their future i realize that when we put this past you getting the woman economic security to develop the workforce of twenty first century and this in in the right place i i thought back to our my mom this morning when i went to we first came to this country back back in days and pipeline bill was sent up on off it has nothing to do with gas pipeline but acronym for a private investment public education labor industry experience and i'm going to introduce an amendment this coming week to make sure that you know minority and racial diversity i included in that bill and have a strong preference so i so i encourage you to come and see me too if you you know have interest in this bill you know we need to put everybody at the table so thank you very much for the time and enjoy the rest of the day and it's not jess so we need to address this issue and we need to address it now so today we have a panel of women women of color who will share with you their aspirations and their  on economic security in the workforce so i thank you all for being here and have a great day question for you in the case you don't have it in front of you the first question is why she introduced myself i am here night the president of the black women's business alliance we'll start with the first question which station good morning my name is camilla me and i am a community organizer admaston in norwich is a religious organization and community outreach program in north minneapolis as well as i am a long time entrepreneur business owner hi good morning everyone my name is boat and i'm senior director at asian americans pacific islanders and philanthropy and the business owner with about ten employees in minneapolis that provides good morning my name is denise butler currently the project coordinator for african career education resource inc and i just joined my brother in a small business staffing agency as well good morning my name is alice and i were in a nonprofit organization that develops leadership for students little bit about your community and the strengths of the women in your community and we can start with like i said i'm undocumented and i happen to also be a latina from mexico city i was born in now i'm thirty four and i have a daughter of my own and we had a hard time just finding regular food we had to drive all the way from minneapolis minneapolis duluth america here in western paul and so actually i happened to be i happened to reality now but i also happen to be undocumented and we've seen a lot of changes within the past fifteen years in terms of what it means to be one in minnesota especially because when i was in high school these conversations were not allowed to happen we were told to not talk about it to not disclose our status and we would see now that there is not just a now so wor million dollars to the g d p of minnesota for the people that will qualify for this executive order so that's an expansion of the freedom action which will allow students to get or people to get a work permit if they were brought to minnesota before age sixteen and also will allow parents of u s citizen kids to get three year work permit as well in the meantime we hope that immigration reform keeps moving in terms of being in and also having a second language we've seen also the transformation from being put in a special educational scene my first native language has a deficit now we eighties you know looking poor great opportunity my dad actually came here to go to school and my mom being a little happier than she has she followed him over as well and they've been here ever since you know moved to the suburbs myself a homeowner you know and i had a house so i find that it's not just about fitting in it's not just about the status quo because at the end of the day we are not all given the same opportunity you know being a woman  being being being a woman being an african american woman being a liberian woman and you know it has a lot of backs as far as you know i went to school i got the same degree as many of my other peers but i found myself yet able to make that income brackets actually poor to take care of my family taking care of me brothers and sisters you know different various generations because from the culture i come from that's what you do even to this november having to take care of our elderly father  you know so there's been a lot of weight put on my house with not being able to exercise the amount of money that i'm supposed to be making given the money education experience that i have so i mean i really champion this opportunity to be here to share some of these  information and then also for something like this to be a subject you know having women get equal opportunity to be able to make him a money amount of money that we made in the library community or say we  leased twenty two million dollars to this minnesota trying to me that's just from the liberian community we own homes but a lot of us i don't know the demographics help them pinpoint a lot of us are still just d d i d d d for deportation because you know they're not getting the opportunity to open establish real businesses they're doing either home we're doing it out of this building so a lot of the money that we actually could actually generated as economy is being undocumented because we're not giving the right opportunit to become a business owner and the women in my community are the head of the household they are taking the brunt of the responsibility of taking care of the home can propel is here and in liberia as well so those are some of the time and emmett's that are going about so i think as everyone has said before i wish we just had a lot more time because we're all asked here to speak about kind of whole collective communities that you know i always try to put out the disclaimer that even though i am a part of so certainly in the political construct of asian americans american community is very diverse right in the state of minnesota we are almost three hundred thousand strong but represent over forty two ethnic communities coming from over fifty countries so i'm going to i'm not trying to represent all of that i want to give you a demographic profile just so you have a sense of  the vast diversity of the community that has now been lumped together as a way for us to more easily count people in this country but then also what that does is that aggregate population  gets used to determine how the community is served and i think that's what we're all talking about in terms of where some of the challenges are for the community  minnesota there is an american population has increased fifty three three percent and this is a much higher rate than the national percent the national increase and it's the fastest growing ratio community in the state  unlike the east or west coast because sometimes when we think about asian americans we tend to think about the east or west coast and we don't really think about the midwest but the midwest is one of the fastest growing american populations our demographic here is unique because of the southeast asian populations sixty percent of the asian american population here are southeast asians and that's very different than other demographic profiles across the country sixty percent are foreign born and seventy two percent are citizens and of those who are able to vote asian americans vote the highest rate even more than the general population and this is surprising because sometimes people think well you know asian americans are they they don't they don't participate but we dug more deeply and i think we've kind of learned for ourselves that that's not true right so what what gets shared about our communities is not always the narrative that i think we want to tell i think the strengths and the asian american community are that really women value their heritage and often are the keepers of their histories and cultures this is true for many communities but it's certainly true for the asian american community we are resilient community that has endured generations of sanction racial prejudice in this country right so in particular for asian women anything from the chinese exclusion act to you know the japanese interment to now even the way that our immigration system works and bringing in highly educated workers which mostly are men and women are left behind and then also minnesota happens to be one of the most creative places in the country for asian american artist and a lot of that is being led by asian in americans have strong familiar connections and they're the most likely to live a multigenerational housing so almost thirty percent live and at least two generations or more so central minnesota so the difference between what they've all experienced you know as as a cultural group and what we as african americans have experienced is we've been here a little bit longer than everybody else we have been gone through the rains pretty much and the different levels that relation to our community that has happened time and time and time again  has kind of put us in a in a basket you ation but also in that our community is resilient right so we also hold many of these are two things that you will hear throughout throughout of this morning we we're by sheer number right i was right every ethnic group that's up here so the numbers that we show is is it's a little bit more of a  disturbing numbers because of our number it are numbers are so big and we've been here for so long actually we've gone through what they've gone through a couple of times over so when you look at the situation here in minnesota even on a national level when you look at the situation here in minnesota we still are here you know so the african american family is still vibrant even with all of our state of affairs currently where we're big our in the arts in dance in music and in the church in other religious organizations that's historically been our backbone and that's what's actually kept us going is our spirituality so  with that you know i want to deeper you know statistics when we get to a couple of the questions but the black woman african american woman here in minnesota she's pretty much been the backbone of keeping after americans in this state you know so it's not totally falling off you know our i have mothers our grandmothers are now raising our children and we have family members raising cousins and nieces and  he was as our own children and it's just been you know that is the plight of our family it's very fragmented and and so on and so forth so but on top of that we're resilient so with that being said we have a lot we have lots of give we been giving a lot when it comes to education in education in business  in economics the numbers are staggering however we're just on the rise so we do have something look forward to and all of this has been just really uplifting to be a part of to even know that we actually are on that kind of curve now we can start to look up and say ok here's come you know the fresh air is coming in if you will so culture here in american community in minnesota it still is a shoulders we carry the target on our backs as well as as they do their statistics of the of the system i have us the key concepts to any aspirations and goals in in the hopes and dreams that we have have to be supported with you know protective mechanisms especially in africa american community you know we have so  many different issues that impact us we need a reduction in the risk impact you know we need a reduction in the negative chain reactions to things that happen that have been happening for a long time you know we want our children to go to school and graduate high school you know really get high school you know secondary education is a different conversation and when we were looking at us you know going out to go to work we want livable wage jobs those are dreams and hopes those should be you know in a right that we should be able to have we should have to hope and dream for that we should be able to get that and you know also establishment maintenance surface in in south africa see that is huge in our community kind of been knocked down so many times it's like dragging dragging a dead dog basically is is a lot it really is a lot are young women are young women when i was looking at the statistics it was it was hurting me to look at it they are the highest number of the rising number of young women in the juvenile system right it is peaking with the men like that's crazy i could i can believe that so although as as  in american women are nationally on a national level are the most educated are the highest paid in this is only in our community this is not you know across the board are the  breadwinners you know eighty eighty seven percent of african american families lation why are breadwinners and i think even here in minnesota it is close to like seventy nine percent so those those basic know i mean i agree with the sentiment that many women in our community want want well all women want and that's really to be able to achieve educationally economically and you know to find happiness right and so impart of die just because they want to achieve their full potential to contribute to their families and communities and the question is you know i we doing all that we can to build on women's assets but to also make sure that the resources that are meant to serve our women do so and in our community i think that for so many because we have an overwhelming  proportion of our community that came as refugees and for many of those populations for them this is the first time that they have access to free education so you know if you are the first to go to college in your family is that a recognition of that but when you look at the aggregate data for asian americans you think that everybody is doing well educationally and there's not a lot of support for  supporting those who might be accessing education for the first time in their lives and i think that that data skews that often that's really about how we choose to bring people to this country and minnesota in the last decade has really benefit because of the industries that we have here bringing in highly educated workers and a lot of those workers are coming from india born then you start to see that actually for asian americans those who well this is the first decade that we have more in particular in the southeast asian community children who were born in this country community if we have the same aspirations for educational economic and other kinds of success in the community and because women are so instrumental to the community's wellbeing i think we have to pay attention to that also the recognition that for many communities being here in america has really afforded them the opportunity to address the kinds of gender challenges that we have in our communities and that that means that  women want to be able to make choices for themselves and not fear being abused or all kinds of gender based violence but also i think that they're in a unique position in our community really understanding that we live in a system that unfortunately has over criminalized men of color so the challenge for us is how do you support women to make the choices that they need to make for themselves so that prices in the legal system and then lastly i think that women in our community are creative and have many solutions and unfortunately have not always been tapped to be a part of the creation of those solutions so you know i would just continue to  let me first and foremost begin by saying you know we're very cognizant of the fact that so malas right years ago when they did they would not have been able to rise to the to the levels they have if it wasn't how children to succeed in school they want them to get well paying jobs when they graduate everyone wants to have the american dream a home with a picket fence you know so it's just unfortunate that we work in a system right now  and when i wake up and i think about the school system i have things to worry about maybe most a lot of maybe mainstream minnesotans don't mean concerned so how do we overcome this challenge out when you look at the community for instance i'm a researcher you know and before when i was invited to this forum i did a little look and see what are some of the statistics out there greatest fear that my eleven year old daughter generation how generation high when they become the working force in minnesota the system that is in place right now and the  being amongst us like we knowing what needs to be done and what buttons to touch to turn around the tide and move the tide of the right direction what we're actually seeing is the resources that are available to make these changes we do know we know what are some of the elements that are critical to put it this solutions that will change the tide and i can give you many many examples in some of this implicit bias that is going on in institutions and systems that i feel good willed and i have the greatest intention in mind but unfortunately giving the outcomes that we're looking for so we have these are the possibilities within that realm but i well first off thank you very much for the opportunity to come and speak to you i think what you're hearing is critically important to the state of mind of sudden that is when the vitally matter and i think it needs to be stated clearly  but you in the audience and the others i could not be here but are very passionate around these respective issues so thank you very much and i look forward to working with you a you last month small business owner i've been harboring dreams of moving to the next level moving away from startup and really growing this business so i went to a banker last month and  sitting down at the bank or i was very confident in my drive and walk into this office and i said down and you know i've worked just couple years in my technical skills i have a business that i was able to convert from fifty thousand dollars loan to over six hundred thousand an building up somebody else's property that we had to do the heating ventilation electrical plumbing in the right to bring it up to state levels and that's one lesson that i have learned and to move to the next level that's not what something i wanted to do in the next business endeavors that i had so  place and the bank i you know i'm thinking ok i have significantly increased my income i have rocked on my credit i have rocked in my technical skills and my competency i have proven track of that i can do it so well you know it's going through my check marks and i'm thinking last year and my true employer his god is my witness i have given them a hundred percent of their play six months off from their work and  mean resonated with me with my family's business as well as my business and that is kind of push me to back embark upon my business currently which is helping businesses good business  structure their business correctly right and build business credit back how the capitalist system is actually set up for us to for everyone to actually to use it correctly so that is what i do i train small businesses how to structure their businesses and i have the story a hundred times a hundred times over not just from you know small businesses even medium size businesses that haven't you said one the solution to reviving the african american community was stabilizing the stabilization of the black families with on quality rollitt on the set again quality early childhood education our children are our future and that is not just a sound bite that is truly what we look forward to in when we set out you know outside of not once we once we marry once once we start to have children so that is very very encouraging to know that that is already in play the other thing is like other sort of from library or the she was saying do ability to train economics sufficien having actually making money by just one right and being supporting women owned businesses is key is just on a simple no that is so key across the whole line you