- We can break the barriers by becoming the expert then taking our expertise back to the communities for internal growth.

- Homelessness hits the black community hard but across races, it is still a big problem.

- Remember, Audre Lorde, she is the one who taught us that your silence will not protect you.

(upbeat music) (crowd applauding) - I am a misunderstood millennial.

And just like most millennials growing up, I was labeled entitled, lazy, too casual, and self-centered.

Crazy how we misunderstood millennials have unclothed those very labels.

Millennials are now said to be highly educated, entrepreneurial, quickly adapt to change, and innovative.

It is the millennials who are the maker generation.

Currently the largest population in America and moving into full adulthood.

We are the everyday neighborhood heroes, teachers, social workers, government officials, doctors, and lawyers.

We are also the small business owners, app developers, graphic designers, and influential entertainers.

It is on us, the misunderstood millennial to change the historical financial generational curse within the African American community.

A curse that started way before the baby boomer and Xers generation.

A curse that denies us the ability to apply simple concepts such as budgeting and prioritizing savings.

The curse that leads us into the comfortability of renting our homes instead of owning our homes simply because the conversation of credit scares us.

The curse that keeps a wealth gap totally driven by policy and discrimination growing years after that fight was seemingly won.

I am a misunderstood millennial, and I am here today to break down the barrier between financial knowledge and the application of that knowledge within the African American community.

I am here today to bring awareness to the wealth gap and provide inspiration to my generation to change the trend and control the variables so that we can also have generational wealth.

I invite you to wrap your head around this.

The Civil Rights Act was signed by President Johnson in 1964, legally ending discrimination and segregation instituted by the Jim Crow laws.

Surely after that in the 1970s, the community reinvestment legislation seemingly been realigning yet our communities are still suffering.

They say, time heals everything, right?

Wrong.

Years later, the statistics haven't gotten better for African Americans, it's gotten worse.

How is it that according to a GenForward Survey done in 2017, millennials age 25 to 34 are still lagging behind white America in home ownership by 23%, while poverty rates in black America has doubled compared to white America.

A broken system, a system with a splinter American dream.

I am a misunderstood millennial whose parents' parents were denied the opportunity to take advantage of home ownership and well cut suburbian communities.

Denied mortgages based on their last name and were forced into overpopulated ghettos with less than adequate educational resources.

And 30 years later, some of those same practices still exist.

If wealth is accumulated by assets such as homes and it is not afforded to those and at risk underserved communities, how can that community gain generational wealth?

In my own family, these lessons we'll learn through experience.

Speaking with my nana one morning, she recollected a time in the early 1970s where she and my great grandmother were denied for a mortgage.

She talked about how she was left powerless, unsure, and confused.

The process for them was complicated.

And in her mind, she knew they qualify, both of them had reasonable paying salaries and were never late on bills.

They realized they were denied because of their race.

What a difference 10 years mix when later she successfully purchased at home with my grandfather.

The crazy thing is her application for financial literacy wasn't much different, except this time she understood the system was stacked against her.

And so she and my grandfather used the white realtor to negotiate so they could be successful.

Her message, you don't know what you don't know.

Knowledge is the most prominent form of empowerment.

We can break the barriers by becoming the expert then taking our expertise back to the communities for internal growth.

We can change the trajectory.

Generational knowledge has the power to become generational wealth like in my family.

My nana took financial knowledge learned from my great grandmother and applied risk and credit.

Stating to me in the conversation I never purchased more than I can afford to pay back.

It is important to know where every dollar is spent.

My mom took everything she learned then, and through her experience grew a sense of financial literacy which according to accredited financial counseling experts is defined by having the skills to achieve financial understanding and conceptual relationships.

And now our generation, our charge, the misunderstood millennial is to improve financial capabilities utilizing our expertise and learn skills to teach the ability to accumulate and protect assets, which is the driver of total wealth, not just for our family, but for the community as a whole.

We still have steps to climb.

Our community even today has missing resources and information, a considerable knowledge gap that needs to be filled.

But most importantly, there is confidence and motivation within the African American community and underserved communities that need to be restored.

Millennials unite, together we can identify the gaps in our community.

Together, we must maximize the opportunity to become the professional, utilize the resources afforded to us that was not provided to our ancestors and get expert help where we lack knowledge.

And finally, we must excel at creating the legacy in building generational wealth.

Identify, maximize, excel, We, the misunderstood millennial, control the variables and change the trend.

Thank you.

(crowd applauding) (upbeat music) (crowd applauding) - My story is one of many.

For some, the story is being formerly incarcerated and unable to find work because of their past.

For another, there was domestic abuse and a mom and her family had to run to escape the situation.

Another couldn't shake their drug addiction and lost everything.

For me, the stories about a mom who worked full time, but couldn't escape the vicious cycle of debt then possibility of finding affordable housing and a bunch of challenges living in a region where thousands work their hearts out and do their best, but remain poor.

In case you haven't figured out my story and that of these others is the story of becoming homeless.

For more than 60 months, my mom and I lived in shelters and in a bunch of different places and none of them was a permanent home.

During that time, I went to school unsure, unsure when we would start switching shelters and homes every few months, and unsure when basic necessities wasn't a luxury.

I wanna talk to you about the face of homelessness.

I wanna talk to you about how homeless people are not a monolith, and how the problem of homelessness is complex.

But I also wanna talk to you about how there are solutions out there.

There are practices and programs that can solve the problem.

And what we know is that investing in these solutions is less expensive than allowing the problem to go on.

My mother and I fought hard to get out of homelessness and there were lots of tears but there were also solid supports and that made a huge difference.

I'm from Los Angeles, California, and I will remain there until I graduate from high school and go on to college this fall.

But last night when I met with Austin Council Member, Kathie Tovo and also with local activists Chris Harris and Chaz Moore, I heard that many cities are experiencing the same thing.

This problem of homelessness is big, but as I said, it is solvable.

Let's start by talking about the problem.

There are different types of homelessness.

There's chronic homelessness, where individuals who are continuously homeless and can be staying on the streets or in emergency shelters.

There's transitional homelessness, where individuals who stumbled for a moment before getting back into stable housing.

And somewhere in between there's episodic homelessness, where individuals who frequently switch between homelessness and institutions such as inpatient treatment programs, rehabilitation centers, or hospitals.

And among the reasons people become homeless are not making enough money to afford to live where they can find work, having to escape dangerous environments before they're able to find another housing option, drug addiction, or mental health problems.

Housing discrimination, for instance against black men who are seen as dangerous.

It's also a factor as are other forms of racial discrimination that makes circumstances worse for blacks experiencing this crisis.

As a result, according to the center for social innovation, black people comprise 13% of the general population in the United States and 26% of those living in poverty, but more than 40% of the homeless population.

Homelessness hits the black community hard, but across races, it is still a big problem.

When it comes to solutions, we first need an educated public.

People need to understand that there are millions of people from many different backgrounds who can become homeless.

And without support in under the wrong circumstances, homelessness can hit you no matter how hard you're working.

Second, we need many different partners pitching into help.

Local governments, federal support, nonprofit organizations, and private institutions all need to play a role.

And as they do, they need to coordinate with one another to understand who can provide what services best to make sure that the services are spread to all people who need it.

And we need to understand the difference between short-term homelessness and chronic homelessness, and meet people where they are.

Sometimes it is prevention or rapid response support recognizing when people are at risk of homelessness and being able to step in with stabilizing support, for instance, food, debt, relief health services, job training, or other case management.

Sometimes it is another extreme.

Some people have severe physical disabilities, mental health issues, or other challenges that mean that they will always have a level of dependency.

We can and should find housing for them regardless of whether they will be able to pay for it.

Sometimes it is an in-between.

We need to provide housing first and then figure out what services people need and meet them at point between what they can handle and manage and what can we support them in becoming stable?

There are many examples of this range of programs in cities across the country.

And like I said, my mother and I had benefited from them.

And don't get me wrong, we weren't working at it.

My mother was employed the entire time we were homeless.

There just wasn't enough money.

But we had case managers supporting us, training on managing incredibly scarce resources, moving assistance when we found permanent housing in a savings plan.

And finding housing stability was incredibly hard work, but we did it.

The bottom line is that solving homelessness is possible.

Solving homelessness saves lives and solving homelessness takes a lot of effort and a lot of money, but the money spent by communities implementing comprehensive solutions is less than the money spent on emergency rooms, extra policing, ambulances, overnight jailings, the entire court system and more.

Seriously investing and addressing homelessness is an investment in people, it is an investment in healthier communities and it is worth it.

Thank you.

(crowd applauding) (upbeat music) (crowd applauding) - I've been thinking a lot about when to speak and when not, and it's been tough.

Speaking out is easier when around people with strong healthy esteem, when around people you trust, when around people with whom you have relationships of mutual understanding.

Being in arenas where there is less trust or a negative history makes speaking out harder.

As does being around people who react to expressions of pain by feeling attacked themselves and many of us do that.

It's harder to speak out also when you're around people with more power than you, and it is also more dangerous.

But at some point when your values are confronted, or when you see what history and analysis tells you are bad decisions or unjust positions, your silence becomes complicity.

And so speaking out might be appropriate.

Here's an example.

And this is a powerful example because the speech also had action and the action had consequence.

In 1967, Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the US Army.

He refused to fight in the Vietnam War.

He said, "My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother or some darker people or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America.

Shoot them for what?

How can I shoot the poor people just take me to jail."

Indeed, Ali was arrested and convicted for refusing to join the army.

He was stripped of his championship titles and lost his licenses to box professionally.

He sacrificed the best years of his athletic career for what he believed.

And though many remember him fondly today, most Americans at the time, most Americans could not stand him.

Unpatriotic is what how one put it.

A simplistic fool and a pawn was how one of the leading sports journalists of the day put it.

And it got worse from there.

Muhammad Ali spoke against killing others, spoke up for black rights, and accurately criticized US actions and policies and he was despised for it.

To this day, I shake my head in wonder and all the people who say they are fans of Muhammad Ali but can't stomach Colin Kaepernick.

Martin Luther King is another whom we remember fondly.

He has held up as the moral conscience of the nation, but it's amazing how we have twisted reality.

The reality is that for all those who loved King, King to was reviled despised and of course murdered.

Millions of Americans found him disgusting.

And the same year that Ali refused army induction, King too spoke against the Vietnam War his popularity plummeted accordingly.

The majority of white people in America disapproved of him generally and even the majority of black people disapproved of his opposition to the war.

President Johnson had choice words that included curse words that I won't say here, but that you can find online readily.

What is that blank, blank preacher doing to me, we gave him the Civil Rights Act of 64, we gave him the Voting Rights Act, we gave him a War on Poverty, what more does he want?

In a poll conducted just after his assassination, half of Americans express sadness or shame at King's death and a third of Americans express the reaction that he quote brought it on himself.

Now the obvious thing to do or the easy thing to do here is to talk about how ideas coming from people speaking bravely will eventually rise to the fore.

And that's good and that's true.

And we do have a King holiday good stuff.

But there's another important point, and that is this.

When people speak in truth and earnest righteousness, there's something else that happens.

They shore up their own mental health.

They strengthen those who too are in pain and can't find voice, can't find words, question their own sanity.

Hearing somebody say, I too am in pain and I'm in pain, and these ways helps all manner of marginalized folk just hang on.

It heals broader communities, it sustains self.

Listen to Muhammad Ali.

I would like to say, this is a quote from him.

I would like to say to those of the press and those of the people who think that I lost so much I would like to say that I didn't lose a thing up until this very moment.

I haven't lost one thing.

I've gained a lot.

Number one, I've gained a peace of mind.

I gained a peace of heart.

And then there's words of Martin Luther King that you're familiar with.

They are the words from the very night before he was assassinated.

He said, I just want to do God's will.

And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've seen the promised land, I might not get there with you.

But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

You remember this, you heard this.

Do you remember that he said and so I'm happy tonight.

I'm not worried about anything.

I'm not fearing any man.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

These folk found peace in speaking up, and this is ironic because their speech revealed so much turmoil.

Now notice, I didn't say cause turmoil, the turmoil was there just below the surface already.

Their words simply stirred it up.

And that simple act of stirring was infuriating to others.

So how do we get to this point where we speak and speaking from your pain, from your position, from your knowledge, from your history makes you bad, makes you evil, makes you a troublemaker.

And what do you do with that?

Here are the words of Audre Lorde come to mind.

The power gave us the language to understand the black tradition of speaking up and speaking out when she said what is most important to me must be spoken, must be verbal, and shared.

Even at the risk of having a bruised or misunderstood, remember Audre Lorde.

She is the one who taught us that your silence will not protect you.

And to the point here, she is the one who told us that you're never really a whole person if you remain silent because there's always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out.

And if you keep ignoring it, it gets matter and matter and hotter and hotter.

And if you don't speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.

That's a poet by the way.

(crowd laughing) So Lorde teaches us that speaking up and out is important to our personhood.

Speaking, by the way, sets the stage for change.

Speaking is part of maintaining our emotional health and sanity, if you will.

And there is one more thing about speaking out and it's important.

We live in a richly, plural nation so many different peoples and backgrounds that have come together, trying to work this out.

That remains our greatest challenge and also without a doubt, our greatest potential strength.

So in addition to being willing to speak to put your voice to the public square and be heard advocating for what you believe to be right and good.

In addition to this, I also need to be willing to listen and listen hard and listen through other people's sincere expressions of pain even when their pain is not polite.

So I wanna close with Audre Lorde.

I wanna close from Audre Lorde.

These are her words.

Difference must not be merely tolerated but seen as a fund of necessary polarity between which our creativity can spark, only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening, only with interdependency of current strengths acknowledged and equal can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate.

With the interdependence of mutual non-dominant differences lies the security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future.

Along with the power to bring that future into being.

Difference is the raw and powerful connection from which our collective power is forged.

Now that quote offers a lot to chew on, and I encourage you to look up Audre Lorde's words yourself and take them in purposefully and slowly for yourself.

But here is where I am, inspired by centuries of black speakers who risked it all.

Ida B.

Wells documenting lynchings in the South and facing the death threats that came with it.

The formerly enslaved Sojourner Truth who declared her existence as a woman, a mother, a human.

So I declare the right to speak out when I'm in pain, and yes, I want to be heard.

But I also declare the personal and communal responsibility to listen when others are telling me that they are hurting and the co-figure ways to make things better.

Now speaking was the basis and bulk of this talk and listening is critical as well.

Neither are consistently easy, but both are necessary if we are to move forward as a community.

Thank you.

(crowd applauding) (upbeat music)