1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 1 August 10, 2009 TRANSCRIPT OF CONFERENCE CALL OF THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Project.
MR. SKOLNIK: phone here? MR. HOLMES: MR. SKOLNIK: MS. BEA:
Who else do we have on the
Chris Holmes. Okay.
Apple Bea. Mr. Shriven from Mark Gecko. Rebecca Krause-Hardy.
MR. SHRIVEN:
MS. KRAUS-HARDY: MR. HANEY:
Hunter Haney from Voice
MS. BAN: MR. BAZIS: Dynamics.
Liz Ban. Tom Bazis from Education
MS. SCHWARTZ: MR. SKOLNIK:
Constance Schwartz. This is Michael Skolnik, and
we are waiting a few minutes for a more folks to join us. We usually have a moderator, but we don't So at a
have a moderator on this phone call.
certain point, I'm going to give you a way to mute your phones, so whenever you want to talk, you can unmute that button. minutes. MR. KEYONIS: MR. SKOLNIK: MR. KEYONIS: Hello. Yes. Yes, this is Lee Keyonis. Michael Skolnik? So we'll start in a few
I'm just joining you guys. 2
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MR. SKOLNIK: joining us. MR. KEYONIS: MS. FURMAN: MR. SKOLNIK: MS. FURMAN: MR. SURFOLEY: MR. SKOLNIK: MR. SURFOLEY: MR. SKOLNIK: MR. SURFOLEY: MR. SKOLNIK:
Hi, Lee.
Thank you for
Thank you for having me. Rachel Furman is here too. Hello, Rachel. Hi. Evan Surfoley as well. I'm sorry? Evan Surfoley. I can't hear you. Evan Surfoley. Okay. Okay. This is going
to be quite fun today with 23 people. MR. AKATUNDAY: from Chicago. MR. SKOLNIK: MR. AYANDELE: Okay. This is Bim Ayandele from This is Mobaloge Akatunday
Winner & Associates in L.A. MR. SKOLNIK: Okay. Jeff Kimmerling from
MR. KIMMERLING: Lincoln, Nebraska. MR. SKOLNIK: MR. FINE:
Hello, Jeff.
This is Joshua Fine with Baron
Fine LLP in Los Angeles. MR. SKOLNIK: Hey, Joshua.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Angeles.
MS. KIMMEL: Los Angeles. MR. SKOLNIK: MS. SHEA:
Hi, this is Karen Kimmel from
Okay.
Hi, this is Avia Shea from Los
MR. SKOLNIK: MR. SMITH: Philadelphia. MR. STRAUSNER: Strausner. MR. SKOLNIK: MS. BROWN:
Okay. Hi, this is Tayyib Smith from
Hey, this is Kevin
Okay. Hey guys, this is Saskia
Brown from Current in L.A. MR. SKOLNIK: CARMICHAEL: Angeles as well guys. MR. BONNER: Los Angeles as well. MR. SKOLNIK: MR. FOG: Okay, Sean. This is Sean Bonner from L.A. is in the house. Carmichael here from Los
Just to switch it up, Michael
Fog from Los Angeles. MR. AVALA: Nick Avala from Los Angeles. Okay. Valentine from Brooklyn,
MR. SKOLNIK: MR. VALENTINE: New York.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Michael? star 6. Skolnik. New York.
LAZARUS:
From New York. Sharon Lewis from New York,
MS. LEWIS:
MR. SCABARA: MR. SKOLNIK:
Joe Scabara, Los Angeles. So guys this is Michael
What I'm going to ask you to do now is if
you haven't introduced yourself, no reason to mute your phone just yet until you introduce yourself, but if you can, press star 6 on your phone now and that will mute you. And then if you want to talk
towards the end, we'll do a question and answer. SPEAKER: Good job, Mikey. Please continue to press
MR. SKOLNIK:
MR. DE LA ROCHA:
How are you doing,
This is Mike De La Rocha here. MR. SKOLNIK: Michael De La Rocha is here If you haven't introduced If you have, please
and now he's star 6'd.
yourself, please do so now. press star 6. MR. ALONZO: San Diego. MR. RODEN: Pittsburgh, PA. MS. HASTEY:
Hi, this is Pedro Alonzo in
This is Paul Roden,
This is Lynn Hasty from Green 5
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Galactic in Los Angeles. MR. AKATUNDAY: Chicago, Illinois. MR. BEVIN: Los Angeles. MR. WONG: from Washington D.C. MR. CLARK: This is Mat Clark filling in in Hey Guys, this is Victor Wong Hi. Mark Bevin from This is Sean Akatunday,
Chicago for Mike (inaudible). MR. SKOLNIK: I hear somebody in a car, if
that person in the car could press star 6, I would greatly appreciate it. MS. BULL: Hi this is Lori Bull in
Los Angeles with Shepard Fairey. MR. STONE: Hi, this is Rob Stone from
New York, Fader Magazine Cornerstone. MR. SKOLNIK: seconds. MR. RUNNER: MR. SKOLNIK: Justin Runner, L.A. If you're just joining us, if We do not We'll just wait 30 more
you could press star 6 to mute your phone. have a moderator.
If you could press star 6, that
would be greatly appreciated. MR. BOLERO: be the last one. I was waiting to see if I could
This is Leo Bolero from Mark Gecko. 6
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This is Black from Philadelphia. MS. VASSEL: Projects, New York. MR. SKOLNIK: All right. So we will Nicolette Vassel from Dive
As people join us, I'll ask them to mute
their phones periodically just so we can hear everybody. New York. This is Mike Skolnik. I am based in
I am a film maker for the past ten years
but currently serve as the political director for Russell Simmons. I have been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA about a month ago in a conversation that was had. We had the idea that I
would help bring together the independent artists community around the country. So as we hear
everyone's names and locations and companies, this is extremely humbling to be in all your presence on the telephone. this phone. It's a remarkable group that is on We thank
I thank you for your time.
you for your time. First, I want to thank the hosts: Hal
Mendoza, Michael De La Rocha, Raymond Leon Rolker, Aaron Rose, Tayyib Smith, Rob Stone and Nicolette Vassel who all graciously reached out to their peers and colleagues around the country to have 7
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them join on the telephone call today. I want to start off by saying a few things, and then we will have some people in Washington from the NEA and United We Serve speak to us, and then we'll have a chance for questions and comments and discussions afterwards. I think
this it's clear, and I heard somebody from Shepard Fairey's team introduce themselves, and I think Shepard and the Hope poster obviously is a great example, but it's clear as an independent art community as artists and thinkers and tastemakers and marketers and visionaries on this call, the role that we played during the campaign for the president and also during his first 200 some odd days of his presidency and the president has a clear arts agenda and has been very supportive of using art and supporting art in creative ways to talk about some of the issues that we face here in our country and also to engage people. And I think all of us who are on this phone call were selected for a reason, and you are the ones that lead by example in your communities. You are the thought leaders. You are the ones that, if
you create a piece of art or promote a piece of art or create a campaign for a company, and tell our country and 8
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our young people sort of what to do and what to be in to; and what's cool and what's not cool. And so I'm hoping that through this group and the goal of all this and the goal of this phone call, is through this group that we can create a stronger community amongst ourselves to get involved in things that we're passionate about as we did during the campaign but continue to get involved in those things, to support some of the president's initiatives, but also to do things that we are passionate about and to push the president and push his administration. And the first thing that I thought we could all come together on and begin this collective of artists around the country was United We Serve or is United We Serve, and United We Serve is the president's call to the country to get engaged in meaningful community service, and I wanted to give you all the opportunity to hear more about the United We Serve from the folks who are running it as well as hear from the National Endowment for the Arts and Yosi Sergant, who many of us know has been a true champion during the campaign of the arts and as what he's doing over at the National Endowment for the Arts, and how we can all 9
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work together to promote and to engage our country in service as well as use art in doing so. So I wanted to introduce our first speaker is Nell Abernathy. United We Serve. So Nell, welcome, and thank you for joining us, and I would love for you to give a rundown of United We Serve and an overview. MS. ABERNATHY: Thanks, Michael, and We And Nell is the outreach director for
thanks everyone for getting on the call.
actually were lucky enough to get someone who I'm going to introduce first which is Buffy Wicks with the Office of Public Engagement, who I'm sure many of you know from the campaign. She was a huge
champion of getting the arts community involved on the campaign and also has been one of the people who spearheaded this initiative from the beginning. So I'll let Buffy say a few things first, and then I'll get into the we’s about this. MR. SKOLNIK: apologize. MS. WICKS: Oh, no worries. No worries. Okay. Great. Buffy, I
I'm honored to be on the call, and I just, you know, it's been a long road I know for a lot of us, and we're really just beginning. I, first of all, 10
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want to thank everyone for being on the call and really just a deep, deep appreciation for all the work that you all put into the campaign for the two plus years that we all worked together. I was the
field director in California so I hear my L.A. peeps out there, so it's exciting to hear those voices. And, you know, we won and that's exciting, and now we have to take all that energy and make it really meaningful. I'm in the White House now and
what I've learned over these first -- we just had our 200 mark on Saturday, which sounds crazy, is that it's -- that change does not come easy and, you know, when then Candidate Obama would say that it's like, yeah, I know change doesn't come easy, but then now that I'm actually in the White House and working towards furthering this agenda, this very aggressive agenda, I'm really realizing that, and I'm also appreciative of the way in which we did win and the strategy that the campaign shows, which is really to engage people at a local level and to engage them in the process, because we need them and we need you, and we're going to need your help, and we're going to come at you with some specific asks here. 11
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But we know that you guys are ready for it and eager to participate, so one we want to thank you, and two, I hope you guys are ready. So I'm at the
Office of Public Engagement here at the White House. Our office does a lot of outreach to
communities all across the country either by constituency groups or by issue. We have about 20 folks and we work under Valerie Jarrett, she's one of our fantastic leaders and Tina Chen. And so we're really here at your And as
disposal and we want to be helpful to you.
part of my role here is working on service, and so when we were thinking about how do we take a lot of this energy that's out there, how do we translate folks who have just been engaged in electoral politics and engage them in really the process of governing, of being part of this administration in a little bit of a different way because politics is one thing and governing is something totally separate, we really saw service as the platform by which we can do that. Service for individuals who have never participated or volunteered in their community before really provides for them an opportunity to open their eyes and see what's going on in their
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community and really the goal for us, we wanted to bolster civic engagement with this effort, this United We Serve effort. We wanted folks to connect
with local nonprofit organizations in their community. We wanted them to connect with local
city council members or local elected officials. We wanted them to connect with federal agencies, with labor unions, progressive groups, face groups, women's groups, you name it. What we realize was that the only way we're really going to have change is if all of us are working together collaboratively in really creating sort of these sustained relationships that we can all build on and that it's really going to take all of us to be strong to deal with a lot of the issues that we're facing. So the concept of United We Serve, and I know Nell is going to talk a little bit more in detail, is really to get folks engaged locally in their community. You know, the -- the campaign
itself goes from June 22nd to September 11th; 81 days of sustained service. And the reason why we
did that time frame was often what happens is people will issue calls to service, everyone will go and participate and individuals will go out and 13
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do their two or three hours of volunteer time, and that's it, and they walk away from that experience. And maybe they've had a good time and maybe they didn't, but there's no real measure of impact. So what we wanted to do was make this a sustained amount of time where folks could see what I'm doing here matters, and what I'm doing changes my community. And I see from beginning to end that So
I can be an agent of change in my community. that's why we do this more sustained period of time, and we really view it as an onramp to a lifetime of service.
We really want service to be incorporated into people's daily lives. We want people to think
of service on a regular basis, commit to doing service on a regular basis, that they feel they can contribute. The challenge that you have there is
do you ask people to do one specific thing or do you give them a menu of options, or do you say just go volunteer wherever. So we've kind of narrowed it down to four main areas to give people a little bit of direction. We worked very closely with our federal We worked closely
agencies here in the government.
with the Department of Education, Department of 14
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Energy, the EPA, Department of Labor and others, really sort of industry experts thinking through what are the main issues people are facing, how can we work with local organizations and this federal government to create this sort of change. So we focus on the four main areas: is health care. One We
Obviously, that's a big issue.
met with Health and Human Services and thought through there are ways we can have organizations and individuals work with HHS and others to be effective. Is it preventative health care? Is it
children nutrition?
What are the main issues?
What's the main focus there? Second was energy and environment. And so I
we worked a lot with the Department of Interior. know I'm throwing a lot of government stuff at you guys, so bear with me. now. It's the world we live in And
We're actually running the government.
Department of Energy and others I'm thinking through, is it trail restoration programs that's needed? Is it weatherizing homes? So we can
partner with the league of conservation voters or the Sierra Club on those efforts and really funnel people's energies that way. The third was education. We met with the 15
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Department of Education.
Turns out the number one
issue that they're concerned about is summer reading loss. Children leave the 2nd grade, and
they have these great reading skills, and they spend all summer in the pool like I did when I was little, and they go back in the fall and they have dramatically decreased their reading ability. you have to play catch up. So we wanted to combat that. we -- how can we combat that issue? So how can You know, is So
it getting kids library cards or reading to children or doing book drives, things of that nature? And then the fourth category was community renewal, and that's more focused on our traditional service activities, you know, food shelters, homeless shelters. service activities. Many of these more traditional A lot of these organizations
are facing a decrease in funding while at the same time an increase in need. those needs. So those are the four areas that we focused on, and we're managing the whole thing through Serve.gov, which is a new Web site that Nell and I can talk to you about here in a second. 16 So how can we support
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And, you know, we have about 257,000 plus projects going on around the country that we're asking folks to be involved in and we're doing it in sort of two ways: Folks can go on to our Web site, and they
can find a project that the local Sierra Club has sponsored, and they can sign up to volunteer. They
can put in their zip code and sign up to volunteer. Or if they don't see something that they like, we have a lot of online toolkits where I can go on, and I can go on and learn how to do a specific task and can register my project, and I can recruit my friends and my family and my neighbor to be a part of it. We did a lot of outreach to organizations and Nell can go over those pieces, but we're working with a lot of folks in all different sectors. It really does take everyone's We need your guys's help to promote
involvement. this.
We know that you all have channels and
ability to get the message out far greater than we do here and the president's put out the call. that's who we have to push this forward, and he speaks to a lot of people, so does our First Lady and so do our cabinet secretaries. But we know And
that you all are very powerful voices of change in 17
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your own right, and we're looking to you for your help on that. So with that, I appreciate you guys letting me be on. I will jump off now and allow Thank you all
Nell to talk more about the details. so much. MR. SKOLNIK: MS. WICKS: Great.
Buffy, thank you.
Thank you. Thanks so much, Buffy, and
MS. ABERNATHY:
thank you, Michael, for organizing this and asking us to be on. Abernathy. For you all, my name is Nell I'm the director of outreach for United
We Serve, which is run through the federal agency in Washington, the corporation for national and community service. We also do things like
AmeriCorps and other national service programs. But our goal here has really been to figure out how to implement great vision that Buffy and the president have about increasing civic participation across the nation. This will sound
very familiar to many of you, we've basically been working to do this using the same tools we found so successful in the campaign. I'm sure many of you
saw as well the lessons learned, the same lessons learned that ordinary people can accomplish 18
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extraordinary things when asked and when given the proper tools. So our primary goal here is to ask
those people and arm them with the skills and tools they need to really do what they're already doing but do it as effectively as possible so that as in our very specific community service world, meant a few things. First, trying to make service more accessible. We know that we need to expand the
base of who's serving and also what it means to serve, because a lot of people are already engaged in a community service, probably a lot of people you work with, but they might not think of themselves as part of this national service movement. So we just want to make sure the space
is large enough to encompass all of the service that is being done and make everyone feel like they're part of this tent. so accessibility has been a main thing for us and we created Serve.gov, which is a Web site very similar to some of the Web tools we used on the campaign in that you can go in and type your zip code and in return service opportunities would come up. Google. It was produced in partnership with It is a work in progress. They're 19
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hopefully going to be adding this social networking piece to it and it will be a growing online community. Our main goal is getting out there, so anyone who says, "I want to get involved; I don't know how," can take that first step. Buffy also
alluded to these do-it-yourself toolkits we created. We have 12 that really allow people who
are more self-directed who say I have a need in my community that I want to address, and it's not necessarily attractive to me to go and serve soup at the existing soup kitchen with 80-year-old women, but I think I have a good idea how to do it and we want to make sure those ideas are encouraged and we connect those people with other like-minded individuals. So that accessibility piece has been huge. And then another tool we've been working on is on the ground presence. We obviously don't have the
kind of field staff that we were used to in terms of producing events and encouraging local contacts, but we are partnering the big national organizations, local affiliates across the country and with AmeriCorps members, we have been able to generate this sort of on-the-ground enthusiasm 20
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through the traditional channels, the local Red Cross, your local Boys and Girls Club. And so we are getting the word out through those traditional channels. We are really -- right
now Buffy talked about the initial 81 days from June 22nd to September 11th. That was sort of our
initial we want to get the initiative off the ground and up and running, get the partners on board in the traditional service world, get the Web site up now. As we're looking towards September 11th and what that day means, it's going to be the first time ever it's declared by President Obama a national day of service and remembrance and looking at it not as the end to anything but rather an opportunity to build on the foundation late this summer by extending the base further, and the president is going to issue another goal to service and asking people to sign up to another season of service. Our goal now, now that the tools are here, the foundation is here is to really expand that base and get the -- get to the folks we haven't necessarily reached this summer. And so that
brings me to kind of our third major tactic we have
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been working on all summer using the media and the story-telling on the campaign. Sharing our story
of why we were moved to volunteerism was incredibly important what we did at every volunteer event, what the president did when he was talking about his own story. To a large degree, that's how I saw the arts community to be so powerful in the campaign helping us to tell the story, telling their own story whether it was the Hope poster which made the whole -- our whole mission instantly recognizable and relatable to people, or it was the Will.I.am video that circulated on the Internet but helping people to feel that they are part of a national movement and that their story, their private story, fits into this public space. So we are really looking at reaching a new brand of people, highlighting a new kind of service project, grabbing those people who don't necessarily read the community paper. Where the
Lyons Club, it's talking about their service project and making sure they know they are part of this, and they are critical to this. I think Yosi is on and is going to talk about some of the specific ways which we feel the 22
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art community is critical to this both what's already going on and some opportunity for future partnership. And I'll stay on the call, and if there are any questions at the end, I'd be happy to answer them. But thank you so much. I want to
echo again what Michael said about feeling truly humbled in the presence of some of the real peace makers across the country. And I lived in L.A. for
a long time, so I have a particular soft spot for you folks out there. MR. SKOLNIK: Yosi. Thank you. Nell. We have
Yosi Sergant is from the NEA, director of
communications at the National Endowment for the Arts. Yosi, the floor is yours. MR. SERGANT: Thank you so much. Still
trips me out to hear myself introduced that way. Hello everybody. some many familiar voices. government. First. It's really good to hear Welcome to your
I want to thank Michael for
putting together this call and all the hosts. Thank you, Buffy, for taking time out of your -- I don't know if you guys know Buffy. Those of you
that do know, know that she's taking time out of 23
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Cash for Clunkers and H1N1 and making sure that the government is running properly to take time and hop on the phone with this telephone calls, and I've been in this game with a lot of you for quite sometime. And before I joined the dot gov side, I can say personally that I haven't reached out to anybody at the White House to participate in something as important as national service. The
very fact that the telephone call is happening to me is a really bold statement. And I think it's
reflective of all the hard work that went down during the campaign, all the time and energy that each and every one of you put in, myself included, it's paying off. This is what we fought for. We fought for
a chance to be at the table and not only at the table but we're setting the table. And now the
official rule of National Endowment for the Arts, as director of communication and say, We here at the NEA are extremely proud to participate in the president's United We Serve initiative. This is a chance for us to partner with the White House and the corporation for national community service along the arts community in 24
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immediately affecting some change in our communities. I want to make the point very clear,
we acknowledge the creativity, commitment and generosity that each and every single one of you puts in daily to shape the lives of those who surround you, whether it be leading by example at identifying qualities design, quality art, quality music, we recognize the role each of you play in shaping the lives of those around and that could not be understated. We also want to encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity that's been put in front of you. This is -- the president of the
United States is really -- put out a call to America and said, We want to make Americans' lives better by asking everybody to participate in shaping the life of their community and make the quality of life better. This is an amazing opportunity for each of us to not only do what we do daily but to do it within an infrastructure and framing of a national program. Nobody knows better how to -- I think the
point has been made, but I'm going to reinstate it -- restate it. Nobody knows better how to make
a stink about it than the people who are on this 25
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call and the people that build your networks as Michael said, it is a great idea for this community to coalesce and continue to charge forward in making this the country that we all want it to become. What does that mean? within this initiative? service? How does it fit
What the hell is national
How the hell do I get kids with fancy
haircuts in all the right clothing to pay attention to it? It means whatever we want it to mean.
Realistically, there are huge national organizations, arts organizations, not arts organizations that are day-to-day that are actively engaged in this conversation and are really working very hard with the guidance of Nell and all the people all over the corporation to move those big machines around. Cross. They're Habitat for Humanity, Red
You name it; they're all in this fight, and
they're all making an effort. Now, how do we move the people who look to each of you for guidance to get involved? We have
to leave that to you because nobody else knows how to do it better than you do, you through your community. You know how to move them.
And one of the things that, you know, I've
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certainly found in my time and I find from learning from each of you and watching each of you work, is that they don't necessarily have to be big initiatives. You can lead by example for, you
know, I hearken back to an example that happened right before election day during the campaign when a bunch of DJs got together and put on a conference call for all the top radio and club DJs around the country who got onto a telephone call and encouraged everyone to make DJ mixes using songs that would encourage people to get out and vote. That is our -- that is a community of musicians speaking to a community of music lovers in what is in all intents and purposes of not a huge amount of time or energy from the organizers, a limited time from the artists, but really a broad statement across the country with vast reach into -- into the citizens' lives. That, to me, is
just a powerful statement of services as getting kids to go out and donate blood or adopting an alley way or identifying some walls in your neighborhood that have been stricken with graffiti that need a mural. What we're asking is for you to take -between now and September 11th take an action.
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What it looks like is completely up to you. want you in the -- we want you in the fight. want you to work with us. information.
We We
You can have my contact The
I'm available to all of you.
corporation for national services is available to all of you to turn on your community, to act as the message spreaders of this program. So how do we do that? really quick and easy steps. at Serve.gov. There are three
One would be to look
What Serve.gov really is, is it's a
place where people can go and find out about service opportunities in their neighborhoods. a place where people can go and post service opportunities in their neighborhoods, and it's a place where people will be telling the stories of service opportunities in their neighborhoods. Wherever you can fit into that equation, is fantastic. If you go out and decide you're It's
going to take the staff of your agency or you're going to ask people to come to your club or you're going to ask your DJ clients or musician clients to go out and do something, post it on Serve.gov. Make it visible. Second piece would be to, you know, specifically to look at applying your talents. 28
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It's one thing if you go out and sweep; it's another thing if you're a musician and apply your music skills. I know there are plenty of graphic You know, if
artists on this telephone call.
you're a graphic artist who finds a service opportunity that's out there, a good cause that's happening, and then donate your services as a graphic designer, maybe encourage other graphic designers to do the same for Serve.gov. Attach
whatever you're doing to this initiative. Let's raise the visibility for the president's call so the people can see it across the country. The second thing would be to really
document it, to take photos, take video, post it on your blogs, get the word out. Like I said, this is Do it. Call on
a community that knows how to make a stink. Do it within your town. Do it nationally.
other producers, marketers, publicists, you know, artists, people from within our community and get them engaged. Really I want to emphasize, and I know that other people have brought it up already, but I want to just hearken back to it really quickly in that this is just the beginning. This is the first We are 29
telephone call of a brand new conversation.
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just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government. What that looks like legally, we're still trying to figure out the laws of putting government Web sites on Facebook and the use of Twitter. This is all being sorted out. We are So
participating in history as it's being made.
bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely and we can really work together to move the needle and to get stuff done. Pick -- I would encourage you to pick
something whether it's health care, education, the environment, you know, there's four key areas that the corporation has identified as the areas of service. My ask would be to apply artistic, you know, your artistic creative communities' utilities and bring them to the table. Again, I'm really,
really honored to be working with you; the National Endowment for the Arts is honored. You're going to
see a lot more of us in the next four and hopefully eight years. If you have any questions, I think we're going to turn it back to Michael. Actually, I'm
going to -- I'm going to turn this to Thomas Bates. 30
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We wanted to give you guys an example of a project that's out there that I think is applicable here. Thomas, are you on the call? MR. BATES: MR. SERGANT: I am. Yeah. Can you hear me? So everybody this is Rock the Vote is
Thomas Bates from Rock the Vote.
one of the groups that is taking up the charge for United We Stand. Thomas is based out of Chicago,
and he's going to give you an example of a project that he's doing with the Rock the Vote. MR. BATES: Hi everybody. We just wanted
to give you one quick tangible example of things that can be done, and this is a work in progress, so don't feel like you're behind the curve on this. We're thinking it through ourselves, but as one example, there's an artist named Cody Hudson out of Chicago, who may or may not be on the phone -- this may come as a surprise if he is on, the timing of this -- but we are trying to think about at Rock the Vote how do we engage young people, in particular, on the issue of a new environmental movement, plus, what does our world look like outside of new legislation, outside of big stuff? How do you connect with the people at a local level? 31
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Cody is an artist who takes, as an example, recycled material and creates public art out of them. So we were talking with some of our
people in creating an event that would have people in the community go through their own community, do a clean up, and take those materials, frankly trash that they find on the ground, and take them to a central meeting point community in Chicago and have Cody and other artists turn it into something of a community monument rather than that the trash that it was before. That was one example that we came up with to really make this a tangible event that linked the service piece with the message of the environment community renewal that is part of the United We Serve. MR. SKOLNIK: Fantastic, Tom. Cody, if
you're on the call, it sounds like an amazing project. This is Michael again. What I want to do
now is open it up for some questions, comments, or suggestions or ideas. I know everybody on this We're now
phone call has ways to make this work. back to the star 6 orchestra.
So if you want to
ask a question, you need to press star 6 so we can 32
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hear you.
So if anybody has any questions or
comments, suggestions or ideas or concerns, please ask away, and we would love to hear your thoughts. MS. BROWN: from Current. Hello. Saskia, what a week you had Michael, this is Saskia Brown
MR. SKOLNIK: last week. MS. BROWN: here. MR. SKOLNIK: them home. MS. BROWN:
It's been a hell of a week
Yeah.
We're happy to have
No kidding.
We're organizing
a number of screenings in L.A. before September, and I think we could probably quickly kind of turn it into something that could support this initiative. I was wondering if there was a list of
films or media that we could have a look at to screen? Like are there any -- is there a
recommended list of films that you guys could illustrate this campaign nicely? of a vague question. MR. SKOLNIK: idea of service? MS. BROWN: Yeah, or that you feel would Films that represent the I know it's sort
be a good idea to represent a campaign or what you 33
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guys are trying to do here? MR. SKOLNIK: I think that's a great
question, and over the next week, I'm going to have some ideas. After the questions are over, the next
week, folks in this phone call if they have any ideas or films that they've made, there are probably some great filmmakers in this call that we could screen so why don't we -- we'll open that up to the group over the course of the next week. that could be arranged, I think that would be a great opportunity for some of the filmmakers and, you know, filmmakers that are not on the call. Would that work? MS. BROWN: That would be great. Should I If
give everyone my e-mail right now or -MR. SKOLNIK: MS. BROWN: Yeah, why not? Everyone get your pens. It's
S, as in Saskia, and Brown as in the color brown at current.com. E-mail your suggestions. Great. What might make
MR. BELVIN:
sense -- this is Mark Belvin from Los Angeles -- is to actually set up an e-mail list and do something where people are being notified of current examples and things that are happening. It may spark ideas
with other people, and I think if you're trying to 34
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organize community, this may be a healthy way to do so. MR. SKOLNIK: we will. Mark, great suggestion and
If anyone has not e-mailed directly --
this is Michael again -- please do so, and I'll give you my e-mail address. from most of you. I think I've heard
But just in case you've spoken
to Yosi or someone else, please e-mail me with your contact information. list of the people. I've put together a large So my e-mail is M, as in
Michael, and then my last name, which is S, as in Sam; K, as in kitten; O, as in Oscar; L, as in Larry; N, as Nancy; I, as in igloo; K, as in kitten, Mskolnik. That's MSkolnik.com. I
So again, MSkolnik at MSkolnik.com.
will definitely distribute an e-mail list by the middle of this week. MR. BELVIN: Can we also get sort of an
overview of action point that you would like for this that we might actually distribute to some of our people we work with? MR. SKOLNIK: MR. BELVIN: MR. SKOLNIK: Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Any other
comments or questions or -35
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MS. SHEA: fusicology.com.
Avia Shea from Los Angeles and
I was just wondering, we run a Web
site, and we live off of like buttons and widgets and new media and, you know, tags. Have you guys
already been setting all that up so it's easier for us to grab all those codes and implement them into our newsletters and onto our Web site? MR. SKOLNIK: MS. ABERNATHY: Nell. Sorry, I didn't hit
Yeah, we're working on that.
We have some
of that capacity, and we're constantly improving. Probably the best thing for us to do would be to talk one-on-one, and any of you can call or e-mail me any time one-on-one, and I'll make sure Michael includes that in his e-mail address, all my contact info but on the text piece to make sure we get you whatever you need. MR. SKOLNIK: I think that's also a good
idea as well is if United We Serve did create some widgets or things that could be easily implemented on the Web site, that could be a good tool that we could use to spread the word and get people involved. MS. ABERNATHY: Absolutely. We have on 36
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our on Serve.gov, right now there are the preliminary things: banners and various widgets,
that you can tap into so you could post a feed right from your Web site to all, which is the source of all the volunteer opportunity. So
there's a lot of networking that could be done on that. So as we expand that, I'll make sure you get updates on that and any suggestions. Again,
the federal government, we're not necessarily the best at doing this kind of thing, so we definitely could use guidance, and I would appreciate any ideas anyone had on that. MR. SKOLNIK: question or comment? MR. BAZIS: That was a great point with Great. Anyone else have a
pre-making Internet creative and e-mail creative and things like that. And just another thing to
bring up, I don't know how deeply you guys want to get involved in terms of the local campaigns, but I would imagine some sort of analytic implementation to really kind of determine what sources are being effective and we can appropriately designate resources to effective sources especially with any sort of internet arm would be probably a pretty 37
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intelligent thing to do. MR. SKOLNIK: that speaking? MR. BAZIS: This is Tom Bazis. I'm with Yes, thank you. Who was
Education Dynamics here in Philly. MR. SKOLNIK: Anyone else? MR. HANEY: Voice Project. This is Hunter Haney with Great, thank you Tom.
This is might be a specific example
but obviously video might be very popular and also very good was for getting this message out there. If all of these organizations were to submit some sort of video to a central point where it's compiled of all the services going on, not only by Americans in America but around the world on that day, September 11th, it could be a great viral piece sort of answering this junction of this day with creation. I don't know if that jibes with the
folks at Current or -MS. BROWN: Yeah, this is Sauskia from We are doing a large
Current responding to that.
obviously on-air piece for September 11th probably all day. If there's any media or kind of
initiative you guys think would help you guys from a point of voice of an on-air property, let me 38
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know. happen.
I'm happy to propose it and try to make it
MR. BELVIN:
If you find this being some
sort of centrally elected video content, you know a piece or two that makes sense -- Mark Belvin -again, I would be happy to facilitate that or other people within the music community might actually try to put music together that might complement it. MR. SKOLNIK: Fantastic. Thank you, Mark.
I think we can take one more.
We're in the middle
of a day here, so I don't want to keep you all too long. We'll take one last question. MS. BAN: I think for the people that are
on the inside of government to talk for a minute about Organizing For America and the differences between Organizing For America and Serve.gov and what we can do to help on critical advocacy issues like health care reform, cap and trade policy, if that should help move policies through the government, because this is a really important role that our creative community can also play. MR. SKOLNIK: Excellent point, Liz. Do
Nell or Yosi, do you want to take that question? MS. ABERNATHY: Yeah, I can address that a
little bit, and the reason only a little bit is 39
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largely because in my role at a federal agency, I'm precluded from going too far down the specific steps what people can do to advocate. But we have
to, for these legal reasons, remain really separate what we do here from what OFA is doing, and so they're basically two separate goals with the same idea. We use the same techniques, organizing strategies, because basically they're both run by people from the campaign. But Serve.gov and the
United We Serve initiative is based on the direct service addressing needs through volunteering today bipartisan support ideas than OFA, which is obviously advocating for policy change on these specific issues. So if you're interested in getting involved with OFA that's run through the DNC now, I could probably put you in -- I could help you with who to contact. I could get that information to We can't sort
Michael and he could get it out.
of -- as a representative of the corporation, I'm not capable of giving you more guidance than just sending you to the right person. MR. SKOLNIK: Well, I can speak on that
because fortunately or unfortunately, I don't work 40
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for the government.
This is Michael, again, but I
can speak a little bit on that, and then I'll wrap this up. I think that's a good point, Liz. Organizing For America, which was created after the campaign which now houses, as we said, in the democratic party and is run by Mitch Stewart, who is part of the campaign, he's the executive director, it is what the democratic party has created to help advocate on behalf of the president, on behalf of the president's policies to get them passed in government. So what I had hoped in bringing this group together with the great hosts, which again, I want to thank for reaching out to their communities was that we could begin to bring together our community in the same enthusiasm, with the same enthusiasm and with the same energy that we all saw in each other during the campaign, and we could continue to work together on issues as important as United We Serve and Service and begin here and continue to work together on other issues that we feel are important, as we mentioned some of them, health care and others, and I'm hoping, and Mark, thank you for your thought of an e-mail list that we 41
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could have stronger community, more communities that are in better communication with each other, and I will definitely make sure that everyone has each other's information and use this amazing opportunity to push forward what I think we all do already which is serve. And I think art in its definition is service, and so now it's time for us to celebrate what we do and promote what we do and also encourage others to get involved with what most of us have been doing our entire lives. So I know
it's the middle of most people's days and for our L.A. crowd, it's amazing how many people are joining us in the morning in L.A. I know you guys
start a little later over there than we do in New York. But I do appreciate all of your time but this is I hope, I hope, I hope, and I say this from the bottom of my heart, that this is just the beginning of a collective that we have created. Those who are on for all of this phone call continue to work together. We'll focus over the
next six to eight weeks on United We Serve and do our very best to help this initiative as well as get involved with this initiative. 42
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 humbled. Nell.
I can't believe that Saskia and Mark and all these people, Tom are already offering help with their own companies, with their own communities because it's a beginning of something very great. And I hope that we can see this
collective after September 11th and keep pushing the things that we care about and that we are passionate about. Please, please, please be in contact with me if you want to say something but don't want to say in front of a bunch of people, you're more than welcome to e-mail me, and then I'll send you my telephone number. You can call me, and we can talk
at all hours of the day, because I truly believe in us as artists. Although I stepped away from the
art world temporarily to work with Russell, it's still what drives me, what fuels me and what excites me. So as I said from the beginning, I'm I want to thank Yosi. I want to thank
I want to thank Buffy, and Thomas Bates from Thank you for joining us in this
Rock the Vote. phone call.
Greatly appreciate your participation.
I thank the hosts once again, and I thank everyone else who's on the call to join us. And hope it's 43
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sunny in your neighborhood, because it's sunny in New York, and now I'm going to go get some lunch, so thank you all. I enjoy it and appreciate it.
You can press star 6 to say goodbye.
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