The global economic picture is looking bleak. Economists predict there will be a recession in almost every devel- oped economy across the world. The US economy is expected to contract by 2.8% this year. The New Economic Reality: Social-economic Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic is a Profound Conversation focusing on how this will dictate economic realities for individuals, families and communities within the United States? What will be the evident new, stark realities facing us as we continue to brace for these tectonic shifts? Profound Conversations is a moderated discussion with a question and answer segment for listeners to contribute thoughts and seek guidance for current challenges that exist within the family and organizational dynamics of our current times.

Show Topics and Highlights

How is this pandemic impacting our families? And how is it impacting us as individuals?

Where do you think we are right now in the middle of this crisis from a financial perspective and an economic perspective?

“How is this impacting communities like Baltimore?”

We have to stay calm and understand that the way through all of this is acceptance, and some humility, and of course, belief in ourselves and our creativity. 

“How are we gauging and predicting where we might be when we take in consideration the human factor?”

“The normal thing that we would do in a crisis is we would gather, we would go and have a town hall and everybody would get together and we would decide what we're going to do about it.”

“I choose to remain hopeful about the kind of other part of that's in the design of human beings. That's sometimes where we are, we are truly at our best when things are worse.”

We are not invulnerable. As a country, nation, empires have risen and fallen well before it happened elsewhere, it can happen to us no matter how much money you have, or weapons you have, so on and so forth. 

“What is life going to look like post COVID-19?”

Profound Conversations Executive Producers are the Muslim Life Planning Institute, a national community building organization whose mission is to establish pathways to lifelong learning and healthy communities at the local, national and global level.   MLPN.life

The Profound Conversations podcast is produced by Erika Christie www.ErikaChristie.com

Full Transcript

Linda Howard

First of all, thanks, everyone for joining. Welcome to profound conversations. And our conversation today is the new economic reality, social economic impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. Let me give you a Little bit of information about what profound conversations is profound conversations is a listening and discussion space, which brings together leaders into a conversation grappling with challenges of our time. Our goal is to use intercultural dialogue and community and in organizational engagement to achieve valuable cultural, educational, Economic and Policy outcomes.

Erika Christie

Let me give a real quick tech thing and then Linda, it's all yours. For the attendees watching right now. There is a chat feature that if you would like to chat amongst yourselves, please go ahead and put any comments or questions you have in there, if you have a question for one of the panelists across the top of your screen is a q&a button. So that is for a question that's directly related to what the panelists are talking about. All right. And that is it for me. So Linda, it is all yours.

Linda Howard

All right. So welcome, again to Profound Conversations. This is our second our second week of doing profound conversation we launched last week, and last week we were engaging in conversation addressing mental health during these turbulent times. Today, we're going to be talking more around some of the economics. So whether or not you've been impacted from a health perspective with the Coronavirus. You have surely been impacted some way from from an economic and from a financial perspective. We have people whose companies have been have been closed, they have not been able to move around the way that they need to move around. It's impacting, impacting low income families in terms of how they're feeding, feeding their children in school lunches not being available with schools being shut down. But it's having an impact on just about everyone from an economic perspective, and we're probably going to see even more of an economic impact in the weeks to come in the months to come. We really don't know how long this is going to last. And when we when we start thinking about this issue as a global issue. The economists are saying that it's looking pretty bleak that most of the developing world is going to go into an economic and economic depression. So we then bring this down to us at a community level in the US and the community and the family. And that's what we want our speakers to be able to talk to you today about to let's look at it across The spectrum, how is it going to impact us at an economic level in the US? How is it going to impact our communities? How is it impacting our families? And how is it impacting us as individuals? I'll give a we have three profound conversations conversationalist with us today, and one is Jamil Johnson, and Jamil is the Associate Vice President at NASDAQ. And he was he formerly served as a chief of staff for for US Congressman Gregory Meeks, and was the president of the House of Representatives, Chiefs of Staff Association, and he was a staffer, also for former's former congressman Floyd flake. And when Jamil talks you probably give he'll give you a little bit more about what he does. We also have Andre Robertson and he is the CEO of the Robertson group in collaboration of conscious community development, social enterprise creative placemaking, an urban residential development practitioners focused on revitalizing Baltimore City. And Andre and I had a nice chat before we opened up the phone lines and learned a little bit more about what he's doing in Baltimore and how this is how this crisis is impacting Baltimore. So I look forward to him sharing more With you around that. We also have with us, Jamal Williams, who is the founder and managing partner of red dove partners, LLC, and that's a firm with unique and comprehensive that has a unique and comprehensive approach to real estate and economic development. And he is currently focusing on a pioneering new discipline known as social architecture. So welcome to our panelists to our second episode of profound conversations. Welcome, everyone, and welcome all Attendees that's with us today.

Um, so now I, I've experienced a number of economic downturns in my professional life. I'll date myself a little bit here. But as a young attorney in New York, I experienced the saving savings and loan crisis of the late 80s and early 90s, which was also coupled with the junk bond crisis. We also went through, I had a business and during 911 and felt the impact of that. By the time the whole real estate debacle came along. I felt like I was an old pro at weathering the storm through these crisis, but this is looking and feeling very different. So I want for our profound conversationalist to give us some sense about where you think we where do you think we are, let's talk about The State of the Union. And let's talk about the state of the unit, the family unit. So we want to cover both of those we want to cover where we are as a country where we are as a community, and what's happening at the family and individual level. And if you joined us last week, I started out by saying, this is where we are, folks. So I'm going to ask if any of you can jump in and just give us some kind of idea about where do you think we are right now in the middle of this crisis from a financial perspective and an economic perspective?

Jameel Aalim-Johnson

This is Jameel. I'd be willing to start. Can everybody hear me okay?

Linda Howard

Yes.

Jameel Aalim-Johnson

Okay. Well, here are my thoughts. I mean, one of the things that we're dealing with and I'm working for NASDAQ. We obviously operate the market. So we're seeing Particularly what's happening we operate here in the States, as well as overseas in Europe. The market in itself is being and you talked about starting from globally and coming back home. So the markets obviously, we're experiencing unprecedented message traffic, unprecedented volumes across all asset classes. asset prices have been fluctuating mostly in downward trend. The market has lost all of its gains over the past couple of years. It has gone as low as where certain prices were three years ago. And when you can think of that in terms of a market that has had an upward trend that is a lot of loss in a short period of time. And like you said, I myself, you know, was growing up as a young adult working in Congress working in local development. Corporations through all those crisis that you mentioned, this is the worst, because of the fact that in most of those previous crisis, it really focused on a particular asset class that tumbled and then had a trickle down effect on the rest of the economy. But it's not as if the entire economy was infected at the same time, because of the need for social distancing. This is affecting the entire economy all at one time. And additionally, it is affecting all countries at one time. So when you think of it in terms of a crisis, like you might have when a particular area of the country for instance, has a bad storm, and power goes down, but then you have other utilities from outside of that area that will send help. We're in a situation where both nationally and globally, there's no one who can send help, because everybody's in the same situation. And even though you may not be have one of the areas that will have strong effect, it's affecting everybody in one way or another in order to try to keep it from getting worse. So this is probably the first crisis I have seen in my lifetime, where every aspect of the economy, I mean, obviously some worse than others. But every aspect of the economy is feeling the effect at the same time.

Linda Howard

Andre, how is this impacting houses impacting like communities like Baltimore, because a lot of times we talk about the stock market. For those of us who may not have anything in the stock we we don't understand how this might impact The local communities. So what have you been seeing in your work in Baltimore in terms of the impact of this crisis from a financial perspective?

Andre L Robinson Jr

So it's a very interesting question, because again, most of my work happens in communities that were already in distress and have been for generations, right. So it's the old adage that if you know why people get a cold, we get pneumonia. There is all of us are kind of sort of in the stock market in some capacity because we are part of a stream of markets that are deeply influencing each other. And Baltimore is a city where you can see in relief, the history of structural racism, quite quite an evidence, right. It's actually manifested itself in the environment currently, because it's really the only city that hasn't been especially an urban core. It hasn't massively gentrify. So you have extremely wealthy neighborhoods right next door to extremely poor neighborhoods in a city that 70% black and brown but still experiencing 2535 45% unemployment depending on where you choose to place your gaze. So I think one of the things that we are looking at in the current crisis because the multiple assaults that have happened, that suppress black agency in a city like Baltimore, happen in every sector, right, so essentially, Baltimore is already a manifestation of what the world is experiencing because we are deeply traumatized, deeply damaged in healthcare, food, housing, education, the law, transit, so on and so on. And those things are still made manifest, because the urban removal that happened in most urban centers hasn't really happened on mass here. I'm from Washington DC. My production company is based in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, I worked in Harlem for 30 years Northern and Southern California, Dallas. So I've seen Baltimore's my seventh city doing this work in and we were gentrified out of all of those cities. Because basically working with artists, I build theatres and galleries, restaurants and those kinds of things. And basically, we're renting. And so the second we light up a chord or a corner, and the landlord finds out kind of sort of how much we're making in pigs, the new rent $4,000 over that. So you know, I, my brother and I opened up an art gallery in a performance space in Emeryville, California, in a abandoned corridor that was an industrial zone. Pixar Animation moves in across the street from us, and expands rapidly, and our rent went from 7000 to $21,000 a month in one job. So basically, it's like whatever you can afford. That's your new Rent. So one of the things that we're seeing here on the ground is that Baltimore has a ton of distressed, very beautifully, architecturally laid out city, very well designed city, but because of the generations on top of generations of discrimination, they're kind of locked in a permanent underclass. And we've seen that in many other places, of course, but that underclasses for the most part, like I grew up in Washington, DC, they've been removed. You just don't see them downtown. It was like, I was at a meeting down there. It was, like 30 minutes before I saw a black man in a suit, and neighborhoods that I had worked in as a as a young person. So we haven't seen the full effect of this global meltdown on these communities yet, but they are already distressed. They're already addicted. All the things that lead directly from like racism equals poverty, like the end, you don't need a deeper explanation of that. You can still find that manifest quite powerful. visibly in Baltimore. So we're really feel like we're that early part of a tsunami where the water runs out. And everybody goes, Oh, look, this money raining down this fish, we can all pick it up off the ground, but you're not seeing the three mile high, you know, flood of water, that wall of water that's coming at you, and then,

you know, having to predict how we ride out that in a community that is already deeply unhealthy. It's, I'm not, I'm not hopeless, but hope is not a strategy. Let me just say so we're trying to shore up whatever local agency we can find because we're not really expecting very much help for law to trickle down from federal and state sources. So that's my cheery message for the day. It's a sunshiny day to day and we still, you know, trying to get stuff done, but it's a challenge when your real estate development depends quite heavily on capital and private capital, by the way, you can't really rely completely on state funding. So this is the moment where we're looking at the reset button being pressed across the board. But wanting to make sure it doesn't get reset for the old and equitable, tragically modular marginalized system that that was existed for, you know, since the beginning of a Baltimore really.

Linda Howard

And I'm going to ask Jamal, to jump in so that we can make sure we're kind of covering that spectrum of that, that global the stock market to community. And I know one of the things, Jamal that that you work with is is just understanding that whole gradient of relationships. So I'll ask you to jump in here and talk a little bit about how do you see this crisis from a social credit perspective.

Jamal Williams

So first profound comments by both Jamil and Andre, the volatility is as we, as we've never seen it before, and as you've expressed as well, and I think I think my what I'm experiencing right now, personally,

I'm a bit dazed and confused about where we are businesses slow for us maybe, of course, unexpectedly. And I think my condition is, is a condition of many other business owners and individuals across the country. We're all days. And we're, you know, we have different aspects of our practice and architecture, meaning, play space design, we have parts of our practice. is a focus on social innovation, and of course, finance and economic development. And we're still trying to get a handle on what it is that we're facing. I think it's Andres sort of imagery and vignette that we're looking at a tsunami is an excellent statement. What we're experiencing I think, right now is very is tectonic. And when, when shifts are tectonic. It's, you know, it's, it's very, it's, it's a difficult thing to manage. Yeah, you know, we have to stay calm and understand that the way through all of this is acceptance, and some humility, and of course, belief in ourselves and our creativity. And so now, what we're not understanding right now is really be patient with first thing healthy. And that's the interesting thing about this tsunami, if I can borrow that, Andre Is that there is nothing that we can throw at it, other than what is needed by the public. The public good. What I mean by that is that this is how, and we, the impact, right, there isn't a bias on whether a person person is rich or poor. So there's nothing that we can throw out as we usually throw at financial decisions or markets or something happens here. You know, you add more pressure here, you throw more dollars here, you decrease this here, and so forth. And so you know, it's been, it's what is it's been, what three to four weeks, but it's, it seems like months. So we're really trying to weather the right now the social and psychological effects. And so at the same time, things come through. I was on the phone this morning, with a few My development partners, just maintaining a focus on our existing projects, being hopeful that the credit markets and you know, private family funds will be there. But we just don't know what other end of this looks like. We're really not certain. So that said, I mean, our practices focus as a development company is really understanding and pushing social innovation, social technology, through a field that we pioneer called social architecture. And we do that with a number of colleagues as you know, Andre and Kareem and Samuel Atlanta and we've got shout out to Russell Shara and Mike Bonhoeffer in California. We just we've been at this practice now this this work for about, I want to say 10 years.

A word that was first coined as community as product that understanding a creating conversation And perspective where communities can understand that they themselves are a product. And what is it? What does that actually mean? Most often here, as you'd mentioned earlier, we want to comment on communities and what's happening in communities that we tend to make a distinction between neighborhood versus communities. So I'm so as this is a good segue. So to understand the social gradient, and we're, we're we're sort of taking all of what's happening and occurring and looking at on social gradient, the social gradient as if I can map it out. And if you can visualize it, we see that you know, every, you know, the gradient of self is another term for it. So every human being relates and social gradients, whether it's the womb, as an individual, the womb, the family, the tribe, the community, society, state, nation globe, the universe, the cosmos, the next slide. Yeah, there are conversations about these Sort of gradients in all our lives. And oftentimes we miss a distinction in our interaction in our engagement, whether it's socially, business, theology, etc. And so the social grading gives us another set of tools and lenses to really see the distinction between conversations approaches, and analysis, analysis analyses of the things that we're engaging in. So we're really under, you know, the cusp of that with this current crisis. Where it's slow for us. I mean, the first thing we recognize is okay, we're bracing for we this is a this is new, there's a new normal, and that is we have to raise our agenda next generation thinking this way that there is going to be another crisis, right? 710 12 years. So first thing we're saying Okay, so how do we design spaces. You know, you had an example and I'll finish up here, pass, if you will. But we had an example in China where we saw some videos where the security forces were welding The doors on apartment buildings so that tenant and occupants wouldn't be able to leave as a safety measure. And so, you know, we thought about that and realize that, wow, you know, if not that we would have to be that drastic in our approach. But we thought, well, maybe multifamily buildings, courtyards, interior courtyards, vitamin D is very important in any crisis are going to be critical to multifamily design. You know, so when we start to look at spaces that that our public spaces realize the ventilation systems will have to be Almost like a clean air lab that to some extent if we're going to prepare for the future. So we're just still trying to look at what's going on in our understanding. We have some tools in our sort of platform to look at things distinct, distinctively, and maybe offer some innovative approaches to what would may be new markets and new ways of resets and so forth. But it's so early. It's so early, we're still just trying to understand and get an orientation.

Linda Howard

When I'm listening to all of your comments, one of the things I was going back to the conversation we had last week, where a lot of times when you're making these predictions, like if you're looking at the financial market you trying to figure out how the markets going to behave. In this situation, I think we got something additional going on because we also got to think about how people are going to behave And in, in this is a really new situation where we, where we've putting people in these lockdown positions with a tremendous amount of fear, which generally which, which causes us to have the discussion last week about the mental health and well being. So how is it you know, how can how are we gauging and predicting where we might be when we take in consideration the human factor? And what might how people might come out of this in terms of their own well being and how they interact and how they want to interact with each other.

Andre L Robinson Jr

I think it was certainly expose the places in your systems that are the weakest. And there's no reason for us to expect that. systems that haven't been tested at this level. We don't know Drill for for pandemic crisis's or crises, or, for that matter, emergent states of emergency. All with warnings. I mean, this happens over and over and over again, right, you know, been loddon determined to do something inside of the United States. And you go, yeah, that's nice. But you know, let's wait till something really happens. And then we'll just react to it. That hopefully in this generational shift between my generation I'll hold the claim as the oldest person here, I was born in the mid 50s. And there have been many crises, some slow moving and some constant for for people in, in the areas of the city that I care about. It's not that I don't care about wealthy people, if their children were in trouble. We wouldn't do anything about that. But they allow this crisis to be to be visited upon certain sections of the known black world, for instance, for quite a long time. So is this the moment when we have all these other technologies that actually could be created. And now the normal thing that we would do in a crisis is we would gather, we would go and have a town hall and everybody would get together and we would decide what we're going to do about it. And the maximum number of people that we can probably put on these electronic platforms about 100 people, and then that becomes a cacophony, right. So we have a new set of challenges in a neighborhood that we know didn't have broadband. People, our children do not have laptops, they're going to be sent home with their homework assignments so that we knew all this stuff. We know that we could provide those laptops for about 50 bucks, and we did not do it. So now you have a whole school year gone. Everybody's gonna have to repeat the grade. Let's be real, because this year is gone. And so now we have to really consider all these things that we could have been working on all along. It's like the curb cut effect, right if you would actually design something together. benefit the most people in society, you would have been in a better position to make sure that the nurses had PPS and masks. These are the basics. And we got them wrong because of certain other conditions, which we won't spend a whole hour talking about today. But these are known surprises. This is the expected surprise. Everybody told us to prepare for something like this. And we did not do that because our leadership was listening to other voices. So we're at this place now where where it's really not recoverable to bury 500,000 people all at once. We had to do it in the war. We had to do it when you know when bombings happen but we in this country are have afforded ourselves a certain amount of you know, some mandolins about these kinds of conditions because they don't really happen here. You know, we're not used to pandemics other other

I got a call and that made me that made it for a second. So I'm saying we've had we've had to get used to things we're going to have to get used to this new normal that Jamal spoke about. And part of the challenge, of course, is going to be reset for whom new normal for whom. And that's what I kind of remain hopeful about that. I'm dealing with a generation. That's an intergenerational interracial intercultural play with a lot of you know, Baltimore has a lot of colleges and universities. So we have quite a robust talent pool here about 350,000 people come here for their education. But they are untethered to communities where they've been told don't ever go over there with those people are they literally tell them that when you get to Hopkins in certain universities don't ever cross bla bla bla Street. So now that we have something that respects no boundaries, it Charles, if Prince Charles can get it clearly anybody can get it because that dude has no job and no work and you don't have to be anywhere. That means that anybody can be affected by that. And maybe just maybe this is the moment where we start to be concerned about those other people. And why are our children begging for dollars and Washington does, maybe that's really the time that everybody can see, that's not really good for anybody. So that I remain, I choose to remain hopeful about the kind of other part of that's in the design of human beings. That's sometimes where we are, we are truly at our best when things are worse. And that we can start to care more about those lean and mean places in society where doesn't really make any sense that in this country with all this abundance, and assets stacked in this corner, that that will be hoarded and the other folks won't get anything. So That's just a choice. You know, I just choose to be about the business of continuing to care for communities that have been marginalized and really decimated by the constancy of the theory of relativity, right? racism equals poverty, then you can add all the rest of the things in there. But this is definitely traceable back these chickens kept come home to roost. So I think this is the moment where we can see how many people can we gather around the rebuild society that we will have to do because we'll have to rebuild it.

Linda Howard

And we have Jameel on that that's calling in so I want to make sure we keep Jamil in the conversation. So Jameel, do you want to talk a little bit about kind of that global picture of maybe the role that the Federal Reserve might be playing in this?

Jameel Aalim-Johnson

Certainly, I do want to follow up on what was just said in regard to to this crisis, and I'll get to the global issues too, is that we've often felt, you know, people have a tendency to look at what has happened to them in their lifetime. And feel that's what's always going to happen too often because most of the wars in this country have been fought overseas, that even when we look at war, we look at it as well. It's not that bad, because the US has never experienced a route other than the Revolutionary War, the war of 1812 and the Civil War. In the last century, we have not really experienced war on our shores, and the destruction that comes with that. So you end up not believing or thinking you have to prepare for it in the same way that we have not really experienced. Since the Civil War, political upheaval To the point where like sad, like in Iraq and Syria and the like. So I think this crisis ultimately can be good for us in two ways. One is acknowledging the realization that we are not invulnerable. As a country, nation, empires have risen and fallen well before it happened elsewhere, it can happen to us no matter how much money, money you have, or weapons you have sown and so forth. I'm a, you know, God fearing person, as a Muslim or believer. And Allah has shown us with all the weaponry that you have, I can take something that you can't even see and bring you to your knees. So, this should be humbling for us to one of the things that has happened in past crisis is that those who could afford it and you know, various systems have become more resilient as alert As a lesson from having to deal with particular crisis, my entire company and a lot of other companies that are still able to function are doing it without seeing each other without, you know, except on video without seeing each other without being in offices. In other words, we're able to do it without being on normal real estate. And that was created by past crisis. That said, we have to have business continuity plan so that we can function. You know, even in a case like Hurricane Sandy, I'll give you an example. Hurricane Sandy in New York, there were broker dealers, that if they could not get to their offices, they could not serve their customers. So the market has to be closed. Now, that's not the case. And that was just two days. We're going into three weeks and the markets are still functioning pretty much without floor. Because we learn lessons from the past. Now that's on a larger scale. And that's happening in more developed countries worldwide. The question and I want to bring it back to the local issue is how do we develop that kind of resiliency in our neighborhood, and amongst our people. Now, what the Federal Reserve is trying to do, but they've used as you know, after the 2008, financial crisis, they use a lot of their tools then, which is really, you know, buying bonds, putting more money into the economy, lowering the interest rates, so that hopefully people will want to invest more. But one of the things they said is that we use so much of it then, and it's become a normal part of the economy. And this is why chair Powell was also looking at we need to start raising interest rates because we keep them this low and that becomes the norm then we When another crisis strikes, we won't be able to use that tool again, because we're already pretty much at rock bottom. All right, we'll have to go to negative interest rate at that point in time.

Unknown Speaker

But what Congress is doing, as you know, is they're trying to put direct cash into the economy. They're trying to put it in the pockets of individual families. Of course, how long does $1,000 you know, last, or $2,000, depending on how they're going to distribute it. The agencies are still trying to figure that out, even though the legislation passed, because it was passed so quickly. A lot of the actual implementation has to be figured out by the agencies, by Treasury, by HUD by others, by the SBA. And remember, all of those places that people are working at home to do so. We put this on a government that's also struggling, it's not like, you know, 911 where it's like, well, the government is still on Tak, and City Hall in New York is still last. Albany was still there. Now all those people that were relying on are also home. And then the other question you have to deal with is for some of those businesses, particularly those that are, you know, no work, no pay type businesses. You know, some of our friends and Jamal knows them. Kareem knows them. who own restaurants are struggling right now because people aren't out shopping. Macy's is laying off 130,000 people, so you may be able to help people with both forgiveness is in regards to mortgage payments, I mean, not forgiveness, but delays and mortgage payments and other things. But if they can't go out and spend that cash, it really doesn't help. One of the reasons we have this downturn is because those of us who do have cash aren't really out spending it because we've been To stay away from, you know a lot of these places and in economy is just like, you know, use the same term and ecosystem is dependent upon itself. Once one part begins to fail, then the other parts begin to fail to, because it was all interdependent. So the question becomes, how soon are the steps that are being taken now, I'm going to give us an opportunity to reopen the economy. And the question becomes, both individually and from a community basis. How can we do like some of the larger players on a local level and become more resilient, in a sense of we've learned from what has happened. So what do we do as individuals do we understand the importance of saving better as small businesses do they begin to say if we can open how Do we still get our product to market? I don't know. So in order food so I can still be open in this particular particular time and manner. So those who do have money can still spend it. What do we have for our employees? What systems have we put in place from a government point of view, or from an individual point of view? For those people, if they're not working, they have, like people have talked about a universal income. I'm not necessarily advocating that in general, but maybe that's something that should automatically be prepared for in cases of emergency like this, where Yes, I'm a normal working person that's, that's on and so forth. But I can't work right now because of this crisis. It's okay. You know, go online, do this universal income. How often do we look at schools metric at NASDAQ recently we were talking about the issue of someone Asked as part of what we call our global link of black employees. We had a function during Black History Month. And someone asked, we because we have to have the best equipment. That means we change it in and out a lot, but fairly frequently. What do we do with that equipment? And can we then provide it to poor schools like the brother brought up earlier, so that all those students have it have equipment, this should be something that should really be pushed, so that you don't have a situation of I can't learn, because I have no access to learning. early on.

Unknown Speaker

One of the public schools I think represented Public Schools has said, we could look at doing online learning, but that is going to leave poor people behind who don't have online access, which means we're just going to make it worse for them. If we let everybody else move forward, and they're left behind. So I look at it. I'm also very, you know, politically involved with organization called Prince George's County Muslim Council. One of the things that's going to come up for us, and I'm going to make sure it does, is looking at it from a school system for government point of view. What are we going to do to make sure we're working with the business community and the government to make sure on an education point of view that the poor have of us have access to online capacity? If the schools have to shut down again, if we don't learn a lesson from this, then we deserve whatever happens to us.

Linda Howard

Now, one of the things you said along Jameel that captured my attention was a business continuity plan. And, you know, that's something I've worked with healthcare for years and we always have to have a business continuity plan in place is updated regularly as Andre said that, that running those drills, you do run the drills of what do you do in the event of American, you know, hurricane, some of you don't have your critical systems all in one place. You're having them on different coasts. So if a hurricane hitting here, you at least have a critical system somewhere else that's not impacted by that. So how, you know, that's I found that really interesting to just think about it even from our business perspectives from a community perspective and from a family perspective. H ow do we put that in place?

Jameel Aalim-Johnson

Yes, that's very true. Like I said, one of the things that we had to do was immediately look back at our plan, and say, okay, What do we do in this circumstance? So we have a whole an entire organization, except for those who literally have to go in from time to time to make sure the servers are running. We have a whole system of people who can work from wherever location that that they are, you know, so the issue is, when it comes to the first thing you have to have in putting in what they call a BCP or business continuity plan is you have to be willing to take the time to say, it's just like the fire drills, we have to take time out to focus on this so many small businesses and individual families. It's like how many individual families actually do a fire drill at their house. You know, most people don't think of it until it happened. So the first thing is commitment to the realization that anything can happen in the future. So what are the likely things that might happen and what are some of the unlikely things that might happen? And you look at them and list them? What if I'm out of work? What if I can't get to the job? What happens if you know stores close? What if you have to take a look at a listing of things and say, if a happen, how do I do B? Just recently, I was taking a class called, um, Harvard Business Online entrepreneurship essentials. And one of the things that they talk about there is when it comes to planning, is that you look at, okay, here's what I need to go right in order for this to function. But in each of these aspects, what happens if this goes wrong that goes wrong or that goes wrong? What do I do? What is my plan B when Plan A goes wrong? And what is my plan B, if something I haven't considered goes wrong. So that's the first thing that we have to look at both as individuals and companies and small businesses, large businesses do Just all the time, small businesses probably do not small business just hope that when the doors open, people will come in and they'll pay their money, or I'll get this next contract and so on and so forth. We've got to take a look at what are the individual aspects, I already know what it takes for me to function. So I have diamond cessful and say, what happens if one of those things goes wrong? And when one of those things does go wrong? How do I react to it? And what have I put aside to plan for it, when it does go wrong, as opposed to assuming everything is gonna go right? And then taking all my resources and using them in the present day, as opposed to the to the future? And one of the things I also want to recommend to everyone if you are able to and I know not everybody is able to one of the things that sophisticated people do is they realized in a crisis In a crisis, there is an asset sale. Right? all assets have a sale during a crisis, you know, just like around Christmas time or the new inventory is coming in. So one thing that we have to learn as a people is that if we have the ability, if we have the resources, invest in assets now while they're for sale, as opposed to wait until everything is fine, and all those who have real cash have purchased all the assets at a discount. And this helps us strengthen our communities. So we're in a better position to help those who don't have.

Linda Howard

Now, one of my experiences with just working when I practice law, was being able to work with people to have them think about what everything that could possibly go wrong, because that's the way you build a strong business continuity plan. You got to actually conceive of what can go wrong. No one conceived of two planes hitting the towers. So even the insurance policies weren't written in order to address that issue. So there were big debates over is this one claim or two claims? Because we never imagined them both happening together. So how do we how do we begin to pool kind of resources and kind of that collective mind to be able to think about all the possible things that we as families, as community as businesses, need to plan for? Because when we do that, on an individual level, there's going to be a lot that we miss.

Andre L Robinson Jr

One of the things that that can be critical to also begin to think about is that what happens when failure is catastrophic, not like, well, if this happens, I'm going to do this. What if all of your systems go down? What if all of the power goes out? I mean, those are the kinds of things not just for two days. With goes out, and is not rebuilt because Puerto Rico doesn't matter here, take some paper towels, we do have to think about those kinds of elemental corruptions that are that you can't really glaze over. That may be the opportunity that should not go to waste in this current crisis is really looking at a level set that says how much of this is going to always keep occurring over and over again, if in fact, all the lifeboats are actually at this end of the boat and that everybody else is trapped below deck in the current crisis that we have here. in communities. You know, generally in organizational culture when when communication is low, trust is low. And you don't have a strong network of communication in most black communities. There are very few institutional presences outside of the police department and If people can gather in church, we got a lot of churches, but they can't gather in church. So we have no place where the information is being disseminated. So right now communication is very, very low. And what rushes in when communication is low is innuendo and rumor, and I thought in the virus is killed off, and you know, you don't really worry about it, the heat kills it. And then the president saying the same normal, you know, in, you know, crazy stuff. So all of your systems are kind of out of out of place. So one of the things that we're thinking about is that what happens when your traditional hierarchical leadership structure is damaged to the place that not only is the captain maybe gone overboard, but all the second mate and all the rest of the mates are gone too. And you don't see any of those people in community, just the people who have the guns are here and their guns on both sides in these community Because they allowed those things to flourish for a long time. So

it's not possible to set aside something when you're on subsistence in the first place. And that's really what we're really having the opportunity to look at in a city like Baltimore, because the disparities are so enormous. And they've existed for so long that you have a system that's probably not worth preserving in the old way that we think about preserving them in the first place that we really should be looking at. How in this moment, do we create a system that is just how do we get together with people like Jamal, who are design thinkers, and if we give him all the magic wand for a little while, he could say, well, if you really wanted to adjust and fair and verdant society, you would think about it this way and start to rebuild around that because almost all of our systems, they're not broken. They're fixed in place. premiere. And marginalized sections of the city that we just came to accept that these people are going to be always poor. And so if in fact, yes, I grew up foods in the grocery store, but if they don't have money to buy the food Well, I'm, I'm a student of history and I, if you look at revolutions, they all begin in hungry bellies, no matter how high the wall or the fence is. So this is the moment where we may want to think about not lurching from crisis to crisis to crisis. But what would happen if all of the systems are seem like they're permanently fixed in a broken like the the normalization of deviance, right, these are the things that bring the whole kettle of fish down. And if you have a system that is run by liars, who are going to lie about the corruption and pretend that it doesn't exist, you really won't be able to have very much of a thing to press the reset button on. So that's really what what we're really trying to work out amongst a broad swath of individuals who are deeply committed to justice, equity and inclusion, but don't really have the means of control over the markets in their hands. So it will press the reset button and assume that 25 of the people 25% of the people are just going to starve to death. Those are bad assumptions to run to run your scenarios on. So that's that's kind of what we're wrestling with. And really considering that this is the time to be hyper local, right? I have a block that's in distress, doesn't really matter how well they're doing three blocks away. If this block is in distress, it's going to bring that down with it. And I think people are really starting to see Oh, yeah, I actually am in a safe neighborhood, but I heard the gunfire and it's, it's a block away in one direction or another. So we're hoping to continue with that to build trust and enable That has very little of it not only not internally, and doesn't trust it systems because the systems are not present.

Linda Howard

Now, how do we think? How do we think this kind of new reality? this post COVID-19 How do we think this is gonna affect all of the systems in the relationships? What is it going to look like post COVID-19 and I see them all smiling. So I'm gonna ask you to take that.

Jamal Williams

So the interesting thing here is right there, there are layers to this. There's serious layers, all of this. Associate grading allows us to look at these distinctions in these layers and search in mind for distinctions.

Here's the immediate

again. Here's the immediate

Unknown Speaker

thing that comes forward for me. We're in a climate right now in the country. And I'll just deal with our nation first, because other nations have very interesting approaches to deal with their issues. And we've seen the numbers come out of Britain and some of the Scandinavian countries are, what they're doing for their, for their citizens, you know, guaranteeing percentages of their incomes and so forth. But while those countries are dealing with their own crisis, ease around immigration and other issues and so forth, and fluctuating markets, Brexit and so forth, and what that means in the European economy, one of the things here that we're dealing with is, and it's really it's part of the issue. But because we're so concerned about our survival, in terms of our health day to day, we're not discussing it but there is an eroding. There's a climate of You wrote in a climate of etiquettes. Right? Where you have a leader who lack the etiquettes. And in those sort of erosive environments, you have a lack of trust, as Andre says. And so and when you're in a crisis like this as a unit, the thing that you need most, especially if you're going into battle is trust. And so that's like the, you're talking about relationships and what comes out together and so, so, the, the some extent the, as Jameel mentioned, humility, the the idea that we're vulnerable and that we have to find resiliency and what right what is it and for this system, it's been capital, it's always around capital, not, not the issues, you know, what I call the social technology issues of understand Standing ourselves as operational that we can be operational as human beings, we think but we have, there's a warmth to us. So, you know, how do we deal with the existing climate, or this this crisis in the existing climate, as you can see from the media, and some of the leaders in this country, it hasn't been favorable at all. Um, so I think again, so we're in that mode, where it's like, I wake up, and I just they would you say, accept the reality of where we are, and that it's going to take time to takes focus and time and figure out what's happening and what we should do. But I think I think the one thing to come out of the other side better, we have to educate ourselves and educate others. So this is a great time. So we study history, and we said what was it what was there was there a resiliency and the Society during the Great Depression, what was the what were those things that were there and people talk about how they work together. We're hearing a lot of that today, right? People are talking about your online communities and developing their their neighborhoods and communities are shifting in some neighborhoods, and we have to be aware of, in other neighborhoods, a lack of resources Andre mentioned, but I think they're there. For, for us from the social innovation aspect of our business. We were looking at, like just understanding helping people understand like, okay, there's a shift here. And the first thing we think about as developers, we're already making a move in certain markets with investors, and about where we think the asset prices will drop. And we know where those markets are, but where we see that the demographic shift where people just the population is moving to those neighborhoods, those cities, they're just, they're going to happen, right? But again, we just don't know for sure yeah, because You know, you know, just the other day I woke up and I was thinking to myself, man, I should have actually moved to that farm 10 years ago when I was thinking about it. So we're not sure where people think is going to be. But of course, that's a lot of this is controlled by demand, you know, demand for work and so forth. And that's why are the cities have been growing, right? So we have Urban densification, and so forth. But so the thing is, I'm trying to look at just like where we are today in the world in terms of, let's say, concentric circles, or relationships of business, technology. And as you ask the question, behavior, right? business, technology and behavior, and where they intersect is that point of innovation. Right? Where do we find the new ways of culture being new ways of creating technology efficiency, and new ways of looking at profit?

Unknown Speaker

Right, whether it's B court, nonprofit, C court, etc. And that's part of the issue right now. You have when you listen, they're talking about sending out $10,000 checks. I don't know if you know, Jamil is the finance man, for sure. So if you can do the math real quickly, I was like, You mean we can't spend a billion dollars on ventilators? Like the government said, No, it's too expensive. So I was like thinking to myself, I wonder if like everyone ever received a $10,000 check just decided to give $1,000 and we finance it ourselves. Right? And then charged. It's, it's really not difficult. It's just how we look at capital in markets and how in that government, how we treat ourselves each other. And so, you know, part of what we would like to do is find a way to have those conversations in the spaces Then we can have them in first and foremost. And so some of some of the ideas, there's been ideas with some of my colleagues that are in education, for example, there are consultants, education consultants, and they're looking at the, with, with the banking institution, interestingly enough, they're looking at how they focus and creating very specialized homeschooling the online homeschooling component that we're dealing with that we're embracing and and now how do we encourage it, and then kind of focus it on certain types of a certain type of education. So out of this, this crisis will develop a thirst for economics in next generation and to fix the system. Right. So when you talk about the the other side, you know, how do we segment it? We talked about three to five year to 10 year, that's how I was normally looked at, or we're looking at 20 year launches generation trenches. So how do we fix it? So when you start helping people understand, you know, business, those concentric circles, and then the the, then you take that concentric circle and you put it along the gradient, what are the opportunities along the room and a family and a tribe and community and society levels to look at businesses and their impact along the gradient, or the communities that they serve along the gradients and understand that? And you know, one other thing I'll say, so that's just kind of how we're our perception or initial perception about what to look at. And it's very, you know, you know, it's a deep dive.

Linda Howard

Jamal, I'm gonna ask you to pause for one moment. Hold that thought though. Um, I know we're about two minutes after five. And just in case some callers need to get off. We're if the speakers will stay on for a few minutes. I would love to have you finish the point and open it up for some questions. If any caller does have to drop We this session is being recorded, you are welcome to throw a question into the chat box that we can answer if you have to drop off. But if you can stay on, please hang on with us for a few minutes. And we can stay on maybe another five minutes or five or 10 minutes to take any questions that people have. So I just wanted to say that before people dropped off, okay.

Jamal Williams

All completed. So I mean, I'm, I'm hopeful. All right, I'm hopeful and about about the fact that life will continue. I don't think we're at the end. That there is possibilities for some positive outcomes. I know most folks are trying to return to normal and that means profits over people. And that's a problem. We've got to fix that. So in a sense, I'm looking to see where the opportunities to make at least some small games where there's Jamil said, their acquisition of assets that we can put into place Are folks or whether they're long term sort of innovations that will help our generational thinkers, economists for the future? So we're hopeful about some positive outcomes. But you know, we're dealing with the immediate

psychic shocks right now, so to speak.

Linda Howard

Right. Thank you. I see we have a hand up. Erika, are you going? Can you open the lineup for me? Yep.

Erika Christie

Yep. Let me see if I can get it right now.

Hey, Hakim. Are you there?

Caller

Yes, I am.

Erika Christie

All right, please. Go ahead. What's your question?

Caller

Okay. My question is, I'm from Kansas City. And I was hoping that we can get some clarification on just basic avenues of revenue that can come into organization that have agenda for elderly and providing Ways and Means for them to feel actually a part of the community instead of being separated from the community.

Are there any guidelines been put in place that would allow for each organization to be able to generate funds based on the things that we know need to be done here.

Jameel Aalim-Johnson

Let me say this one thing like quick

Unknown Speaker

You have a stage four piece of legislation that's coming Up, in which people will be able to where they're going to be looking how to further assist the economy. The last thing that was passed was called stage three. This one is known as stage four. And that will happen when Congress goes back into session, they will be looking for ideas on where on particularly on the Democratic side, where they can put money into places and organizations that can help average people in the long term. So what I'm going to recommend in that, is that if you're saying, here's what I can do to help shore up people's lives over the long term, in this case, you know, seniors always sympathetic. You need to reach out to your legislators and and say, you know, particularly on the federal side, I think you said you're out in Kansas. Is that what you said? Or if so, you're talking about Oh, sorry. So you got somebody who's, you know, high up low. as a subcommittee chair on financial services and Mr. Cleaver, you've got, Mr. You've got Mr. play out there, who's also a subcommittee chair. And, you know, say, hey, look, here's what I can do. You need to put some language in this that does this. And particularly Now, it's important while you've got a miss waters as the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, and you have

Jameel Aalim-Johnson

and you have,

you know, Miss Miss Pelosi as the

Unknown Speaker

committee chair as the Speaker of the House, so we got to take advantage of this opportunity.

Caller

Senator Pelosi, actually has put forward a measure to increase the Social Security benefits for seniors and I understand that it'd be really helpful But what we're talking about is outside the limited phones that they expect to give to the elderly.

Jamal Williams

So, Hakim, one of the things that again, in our in our innovation thinking, we're working in Philadelphia with some some partners and developing community groups there. So sometimes it's very, I mean, it's tough sometimes to solve the immediate problem. Because, you know, we were working with old products and systems, right. So you might, you know, you get, you know, social security was 111 source. So, I think, if I understood your question correctly, you were asking about sort of developing a new product type of business that would allow for linkage and connections to seniors, as part of the community, but how do you turn that into how does that create a capital source or become revenue source Right. Am I correct? Is that kind of where you're going?

Caller

Yes, sir. Exactly.

Jamal Williams

So we had put together a program a development program on to address an issue like this and fill it out for you. It's it's still sort of a white paper for us. And what it what it is call on how good is it? So it's the idea of sort of inclusive ecosystem that embraces a zero to 100 or 200. Right. And we would, the idea was to design a civic Community Center, civic Community Center, in a center of this name of this community, this three acres, five acres of land, I'm sorry, seven acres of land, and then we would have senior housing affordable housing. In the Civic building, it's attached to a library. And so what happened is what we're thinking. And so now what we do is we would source we would sources, seniors, and see them as sort of knowledge base component. So if you were to do a survey or a asset mapping or asset, data collection of their education, your background, your training, we'd find that there are some of them are former teachers, technologists, etc. Some of those still have linkages to their universities. And so we knew that with affordable housing, the folks that were addressing in terms of their housing needs and requirements, and there would be a clinic nearby a part of this development as well, that the parent that the mothers or parents would be away working, you know, long hours is generally doing this economy. You don't have to Doing this economy, and that the seniors can substitute at the Civic Center and in the library and sort of mentoring in and being a, what do you call tutors, to those children. And so then there would be some sort of stipend and set aside. So we're working with the policymakers and so forth to look at this new concept and it was embrace. It was embraced by the local council woman, and it was embraced by two state senators, this concept of I apologize in the name I just can't bring it to mind right now. But it was sort of Civic is a such a collaborative civic community Town Hall. So that's, that's one of the things I think when you're so in Missouri, do you find some, you know, social thinking, community based developers who are interested interested in a holistic model. Perhaps we can To help you and have further discussion and help you with your thinking, and sort of collecting some folks together to see if you want to put a project like that together.

Linda Howard

Thank you.

Okay. Um, thanks all of our profound conversation lists. I hope everyone that tuned in, got something from this conversation. I certainly learned a lot. And hope you will join us for our next profound conversation. Thank you.

Jameel Aalim-Johnson

Thank you.

Jamal Williams

Thank you all.