Sign Michigan Banking Job Offer Myself

Industry sign banking michigan job offer myself

so hi everyone i'm carissa patron i'm the equity program manager for the west michigan sustainable business forum and i'm pleased to welcome you all here today for this really great panel for those of you who aren't familiar with our organization the forum is a collaboration of businesses and institutions dedicated to promoting sustainable business practices within the focus areas of climate leadership social resilience social justice and the circular economy so today we're excited to present a webinar on the state's cannabis industry and have a conversation around the various struggles the state has faced when translating its legal status and economic opportunity into prosperity equity and sustainability so i would like to thank good for michigan for their support in developing this program along with alice jasper who's the good for michigan program director for co-moderating this panel with me today if you find this program valuable i hope that you'll join us for some of our online upcoming webinar discussions as well our next week our webinar will focus around advancing health equity and social justice along the west michigan lakeshore which will include four local speakers who will share their perspectives on current impacts to physical and mental health around the intersection of health equity and social justice and the need for holistic change so please also keep an eye out for our climate resiliency forums that will be coming up later on this month into september as well and lastly the forum will be hosting the michigan campus sustainability collaborative earth day 50.5 on october 22nd which will be a statewide virtual conference recognizing the 50th anniversary of earth day that really encompasses learning and education for students faculty and staff and alumni on college campus campuses across michigan so you will receive a link to the video from today's program along with a short feedback survey and any additional notes that will come out of today's program in an email following the webinar so this is a series of this and a series of all of our programs are primarily funded through membership donations and if you are not yet a member of our organization and would like to do so please consider becoming one we offer both individual and corporate memberships so you can contact rose or info at wmsbf for more information and you might also be interested in learning about our various working groups where a lot of our work happens including the sustainability and equity working group that will meet next on monday august 17th climate leadership council prosperous economy working group among others so please email us to get involved with any of our working groups if you so choose to do so um so now i would like to recognize that i have the privilege of introducing our dynamic panelists today including um margot bruner who is the director of compliance and diversity for red white and bloom among a lot of other hats that she wears that she'll talk about um next is tammy vandenberg who is the organizer and a funder of decriminalized gun rapids along with the co-owner of the meanwhile in the pyramid scheme and board member of the west michigan cannabis guild and uh lastly we have denavi moji who is the corporate impact strategist and legal compliance manager for flourish along with the executive director for the black and viral cannabis guild a co-founder of equity equitypack as well so uh thank you all so much for joining us today i'm really excited about this conversation so for our attendees please note that you can share your thoughts with all the panelists or just the attendees through the chat function you can also ask questions through the q a field as well so we'll have time at the end for a few questions and answers from our panelists but now i would like to pass it over to alice thanks so much chrissa um my name is alice jasper and um thanks so much to perform for hosting this conversation and um yeah for all of our panelists for joining us today we appreciate you and your time and your knowledge um so would you mind um each of you kind of uh sharing a bit about the work that you do and all the various hats that you wear with regards to the cannabis industry um both you know whether that network is based in michigan or if it's michigan and nationally um margo can we um would you uh kick it off for us and introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do marco i think you're on mute oh sorry um i am the director of compliance and diversity inclusion for right white and bloom red white and bloom their footprint expands beyond michigan we are currently uh subject to closing in michigan illinois massachusetts with california and florida coming on as well um prior to that and we also recently entered into a deal with high times prior to i'm also the a direct board of director member for the minority cannabis business association and so we are responsible for drafting policy nationally um that is a trade association that is basically rooted in the cannabis industry but has an additional call to justice and equity and economic empowerment and we do that through the creation of both national policy and we do weigh in on some municipal issues as well i just recently completed my term with uh the marijuana regulatory agencies laura work group i have been a member of attorney general dana nessl's policy work group and i was previously appointed to um the michigan state police impaired driving committee we did a 13-month study that dove into what is impairment in the state of michigan and it also last but not least brought adult use legalization to michigan through proposal one great thank you so much margo um next uh if we could take it over to you tammy um would you be willing to share a bit about um the work that you've done in the cannabis industry space um with regards to policy and organizing both west michigan and statewide sure um thanks so much for having me and thanks for putting together this discussion really really critical to be talking about this we need to talk about this a lot more a little bit about my history i've been a drug policy reformer for about i was trying to think 20 years i think 20 years ago i got into this and came into it through being a housing activist and um saw very quickly working with people living on the streets that drug policy was a massive issue and the drug war was very much part of the reason so many people were homeless also seeing the disparities in arrests and charges and really fought for a lot of my clients who had used drugs in the past worked to try to change housing policies around subsidized housing which we didn't have a lot of luck with that and uh subsidized housing as many of you know screens out people with any type of of drug charge and even if it's from a very very long time ago so we started working with organizations to try to change these policies non-profits and housing organizations were extremely reluctant to do that we went through fair housing and found out that drug users and people with with law enforcement uh interaction in their past were not any kind of protected class and so they wouldn't touch it so eventually i just started thinking you know why why is this why is this illegal anyway why is cannabis even illegal you know all kinds of people are using it all my friends are using it um they're not getting picked up other people are getting picked up this is this is really bananas and so kind of changed my focus to changing the laws and got got involved with the drug policy alliance um harm reduction coalition and eventually my colleague mike michael tufflemyer and myself ran uh the decriminalized gr campaign in 2012 which uh people thought we were completely crazy and there was absolutely no way uh the city of grand rapids if you're familiar with west michigan as uh i think this is a statewide panel but west michigan has has a very very conservative uh religious history and uh the the level of stigma around drugs in in these parts is is through the roof um compared to so many other cities i've uh experienced and countries so we to everyone's uh shock we we won overwhelmingly in 2012 and then the powers that be fought in court for the next couple years but we did end up winning uh decisively since that time um i've been involved with uh proposal one also i served as a board member of mi legalize in 2018 and that was probably one of the most meaningful experiences of my life working with folks all over the state to get that passed traveled to all kinds of places i've never been which is really fun and met so many fantastic people and and we won decisively which is fantastic uh since that time i have um co-founded the west michigan cannabis guild and serve as co-chair of that entity i also applied for a license myself and was denied for that license back in april so that's a little bit about my background and condensed very condensed involvement with uh trying to end marijuana prohibition as well as lots of other drug policy reform thank you so much tammy and last but certainly not least um navia um could you tell us a little bit about the work that you do especially around flourish and the work that you've been doing around expungement uh and the black and brown cannabis guild absolutely um well i want to start by saying these two are very hard acts to follow just this is a incredible group of women on this panel i feel like i'm here to speak to it but also learn so this is amazing um so my background is primarily in just i've been a long-standing advocate for diversity inclusion and equity work um my back branch which is all the way back just here to grand rapids where i'm based but another west michigan sustainable business forum community benton harbor and growing up in ben harbor a primarily small black community i watched people very close to me friends and you know families that were detrimentally impacted by the war on drugs i never perceived marijuana to be very harmful but i also understood that you just couldn't do it just because the system said you couldn't right um and and the impacts of that were profound on me even at a young age um and so i'm from ben harbor i have a key to the city of bend harbor i did all types of really fun advocacy stuff back in those fun days before moving to grand rapids and getting involved politically i've always been a systems level thinker a systems level activist and so when i came to grand rapids i kind of got connected to leaders here who are passionate about diversity um initially and what that turned into was me starting my own consulting firm basically to assist elected officials candidates and campaigns and um ascending to elected office so that they could facilitate change one of the issues with that that i discovered while working with judges the state house representatives school board members county um candidates was just that the pipeline was broken for a regular individual to ascend to elected office there was just so many systemic barriers and so i started working to address those barriers um i started a radio show as pretty grassroots is called political pulse i'm the only black owned to do for like two years and i had the pleasure of talking to brilliant people like tammy about her work in cannabis and people like pat miles being appointed by barack obama and then i also helped co-found equity pac which was another piece of the systemic um three-prong approach to the pipeline for leaders and through equity pack we raised money and we supported equity-minded individuals and to increase their win ability so that they could essential elected office um i got approached about a year and a half ago almost two years ago now by someone who was like hey the work that your consulting firm does bringing this lens for equity and inclusion uh and outreach to leaders could really be beneficial to this burgeoning cannabis industry and so as i learned about the regulatory compliance and licensing um you know for municipalities i realized there was just this huge opportunity to advance and amplify the needs of our neighborhood associations our neighborhood groups our community organizations who were really afraid of cannabis who were really uh nervous about big money coming from you know wherever they felt it hailed from california and colorado to kind of change the face of their neighborhoods and i realized that there was a lack of education and so um my consulting firm first was working with at the time the largest medical marijuana license holder in state of michigan and so i got really familiar with licensing with regulatory compliance and i started facilitating um these community um plans to positively impact neighborhoods and so after that i realized as a consultant it wasn't just the best position to hold companies accountable for fulfilling all the promises that they were making to the neighborhoods and so what i did was um i started networking with others all over the state of michigan working with folks like director andrew brisbow coming to different conferences where i learned about how on the east side of the state they were doing incredible work and expungement and i was super jealous i was like why do we not have a robust arm of expungement resources in west michigan and so me and one of my really close friends brilliant entrepreneur ariana waller started the black and brown cannabis guild so that we could bring expunged resources to the west side of the state and so looks like the navia froze did she freeze for you okay um that's all right well hopefully we can come back to her and um she can kind of get tapped back in soon um but we cannot maybe just shift to the next question if that works for y'all um so thanks so much for for introducing yourselves um could you maybe speak to oh she's back no um so could you maybe speak to some of the barriers um that we see as the cannabis industry is expected to grow exponentially and become a major economic force in the state um but there are a lot of barriers to growth and you know equal opportunity to get engaged in this space um so could you maybe speak to what those barriers are and give us a brief introduction of local and state policy solutions that might help to address some of those barriers um and if there are any pain points within the current policies that still need to be addressed um and maybe we'll take that uh start with you margot and then um the first thing is that there's a huge lens right now because cannabis is new and it's an industry that none of us have ever seen the end of prohibition and this particular prohibition unlike alcohol comes with a lot of racial strife because cannabis is a substance that was used to disproportionately arrest criminalize you know separate from resources in multitude of ways of people of color um but as a person of color that speaks in this space um and sees you know a really large landscape i think that it's unfair to exclusively focus this on cannabis all of the policy and all the talk about social equity is essentially acknowledging some of the harm and creating one policy that is expected to undo hundreds of years of oppression um and that is a heavy lift for cannabis to do um so if you look at the history of cannabis itself um you know people of color are disproportionately arrested um sometimes at the rate of the average per the um aclu about four times average but in some cities like grand rapids i believe the average was as much as 15 times that of their non-um people of course as non-people of color so i think that we need to address that and address what does an arrest look like uh an arrest looks like a criminal record a criminal record can disenfranchise you from economic opportunities as far as employment it can disenfranchise you from housing it can disenfranchise you from educational opportunities and so all of that has to go into the pot i don't think it's possible to create one policy that undoes all the things that have happened um another part part of it is the disproportionate distribution of wealth so cannabis is a very high capital raise and i've seen you know a really large landscape and you know right now i'm with an mso that's you know on the stock market so that's a little bit different but even when i wou d come to people in the state of michigan and say you know people who are approaching one license or two licenses well where did you come up with the resources because this is federally legal so you can't go to a bank for a loan um and people who traditionally did not go the route of raising capital many people would say well i just went to my family and you just went to your family and were able to garner millions of dollars to start a new business and that does not always happen in community communities of color um so i think that acknowledging that this is an entire systematic issue it doesn't just focus on the lens of cannabis but when it comes to the state of michigan there are a number of complexities one we have a fully legal market both adult use and medical and we don't have a path to expungement even if i create a path to expungement that does not necessarily mean that you're interested in participating in the industry or that you will have access to the industry through ownership because licensing is not limited at a state level but licensing is capped in most municipalities so they're only a fixed number of licenses that are going to go around um and that causes the price of real estate to rise in a number of economic factors so i think um just looking really heavily at the entire economic landscape of america today and the history of that is the first step that we could take in creating any policy around this particular space thanks so much margo and danville i'm glad that you're back um give you a moment to kind of plug back in and make sure you're good and maybe we can pass it off to tammy the answer yeah i i would um second every single thing um that margot said um i think i have a long list so i'll be very brief so access to information you know grand rapids basically every property was eligible snatched up before a huge part of the city even knew what was going on um or how to even get into the market or how to get a license exclusionary zoning i was i was reading i've been learning a lot about exclusionary zoning and in terms of if you need if you need to hire your own urban planner to even find a piece of real estate for like 50 grand you know that that's exclusionary you know who can who just has 50 grand sitting around to hire a professional urban planner to help you navigate this unbelievably complicated zoning that we have uh it's you know it's everywhere but uh specifically grand rapids where i live you know all these different sensitive uses and how do you define a sensitive use and um how how does their input play in so that that whole thing has just been extremely complicated and knocked out a huge portion of the population the capital requirements of course are are immense um access to real estate as margot said the fewer licenses available in any one municipality or uh township the the prices skyrocket and grand rapids people were paying uh three times market value you know who can who can who can pay three times market value and the neighborhoods that are zoned in are primarily commercial districts uh my neighborhood east town is zoned out um we actually have some small buildings you know so so people might actually be able to afford smaller buildings as opposed to these giant commercial buildings in industrial districts and commercial districts lots of communities just opting out entirely you know zero opportunity for anybody and a lot of uh a lot of cities including kentwood wyoming all kinds of cities where uh the populists voted overwhelmingly for proposal one and uh the people in charge just decided well we don't like it so we're not doing it regardless of what the voters said uh racism at every level of every system um no banking uh again who's i'd my family doesn't have wealth i don't have access to a million dollars um but a lot of a lot of white people do um but in terms of banking that's uh that's a huge issue expungements is an issue and yeah those are those are just a handful of things that have uh and in terms of solutions i think lots and lots of education um stigma is really really big some of the stuff i've heard at planning commission meetings is just astounding um people talking about dead bodies out in front of dispensaries and i mean it is reefer madness is real and there are so many people that still buy into that craziness and and in all fairness we're dealing with you know 90 years of propaganda and misinformation and so just just working on that stigma piece and um that that's significant as well so yeah i'll leave it at that for now thank you tammy and uh yeah danavia could you yeah i think they said a lot of the big ones um i think the question was just focused on local and state but i think federally descheduling marijuana is going to be important obviously banking is really important i think those issues that are that present themselves as normal barriers to any entrepreneur are so compounded when it comes to entrepreneurs of color that it's really near impossible to to foster something and like some policy outcomes that are equitable without addressing some of those really high barriers for everyone and then specifically when it comes to barriers for in my opinion what i see for people of color after our expungement fair last year we had dozens of people reaching out to us asking how do they get into the cannabis industry and some of those hurdles especially in west michigan were around cities that weren't um weren't opting in to marijuana just like tammy said because of stigma i knew a lot of entrepreneurs that were in cities that were really negatively impacted by the wrong drugs and i tell people every war has casualties right when it was an unjust when it's an unjust war you pay the casualties some type of reparations right and america does a great job at that for anyone but victims of the war on drugs it seems like and so communities like flint benton harbor grand rapids where i saw large numbers of people reaching out asking how did they get into the industry they couldn't find property within a city that would opt into marijuana even at present the cities that are opting into allowing licensing oftentimes are doing so without embedding a policy lens that's equitable they're just using a lot of the buzzwords so they all claim to have social equity programs but none of those programs have license set asides for people that were harmed by the war on drugs they have really rigorous um hurdles so like in the city of grand rapids i think it's like you have to have been a resident of grand rapids for 10 consecutive years between like 1970 something in like 2016 or 18. um and even for people that i know who are working in the cannabis industry right now who left and went away for college came back things like that for whatever reason they don't qualify right or people that i know who have multiple felonies who have worked at state of michigan to get permission to be in the industry they don't qualify even though there's a current like quote social equity program in place a lot of cities are doing like cities like grand rapids did and saying we're going to allow licensing for everything and we're going to expect micro businesses to be the licensed type that fosters racial equity when in reality micro businesses just aren't as sustainable as they need to be especially for folks who have experience as a caregiver um and so those are real barriers i would say immediately what we really need in in cities like grand rapids that are going to be pro marijuana is a little bit of deregulation around properties right tammy touched on this the sensitive land uses the waivers those things are really costly and confusing if i want to start a business i should be able to find a property and start that business and then once i have to operate right once i jump over the hurdles of getting licensed i should be able to access information on how to sustain a viable business and that's difficult too in marijuana it's almost like a good old boys club sometimes where all the knowledge around how your supply chain works with growing cultivating best practice in retail best practice and insurance and banking those things just aren't available to most entrepreneurs especially entrepreneurs of color and so right now we need more incubators more mentorship programs like the ones that we're working on now more pipelines for jobs specifically um and then yeah just this real um equitable policy that targets people with cannabis convictions and people with adverse impacts because of cannabis prohibition thank you all for your really thoughtful answers this is a really important conversation so we know that recreational possession of use of marijuana was approved in michigan in 2018 but there are many individuals as you all have touched on a little bit who are still incarcerated or live with criminal records for offenses that would be legal today so there are even some cases of folks who are currently serving 60-year sentences um or other folks who have even been recently sentenced to over 16 years of federal prison for operating outside of the marijuana law lava in michigan so continuously we see that black and brown folks have been and are still disproportionately impacted by the prohibition of marijuana and the war on drugs could you all speak a little bit about what you're working at currently to address some of these issues and disparities in michigan is it okay if i start this one that was like the call i was on right before this panel was about this um right now flourish and the black and brown cannabis guild are working with the last prisoner project in the rolled it up for justice program uh specifically around michael thompson uh the gentleman who was sentenced to serve like you said close to 60 years in jail for selling three pounds of marijuana to an undercover cop back in the 90s um this gentleman um became a client of the last prisoner project and there were celebrities all over the country calling for his release and over 130 000 emails were sent to the governor's office and this gentleman is up for clemency and this still has not been granted and then most recently the development has been that this gentleman has contracted coronavirus and we have been continually calling for his release um because this is just uh again another casualty of really really harsh punishment for something today that would not be legal and that would not be dealt that with that way and so we're calling for the release of michael thompson that information is available on all platforms right now if you go to flourish any of our social media website um there's links to the governor's office number email so that you can call for michael thompson's release um and then at a systems level some of the work that i think we have to do to address these issues and disparities in michigan is continuing to um reverse the the constantly compounding impact of people who have cannabis convictions i say it all the time that one in three michigan families has someone in their family with a um with a conviction right and the impacts of those crimes on their everyday life every time they apply for a job they have to disclose that every time they want a scholarship every time they want to do anything they have to disclose that and so over criminalization of things that are harmless um we really need to be peeling back in michigan and so right now there's a package of expungement bills moving through michigan that would make uh expungement automatic which is something that i've been working with some legislators on right now um we need people to be pushing uh on peter lucito's committee to move that package of expungement bills forward uh this september we're going to continue to be doing expungement fairs all over the state of michigan i'm super excited to be working with the city of grand rapids with the governor's office to do that we need more partners in that work also we need cannabis companies to be intentional about creating job opportunities for the ones who don't want to be entrepreneurs and cannabis i think margo touched on it in her opening remarks about how 400 years of slavery and a million years of racism is not going to be dismantled by just one industry in one day and in one policy outcome but i do believe that there's a multi-pronged approach that we should be taking companies like flourish where i work we're a larger company we leverage our ability as the second largest cultivator of marijuana in the state of michigan with factories in multiple cities to create pipelines for jobs for people of color um especially people harmed by the war on drugs when people want to learn about cannabis we need to be there to provide resources for them i tell people to call me to reach out to me over email because if you're someone who wants to have a space in this industry and one of the hurdles is not understanding how to navigate we can eliminate that quickly right we have the resources to do that i'm always looking for more partners that are going to do that as well and so is the state of michigan they'll soon the marijuana regulatory agency will be launching a resource uh arm to their website soon flourish the black and brown cannabis good and others have committed to being a part of that program to create a pipeline for information on how to get into the cannabis industry and how to stay in it how to be successful and profitable in it so that we can end this notion of we're all kind of competing and kind of all support each other and so that's um that's just a few of the things that i think we can be doing right now on a personal level and on a professional level uh in this industry and otherwise yeah thanks for all that really important information marco or tammy would you like to weigh in on that question um yes go ahead go ahead well um well i was originally a founding member of national expungement week and um during national expungement week last year there were 43 events in 30 cities i hosted five events in the state of michigan four expungement fairs and one legislative policy discussion um and one thing that i can say that i as a total lessons learned in year two and having come into contact with over 900 clients is that expungement fairs are not necessarily the best process for this during one of the partners for for national expungement week is coke for america they have their clear my record software i am a cult for america volunteer i own their code for congress brigade i believe emphatically that automatic expungement is the only way to do expungement it's just a huge barrier for a person to have to endure criminalization and even through the assistance of expungement fair if i fill out your paperwork and if i help you get your fingerprints you still are going to be responsible for filing that with your local clerk you're still going to be responsible for serving the attorney general you're still going to be responsible for appearing before a judge and or magistrate and representing yourself and there's just like a lot of places where that can fall through the cracks and it just still takes a lot of time and energy and effort when we have the technology and the resources to just flip a switch the state of illinois on january 1st they expunged 11 000 records um it is also very low cost to do an automatic expungement as opposed to clogging the system of justice especially now after you know coronavirus where you can't even walk into a clerk's office and and do your filing you need a superior superior level of knowledge to do an electronic filing um for all of these things it's extremely complicated and frustrating and that is the reason why some people don't even participate in fairs or they come to a fair and they don't follow through and so they still have the burden of that on their record i think that it's up to us to advocate for all that heavy lifting um be done so that it's automatic i think that there is some pushback um that is from more a conservative mind of thinking that people should have to quote-unquote work for something or people should have to endure some sort of hardship in order to receive help um and i think that's just like extremely unfair um and so having an awareness of that definitely in favor of all the expung ment bills um only one of the expungement bills had automatic expungement in it and of the previous expunge iteration of expungement you still need to petition the court which is not automatic automatic to me means that i woke up and it did not exist anymore and if you cannot do that at the very bare minimum establish a standard that my criminal record is only visible to a law informant for a law enforcement agency it doesn't have to be applicable to employment or housing unless your crime involves some sort of dishonesty um or or violent act um so we've established so many barriers um for people that this awareness is the first step but a slew of policy it's not going to be one policy it's going to have to be a complete change of minds a complete changing of hearts and a changing of the guard quite frankly in order to see the future that we hope for yeah i'd like to piggyback on that um you know the drug war a lot a lot of folks there's kind of two schools of thoughts right there's the drug war was a massive failure right because the stated reason for the drug war was to reduce use that's what they said they wanted to reduce use well it did the opposite of that right drugs are cheaper more accessible um than ever um the second school of thought which is the carl hart school of thought who's a personal hero of mine is that the drug war worked exactly as it was designed and was was a phenomenal success because when you look at anne slinger in the 30s when you look at nixon in the 60s when you look at reagan in the 80s these laws work to control populations that were seen as problematic all the way back to the mexican immigrants which is where the word marijuana came from which is why we use cannabis the word cannabis a lot now to the anti-war activists and the jazz musicians and so so it's not like folks just kind of accidentally got picked up in this it's not like somehow a lot of people have a ridiculous idea that uh black people use more drugs than than white people well it's it's not true the drug war was designed um by racist people to control various races and i've got the new jim crow here too which is another phenomenal resource for people that want to learn more about uh you know once jim crow was ended once prohibition of alcohol was ended then a lot of those same folks moved on to the drug war so i think knowing that uh we need to government needs to take responsibility i i agree i i love what flourish is doing i love what redemption cannabis is doing i love what farmhouse wellness is doing i love all of this phenomenal work by some businesses and i think every business should be doing social equity work and in a meaningful real way but you know what the government put these policies in place and the government benefited from i mean look at law enforcement look at law enforcement budgets look at jails look at private prisons look at prosecutors look at you know these are the folks that created these horrendous policies that are unbelievably expensive and insanely harmful so one of the things we've been working on is okay how are they going to make amends you know what what what are you all going to do and uh again i absolutely want to continue to pressure businesses but there's only so many businesses and there's so much only so much money they have if we're looking at real real meaningful call it amends call it resources call it reparations whatever some type of meaningful way to address the massive harm that's taken place we're gonna need city county feds state all to play a massive role um i i agree automatic expungements are what we need to do every state going forward that legalizes i hope includes that in their in their legislation uh it's really really hard to do it after the fact mi legalized did endorse both dana nessel and gretchen whitmer i was at some of the work groups as well with nestle and you know we got commitments from them that they were going to move forward with automatic expungements and we have not seen that in addition to pardons across the board for anybody that is that is incarcerated right now for something that would be legal let them out get them out what are i mean what in the world is michael thompson still doing in prison this is insanity and now he's got covet and this is just i mean it just hurts it hurts my soul you know this is this is just awful so we need way way way more people to get involved in this fight in this movement i mean i see margo i see de navia i see like the usual suspects you know there's there are not enough people working on this um there's a lot of people contacting you know asking us what we're doing you know we're doing everything we can but we can there's only so much so many people can do we need to build a much much stronger movement with far more people and the last thing i wanted to say was on this issue is other systems are still extremely problematic even though we have decriminalized and we have legalized you still have entities like ice that are um sending deporting people sending people back for a marijuana because they got marijuana even though it's legal they're picking them up anyways saying it's federally illegal and and deporting folks uh cps is another huge huge issue for for people that use cannabis uh particularly uh the black population is is very targeted um and just because it's legal cps doesn't like it and they consider it a drug and you know nobody oversees cps they just do whatever they want uh so for anybody out there never let them in never ever let them in get an attorney because they will mess your life up don't get me wrong they do do some important work here and there but get an attorney because they will make your life extremely difficult so working on those systems as well you know we think a lot about uh the police and um different policies at the state level and city level but we also got to be looking at uh what are sort of these behind the scenes in the shadows uh entities that really continue to just make people's lives