we are very lucky to have with us live in the studio this morning jeffrey ferment jeffrey toobin is a technology consultant writer and activist and he is was co author of the i want to three campaign the initiative that would have ended corporate personhood here in seattle and he is here to talk about microsoft's nevada tax dodge jeff thank you very much for coming and spending time with us this morning thanks frank good to be here so start out tell us how did you  involved and when did you discover this tax dodge well i worked at microsoft for about eight years up until one thousand nine hundred nine and towards the end of my stay there i was just having a conversation with someone who happened to mention that they had been sent to mind and years later when i was i pitched this story to the seattle weekly i said let's examine what kind of citizen is microsoft in the community and they were really into the story and so i started looking into what was that one of the things that i looked into  as well as the reno operation all right and what did you find out basically they set up in reno to account for between thirty and fifty percent of their revenue worldwide so that they could avoid this tax called the royalty tax in washington state and the royalty taxes kind of a very specific tax that's part of the business an occupation tax in washington state it's it's a strange tax in the way it was written was kind of strange but it's a tax and that was the law that you had to pay tax on licensing revenue in the state of washington to your worldwide customers  o and how much tax are we talking about well so when microsoft started this it was relatively small for them about forty million dollars a year but that was nine hundred ninety seven and an initially the royalty tax rate was one point five percent of all of your worldwide licensing revenue but the software industry which is largely microsoft in washington state lobbied the legislature and got a preferential rate so the rate is actually was actually point four eight four percent after one thousand nine hundred eight and then around that time microsoft's business started to completely grow and boom and so the amount of savings grew to between eighty and one hundred million dollars a year annually of taxes that weren't being paid to the state of washington and then this added up over time because this went on for about thirteen years and then a to include the interest and the penalties that the department of revenue generally assesses against people who don't pay their taxes so essentially we were looking at one point five billion dollars in savings that microsoft did not pay in taxes to the state of washington and if you actually calculate these figures at the one point five percent tax rate before microsoft lobbied to reduce the tax rate we're talking about four point three seven billion dollars in tax savings for microsoft so originally they set up there they go their situation in the and then when did the change in the royalty rate kick actually it's interesting they seem to there's not the state couldn't provide a lot of details about who did the lobbying when back then because as awhile ago but they they seem to have changed the tax rate but the company went ahead and open the office in nevada anyway all right so it's a good lesson that even when you give companies what they want to encourage them to like stay in a region they'll still sometimes do whatever they want to it we don't often when we give tax breaks to corporations we don't always get anything in return so any info on who led the lobbying effort to change the the respect i know that was kind of fuzzy the department of revenue couldn't really provide me much information on that it was just sort of generally the software industry lobbied the legislature i was successful to cut the tax rate by about two thirds in the legislature doesn't have the records on that honor it's not an issue that i looked into very deeply because you know we know that the lobbying operation in washington state is today that it's largely microsoft makes up a big part of it and who funded it so technically this isn't illegal and because it was incorporate law well so the questions of legality really are complicated and so this the state of washington made in administrative decision not to push to microsoft collecting these taxes from  microsoft and the state of washington in the department of revenue made administrative decisions that they didn't think that they could legally win a lawsuit against microsoft so therefore they wouldn't pursue it so but there actually are a lot of legal issues that one could raise if they wanted to contest this so one of the some of the common themes and this gets a little bit wonky and technical but next this is an issue in taxation where you  have the money being made from the licensing business and microsoft all that technology all that software is built here in redmond the company has more than forty thousand employees here ninety five physical sites no one's going to argue that the that without washington state's microsoft operation that that revenue that licensing revenue could even exist another thing is that a lot of states use something called the step doctrine that if a company makes an artificial step just to avoid taxes that the courts will invalidate that accounting step and force the corporation to pay the taxes and it's called step doctrine and if you look at largely what the nevada operation started to be at the beginning and was about for the longest time it's really a step in order so that microsoft can pretend with a slight of hand that those licensing revenues are based in nevada where there is no tax compared to as opposed to that they're actually generated in washington where we have this point for a four percent tax and so the step doctrine is one legal issue another issue is when we talk about royalties and software licenses it's a category of the law called intangible property because like the software licensing or digital goods are not physically or not like airplanes like with boeing they're not retail boxes of software like the windows box you buy we're talking about the  hundreds of thousands of copies of windows and office that get sold big corporations and just duplicated electronically and there is law like there's an appeals court decision in louisiana where the court said that one word comes to taxing intangible property that's not physical that the states can look at where the company is based and where its operations are based and again nexus and use that to assert their taxing authority so when we talk about one of the problems with this whole tax dodges is microsoft's influence in olympia and over the administrative arm of the state government and so these choices that are being made not to collect taxes on microsoft are questionable and  when the law was changed in two thousand and ten which we'll get into governor gregoire appointed now congresswoman susan del bene to actually run the department of revenue now susan i actually used to work with her at microsoft she's a great person but she isn't an ex executive she'd been at the company fifteen years and now she's running the tax department and her husband kurt who i also used to work for is actually i think he's now the president of the microsoft office division and so there's a lot of questionable influence  relationships here that lead to the administrative decisions not to enforce the royalty tax law i believe they just have this week in the seattle times a op ed talking about how this year's budget is being written by two x microsoft employees and it was being paraded as and this is something good yeah i mean i think sharon chan's editorial in the seattle times she was also saying that she also express some concerns about how microsoft run some of its businesses and maybe it's not a great idea but yet she was not really critical and she she left out some huge facts so she talked about ross hunter a seventeen x microsoft executive who's now running the budgeting process and olympia and she happened to just ignore and leave out a big part of the history of ross's role in the nevada tax operation so ross used to work at microsoft and then in two thousand and ten he led changes to the law he was chair of the finance committee of the washington state legislature and he pushed through a bill for the budget that basically gave microsoft formal amnesty on their billion and a half dollar tax dodge interest and penalties and then also he changed the definition of the royalty tax so where the royalty tax for the longest time was a tax on worldwide sales cut russ represent one hundred bill changed it so that now the royalty tax is very diminished it's you only pay taxes on sales to washington state customers and so this is obviously a huge victory for microsoft even though they've even though they continue this practice in nevada and even though the state wasn't enforcing the tax on them they were getting a lot of flack partly through me bringing up these issues publicly and so by changing the law they're not actually dodging the tax anymore because the tax has been changed and that's kind of how the way things work in olympia right now is microsoft has a lot of influence there and gets what it wa how did ross hunter justify cutting such significant funds for potential funds for the washington state budget yeah it's pretty awful as i was raising these issues before that law changed in two thousand and ten hunter sent around some talking points to a few some of the arguments and facts that i was bringing to the surface and he said that changing this law might actually encourage companies to bring their operations back from nevada and he also had i forget i don't know where this quote was but he was telling people that it would raise revenue for the state that that we would actually earn more royalty revenue from corporations in washington if we change the law and actually a couple weeks ago i checked with the state two years later now are we making more money or less money with the new law and we're making less actually that may change over time but what but one hundred never really intended for this law to lead to microsoft moving its nevada operations back or for it to lead to substantially more revenue this law was changed to give microsoft cover and a formal blessing for their nevada operation but even following the logic on just the changing the tax from all products which obviously is a large pool to just washingtonians i mean it's like a ninety nine and a half percent tax cut for microsoft by doing that mean it's been just taxing his his constituents at that point oh yes well yeah and this gets kind o also wonky in technical and as i said the beginning the royalty tax being a tax on worldwide sales was always a little bit weird it's an unusual tax and what they were doing in apportioning the royalty tax it's a common practice that's being done across the country where states are focusing on taxing sales within their region so there is some logic to it but  there are several dozen categories of the business and occupation tax and the primary focus of the bill was to apportion the services revenue so that they could tax fees that banks were charging customers in washington state which was kind of a big cash cow and ross decided that the royalty tax needed to be apportioned at this time it was the only other category of be you know that was just thrown into the bill and that's why it was so suspicious and really it was it was designed to be a gift for microsoft so was there since you were involved back when they were making these changes in two thousand and ten what was the the media response what was the legislators i mean obviously they passed it but was there any serious discussion you know this is a big concern and i think  maybe we could just before and let's talk about education in washington state so you know bill gates and the gates foundation are big supporters of education here and the gates foundation i believe has a number of initiatives to support education in washington state steve balmer has said that it's really important for washington to invest more in education that our taxpayers need to do more to fund education brad smith the man behind running the nevada tax operation for microsoft he's their executive vice president and general counsel he is always talking about the importance of education and graduating more technology graduates in washington and i agree that this is a hugely important issue so right now where we are with the state budget is that governor inslee and the legislature are trying to find one point two to one point four billion dollars to put back into the education budget and this is as a result of i mean things have gotten so bad in washington that the courts have ordered the legislature to restore funding to education and so since two thousand and eight the state has cut four billion dollars from education from k through twelve and higher and it's been a travesty and you know and you mentioned sharon chan's article she said microsoft everybody gets really happy when they create a new billion dollar business and that's really the goal there is to create a new billion dollar business as well when you take billion dollars away from any institution you're destroying it you're devastating it and so that's what we've done in washington we've cut four billion dollars from from our k through twelve and university education very few institutions can survive  that and so when we talk about quality of education how can we even start that conversation like whether we're doing a good job when we take four billion dollars away from that system and so i mentioned earlier that if not for microsoft's lobbying and nevada tax dodging the company would have paid four point three seven billion dollars more in taxes so i'm not saying that it is the cause of our four billion in education cuts but there is a big coincidence that these numbers are in the same ballpark and so when bomber gates and smith talk about the importance of education on the other hand they are using these sophisticated corporate mechanisms to deprive the state of revenue that would otherwise go to the schools and you during your your investigation on the two thousand and four article at the seattle weekly you had spoken actually with brad his name is leaving me yeah you want to play the clip yeah let's play that real quick it's a three minute clip and we can hear directly from the man himself so this is your phone interview this is a segment from your phone interview with brad smith in two thousand for yeah i was doing the article citizen microsoft for seattle weekly and and just to be clear we had permission to record the interview with him  well the you know we the principal focus of discussion inside the company and with people in state government here is kind to send both a focus on and revenue generation for the state of washington and job creation in the state of washington ok and you know obviously the company did make a decision i'm not remembering exactly how many years ago you know to put microsoft licensing incorporated in the router you know here in part to recognize the lower tax rate that was in place there and there have been times when people in state government know the number myself i'm sure we can we can find it but you know here the fence i guess i would say is probably not that surprising when you consider the amount of our revenue that is generated in the state of washington you know we're a global company one of the interesting her defining characteristics of microsoft is that over half of our revenue is generated outside the united states so for the cause of washington here to require that worldwide royalty revenues are reported it is taxable under the piano so that's not saying that you guys aren't you know african law i'm not saying that i'm just saying that under the rules in washington all the worldwide royalty revenue would be taxable here yes of art also saying that the law is actually structured in such a way so as to all right so that was the segment from your interview with brad smith in two thousand  four so what is what else has come out of the two thousand and ten legislative changes well you asked me kind of what was the conversation stan and i honestly i'm concerned about the washington state legislature my conversations with  representatives then gave me a sense that not very many of them understood what was happening what was behind the change to the royalty tax what was behind the what was is called a field audit clause that was giving amnesty to microsoft on its back taxes and i started to get the sense that people don't really want to take on microsoft in the legislature which isn't surprising but they didn't realize that was happening in our democratically controlled legislature that was in two thousand and ten and  one of the big issues like is i wrote an article a couple weeks ago about how the department of revenue has been using yelp to search for night clubs that are offering patrons the opportunity to dance and then assessing back taxes against  you know communities like community night clubs like the sentry ballroom who is assessed with i think a two hundred fifty thousand dollar tax bill that they've been trying to pay off and having to hold fundraisers to pay that off last week the legislature was arguing to raise funding they should they extend the beer tax and then that seemed too controversial so there they were looking at extending taxes on janitorial services and at that that same week microsoft recorded record revenue of twenty billion dollars half of that probably from software licensing this concerns me the washington state legislature later seems to be complicit they don't want to take on microsoft with this issue they don't want to look at why we cut four billion from education how microsoft saved four point three seven billion in taxes and there they seem to be looking for nickel and dime solutions to what is a much bigger problem and i think it's damning and it concerns me and you could hear brad smith in his interview he was saying this really isn't a big deal to the state budget this really isn't a lot of money and he's just lying and if microsoft wants to prove that anything that i've said here is wrong they can just publicly release how much money they paid in royalty taxes from the years one thousand nine hundred seven to two thousand and ten and the company has refused to do so another interesting point that you brought up in the documents that you have online at your web site which is microsoft tax dodge dot com and we've put some links up today for listeners is that microsoft is used in kind of courts in the past year yes so you know when it's convenient for them they want to use the legal system to they've actually sued microsoft nevada has used king county courts to sue customers they haven't paid their bills and in one case that i found  they recovered eight million dollars and if you ask people in the courts here the courts have been defunded by the budget cuts of a number last number of years and they're still there struggling some would say that they're having critical funding issues so not only has microsoft acted by setting up nevada to deprive the state of revenues that would support the courts but then microsoft burdens the courts by allowing microsoft nevada to start lawsuits here and it's just more hypocrisy from microsoft  thousand have there been any further developments besides that we have again is the times noted to microsoft is designing our new budget well you know we had folks like steve balmer actively supporting the charter schools in that amendment so part of what's happening here is that when a company like microsoft is allowed to save billions of dollars on taxes that never make it to the general fund and then there's billionaires turn around and take  their savings and apply them to the political process or to fund their own projects were sent to the letting them privatized the tax system and choose where money from from the tax system gets spent and that's just not the way things are supposed to work you know i don't get to choose where my taxes get spent and so if one thing that we've seen is we've seen some of these monies that microsoft executive so save gone in it gets put into the political process to get what they want and  i'd rather see those monies go to the general fund and let the general fund get you know the decisions about the general fund get made by the legislature like it's supposed to in the constitution you have been following this  two thousand and four how has the rest of the corporate media done on covering this issue so on microsoft tax dodge dot com we have a link to all the media coverage and across the internet cross the country even some international press we've gotten great coverage for this issue even recently the local media has really been hesitant to cover and i'm really appreciative today of you giving me time to really explain to people about what's been going because i think these issues are just they're critical to the context of our repetitive billion dollar budget deficit and education deficit so for people to really understand why we're struggling to fund education they have to understand microsoft's role in this  so i went and met with executive editor of the seattle times david boardman and five of his journalists in two thousand and ten spent about two hours with them talking with them about microsoft's tax dodge and david was really eager to cover this and said that they would do so and none of that ever materialized as far as i know the seattle times has given one sentence of inc in the last ten years to this issue and that just is flabbergasting to me i've how our readers are going to understand what's happening in olympia and why we don't have money if they don't have some awareness of microsoft's tax actions or just two minutes left so if you were put in charge of washington state's budget what would you do what would you change well so actually it's the the revenue structure that's broken in washington the majority of states have income taxes and sales taxes and sales taxes and income taxes and washington state is heavily reliant on the sales taxes on the business and occupation taxes so i think to improve our budgeting system on an ongoing basis we have to have some kind of income tax like the one that was proposed on people with incomes over two hundred thousand dollars sales tax in washington state has the most regressive tax in the in the country meaning that poor people pay a higher percentage of their revenue than than wealthy people higher percentage of their income than wealthy people and the reason is because we pay almost ten percent sales tax here in seattle and the state portion of that i think is about five or six percent so to fix the budgeting system you have to fix the revenue collection system the other thing i would say is that you have to crack down on tax avoiders and so you know ross hunter made some comments about we have to crack down on these post box these mailbox business these people box businesses in nevada that are real operations well microsoft has four or five hundred people and a very large building in reno but that's essentially a post box to a company that has earned six hundred fifty billion dollars in the last fifteen years when you're looking at large companies tax avoidance tax evasion it looks different than a mom and pop operation that opens up a post box so i do the washing and she has to be serious about looking at how these sophisticated operations have deprived the state of revenue that we need to fund schools well with that we're pretty much out of time how can people find out more about this issue they can check out microsoft tax dodge dot com and there are a bunch of links up there today all right well with that we are out of time i want to thank you very much for coming in peace activists trainee program so start out tell us about the western washington fellowship of reconciliation so western washington fellowship of reconciliation is part of what is a national and an international organization f o r is the oldest peace and justice organization in the country were about to hit our centennial next year so it's founded at the beginning of world war one in europe and moved to the united states a year later western washington has been a chapter and a regional organizing factor for over fifty years where this summer having our fifty fifth annual summer conference at sea back to life or through seventh which is washington and oregon and some folks from d c who get together every summer to do workshops and have keynote speakers and f o r addresses  range of issues around war and peace and justice issues over the years different chapters have been involved in a number of different things death penalty racial justice iraq war afghanistan you name it we've been there and do the local chapters pretty much decided to decide what they're going to focus on yes they do which is one of the reasons it's both a blessing and a curse in some ways as a director an organizer because lots of people have different passions in the different chapters and they work on what they want to work on because the energy comes from the local folks and the grassroots and we endeavor to sort of connect things together main sort of underlying foundation in principle is active nonviolence and to engage in basically looking at the connections between different issues two years when occupy took off i talked liked to talk to people about how there was a commonality between f o r and occupy because we like to look at the root causes and see how they're all connected and the different chapters in the different individuals connected with f o are pulled the string that's connected that they are most intent and passionate about but they all link up and in in terms of your decision making process to do it democratically or by consensus or something else it's primarily by consensus in western washington we have an area committee in the national body there is a national council kelly happens to be currently serving on the national council for washington  and the different chapters have different mechanisms but it's primarily consensus all right so talk about your peace activist trainee program tell us about that so about thirteen years ago the staff person at the time was approached my kero was approached by somebody who worked with the keller peace education fund carl shoot off and carl said you know you guys really should be doing something in the summer time for high school students and that was sort of the genesis of the peace activist trainee program at the very beginning it was a traditional inturn schip program that first year and it became clear that there was more to be done with that we experience and connections that f o r had with high school students and it's grown and flourished since then in the thirteen years i think we've graduated seventy eight high school students we see it as a way to help light torches of the next generations to expand students tool boxes of both what they can do with activism and the different issues that are involved particularly in the seattle area because we're based here and to try and offer to students in a month's time an experience that changes their lives and we've seen many instances of it having an effect a long term on people have gone through the program haley is a case in point because she was in the program many years ago and is now back on as staff so what type of skills do try and focus on so a range of skills starting with everybody's worst fear public speaking one of our test by fires is having the students do speaking in probably the third or fourth week of the program they get up on a soapbox down outside at victor steinberg park and talk about some issue that they are passionate about we do go through training them first and having them practice and give each other feedback but that's an example and frankly having seen them do that and then to hear the stories later on it's sort of the nothing is hard after you do that and one of our students a number of years ago when the issue was about school seattle schools was big and hot he had signed up to testify before the school board but he was way down at the end of the list so didn't imagine he was going to testify and there were a lot of no shows so he was called and he gave what was the best speech of the evening basically speaking directly to the recruiters and telling them not to lie to his friends and to the audience and telling the school board they had to do something and it was their duty and he said afterwards to me that he only was able to do that because he had gone through having to stand up on the soapbox and speak and think that was a crazy thing to do so that's you know sort of an example he had of r paying attention to you that's true there are a lot of folks who are on the street and hang out there as well and then there are the tourists who are maybe the hardest audience of all another student was talking about the excesses of our society and what people and food issues are a number of years ago and talking directly at some i believe out of town folks who were picnicking there and i don't know that they exactly resonated with what he was saying but he got his message across so so public speaking is one piece of what we do we do another we do a range of things we do some nonviolence an anti racism training with folks facilitation skills for meeting what organizing is like and different skills there frequently we have done a survey downtown and other places in the city and then presented that to somebody in power  be at the city get somebody at the city council or somebody in the school board or other assorted things some years people have made videos and we've gone through that just a range of different things to talk about how you initially got involved with it what attracted you this program in the first place well i was i was growing up in a really conservative area and northeastern washington on a farm on a mountain and i really was looking for and wondering if they were peers out there who are interested in similar topics as i was like nonviolent movements and international relations and you know things were going on and you know it was you know two thousand and five and where seeing a lot of terrorist acts like the london bombings and obviously nine eleven and that was really what i grew up thinking about as an adolescent and the way that a lot of my peers were were processing that was a lot of hatred towards islam a lot of rallying under bush and i was like i wonder if there are other groups out there who are interested in different perspectives and so i you know my parents and my family it didn't kind of family thing to go every year to the regional summer camp conference a four hours seabeck on the west coast of the  state and i had so much fun doing that just being able to see that oh my gosh there was a group out there in the world that is that exists as a community that actually believes that there are other ways to solve conflict other than war and that there are some really cool ways to address it and so when i heard that there was a summer program for high school students i jumped on it i really wanted to be involved with western washington f o r even though i lived nine hour drive away so i  lived with my sister for a summer when i was fifteen and i was really really just my life was absolutely changed i don't think that i would be here doing any of the things that and doing today if i hadn't been in the program that sounds pretty dramatic but it really really came at a great time for me and so there are a lot of really really cool youth in the program and you know every year we have the students do a project together a community project that culminates at the end of the month that they all work on and decide on together and it's supposed to address an issue that we want to address in a creative way as a community and in two thousand and five our group chose to go out on the streets of seattle with some cameras and microphones and poses some pretty difficult questions to people who are living on the street or eating at cafes or her just hanging out at a park asking you know what is your definition of terrorism and what do you think causes it and what do you think are the solutions to terrorism what are some of the root causes and we compiled people's answers quickly into a short video it was really powerful first of all to be able to have conversations like that with people on the street and get people to think about it and get ourselves to think about it more and then we had facilitation training and so we all we had a screening a public screening at you know a public event and you know we broke out into groups and each one of the students we facilitated a discussion on the movie after they saw it and that was so it was so cool i don't know how you know how much of an intervention it was if we solved something in the world but it created a ripple effect in that you know i absolutely fell in love with the asking strangers questions on camera and so when i went to college at willamette university i got grants to go to rwanda my freshman year when i was eighteen and pose questions to to you know journalists who had been persecuted for criticizing the current government after the genocide and you know orphans and child headed households and i interviewed you know all kinds of people about what they thought were some root causes of genocide and what they thought the the way to true sustainable peace would be if rwanda wasn't all already on that math and that also was life changing but i got that idea from the ph d program the peace activist training program and i also got another idea from the ph d program one of the things that they introduced me to kind of talked about through with some of the awesome students who had been involved  talking about free trade agreements that were really really harmful to a lot of countries and the working poor majority throughout the world including caf does the central american free trade agreement and one of the students had just been to el salvador and had been you know in two thousand and four fighting the passing of calf to it and so i was really interested in that so in that i had the opportunity when i was seventeen to go to  salvador i jumped on that chance and i was able to stay in you know cooperate is in rural areas at the time people were fighting the privatization of water and that was in sujit todo primarily there were was most of the most famous community where fourteen people were arrested for massive protests and held you know for a year and some people were threatened to be killed or flown over and helicopters above rivers which they had usually you know done to assassinate people during the war and so i was not only exposed to kind of poverty and exposed to war but little i know of but i was exposed to privatization as as a concept is that i was asking you know why would it be so bad you know governments aren't perfect like why why should we care about privatization and people were explaining to me that it would mean that people wouldn't be able to afford water that the companies would be able to take short cuts and not pay workers or really unfair labor or environmental standards so fast forward now story though because there are graduates all over the world right now from the peace activist training program there are people and someone who i did the program with was working in haiti doing a big media training with youth and she was working doing media training but also using soccer and soccer as a way of helping youth in haiti and she's now back in the states but she was there for a number of years and actually went to haiti partially because when she was in the program one of her fellow peace activists trainees had just read what's the name of the book mountain beyond mountain it's the paul farmer book  and he gave it to her she read it and she became enamored of and committed to the haitian people so there's another story of somebody one of our other graduates  isn't here today because he's in the philippines is coming back to to be one of the co facilitators this year of the program but has continued to be an artist and an activist and is back at school at evergreen but designed a shirt for western washington at the lars bring our billions home campaign and a couple of years ago as part of his contribution an ongoing connection to us and he continues to use some of the skills he already had as an artist but has developed them more and is going to work with us this summer to be on staff for the program and actually the other day or i  been running into people who are graduates that i don't i don't know and i was presenting at a class for suspicious about the opportunity to go on a delegation about the different privatization law that the u s is pushing there i recruited someone to go on the delegation that made a solidarity delegation that i just came back from and as we were getting ready to go like i found out that she had done the ph d program a couple years after i had in she's now working as a volunteer at casa latina and she also was a seattle university student and so then you know we found ourselves side by side speaking in spanish at a press conference in front of the u s embassy denouncing the u s ambassador's policy is of us you know economic intervention and that was a really cool feeling to know that we had not even been introduced through hour or anything like that but we had both had an experience that had kind of sparked a flame in us that made us want to do this kind of work and definitely address issues in a certain way  and i really hope that this year we get even more applicants who are from a wide variety of backgrounds different schools we've had you know apparently some of the richest  years have been when people come from a wide variety of racial backgrounds socioeconomic backgrounds and and i think that this year will be especially interesting there isn't really a typical day in the life of a ph d but we have this year planned a lot of thinking and exercises and field trips around looking at our community through like a class lens and looking at you know health food deserts exist where you know you might travel to south seattle as opposed to like and see different kinds of grocery stores and different kinds of food available and why is that and where are the prisons located and thinking about the prison industrial complex and so we're excited to be definitely working on that as well as having fun i mean well last last year yeah last year we had you know one day i think we had a presentation at the king county council person larry goss office about the project that they had done which is about the root causes of violence and all the gun violence and everything in our communities and having done a survey of the students presented on socio economic and equity as one of the biggest things that people actually said they thought was the root cause of the violence that's happening and encouraged player gusset and the county council and city council that year before to make sure to fund social programs and human needs not worry and greed and that fits in with our campaign that we've been working on the bring our billions home campaign and and other work that that effort are does to make sure that we're not spending billions of dollars wasting it on the military and and wall street and tax loopholes rather than education and health care and so we had presented you know to the and you know and then you know we we would go to tent city and talk about homelessness and and so we never really stay in one place that's kind of a sample of the different things you might do on  so kili has sort of described just now in addition to the skills building that we take on we also take on the exposure to lots of different issues that are going on in seattle is certainly not at a loss for different people working on good causes and we often have to struggle as staff with trying to manage not completely overwhelming people with all of the different things that there are but giving breath and with  sort of range of different issues so the last number of years that we have thought it was important to go to tent city and that's has frequently been a really profoundly moving experience for some of the students who perhaps have not been exposed either to the real people that make up the statistics or the possibilities of self governance that are shown by tent city and nichols ville and other communities last year we had the opportunity to meet with some youth who were homeless through connections and that was also a very profound experience for some of the students one of the most things last year was we went on a field trip down to outside fort lewis to coffee strong and met with a couple of young iraq veterans who told their stories and that was sort of the impetus for in part for the students last year choosing the project around violence they were they were very moved by what those two young men had said to them about their lives and how they were capable of violence and led them to think about what was happening in their own community a number of years ago one of the issues that was front and center was because of what was in the news it was police accountability and violence and the students i'm sometimes surprised with what they come up with for their project and who they are able to bring to the table that i as an adult activist can't get to come to the table so the year that the police accountability was front and center they held a forum down in near valley and got the director of opie a office of professional accountability and somebody from the end double p to sit at the same table and talk about police accountability and violence in the community and similar to caylee's description then had people divide up into groups and have facilitated discussion but i don't believe that those two people had been at the same space prior to that and i think they came because the power of listening to the next generation and paying attention and feeling like this is a program where leadership is certainly integral and doing things in the community and paying attention that so two years ago similarly the issue was around  budget priorities and we had been working f o r had been working on a joint memorial in olympia that year around transferring military spending to some of the human needs that we see and our communities and the students had done a survey and we found out the day that they did the survey that the next two days later the city council was meeting to consider a resolution so we spent the next day we rearranged our schedule and spent the next day with them thinking through what they would say and they went in and two of them testified we were all there to the city council  they were very receptive to the students they all when they did their little shtick that they always do when they're in the city councils talking they all mentioned the students and f o r and unanimously passed the resolution that they were concerned considering so some of what the program is every year is dependent on what's going on in the world and some of it is dependent on individual student interests and some it is what we think are important issues to really talk about we only have a few minutes left and similarly we don't people who want to sign up for this program only have a few days left to be able to do so can you tell people about that so our application deadline is wednesday may fifteenth if people are interested or if you know somebody and you want to pass this information along you can go to our website which is w w w w w f o r dot o r g and click on the peace activist trainee program poster or the project and connect to it if you can't figure that out or you don't have a computer handy you can call me at two zero six seven eight nine five five six five and we really do want to encourage folks to apply if they think they might be interested and what does it cost to do this program you know what it costs negative five hundred dollars because the students are paid a five hundred dollars stipend this is an amazing opportunity and we are actually paying students through the color piece education fund eighth through august first monday through thursday we meet ten am to three pm although there are a couple of evenings and some outside things that we sometimes schedule and all right and so  both anyone can apply what's that what's the age you have to be in high school high school we're primarily looking at people who are currently sophomores and juniors right now so they will be around next year to connect with other people and from anywhere in the greater seattle area or or beyond we've had people caylee certainly made arrangements but we've had set we had somebody a couple of years ago who was from vancouver b c who also arranged to stay with family friends down here we've had people come from mt vernon bellevue kirkland the kids step in insula kan auber and a range of seattle neighborhoods as well so apply right so quickly the contact info one more time w w f o r dot o r g or two zero six seven eight nine