Storming Caesers Palace. featuring: National Welfare Rights Union & Storming Caesar’s Palace

“If you want your life to get better, you’ve got to fight for it!”- Ruby Duncan 

This It’s Kairos Time conversation will feature long-time Welfare Rights Organizer Maureen Taylor, and the Director of Storming Caesar’s Palace Hazel Gurland-Pooler. It will be moderated by Cultural Strategist, Ciara Taylor

Storming Caesars Palace was nominated for Best Documentary Feature and won the Shine Award for a first-time filmmaker at BlackStar Film Festival in 2022. Hazel and the film received support from Big Sky Pitch, Black Public Media’s Incubator 360+ and PitchBLACK, Firelight Media's Documentary and Impact Labs, Film Independent's Documentary Lab, The Gotham’s Film & Media Institute, and Brown Girl Doc Mafia’s Feedback Loop.

Transcript

 Good evening and welcome to it's Kairos Time. My name is Ciara Taylor and I support the Kairos Center. With our arts and cultural organizing and political education, a kairos moment is a time when crisis and opportunity collide and the possibility for something new can emerge. This it's Kairos time conversation will.

Feature longtime welfare rights organizer Maureen Taylor and the director of Storming Caesar's Palace, Hazel Gland Pooler storming Caesar's Palace was nominated for best documentary feature and won the Shine Award for first time filmmaker at the Black Star Film Festival in 2022. Hazel and the film receive support from Big Sky Pitch Black Public Media's Incubator 360 and Pitch Black Firelight Media's documentary and Impact Labs film independent documentary labs, the Gotham's Film and Media Institute and Brown Girl Doc Mafia's feedback loop.

Welfare rights organizing is very near and dear to the heart and soul of the Kairos Center. Our organization was birthed out of the movement and organizing of welfare families, um, and homeless folks, low income, um, people who came together, um, in unity to fight for our right to housing, to food, um, and the right to life.

And the welfare rights organizing, um, has helped to develop, uh, so many leaders, uh, within our network. And it has been an honor to be able to learn from and to work alongside, um, especially the leaders of the National Welfare Rights Union. I wanted to, uh, open us up. I'm gonna just, uh, read, uh, uh, share you all's bios, and then we'll get right into, uh, the conversation.

Um, filmmaker Hazel Gerland Poller directed 10 episodes of PBS's. Celebrity genealogy series. Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. By exploring pioneering ancestors, immigrants roots from around the world, and our D N A Hazel hopes that viewers were realize that we are more similar to each other than we are different.

Hazel created and produced a five part short documentary series about the daily lives of the often overlooked low income New Yorkers called my everyday Hustle part of W E's multi-platform media, public initiative, chasing the dream, poverty and opportunity in America. The series streamed on pbs.org and broadcast on PBS World Channel in 2017.

Hazel produced Roots a history reveal for history, which was nominated for a NAACP image award for outstanding documentary television. Produced in connection with a and E's reboot of Alex Haley's miniseries roots. This special provided an unflinching look at the history of slavery in America. The directors cut screened at the Bushwick Film Festival in 2016.

Hazel also co-produced two hours of the six hour series, African Americans Many Rivers to cross with Henry Louis Gates, which was honored with an Emmy, a Peabody, and an Alfred I DuPont, Columbia Baton, and the NAACP Image Awards. Hazel has worked on documentaries for H B O Frontline, A M C history, and a and e.

She has degrees from Bard College and Columbia University's graduate school of Journalism and lives in N Y C with her family. Maureen Taylor. Oh man, what a hero of mine. Um, since 1993, Maureen Taylor has served as chair of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, a union of public assistance recipients, low income workers, and the unemployed that organizes members to fight for their rights and to eliminate poverty in this country.

Over the past several years, Maureen spearheaded several M W R O campaigns to protect low income Detroiters against electricity, gas and water shutoffs. So I wanted to start with you for this conversation, Ms. Mo. Um, if you could just talk a little bit about how you got involved in welfare rights organizing.

Uh, it is an honor and a pleasure to be with you. Uh, aggressive. That's what you're called. Aggressive young women. And, uh, I think I'm in the right room if I'm in the room with you all. Um, I got into welfare rights. Uh, I had, uh, been married just a few years and, uh, the man I was married to was laid off and, uh, uh, I thought, well, okay, I know about this program called welfare and what I'm gonna do is go over to the welfare office and I had a list.

I, I'm gonna need some help with rent and I'm gonna need some help with utilities and I'm gonna need some help with food. Because I understood that that's what they did and my, the response when I went fill out the application was that I should come back when I'm almost evicted, when I'm starving, and no food in the refrigerator.

If I have the shutoff notice from the gas company, the light company, and the water company, because I'm not in trouble unless I have those documents. So I went back home and told my husband, these people are crazy and, and had a discussion with him. And then I remembered, I met this young woman, her name was Marian Kramer.

So I called her and I said, listen, I went to the welfare department to get these things. Uh, my husband was laid off and I'm not working now. And she had me to meet her at the welfare office. And the first thing she did when we got there, this is just a little tiny notebook. But in those days you had manuals and she took the manual and she threw it and she hit the worker in the chest and I thought, damn, she's crazy.

Right? Everybody scattered in the welfare rights office. People were running out of the doors, they were fainting, all kinds of things. Workers were diving for cover and I thought, okay, she's not any bigger than me, but here comes the supervisor and said, just tell me what you want. I told her in another 15 to 20 minutes, she came back and she handed me food stamps.

She gave me a voucher for my lights and gas and water, and another voucher for my rent, and I looked at this crazed woman. Who threw the manual and I thought, she's not bigger than me. What is it about what she brings to this fight that I wanna get into? I was hooked that day and I knew that this question of poverty was something much deeper than I understood before I came to this welfare office in need of help.

I've been here ever since. That's incredible. That's incredible. I love that. I love that so much. That story about just like how you connect with someone else and how someone else's leadership is able to inspire your own. And just thinking about that, and I wanna turn it to you, Hazel, I have to say this film is incredible.

I was telling you earlier, just the energy of it, um, the, the way in which, um, The women in the film, these fighters were really humanized and lifted up as leaders when so often poor and low income people and, and women in particular are told that we don't have the capabilities of being leaders, that we're not smart enough, that we can't think for ourselves, that we can't fight for ourselves, that we can't come together, um, in unity and fight, you know, with each other.

Um, and, and win. Um, and so I just wanted to talk to you about, if you could just share what inspired you to make this film, you know, why this particular piece of history? Um, uh, that's a good question. I, I get it a lot. Um, I think there are a couple reasons and a couple things that really, um, drove me to, to share this story and to uplift this history.

Um, The first is that I am. I'm Colombian. I was born in Bogota, in Colombia, and um, I'm adoptee, I'm an adoptee. So I was born to a, uh, young woman who I think was 16 years old when she had me, um, and was unable to keep me. Um, I don't. You know, know why. And I don't know, I can't really imagine what my life would have been like had I been able to stay with her.

But I can imagine that it would've been hard. Um, and I'm guessing that she had to sort of give me up or felt like she couldn't take care of me. Um, Because of poverty. And so I have always felt this drive to share the stories of mothers who are fighting for their children, for their, you know, for a, a safe and clean home.

You know, roof over their heads for enough nutritious food to make them strong. Um, and just, you know, everything. And so for me, um, as soon as I heard about this story in particular, like Ruby Duncan story, I. In Las Vegas, I. Just, I was like, this should be a documentary film. And that's sort of how I share and uplift stories is through documentaries.

That's sort of what I know. So for me, that was sort of my form of activism was to be able to, to try to do that as best I could. Um, and so yeah, it's been 15 years that I've been working on this project and, um, I, there was a book that I read, um, that was published in 2005 by Annalise Orek. She's a professor at Dartmouth, and it's also called Storming Caesar's Palace.

Um, how Black Mothers Fought their Own, um, war on Poverty. That's sort of the, the smaller piece of the title. Um, and yeah, I was just like, I have to go meet Ruby and I must get out there. And so I did. I flew out to Vegas and you know, I didn't film anything right away. For me it was really important to just, you know, not take the camera, just hang out, get to know, um, as Ruby Duncan and her family, To meet some of the other women, um, who we, whose lives, you know, were touched by the work she did and who collaborated with her over the years.

Um, like Elver Bils and Mary Wesley, um, and other women as well who, um, passed away and ended up not being in the film. Um, but yeah, from the, from the beginning I just really wanted to get the story out. You know, there's just so much. Like so many misconceptions about low income women, and particularly women of color, um, and black women even more so, you know, who are receiving public assistance.

And so for me, part of breaking down all of these stereotypes, I. It was a huge part of making the film. It was like, this is the history of why we have these, um, you know, racist sort of tropes. This is why we have systemic, you know, racism and, and situations where there is like such a, um, women who are having to go on public assistance and um, yeah.

Anyway, so I just wanted to be able to break it down and really uplift their work and really show that, you know, not. You know, 'cause all of these stereotypes suggest that women are not making good choices, they're not working hard enough, and that couldn't be further from the truth. Right. You know, Ms.

Duncan was a mother of seven. She was working multiple jobs until she had to go onto, uh, public assistance. And then she worked so hard in order to feed her family and, and, you know, organize all the other women in the community with her. They did so much work, they were working, you know, more than I can even imagine.

So, um, that was a big part of, of this for me was just really, you know, busting myths and just really showing how visionary and powerful, um, these women were and are and are. Um, and just because their stories aren't really well known. So really just to be like, look, you know, the shoulders that, you know, people are standing on now today.

Are them. And so we have to recognize that. And, you know, we're talking about a lot of different kinds of programs today that, you know, to try to, um, get better. Uh, you know, to, some people have more money to live on, whether it's universal basic income or getting a child tax credit or there's so many different things that could be happening.

Um, and so sort of seeing that initially conversations that were happening, the women were fighting for a basic guaranteed income, even back in the, the sixties and seventies. So it's exciting to kind of bring it all to life and to just get it out there and share it. So hopefully people can organize and mobilize and we can come together.

Uh, we have a saying in, in our network that movements begin with the telling of untold stories. And so just thinking about what kind of movement can sort of take off from people knowing these untold stories of, of these heroes, um, that have both come before us, but also folks in struggle that are continuing to fight today.

I wanted to take us to, uh, a clip from the documentary that talks about the building of this movement. They decided to form the National Welfare Rights Organization. George Wiley was the executive director. There were also local organizers hired by the national office to help welfare recipients organize.

So, my God, people doing this all over the country. In LA they would call themselves welfare mamas, Johnny Tillman. We couldn't care less about making you mad because we have been mad over a period of years. In New York City was b Saunders. Our people ain't gonna star and we ain't about to see them stall.

We are gonna get food and clothing and shelter one way or the other. They were bad. Oh, I wanted to be like them so bad. Well, recipients across the country began to talk to each other. A woman in Nevada has no choices. There's very few jobs except going to the club are going out. To come across the, the mothers met a Northern Nevada white welfare mother with a blonde beehive hair to named Joanna Cookie Busante.

It was the first time they met poor white welfare families. I could not believe white women didn't have enough to make ends meet that opened my eyes up so much. Poor whites, poor Asian, poor Latinas, just poor people in general start organizing together. You, you have to be in a mass for anybody to listen.

Um, you know, you can go down to the welfare and have a problem and they'll just sit there and look at you and say, I'm sorry. You know, and that's all just, it's not effective. More women bands, especially welfare women, band together and clear this image up that they got so painted, so dim of us. The only way to overcome oppression is through revolution is so we revolt it.

This was an era in which a lot of welfare regulations were overturned through litigation. Nothing was celebrated, more heartily than the King B Smith decision, a Supreme Court decision ending. The heated man in the house rule.

We had won that victory. We see now the system do listen once you come out in numbers. We intend to develop the organization through a closer liaison with the Women's Rights Movement. With the movement of Chicanos and Indians and Puerto Ricans and the black power

in the mid sixties, there was a lot of energy behind a broad vision of social justice in America. People thought, That almost anything was possible. People thought we could actually abolish poverty in America for good. This administration, we get the war on poverty from Johnson, who was pushed really hard by movement energy, unconditional war on poverty in America.

That created a range of low income programs. It's partly how we got food stamps so that people had some food security. That's how we got Medicare and Medicaid. It's incredible, incredible, incredible history. I wanted to share, um, within the National Welfare Rights Union, our political education, um, Carolyn Baker and Dr.

Colleen, Wes McCoy helps us a lot and, and, and really digging into this history and, uh, they shared with us that. Um, this piece from, uh, Uh, Guido West of the National Welfare Rights Organization, um, at its height. In 1971, the National Welfare Rights Organization was composed of 800 affiliated welfare rights groups in 50 states.

Membership was limited to poor people with rules prohibiting more than 10% of the membership being people living above the, the. The poverty threshold and voting rights were extended to only recipients of welfare or social security. Uh, west says that it was founded not as a civil rights movement, but as a human rights movement.

And among the features that distinguished it as a human rights movement was the emphasis that poverty was not limited to a particular race or ethnic group. Although the membership was 85% black, its leadership insisted that their base was all poor people and that the majority of poor people in the US were white.

Johnny Tillman, who was lifted up, um, in that clip and is also lifted up in the film. The first national, uh, chairwoman said that the unity among the poor across racial lines would shake the power structure. I wanted, uh, to ask you, Maureen, if you could talk about the, the, the emphasis on developing leaders of the poor, of the welfare rights organization and the significance of bringing together, um, these leaders of the poor, um, from across all lines of historic division to form, uh, the National Welfare Rights Organization.

And if you could speak to as well, um, the, the logo of the welfare rights, the infinity, and what it means to link up those chains of struggle of, uh, these, uh, women in struggle across the, the US when Johnny Tillman came forward to talk about the problems and the systemic nature. Of poverty. It represented a, a, a, a seismic shift up until then.

And continuing from time to time, you had intellectuals, academicians were defining what does it mean to be poor? And, uh, I think back, uh, I was one of the organizers of the, uh, 2010 social forum and I could still remember visiting. I. Hotels in the Detroit area where the social forum was going to be held.

And the, the name on the rooms that we were trying to get were a single room, a double room, and a handicapped room. So I wanted to go to the handicap room so I could see what a handicapped room looked like, and they all had a, a one or two, or three or four inch threshold to get into the room. And then when I went to the, uh, bathrooms, it was a step there.

So I asked the question, well, this is a handicapped room. Yes it is. Well, how is somebody in a wheelchair? I. Going to get in this room, and the response would be, it's almost like they practiced it. Uh, well, it's only one step. I thought, oh, okay. We can tell the person that's in the wheelchair. You gonna have to stand up, step over that step, pick up your wheelchair and bring it with you.

So it was the same thing with Johnny Tillman, who was very poor family children, realizing the difficulty of it. Then you have these, uh, folks from the different colleges trying to describe what poverty was, and they did an excellent job, but they can only go so far. You don't know what a food stamp is until you get a food stamp in your pocket.

And it was Annie Chambers and Annie Smart that used to talk to me, a young lady trying to learn what is the world about, talking about trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents. And I remembered that. So the importance of this shift. That Johnny Tillman brought in said, well, how about the handicap take leadership positions in what the handicap needs?

How about blind people, vision impaired, hearing impaired people? Taking a leadership role in what? Blind people hearing and hearing impaired folks listening. Impaired folks, how about that? Uh, women's organizations, uh, uh, the right for reproductive freedom. How about women? Saying, let me tell you about this, uh, situation from my point of view as opposed to having, uh, uh, Tom, Jerry, Michael, and Sam.

It's the same thing that happened here, uh, in, uh, Michigan. We are fighting and still fighting access to water issues and, uh, we're into another fight yet again. Using the Johnny Tillman method, folks who are in danger of having their wa, their water shut off are in the leadership of this particular fight.

In this, I discovered something several years ago when we first got into this, and that's something called family toileting. You haven't lived until you understand what. Family toileting is, so I'm here and I got a significant other and we've got three kids. And your water gets turned off because you're behind on your bill.

$150 or 300 in arrears. Okay. Uh, two months behind in a payment. So mom is in the house, dad is in the house, and they go get the little one who is four years old and said You have to go to the bathroom. Yes, I do. So you take that one to the bathroom, but you stand there with the door open because that little one cannot flush the toilet.

So whatever they need to do, they do. All right, then you go get the seven year old. You have to go to the bathroom. No, I don't have to go. Yes you do. Go to the bathroom now and that one goes and you still have to stand by the door 'cause they can't flush it. Then you go get the 13 year old. Oh god, Dwight.

Yes. You have to go and use the bathroom as well. Nobody flushes one flush a day, and that's the first time I had ever seen anything like that in Detroit, Michigan. That is the essence of what systemic poverty is. Johnny Tillman opened that door and said, you need to know what these things are. And today we have this very prolific example.

So you understand that Rockefellers Kennedys, uh, bushes, they don't do family toileting. They can flush every time they go to the bathroom. That's the Johnny Tillman method. Let's be stark. Let's show what it is. How do you make a dollar out of 15 cents? Wow. Incredible. Thank you. And yes. Um, rest in power.

Donnie Tillman. We definitely still follow in that her footsteps and in that organizing tradition. Um, Hazel, can you talk a little bit about. Just how the documentary has been received so far. You're in, you know, these different spaces with different folks, like you were talking a little bit about earlier.

So I'm just wondering, you know, how has reception been just given the moment? That we're in with these increasing, you know, levels of crisis and, and folks going into economic turmoil. Um, what are your hopes for this documentary in terms of, um, the future? Um, and, and, and movement? Um, yeah, I mean, I think just to.

Just to sort of piggyback on what, um, Ms. Maureen Taylor was saying, I think, um, you know, one thing that really is powerful about the film is that we really do show that it's the experts who should be the leaders and the experts on. Living in low income situations are women who are running a family, you know, and stretching their checkbook as far as it can go in order to balance everything.

And so I think that's something that comes through very strongly, um, in the film. And so I think when we, when we have shown it in the places, we've shown it at some, uh, film festivals, um, and we've also been showing it in community, uh, centers and things like that as well, because for me, Um, this film is, needs to meet people on the ground where they are in the struggle and not, you know, obviously film festivals are fun and they're great, but I also, you know, really is important that I.

Ruby Duncan's experience and the message of the National Welfare Rights Organization and all of the moms who worked, um, tirelessly for so long, um, be seen by other moms and families and people and allies and advocates and everybody, and politicians as well, so that they can recognize, um, yeah, who the experts are and who should be running things.

And when we know that politicians don't know how much it costs to buy eggs, Diapers milk. I mean, sometimes they say really stupid things and you can hear 'em and you're just like, how can you even say that? Like clearly just shows how detached they are from reality. Um, and so I think, you know, when audiences at festivals and in community kind of places are seeing the film, they're feeling that, and I think it.

Is empowering and I think what I'm hearing from different people in the audience is, um, a couple things. Oftentimes people say, you know, I didn't know this history. I, and like there's a way in which sort of seeing, um, you know, so many of the moms on camera, on film, it, it like, you see the leadership, then you, you realize, you kind of see the whole thing from a different perspective.

And so women have said, I didn't know that. You know, I, that. There were other moms who had done this work and now I'm excited and you know, there's women of all shapes and sizes and colors. I mean, as you also said earlier, you know, there's. You know, it's always been more white families, white women on welfare than, you know, women of color.

Um, and so there's a lot of white people who have been coming up, you know, and saying, I'm getting snap and now you know, we're about to maybe get cut off and X, Y, and z. And so it's been, um, an incredible experience to be able to hear from folks just the. The struggle continues and there's so much work that still has to be done.

So I think the film allows people to kind of start, start sharing their experiences and that's part of that kind of consciousness raising that we show in the film as well, that I think allows communities and everyone to come together and to kind of talk about stuff. So no one's feeling stigmatized, no one's feeling alone.

We realize like, you know, I'm not the only one who's going through this and we can kind of get together. Um, So, yeah, I mean the experiences so far have been great. Um, we're gonna be having a screening in West Las Vegas for everybody, um, in March, which is really exciting. It's like a big public screening at the West Las Vegas Library, which I.

Um, you know, Ruby brought the first library to the west side. Um, back in 1972. There just wasn't even one. They had like a book, mobile or whatever with like five books on it and people would sometimes go up and get one. But she like created all of these things to see in the film. Um, and I. So it was really great to kind of come home, come full circle and have, you know, she'll be there and that'll be great.

And we're also taking it to the legislature. So we're going to Carson City and we're going to show it to the, you know, the assembly people who are there and be like, and Ruby's gonna come up with us to be able to, you know, continue to speak truth to power. So it's very exciting to do those things. And um, earlier this week we were at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, which was very, um, You know, sort of powerful to be there at this time, given like his kind of, you know, hospice situation and that she, you know, in 17, 19 79.

Had been appointed, uh, to President Carter's, um, commissions on, um, educational and, and like economic, um, of course, I can't remember the name of it, but it's like a commission in which she was trying, she was representing kind of low income folks in America. She was one of five women, um, who were doing that.

So it, it's just kind of coming full circle in so many ways to be able to show this as a historical film. But it's also relevant 'cause it's still happening now. Um, so yeah, this has has been fantastic and I'm really excited to just continue. You know, we have, um, through independent lens we're having all these popups so that we're going with local, um, P b s stations across the country.

We're having screenings in all kinds of places, which is great. Uh, we have 45 screenings in 36 states in the next like six weeks, so it's. Kind of a crazy tour, but it's amazing. This is like my dream to have, you know, everything, have a film come out and people have the opportunity to see it. And yeah, as I said before, just feel kind of inspired and excited and hopefully mobilized.

And if they, if anyone feels anything wrong happening to them or in their community, either. They can either start making their own organization or join one that's already doing the work on the ground. So yeah, I'm excited to, to have this get out there and hopefully we can help, you know, join the struggle.

So that's incredible. Wow. Wow. I'm, this really is an exciting, um, moment in time, um, and for people to be able to, uh, To get, to learn and also to get involved. Um, I wanted to point out in, in the clip that we showed, um, at the beginning of the clip, it showed the, the welfare rights symbol, the infinity sim, the infinity logo, and, you know, linking up the struggles and the logo.

You know, we talk about within welfare rights, uh, union is, is how. It spans across all history of struggle, um, tying and linking up these different struggles of the poor and dispossessed across, um, time and space. Um, This infinity symbol, which is also a link in the chain stands for Unity and Organization.

Um, it expresses a necessary lesson for those people and struggle that freedom ain't free and we only get what we're organized to take. Um, to close us out, um, Ms. Maureen, I wanted to know if you could talk a little bit about. Where welfare rights organizing is headed with the organizing drive of the National Welfare Rights Union.

Why union, why now? And what is and and what's the vision, um, for this work? Where are we going? Uh, well, um, a four letter word is certainly part of our future, and that would be jail. J a i l. That's part of where we're gonna go. Okay. Uh, demonstrations, picket lines, protests, all of those things are going to happen.

Uh, the economic construct of poverty is a difficult, uh, subject to try to manage, uh, Ms. Hazel's efforts. Uh, certainly shining a spotlight, uh, on what's going on, and indicating that even in, uh, 19 71, 72, welfare mothers decided, gee, I can't feed my kids. But if I take them to the casino, they bring you food all day, what a damn good idea.

Take them all in there and here comes the finger food and the hor d'oeuvres and, and everything else. So where we're going, and especially as you talk about and raise the question of the, uh, welfare rates. Link it. It didn't start off as, uh, infinity. It started off with the link, meaning let's link up the struggles, and then, uh, uh, uh, the, uh, the, uh, half circles ended up being closed, but it started off with the concept that says in a chain, You link it up and we're only as strong as our weakest link.

So what we will be doing is, uh, certainly fighting, uh, the, there's a judge that's trying to make a decision fairly soon on whether or not, uh, Uh, the, uh, protection against water shutoffs are going to be extended and she's weighing that option. Uh, we just agreed we to send 2 billion with a b billion dollars to Ukrainian women and children who need help.

I am all for Ukrainian women and children and men and the elderly, whatnot. But as those planes are flying by, you know, some of those billions need to stop off here and help the women and the children in this country that don't have housing, that don't have, uh, healthcare. That don't have enough food for the children to eat, to eat.

So where are we going? Uh, uh, we're going to go straight back to, uh, where we could buy gym shoes with a lot of rubber under the bottom. Uh, and, uh, take these children and put 'em in these, uh, uh, uh, pushable items. And we are gonna take these children and we gonna get back out on these picket lines, demonstrations, and, and these protests to talk about.

How it is that in the richest country of the, in the world, you still have veterans standing on a corner with a sign that says we'll work for food. So, you know, a lot of things are happening. Uh, we don't go to jail unless we have a plan. And what we saying, certainly what I seen, if there's one thing we did right, Was the day we stood to fight.

Keep your eyes on the. Hold on. And I can sing that song for 15, 16 hours until the police scream get her outta here. She won't shut up. That's where we're going. We're gonna fight for the rights of low income people. And by the way, the largest number of low income people in America are blind, blue-eyed children.

They don't even care about the babies. My name is Maureen Taylor. I serve as state chair. Of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. Here. Here. Thank you so much, Ms. Maureen. Thank you, Hazel. Um, thank you to just the incredible leadership of, of, of the, the, the people who built, um, and modeled. Welfare rights, organizing, um, and, and, and set a way forward, a way of thinking about leadership and, and, and who should be the leaders of our movement, um, and what kind of leaders that we need for our movement.

And, um, thank you to the National Welfare Rights Union for continuing to do the work. Um, thank you for the team at Kairos. I wanted to, uh, close us out with a song. Um, That we sing in the Welfare Rights Union. It was originally, uh, comes from a church song. We are soldiers in God's army. And, uh, the welfare rights leaders, you know, sort of sanctified it for our movement to, we are soldiers in the welfare rights.

And so I'll sing it for us to close us out. Thank you again.