for many other organizations, this project was important because it gave us the opportunity to communicate what we needed to communicate with our own voice. It was like, from a community to the community in with like,

there was no there was no filter in between it was what we wanted to say, to whom we wanted to say. And I think that meant a lot for us as a, as a as an organization and as a community.

What a perfect note to end on. Thank you all so much.