- Astoundingly real, compelling storytelling and very eye-opening.

Good evening everyone, I'm Deborah Holt Noel, executive producer of Black Issues Forum and host of "North Carolina Weekend."

I want to welcome all of you and thank you so much for joining us for this special preview screening of "Raising Liberty Square."

PBS North Carolina proudly presents content that connects us to our roots as North Carolinians, as Southerners, and as Americans.

We are also members of a community.

We're gathered this evening as part of a community to watch content and explore important issues.

I'm proud to be with you tonight, representing one of the nation's largest PBS affiliates, as we present this documentary about climate gentrification, housing inequities, and the affordable housing crisis.

I know that this film may have been difficult to take in some parts and the conversation may have some tough parts as well, but we all have different perspectives and opinions.

Please show kindness and respect when entering questions in the chat window to your right.

Tonight I have some very special guests with us to discuss the film and the issues it highlights.

I wanna introduce and welcome John Simpkins, president and CEO of MDC, a local nonprofit advocacy group.

And from the film, Valencia Gunder, a community climate activist and resident of Liberty Square.

Thank you both for being here with us.

We really appreciate it.

Valencia, I just wanna start with you.

As I mentioned, you currently live in Liberty Square.

How are you and how are things in Liberty Square?

- Well, just how y'all doing?

I'm so happy to be here.

- Great.

- Most folks just call me V. - Okay V. - Yes, I actually do not live in Liberty Square, I live in Liberty City.

- Liberty City, thank you.

- Yeah, and Liberty Square is a housing unit inside of Liberty City.

How's it going?

It looks completely different than the way I grew up.

I am the young age of 39, but I still remember leaving for college in 2002 and then coming back in 2010.

And I was like, what is this place?

It looked completely different.

But it still had a lot of the things that I were used to.

I've been back in Miami from college since 2010, and what I do love about what's happening in Liberty City right now is that, finally, community has this aligned message.

We don't want to be pushed out, we deserve to have nice things, we want to be safe, we want jobs, we want good housing.

And that still is the conversation right now, unfortunately, as you've all seen inside of the film, the government did not honor that, local government did not honor that.

And the people of Liberty City, at least all of the community members that I engage, they feel as if like they see all this renovation happening around them and none of it's for them.

People are wondering like, where do you go from here?

'Cause the whole state of Florida is very expensive at this point.

The bullying and the direct targeting that happened to people who are standing up, it's crazy.

And then to enforce the One Strike rule, only once the project got approved, that displaced a lot of people.

For those who don't know, HUD had the One Strike rule that if you get in trouble with the law, you can lose your place, your housing.

And that goes for anybody that lives in your home.

They had never implemented this thing at Liberty Square until it was time to displace people.

So they did a lot of things on purpose and intentionally.

But I do wanna close out with saying is that the people of Liberty City are still speaking, the people of Liberty City are still organizing, the people of Liberty City are still fighting to ensure that we can stay a part of our communities because it's been our community since it's been Liberty Square, you know?

So it's disappointing, but I do see that the community is very concerned and speaking up and that's sometimes what we can hope for, to see the power of the people stand up and remind our local government exactly who elected them into office.

- Absolutely, we're gonna talk about policy and elections and what people can do certainly in this conversation.

Thanks so much.

John, let me bring you in as an organizer and an advocate who's worked with groups and cities all over the state, what do you see in terms of just the cycle?

- I see the cycle repeating itself, Deborah, what we see in Liberty Square is what we would've seen 30 years ago, it's what we would've seen 50 years ago.

And I admire people like V, who don't just come back to the community, but continue to be a voice within the community and not just for the community.

What I heard her say, and I think V should be the sort of the first and last voice in this conversation, because A, she's closest to it, it's her community, it's her neighborhood.

But the other piece of it is that she understands the value of community activation.

And while this isn't a new story, I think one of the ways in which we look for different endings to these stories is by constantly and continuously activating community to speak on behalf of themselves.

And I just wanna say one other thing about community, community isn't magic.

And what I loved about this film is that it shows that communities aren't monolithic, not everybody believes the same thing.

I call community a place where you love everybody, but you don't have to be in love with everybody.

I saw a lot of love in Liberty Square, and sometimes people weren't in love with each other.

And that shows the complexity within the neighborhood, not just the overall picture, and we can get to that later, but the overall issue is complex because it implicates neighborhoods, local governments, state governments, and federal governments.

But at the core of that, if you've got folks who care about each other, even if they got different views about how they accomplish what they need to accomplish, they can stay in the fight, and that's what I saw.

- And that's a neighborhood, that's community, just like you said.

So I thank you for bringing that out.

Let me ask you this V, there's a term brought up kind of early in the film and a lot of people may not be familiar with it, but climate gentrification, what is that?

- Yeah, so before I give the definition, Deborah, I do wanna bring a woman's name into this space, Ms. Paulette Richards, who coined the term climate gentrification.

She's a black woman from Liberty City.

And anytime I speak on this topic, I always mention her name because she gave us as a community language, and I really, really appreciate that.

And so in a nutshell, climate gentrification is the cause of urban communities, black and brown under-resourced communities to start feeling the impact of displacement, housing prices going up because of climate change.

Now, some people see it in two different parts, most people are used to after a storm, like we saw a New Orleans, parts of Jersey, we see these with the islands, like a bad storm happens, they come in, do a land grab, you can't move back in.

What's so interesting about South Florida is that we are ground zero for sea level rise in the world.

Not just the United States, but in the whole world.

And we are starting to see the impacts of the climate gentrification before a storm, so we're starting to see the sea level rise, salt water intrusion.

And we are starting to see the trends of people coming from the shore, from the beach, into our communities, which is inland in the center of the city.

And what makes Liberty Square so interesting, one is Liberty Square is one of the oldest housing projects in the United States of America, it sits on over 30 acres of land and it's smack dab middle of the city, it's smack dab middle of the city.

- That's what I was just amazed by watching the piece, yes.

- Yeah, and I know Mr. Simpkins could tell you more about the history of Miami, but it's very clear they didn't want us on the beach.

It was science, it was everything, telling us to stay away from the beach.

And it's very interesting that these people are not coming to places like Little Haiti and Liberty City.

And for those who do not think that this is a real dynamic, one, we have maps and data and science to prove everything now, but you can look at a community like Little Haiti, which is right east of Liberty City and sits about eight feet above sea level and we're supposed to get six feet of water.

We've had developers actually say on record that they are buying up Little Haiti because it's the new beachfront, and that's right there.

- Oh, they know it's not just something that's happening, it's not something that's a real time kind of change, there's a plan afoot, somebody's got a plan in mind.

- Yes, and unfortunately that plan does not include poor black and brown and indigenous people.

And what's so different about the climate change that we're seeing is that Miami also is built on limestone, it's not built on bedrock, except for these black communities, which is really interesting.

Liberty City, Little Haiti, Overtown, Coconut Grove, Opa-locka, we sit on a ridge and that's what give us the elevation and protects us from the flooding.

And the rest of Miami is not just getting the water from the side, but the water is also coming from underneath.

And we saw the impacts of that with Surfside, rest in peace to all of those residents because our city did not listen about the salt water intrusion eating away at this condo and it fell to the ground and thousands of people lost their lives, and that's how it's gonna look like for a lot of people.

It's not gonna be this big old wave that comes in, it's gonna be slowly creeping in.

And then this street that used to be there, it's no longer there.

And it's gonna start eating up our city.

And I always dare people to think about climate gentrification, even bigger than that.

If they tear down a forest or get rid of a lake in your community, all of those things are climate gentrification.

They're removing you from your community due to any environmental and climate issues, or they're greedy for resources like gas and coal and things like that, that is also a form of climate gentrification.

So Miami is at the center of it, but Miami is not the only place that's happening, all through the Gulf, all up the West Coast, all up the East Coast.

You're starting to feel that these impacts of how people are just having to leave their homes, 'cause they can't afford it or the earth is not allowing us to occupy that space anymore.

- And we see it happening right here in North Carolina.

Right, John?

I mean, I think about the eastern part of the state and even right in Durham, which is the central part of the state.

Talk a little bit about how climate gentrification is manifesting across North Carolina.

- Absolutely, and if we look at what we now call the Inner Banks in North Carolina, that's just slightly inland up the river from the Outer Banks.

That is a new area of development, but that's also been a historically poor area, poor white and poor black, where people are being moved out or being bought out by a variety of devices, inability to pay property taxes, heirs property that's sold at auction, all of these things which contribute to loss of property, loss of heritage, the connection to that land in those places.

And then in urban areas, as cities continue to grow across the south, we see it in Durham, we see it in Charlotte, we see it in Atlanta, we see it in Charleston.

And Charleston, sort of a combination of all of those things in South Carolina where if you go up the peninsula in Charleston, what used to be an African American neighborhood is now slowly, now quickly gentrifying, so as to be almost beyond recognition.

But that's also higher ground.

And those are places that don't flood as often, that don't have as much of a problem as the rest of the peninsula, which gets shut down if there's enough rain.

So we see this all across the region now.

We work in 13 states in MDC, and I can't say there's one state where we work that's not impacted by this.

- V, did you wanna share something too on that?

Because we're talking about change and change is inevitable.

Change is coming whether you're ready for it or not.

The question is, and I think someone raised this in the film, how do you have change but make it equitable?

- That's a really good question, 'cause America hasn't figured that question out, ever, at least in my 39 years.

But to me, I feel like systemic change can ensure things are equitable.

You get what I'm saying?

Like us trying to fix one thing here, one thing there, if we don't shift the way the mitigation and adaptation plans are going for our communities, if your county or your city or your state is talking about climate resiliency and disaster resiliency and your community is not at the forefront of that, especially for under-resourced communities, I don't like to say underserved y'all, 'cause I feel like- - Under-resourced - Under-resourced, under-resourced communities.

And that could be of all colors, you know?

And the whole definition of resiliency is the ability to bounce back and to truly have that our government, our schools, education, our historians, our activists, our organizers, we have to really shift the way the system works to ensure that all the tides lift all the boats.

And unfortunately that is not always the case.

It's like one, we are asking community members who are already paycheck to paycheck, trying to figure out how to pay their light bill or whatnot, to pick up and leave their community and figure it out when they leave.

Last time I heard about the government doing something like that, that was during the Proclamation of Emancipation, like, here go.

And like how do you do that to a people?

How do you take away, it's not just removing them from like a building.

When you remove community, you're removing their culture, their language, their food.

In places like the Carolinas, like how dare they?

Like the Carolinas would be nothing without black people, poor white people, brown people, who have literally created what it is.

And that's the same thing for Florida and Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama.

And I feel like we just can't settle, we have to push, push, push, push, transforming of our mind as people, 'cause one, we can't live on this earth the way we used to.

Yes, black people, yes, poor people, yes, indigenous people and latinx people, climate change is your issue too, it is.

- It's everybody's issue, 'cause when the rains come, they don't care what color you are, the rains are gonna come down, right?

- But the floods, you'll feel the impact of the flood differently if you're prepared.

And that's one level of the work that we have to do within our communities, getting our communities to think about, one, how all of us are human beings and we are impacting the earth and being conscious of how we move through the earth.

And two, we have to watch what we do when we are going into the voting polls and talking with our local legislatures.

And even like, I would even say academia, one of the stories, I got put on the county commission in 2015 for trying to prove climate gentrification.

And the mayor at the time who was in the film said to me, "You are trying to cause unnecessary fear, you need to leave."

And I was put out of the county commission.

- Wow.

- And a few weeks later, Dr. Hugh Gladwin at Florida International University actually gave us the first maps, y'all saw them inside of the film, and that was the first time we actually had tangible information to say, this is real and this is what we are feeling.

And that's why I said the relationship between academia, because had it not been for the professors, and we were talking to people, all these surveys, but we didn't know what to do with it.

So yeah, I just wanted to name like, it's a whole level of things to make us have equitable change.

And although I have not seen America do that yet in my life, I don't feel like it can't be done.

- Absolutely, and you know, John, V is talking about change and people taking action.

What can you share about any policy moves and what individuals can do, what power they do have to affect change through policy?

- I'll give you an example from Memphis.

And this isn't specifically about climate change, but it's certainly about the environment.

A pipeline that was meant to go through a community in southwest Memphis called Boxtown.

That pipeline, the Byhalia Pipeline, which was meant to pump crude oil from Memphis down to Mississippi.

Local community organizers in Boxtown, including Justin Pearson and Kizzy Jones, who formed this group called Memphis Community Against the Pipeline, began to organize to ensure that that pipeline was not built and the risk that it posed to the community would be averted.

And they were successful because they partnered with another organization, the Southern Environmental Law Center, which then litigated this on their behalf.

So it wasn't a policy change, but it was certainly using the regulatory structure, the legal system, to protect communities of color.

And even more importantly, to V'S point, this was a collaboration between community organizers and a sort of very well established establishment, environmental legal organization in the South.

Those connections, those collaborations have to happen if we're going to see change that will lead to policy change.

And it gives communities the heft to advocate for themselves.

But that's a concrete example of what that pathway looks like.

I think there's some key alliances that can be formed and have been formed.

- So we stand stronger together than individually.

We have to form that fist.

We have questions coming in and I just encourage and invite all of those who are on the call right now, if you'd like to ask a question, just put it in the chat.

Here's one that's come through and I'm gonna direct this one to you, V, they ask, is there political representation for Liberty City?

And if so, how can we spur communities to hold political leaders responsible?

- Yes, it is a loaded question.

So I'm gonna give a little power map real quick.

So Liberty Square Housing Projects is a federal government property that is being managed by our county government.

But it also sits inside of the city limits.

It's really awkward, it's three steps of government.

So depending on what you need done inside of that, especially in that community, it literally determines the thing that you need, like who you would speak to.

Like if it's something with the maintenance of the building, I go to the county.

If it's something with the trash in the housing projects, you go talk to the city.

And then it's both the city and the county police department in there, so it's a lot of mixture of things.

However, to hold our official accountable is to hold our community, I mean, our legislatures accountable to our community benefits agreement, they have not honored that community benefits agreement.

The residents of Liberty Square came together and worked really hard to put that together, and it's disrespectful to not honor it.

So that's one thing we are asking folks to like push around our government.

We also, in the middle of a mayor's election, I can't tell people who to vote for, but use your power wisely.

And also like if folks knew more about how they can get in touch with our politicians, that'll be super helpful because y'all be surprised, these folks in South Florida don't answer the phone.

And then lastly, we are asking for support for some of the protagonists inside of the film, like Miss Samantha with the school.

They still have not given Miss Samantha her school.

- Wow.

- And Ms. Samantha is still out there every day educating our children, putting her best foot forward, and she could really use support.

And that was a part of the community benefits agreement.

And one of the last things we are planning on doing is leading our own community participatory mold testing campaign.

Because a lot of the residents that are there are complaining about the mold.

And we know we'll have to go higher than just our government to actually get some response on that.

But those are some of the things.

But yeah, it's the county, the city, and the federal government that we have to deal with.

And I think that's like that with a lot of housing projects around America, because HUD is a federal program.

- It's so interesting.

One of the things that I saw that kind of got lifted up in the film was the idea of how to fix something.

So what you just talked about is the challenge in getting people motivated to go and make things right when John, I believe that there might be some things that we can do before this happens.

And we saw it kind of play out in this film where Aaron and the other young woman tried to explain, you don't want to leave because once you leave it's hard to get back.

Talk a little bit, John, about what can happen or what people can do before they get displaced, before all of this happens, and they have to bond together and fight together.

- Well, I think what people can do before this happens is sort of what V was saying, organize and vote early before these things occur.

It's not a complete solution, but it's part of the solution.

And when we talk about being politically active, people often think about it at the national level, but very little that happens at the national level has a real effect on your everyday life.

What happens in your county, what happens in your city and town, those things will have an impact.

So showing up at those meetings matters.

Making phone calls matters.

I used to work for somebody who was an elected official, I tell you, if they get enough letters, they know they have to do something about it.

If they get enough phone calls, they know they have to do something about it.

So all of these things before we get to the point where people are being displaced, make elected officials understand that something has to be done.

And once something has to be done, then the follow up, which is we're watching you, we're paying attention, and we're gonna ask you about that thing that you said you were gonna do for the upcoming year.

Did that happen?

Has the money been allocated for that?

Because we can look and see how space is racialized all across the South and all across the country.

Really.

So this is not a Southern issue.

And in the racialization of that space, the way that people can protect themselves, protect their communities, protect the culture that develops when they live in proximity with each other is to advocate.

- This next viewer question kind of speaks to that, I think, John, so I'd like for you to take this question and they want to know, do you feel integration has impacted by design housing issues among black and brown individuals?

- I would turn that question to say that segregation by design has impacted these issues because as we could see with Liberty Square and then Liberty City, there were conscious decisions made to restrict people of a certain race, to restrict black people to a certain area, that's happened all across the country.

And the way in which people have been restricted to space by race has only inflamed racial tensions because people realize that when they do get a chance to live next to someone who doesn't look like them, they don't see that as being normal, because what's been normalized through policy is that people who look the same way live in the same place.

And so once integration occurs, it's people bumping up against each other who don't really know each other, who don't trust each other, who don't share a common history, who don't go to the same social activities, who don't go to the same religious activities.

And we see what we see.

And as a result, this increasing breaking apart of a physical community that then gets reknit as a virtual community.

My community is my social media, my community is the media I consume, all of that then informs my attitudes.

And that's where we find ourselves now is with a people who don't know each other, even if they live beside each other.

- That's right, and that difference crosses race.

Aaron talked a little bit about mixed income communities and how that doesn't really solve the problem of housing affordability.

We haven't even talked about affordability yet, but I wanna get to the questions from our viewers and someone asks about section eight, John, says, Section eight seems like a trap.

Isn't there a better way allow folks to pay based on their income and then make the rents more affordable rather than folks depending on vouchers?

And I think that probably speaks to housing affordability and affordable housing as well.

What are your thoughts?

- It certainly does.

Section eight was a bad solution to a problem.

The problem had been warehousing of people who were living in poverty and rather than warehouse 'em in housing projects, the idea was that they could have a voucher where they could go and they could rent in any neighborhood theoretically.

But of course that relies upon a landlord who's willing to rent to you and accept that voucher as payment and accept that as enough payment, or at least partial payment, and you'd then have to pay the rest.

What it ignores is it promulgates this notion of the warehousing of people who are poor, it doesn't do anything to stabilize their economic situation.

It doesn't do anything to give them an opportunity to lift out of poverty.

And we saw it in Liberty Square, which they promised a grocery store, a grocery store still hasn't been built.

There were no places for people to open up their own businesses.

There was no training for people to open up their own businesses.

What resulted was just this sort of sterile, poorly constructed, new facility that very quickly was gonna be just as decrepit as the other.

And all people see who drive by is, oh well, poor people, they don't take care of their stuff.

- Is that by design, John?

I mean the people who are designing these, do they know that these things are absent?

- I wouldn't go so far Deborah, to say it's by design, unless you say that the design is lowest common denominator.

Our economy is set up on the lowest common denominator, cheapest labor, to produce things at the cheapest price.

When labor was free, that was as cheap as it was gonna get.

And since it's not free anymore, we still try to get it as cheap as we can.

So if we're gonna do something for someone, they get the rock bottom rate.

If I'm gonna build you a house, then you get the lowest grade of construction I can find.

If I'm gonna provide you with healthcare, you get the lowest grade of healthcare I can provide you with.

If I'm gonna give you transportation, there'll be a bus that might take you an hour and a half to get to where you need to go.

This notion of lowest common denominator is by design, because governments have been starved of resources and we exist in a system where there are so many other competing priorities and people who advocate for those priorities,, that those people who are just trying to make a living, just trying to go to work, just trying to keep a roof over their heads, don't have the time and the resources often, to do that without someone who is within that community, like V who can actually speak out on behalf of the community.

- That's super helpful.

I wanna get to another question here.

A viewer wants to know, could government force developers to sign a contract mandating original residents come back and if property management doesn't allow them, they lose their tax credits?

V?

- Yeah, that's exactly what the government did.

It was in the community benefits agreement that was approved by our county commission that the residents were not going to be displaced like they promised.

Like you heard the mayor at the time, say at the time, 'cause we have a new mayor, y'all, but at the time the mayor said, "I'm gonna hold them accountable, we're gonna do this thing right.

Nobody's going to be displaced."

But five families are back.

I think it's the lack of accountability once the promise is made.

That's where the struggle happens.

Because the people did the organizing, they stood up, they spoke up, we thought our commissioners and mayors was listening to us.

- And they just did what they wanted to.

They just said, what we're gonna do, It sounds like what they decided is, well, we're just gonna listen to the chatter and do what we want to anyway.

- Exactly, and it's so disheartening to see because that makes people not believe in democracy- - And that affects trust.

- Right, and people think democracy is just voting.

It's also accountability about things that you sign into law, what you do with our budget, passing resolutions and things like that.

And this is a distrust of our democracy when people handle our community this way, you know?

But just to answer the question very directly, absolutely, your government can mandate it.

Now, if your government holds them accountable during the implementation, it's another question, but they can put that in paper.

Your government can side with the people, they can if they want to.

- They can put it in writing and then the folks who sign the contract have to be held accountable, but they have to go through the process of being held accountable, and that can take time it sounds like.

- Yes, lots of time.

- John, let's talk a little bit about affordable housing and policy.

Why don't municipalities build more affordable housing?

- It's largely driven by the absence of a market where developers can make money on those developments, which means that then someone else has to increase the funding to de-risk that for that developer, to make sure that they're gonna make more money from that project than they would otherwise make.

Affordable housing, workforce housing, whatever you wanna call it, simply has not proven to be profitable to build.

There are a few folks who are really giving it a good shot.

There's someone in LA who's doing good work around building affordable housing, but it's that money piece.

But that's not an insurmountable hurdle, there are ways to source workforce housing and affordable housing through tourism taxes, through through taxes on real estate transactions, ways in which you can actually build pots of money that then make it attractive for developers to come in and say, "Hey, there's a market here and I can build units where I will make money coming out of it."

Because sadly, the reality is no one's gonna build it if they don't feel like they can make any money on it.

- No, and speaking from the standpoint of somebody who is a developer, you put yourself in their shoes, you're in this for a business and to make a profit.

V, we've had a great conversation here, thank you so much, John, both of you.

But V, I wanna send you the last question.

What primarily, if we don't know yet, do you want people to take away from this film and from this conversation?

- That's always the question, but I do have answers.

I want people to believe residents, I want people to stop expecting everyday, working class poor people, disabled people, elderly people to know the back ends of policy and business and finance.

These people are trying to live their lives and survive.

I want people to also know these same people know exactly what they need to be okay.

They have a vision for the future, just nobody ever asks them.

So believe the people when they say they need a thing, I always tell people that I feel like America's a first world country, that creates second class citizens, that have to face third world realities.

And that's what happens in our under-resourced communities.

Nobody ever said these people are not smart, that they can't take care of themselves.

So I just want y'all to know like everybody, in every community, when you have to stand up for what you think is right, for the future of your community.

One, when you're working with residents, believe them, their feelings, their stories, their history, that knowledge, that wisdom is always needed, and it's true and it's genuine.

And also just remember, I tell people all the time, we know the United States government is a a huge conglomerate.

And I always let folks know that it still belongs to the people.

- That's right.

- This is our country.

It's not just that group of people who sit in there and vote, this is not their country, this is our country, we make it tick.

All of you all who own homes, who live in the apartments in the housing projects, and occupy this space and also stand it up.

We are the care workers, we are the culture workers, we are the people that fulfill this city, we are the reason why people come to Miami, we are the reason why people come to the Carolinas, we the people, we make that happen, we create the music, we create the food.

And I want y'all to always remember that gentrification is real, climate change is real, people have to evolve, yes, we have to, but we do not have to be erased, invisibilized and harmed through the process.

And I feel as if this video, this documentary, actually, teaches a lot of that.

And if you own a home in your community, if you could stand it, if your great-grandma had it, hold on it y'all, our ancestors fought really, really hard.

"Black Fortunes," that's a book I read, that teaches about the beginning build out of how black millionaires in the late 1800s actually seeded the money for us to even create these communities.

Like literally our people forged a away for us, and if we can stand to ride the wave, I'm asking you to.

And if you just can't, and you like this house is too messed up and I need to sell it, you sell that at top dollar, you hear me, at top dollar.

Because if they want to give you 94, you ask for $1000.

So yes, I just want folks to know, just remember us on the ground, but also remember the Valencia in your community, the Aaron in your community, the Samanthas in your community, the Liberty Square in your community.

I want y'all to use the documentary as an example, but not the fix all.

Your story is different, your story, your government is different.

And just remember that we have a voice and this is our America to fight for.

- V you have summed it up perfectly.

Valencia Gunder, John Simpkins, thank you so much for the work that you do.

God bless you both and just continue to fight and live and love.

Thank you so much.

We are officially out of time for this evening.

Many thanks to our special guests once again, John Simpkins of MDC, also a partner with us on this important event.

And Valencia Gunder, thank you for joining us and for all that you do and we'll continue to do for the folks of Liberty Square and beyond.

And thank you for watching, logging on, and participating with your questions to enrich this conversation.

Many thanks to our two event partners, MDC and River Run International Film Festival.

Please be on the lookout for an email you will receive next week that will contain the link for the recording of tonight's discussion.

Information about our panelists and the issues that were covered tonight, an audience survey as well, and information on when and where to watch and stream, "Razing Liberty Square."

"Razing Liberty Square" premiers on Independent Lens, Monday, January 29th at 10:00 PM on PBSNC Stream Online, and on the free PBS app.

To ensure that PBS North Carolina continues to bring you popular PBS shows, riveting documentaries, informative how-to programs, fund lifestyle shows, Rootle, our 24 hour kids channel, and free screening events like this one, I hope that you are inspired to make a tax deductible contribution to PBS North Carolina safely and securely at pbsnc.org.

And if you're already a member, we appreciate you.

Thanks again for joining us, be kind to your neighbors and be kind to the planet.

Have a good night, I'm Deborah Holt Noel.