thank you for coming tonight it's great to be here i've been looking forward to this event for a while now and it's really cool to be here with you thank you for skipping not only the mueller report but you know the n c a a basketball tournament and whatever else is going on in this amazing city this evening to be here at university bookstore and to cure some for me about projects and search i wanted to begin by asking some really big questions that i hope that rumble around in your mind as i say a few things about the book and read you some from the book tonight these are big questions that i don't think there are actually answers two percent say but their perspectives on them and so i want to begin by asking you to think about what does it mean to have a free press i mean we talk a lot in the united states about the free press it's something that is in in the constitution in the st amendment along with the rights to free speech to a simply and to petition the government the importance of a free press has been affirmed in numerous supreme court decisions but we don't often talk about what it actually means to have a free press and working with projects insert has challenged me almost on a daily basis to think about that and also to ask another really big question that i don't think there's a simple definitive answer to we have a free press in the united states i think at the surface level the answer to that question may appear simple but it's actually i think a deep complex question that raises all kinds of interesting points for discussion if we care to dive into it so with that in mind what i wanted to do is start by suggesting to you one take on what happens if we don't have a journalist but in many ways as one of the founders of what we know today as media studies in one thousand and twenty he wrote if we lack a steady supply of trustworthy and relevant news we can expect incompetence and aimless news helps us helps identify verify it investigates it analyzes it explains and news professional it's journalists editors and the like all in gauge and employee news judgment in the ideal terms in service of the public good but we live in an era now that is considerably different from previous serious i think the idea of fake news is not simply a description these days but it's actually kind of rhetorical weapon we live in an era where internet giants like face book and google proposed to cure rate our news for us in order to protect us from him from from stories that might be misleading or problematic in some way and as a result the nonprofit organization that i work for projects censored is having a bit of what they say what we call like having a bit of a moment right now right we are hearing a lot when we have public events that oh what you're doing this is more important than ever right and that's flattering but it's also a little sobering after forty three years you might wish that the kind of work that the project was established to do w longer be necessary so let me tell you a little bit about the project's mission in general terms and then dive into some of the contents of this year's books in search two thousand and nineteen as a nonprofit are two primary missions are to provide critical media literacy education and i'll say a bit in a moment about how we do that and the other and the other core component of our mission is to encourage the public to be aware of and to provide meaningful support for independent investigative journalism so the st critical media literacy  education as nancy mentioned in her gracious introduction i for the last six years i've coordinated the project's validated independent news program and this program which was a stablished in two thousand and ten is a component of the project winks literally hundreds of college and university students and professors at several dozen colleges and universities across the country in a collective effort to track to identify and to invent important news stories that are not being covered in the corporate press this is in some ways an expansion and  classes at sonoma state to investigate these under reported important but under reported stories so they validated independent news program that i helped coordinate basically takes that program that started at sonoma state and has expanded it to be  national and even continental in scale we we have several campuses in canada that also have students and faculty participating and contributing stories so when i say vetting the stories what we're doing this is the validated part of validated independent news we're looking at the stories the stories are being reviewed for their quality for their trustworthiness their factual accuracy their importance their significance and then we're also looking to see to what extent does this story provide perspective that is not available in the corporate media either these stories have been excluded entirely from coverage in the corporate media or they've been covered in what they think of as a partial way or partial could mean either incomplete or in a in a biased slanted way so each year students participating in the validated independent news program i may slip into the st chapter of this book represents the collective efforts of three hundred and fifty one students fifteen faculty members from thirteen different college and university campuses so there are a few people's names on the cover of this book but as soon as you start opening up the pages this book is the product of multiple voices and multiple perspectives so these stories once a student has a dent to fight a story determined that the story is of high quality made an initial assessment that the story has not been well covered in the corporate press it becomes a validated independent news story and we post those stories on our website or validated independent new straits and one of the things that i'm most excited about keep that keeps me hopeful and engaged with the project is the role that steve the fundamental role that students play let me read you a little bit about that from the introduction to chapter one of this year's book in our experience students are hungry to contribute to something meaningful that goes beyond the confines of their classrooms as they come to develop expertise and passion for their story topics publishing their findings online and in the projects your book gives them a public voice that they might not otherwise have they become informed and compelling advocates for issues that the general public may not adequately understand that students direct development of their critical thinking and media literacy skills contributes to a collective effort to better inform the public about the importance of a truly free press and the existence of high quality alternatives to the corporate versions of the news that otherwise set a narrow agenda for what and who counts as important and newsworthy in the united states so from the start the project has been founded on this idea that students college students with no not necessarily any prior experience in journalism or background are capable of doing this work with the right mentoring with helpful you know committed mentoring and  so then once these stories are posted on the website they'll be several one hundred and where we're right now nancy was mentioning the arrival of the mueller report for me next week the vast majority of candidates stories for the next censored year book will be arriving at projects inside offices from campuses all over the country and then i'll be working busy spring be with a team of people to begin processing those for what happens next which is in the spring we vote and there are two rounds of voting to determine the stories that eventually make it to the top twenty five dollars the st round of voting involves all the students and faculty from the campuses that have contributed stories that year and they vote to reduce the ballot from about three hundred dollars or so stories down to approximately thirty and that and then that and that reduced you know thirty superstar all star stories goes to the project international panel of judges these are a steamed people with expertise in in news journalism and media everything from independent editors and journalists news editors and journalists to professors of of media and communications one of our judges is a former f c c commissioner and the judges then undertake a nd round of voting to determine the top twenty five and to rank those stories so by the time a story makes it into the book as one of the year's top twenty five it's undergone no fewer than five distinct rounds of review and vetting to assure that the story is factually reliable you know socially and politically significant and it has not appeared in a meaningful way in in the corporate press so with that as background let me tell you a little bit about what's in this year's top twenty five list our number one story this year is about global decline in the rule of law this is a story that was originally published in the guardian based on a report by the world justice project which every two years undertakes a mammoth investigation of the state of the rule of law around the country they examined one hundred and thirteen countries they interview i'm not sure i'll get these figures exactly right you can look at the story in the book and tell me if i botched them they interviewed people from one hundred and ten households and three thousand professors lawyers authors countries all around the world and they determined this year that across the board something like  percent seventy one of the one hundred and thirteen dollars countries in the world that they've studied have witnessed fundamental declines in fundamental rights in the last two years and by fundamental rights they're talking about things like the right to privacy the right to due process if you're accused of a crime the right of labor to organize and so forth the right to speech so that's our number one story this year it's amazing to me  i don't mean to sound too much like this but it's amazing to me that that report of that significance and with that kind of remarkable depth and validity that was literally to our knowledge not covered anywhere in the corporate press except for one outlet the name of which i'm not going to recall off the top of my head that basically reproduced the guardian's story so had the guardian not covered it would have been nowhere at all in the corporate press  a couple more our number five story people sometimes asked censorship in the united states no that's something that happens elsewhere our number five story is an old fashioned censorship story the the washington post has banned its employees from using their social media accounts to criticize sponsors of the post so this policy this story was broken by the washingtonian which is an independent washington d c based outlet it was later reported by the hill which also is a d c focused and also important coverage from mint press news out of the twin cities the ban so that the washingtonian got the text of the guidance to employees on this it not only told them they couldn't criticize but encouraged employees to snitch on one another if they thought that someone else was using their social media account that way and two more stories quickly the number nine story is one that's kind of personally i shouldn't do that that's personally  significant to me because it was vetted by one of my former students eric robledo who was a student of mine when i taught at citrus community college in southern california and eric's now at u c davis having transferred successfully  d the story he vetted for us this year is about how indigenous communities around the world are helping to win legal rights from nature and the other reason i like this story a lot is that some of the reporting for this story was originally reported by us magazine how many people are you familiar with yes magazine that's yes with an exclamation mark based right here in out of bainbridge island but nationally and i would argue globally important as a leader in a movement known informally as solutions journalism the idea that a lot of our news today is negative in character and that makes it very unappealing to many people it's depressing right it's discouraging solutions journalism as yes magazine so often exemplifies is reminding us that there are good news stories that aren't simply good news like the firefighters came and rescued the cat who was trapped up the tree good news stories about communities organizing to address real problems that they face one more from this year's top twenty five and this story is getting a little attention this week  explain why in a minute the f b i has been racially profiling so called black identity extremists this story was originally broken by the journal foreign policy in october of tw seventeen it has not been well covered whatsoever in the corporate press there despite the fact that civil liberties groups like the american civil liberties union have argued that the term the very term black identity extremists is is is deeply misleading and it's unclear who who might possibly count as such a and into the so the a c l u announced i believe yesterday or the day before that they're suing the f b i to get documents released that will that will expose this program it's a i think it's especially appalling as many commentators have noticed at a time when  many there's a great deal of violence being done by people who are identified as white supremacists but the f b i continuing along has a long and not flattering history it continues to target people of color and immigrants and activists communities so why aren't these stories covered if we were in one of my introduction to sociology courses at this point a student who's been paying attention would surely ask andy how on earth are these stories not getting wider attention here's a little bit more from the st chapter of the book there is no single simple answer to the question of why the corporate media have failed to cover the stories that comprise each year's list of stories but one important cause of censorship in journalism can be found in the news media's corporate ties indeed it's important to bear in mind that although many people refer to the nation's major newspapers t v networks and cable news stations as the mainstream media it's more accurate to identify those news organizations as corporate media as edward herman and noam chomsky argued in their classic work manufacturing consent news produced by corporate outlets is filtered by the imperative to produce profits in the form of advertising revenues news that does not serve a runs contrary to these corporate interests is either not covered at all or is only covered in a partial way so we have under reported stories that you might think well this is a real downer right a lot of these stories are negative and a lot of these stories right where saying the corporate news media are failing in their responsibilities to inform us as the public but i like to also emphasize there's an upside to this which is and this goes back to one of the core missions of the project to encourage support for independent media without independent journalists and independent news outlets these stories would be unknown to us and that's i think so that's a crucial reason to support them and the work they do so when carl jensen the founder of the project when called johnson the founder of the project st began in gauging his students in this task of tracking these under reported stories the response from people like you know from people at the new york times and other news outlets was as that's not fair there are only so many column inches in the paper there's only so much time in the broadcast we can't cover everything so call himself a former journalist an editor began having his students look closely at what was in the corporate news media and what he found where what they found were many stories that were sensational in nature but not informative for us as citizens and community members carl also a former advertising guy coined the term junk food news to refer to these stories here originated that term and extending that food metaphor he referred to them as twinkies for the brain so here's an example from this year's book from the chapter on junk food news in this year's book that  was written by professor susan rockman and students of hers at the college of member in northern california and i should add i should have said a moment ago that tradition that projects inside has been we don't just point out the junk food news stories which might be just amplifying them further we contrast the junk food news stories with other arguably more important stories that were going on at the same time here's an example from sensor two thousand and nineteen makeup guru and social media icon kylie jenner gave birth to a daughter stormy webster on february st two thousand and eighteen in september of the year before rumors had begun to spread about genders pregnancy but nothing was ever confirmed for months fans have been chomping at the bit for any sign that the younger sister of the car dash engine or family was actually pregnant and if she was they demanded to know who was the father the corporate press to attempted to out jenner's pregnancy for six months it was featured among the trending headlines on almost every social media site our obsession with the cardassian baby also helped divert attention from a startling new report on black infant mortality rates with today's technological innovations one would only assume high infant mortality in the us was a thing of the past but the research suggests otherwise according to recent data from the u s centers for disease control and prevention for every one thousand live births four five white infants die in the st year of life for black babies that number is eleven seven this begs the question what could be causing this racially disproportionate infant mortality rate so it could be things like smoking drinking poverty overall health education strikingly even black women with advanced degrees in high paying prestige is proof professions are more likely to lose infants than there than white women who haven't graduated from high school though minimally covered in the corporate press this infant mortality disparity has been under investigation since the ninety's the collective findings conclude that the main culprit of the black infant mortality rate is quite simply put the stress of being a black woman in the united states the lives of black women and men are filled with greater harassment microaggression sphere and danger than the lives of their white counterparts this increases the likelihood of health risk during pregnancy and childbirth for the sake of time of the skip a whole section on the the nature of all those increased risks black mothers have a greater chance of early onset labor more likely to be on a bill to carry their children to full term and in this particular section of the junk food news chapter conclude while little stories entry into the world was anticipated with bated breath we as a society misted in a finding in addressing an entirely treatable yet ongoing health crisis one that highlights why movements why like black lives matter and showing up for racial justice are so desperately needed these groups call attention to the racial disparity of infant mortality while the corporate fair press continue to look collect the issue in favor of celebrity baby talk so i think looking at the time no i'm going to jump ahead and tell you a little bit about so this is fairly discouraging stuff right not the most uplifting you might be wishing at this point that you had stay home and watched a basketball game on t v or maybe you could duck out and find a place for a stiff drink we try to balance as i mentioned earlier the sort of critical dimension of what we do it projects and said with something that is more affirmative that it's important i think to remind people that there are significant signs of hope and one way we do that every year in the book is with a chapter that we call media democracy in action and the idea of media democracy  action is that it highlights groups organizations unissued of that embody the notion of media democracy the idea of news and information that serves the public good this chapters was put together by steve mason who teaches journalism and media studies at north central college outside of chicago and he put together an amazing lineup of equal ordinated an amazing group of people to write this year i'll tell you about just three of three of the entries in this chapter this year the st is who is a professor at rutgers but he's better known to most people as the creator and host of the award winning peabody award winning podcast uncivil which is which is all about exploding sort of myths and misconceptions about the civil war and its legacy its living legacy in the united states another example from this year's media democracy  is poets reading the news they build themselves as journalism in reverse and before you kind of snicker and think oh that's a cute gimmick you know the idea of a  have processed challenging things like loss and conflict and celebrated community so if you go to read poets reading the news online you'll find poems about contemporary issues like family  detentions and gun violence that are immediately topical to the news of the day but that are framing it in a very different way than you're used to if you're tuning in to one of the news networks or cable stations one more for media democracy in action on koch your campus student driven and initiative to hold accountable people like charles and david missions and visions that they have for the united states so there are reasons to be hopeful their organizations like you know and koch your campus there are there's programming like the uncivil podcast there are platforms like poets reading the news that provide us an alternative to the model of news that most of us are aware of i wanted to end tonight by reading you a somewhat longer passage from the introduction to this year's book that's all about critical thinking last october was the th anniversary of probably the most famous radio welles and his radio team mates thought the story even though the story dealt with the mz of colonization invade foreign invasion ecological disaster they thought that  of martians invading the earth would be too boring if they presented it just as a drama so what they did is they presented it as if it was an actual invasion happening the c b s broadcast sounded like the performance of a band that was interrupted by these we people knew well and folks knew these were actors but they were pretending to be journalists government officials responding to the crisis of the martian invasion the th anniversary didn't get much attention last year i was a little disappointed but mickey huff the project's director and i thought it was such a interesting vent with such contemporary relevance that we decided to make the imagery is featured on the cover and we and we tried to write a little bit about the history of that broadcast in the introduction to this year's book  we live today not in a period where we face any kind of martian invasion but as we know in the introduction at a time when distrust in formerly respected sources of factual information is paralleled by a glut of propaganda that threatens to suffocate us much like the black smoke employed to deadly effect by the invading martians in wells's science fiction classic and so the last bit i want to rea the broadcast became legendary for allegedly leading to widespread panic throughout the united states for example a two thousand and thirteen p b s documentary about the renowned production began quote never before had a radio broadcast provoke such outrage or such chaos the p b s narrative reflected decades of popular understanding of the broadcasts enduring significance as an example of the mass media's mighty influence and its audience's vulnerability to broadcast induced hysteria but the popular interpretation of the broadcast is at odds with the facts as to scholars jefferson cooley and michael sokolow have documented in a series of articles the real story behind the war of the worlds is a bit more complex they wrote in two thousand and thirteen just as the size of wales as audience has been exaggerated so to have reports of the resulting hysteria examining the lesser known history of the broadcast sokol and poli identif two key factors that explained the enduring and often repeated tall tales about the broadcasts impacts first the broadcast took place at a time when radio a newly developing medium had begun to compete successfully with print for audience attention and advertising revenues newspaper editors promoted stories of radio causing widespread panic and consequent public chaos in an effort to undermine trust in radio as a medium and to encourage government regulation of the newspaper industry sensationalize the panic to prove to advertisers and regulators that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted this might sound familiar today if you transpose the media second and influential study of the broadcast hadley cantrell's the invasion from mars a study in the psychology of panic from one thousand nine hundred and forty reported that several one million american families all over the country gathered around their radios listening to reports of an invasion from mars causing quote a panic of national proportions as one of the earliest attempts to investigate the effects of mass media on audiences hadle study legitimize the myth of the night of terror as perhaps nothing else could despite cantrell's academic credentials his analysis of the broadcast impact willfully ignored evidence and promoted little more than a m about it professional conflicts and financial motives led cantrill to overstate the broadcasts actual effects on the public the book's most dramatic claims about the widespread panic were nowhere supported by the data broadcast rights are going to team of four other researchers all of whom were female interviewed one hundred and thirty five listeners many of whom had allegedly been frightened by the broadcast the interviews showed that although the listeners found the broadcast exciting few actually believed it was real and many engaged in what hurts referred to as checking up to determine the martian invasion was a fiction based on her analysis of these interviews in a november and eight memo hertzog framed the study's central question why did some listeners check up on the validity of the broadcast while others did not cantrill resisted making analysis of checking up central to the manuscript intel of colleague and rival paul hazaras felled insisted on it beyond its hyperbole the most significant finding of cantrell's invasion from mars study namely that audience members used their critical the ability in attempting to confirm the truth of the extraordinary broadcast originated with the research and insights of hertzog and good dad in h g wells as eight hundred and ninety eight novel humans were no match for the martian superior intelligence and technology instead and this is quoting from h g wells original text after all men's devices had failed the invading martians were stopped and humanity was saved by  bacteria against which their systems were unprepared in one thousand nine hundred and thirty eight despite both radios developing influence as a new mass medium and orson welles's canny sense of drama critical ability employed by wary audience members who successfully checked up on the broadcasts veracity saved the day as it were preventing the eruption of widespread panic as a very human device critical ability the sense of when and how to engage in checking up as hertzog called it remains our best defense against an invasion of fake news thanks so much for coming and listening and i think now we have enough time left that we can we can have some conversation and questions and whatever you want to talk about thank you does yeah i mean i think balance is of course one of the fundamental ways that journalists attempt to fulfill the ideal of objectivity so but in my field of sociology and in particular the sociology of news people scholars are more and more beginning to question to what extent balance actually allows journalists to fulfill the ideal of objectivity one of the arguments and there's a lot of evidence to support this is that norms of balance can often create false equivalency between positions right it can make it seem and so  the most dramatic episode of this instance of this that i know is the new york times a few years ago issued it this is very rare they issued a st of front page correction acknowledging that their coverage of climate change had been misleading because they had a huge two norm of balance in talking about the different perspectives on climate change that that by giving in effect balanced coverage to figures and groups that about the extent to which humans were responsible for climate change than there actually is yeah so i mean i think you know obviously i think when you tune in to democracy now with amy goodman most everyone probably knows that they are getting not simply a liberal progressive even left perspective on the news to my way of thinking this is my personal opinion that's an important counter balance because so much of the corporate news that we receive is is that in so far as it reflects and and and and topical ises corporate interests it reflects a very different kind of understanding of what's important in the world we should be just wrap up at the last i have one more thing i wanted to do and then maybe we should wrap yeah it's about independent bookstores really and independent media right so if you go down this is not true of every bookstore such an event like this might be in but if you go downstairs you will find on the shelves here  able to get the play produced and published he wrote what he called in up the author's apology which has as far as i know one of the best descriptions of censorship anywhere in it so this is rights all censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions all progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions and executed by supplanting existing institutions consequently the st condition of progress is the removal of censorship now it would be a longer discussion for us to have tonight about the extent to which there is censorship in the us and what forms it takes  that's a discussion i think certainly worth thinking about and having with people you know but i mention it here tonight as we close because that's the kind of book you'll find in an independent bookstore that you won't find in a big corporate chain right and that may not count as censorship per se but that is the kind of reduction we see in a corporate model of this spectrum of perspectives the diversity of perspectives that independent media whether we're talking about plays and bookstores or news and information that that's why we need to champion independent media in all its forms those books for those who make a contribution of two hundred and fifty dollars or more thank you for making a contribution and if you do make it in get the book if you have some time crack it open and see what you think  because i wrote this book basically because i believe that activism activism begins by noticing things that we have ignored or taken for granted and that at some given point they just don't seem right as asking ourselves like rosa parks did why am i sitting in the back of the bus when i could be sitting in front and thoughts like that spark movements  so how do we spark the inquisitive mind i think it begins by questioning the status quo is it serving our needs our family's needs our neighbors needs and our fellow citizens needs  this point let me define citizen because as you may know has become a hot time lately citizen as anyone who lives in this country is contributing to our democratic society it's not it's not just a piece of paper and it's not running few bureaucratic red tape and having a big bank account should not allow someone to cut to the front of the line to enter this country as a citizen and certainly not based on the color of one's skin or the religion they practice or where they have a religion or a quote from all people the conservative republican senator lindsey gra something what being an american was all about after president had finished railing and heel oval office in front of a bunch of republican leaders sharing what seemed to be white nationalist thoughts who'd have thought senator graham spoke up he looked directly at present trump and told him bluntly america is an idea it's not a race said the republic grew to its present strength under the protection of certain political rights among men the right of free speech the right of free press and free worship then he went on to say as our nation has grown as our economy has expanded and these political rights have proved in adequate to assure us equ we have come to a clear realization of the fact that the true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence he was adding a  freedom from want and recognizing that freedom i believe is at the heart of this nation's current political struggles it goes beyond debating how many beds we could afford to provide for homeless people it goes beyond expressing sympathy for the most vulnerable amongst us it comes down to americans having to decide what kind of freedoms are most important to us our national wealth as measured by the gross domestic domestic product transferred from the new class working families to the top one percent of the population that trend cannot sustain a functioning and responsible democratic government now this is not a new debate we've had it actually for over one hundred years in this country but i think it's now reaching a crescendo and we're seeing it playing out in the supreme court and in our court system in general and the reason we are we are now relying on the court system is that because the other two branches of government under both political parties have already been lax and have allowed the highest concentration of wealth this nation has ever seen now and seeking a path forward i'm not necessarily talking about socialism or capitalism and not talking about class warfare but i am talking about what a democratic society needs so that people do not give up hope and our system of government so that citizens do not seek solace in cynicism or embrace the fossa curity in believing the demagogues accusations and who is responsible for their problems and unfortunately we can see that happening today the st with the decline of voter turnout which hopefully will be reversed this fall and usually those voters those not noting of those who have the most to lose from being unrepresented in government and the nd trend is this explosion in conspiracy theories that blame the weak and those have the least political power and we see them coming off the internet almost every morning unfortunately too often echoed by the white house the effects of a shrinking middle class on the national stage are now well documented i won't go through this insisting the general picture is people now are working longer hours multiple jobs and often both having poor health has declined faster than any other of the developed democracies in this country in the world and when they're too old to find work or be able to work they are left with a minuscule saving set aside for retirement for instance the median family the median savings for all us families is just under five one thousand dollars think about that n according to a th survey right now even two years ago thirty five percent of all adults have only several one hundred dollars in their savings account and they are better off then the thirty four percent who have zero in their savings account closer to home in seattle we are witnessing the decline of middle class or the flight from seattle and the growth of the poverty class it can happen to anyone who is barely able to pay for the basic necessities and according to the king county all home website the leading cause of someone becoming homeless is losing their job now in the hallway we have a great exhibit of a number of myth busters that describe the population of people who are homeless but i consider all of those wrapped up in the granite that homelessness as someone else's problem for too many people it only becomes their problem when they find tent cities and homeless campsites and neighborhoods they had never experienced them before and i travel around this a number of cities and seattle is not the only pussies witnessing this horrendous condition we see poverty expanding because a dominant national political philosophy says the freedom to protect marketplace investments is more legitimate than protecting the economic welfare of our citizens if you read the literature on what a good portion hopefully i mean hope not hopefully unfortunately the majority of the members of the supreme court believe in that's where their thoughts are the response to this mindset should not be simply spending more money to provide services or even affordable housing those are good things they need to happen we need to do that but if we just go down that path of only providing services and not altering the laws you end up arguing about the burden of taxes and the management or mismanagement of government which is exactly what the objections that were raised for opposing the head tax on the largest seattle businesses in order to provide affordable housing even those less than two percent of all seattle businesses would have contributed anything to that tax that is why i believe we need to go beyond just treating the damaging effects of this dominant theory faucet we must change the expectations that our fellow citizens have for our nation so that we have a society that we want to live in and can afford to live in a society that provides the economics a good security that f d r referred to and the people in this room and thousands of others beyond this hall have a show and that we can change our laws to create not a perfect society but one that is certainly more just and a more equitable one seattle has had victories and they have been adopted in states in both blue and red states they have taken root because citizens realize that they have more in common with protecting the public welfare than protecting the power in the wealth of the few now c n n has begun that effort by adjusting the structure of our of our economy so that people will gain some stability in their lives so they have an opportunity to reach the american dream of economic independence and not not be dependent on government now let's identify a few significant steps that she has taken toward that goal in just two areas improving working conditions and increasing rental security both made seattle more affordable for those who are in the middle the bottom half of family incomes they are not final solutions but they are real and they are long lasting changes with regards to working conditions we see we have set a national standard by gradually moving to a fifteen dollars minimum wage for all employees in seattle we listened to all sides but we did not reach he retreat from this objective and as a result thousands of lower paid part time workers can now better manage their financial burdens we also adopted one of the most progressive paid sick leave ordinances in the nation which allows sick employees to stay home or stay home and take care of the sick children still receive pay and not be under the threat of losing their job in the area of rental security we passed the rental registration and special ordinance that basically allowed for extensive public involvement in writing it and inspectors now will make sure that all register properties comply with minimum housing and safety standards this will preserve the quality of life for renters and all neighborhoods throughout the city and afterwards we passed a tenant protection law to guarantee that rental units are fit for habitation before a landlord increases rents according to a two thousand and nine american survey approximate ten percent of our rentals have moderate to severe physical problems and to assure that both these sets of improvements have been made for the labor side we establish the office of labor standards without for you have no change and for the side of rental security we're stablished our renters commission and it's important to listen to retrofit concerns because what we have seen in seattle through ris now the rd largest homeless population in the u s according to zillow and that by absolute number if you were to look at a per capita we have beef by far and away the highest passing laws show we are not helpless we do not have to wait for congress to act here in seattle and other cities there is an urban movement brought to provide for freedom f more people from sliding into a state of homelessness but what does it take persistent work innovative solutions and above all a commitment to be engaged in our democracy but isn't that why we're all here this morning to be citizen activists to hear that bell of freedom ring for all of