Over the course of our lifetimes, our bodies undergo a series of extraordinary metamorphoses: we grow, experience puberty, and many of us reproduce.
Behind the scenes, the endocrine system works constantly to orchestrate these changes.
Alongside growth and sexual maturity, this system regulates everything from your sleep to the rhythm of your beating heart, exerting its influence over each and every one of your cells.
The endocrine system relies on interactions between three features to do its job: glands, hormones, and trillions of cell receptors.
Firstly, there are several hormone-producing glands: three in your brain, and seven in the rest of your body.
Each is surrounded by a network of blood vessels, from which they extract ingredients to manufacture dozens of hormones.
Those hormones are then pumped out in tiny amounts, usually into the bloodstream.
From there, each hormone needs to locate a set of target cells in order to bring about a specific change.
To find its targets, it’s helped along by receptors, which are special proteins inside or on the cell’s surface.
Those receptors recognise specific hormones as they waft by, and bind to them.
When this happens, that hormone-receptor combination triggers a range of effects that either increase or decrease specific processes inside the cell to change the way that cell behaves.
By exposing millions of cells at a time to hormones in carefully-regulated quantities, the endocrine system drives large-scale changes across the body.
Take, for instance, the thyroid and the two hormones it produces, triiodothyronine and thyroxine.
These hormones travel to most of the body’s cells, where they influence how quickly those cells use energy and how rapidly they work.
In turn, that regulates everything from breathing rate to heartbeat, body temperature, and digestion.
Hormones also have some of their most visible—and familiar—effects during puberty.
In men, puberty begins when the testes start secreting testosterone.
That triggers the gradual development of the sexual organs, makes facial hair sprout, and causes the voice to deepen and height to increase.
In women, estrogen secreted from the ovaries signals the start of adulthood.
It helps the body develop, makes the hips widen, and thickens the womb’s lining, preparing the body for menstruation or pregnancy.
An enduring misconception around the endocrine system is that there are exclusively male and female hormones.
In fact, men and women have estrogen and testosterone, just in different amounts.
Both hormones play a role in pregnancy, as well, alongside more than 10 other hormones that ensure the growth of the fetus, enable birth, and help the mother feed her child.
Such periods of hormonal change are also associated with fluctuations in mood.
That’s because hormones can influence the production of certain chemicals in the brain, like serotonin.
When chemical levels shift, they may cause changes in mood, as well.
But that’s not to say that hormones have unlimited power over us.
They’re frequently viewed as the main drivers of our behavior, making us slaves to their effects, especially during puberty.
But research shows that our behavior is collectively shaped by a variety of influences, including the brain and its neurotransmitters, our hormones, and various social factors.
The primary function of the endocrine system is to regulate our bodily processes, not control us.
Sometimes disease, stress, and even diet can disrupt that regulatory function, however, altering the quantity of hormones that glands secrete or changing the way that cells respond.
Diabetes is one of the most common hormonal disorders, occurring when the pancreas secretes too little insulin, a hormone that manages blood sugar levels.
And hypo- and hyperthyroidism occur when the thyroid gland makes too little or too much thyroid hormone.
When there’s too little thyroid hormone, that results in a slowed heart rate, fatigue, and depression, and when there’s too much thyroid hormone, weight loss, sleeplessness, and irritability.
But most of the time, the endocrine system manages to keep our bodies in a state of balance.
And through its constant regulation, it drives the changes that ultimately help us become who we are.
Probably a lot of you know the story of the two salesmen who went down to Africa in the 1900s.
They were sent down to find if there was any opportunity for selling shoes, and they wrote telegrams back to Manchester.
And one of them wrote, "Situation hopeless.
Stop.
They don't wear shoes."
And the other one wrote, "Glorious opportunity.
They don't have any shoes yet."
(Laughter) Now, there's a similar situation in the classical music world, because there are some people who think that classical music is dying.
And there are some of us who think you ain't seen nothing yet.
And rather than go into statistics and trends, and tell you about all the orchestras that are closing, and the record companies that are folding, I thought we should do an experiment tonight.
Actually, it's not really an experiment, because I know the outcome.
(Laughter) But it's like an experiment.
Now, before we start -- (Laughter) Before we start, I need to do two things.
One is I want to remind you of what a seven-year-old child sounds like when he plays the piano.
Maybe you have this nathanstephens@example.com.
He sounds something like this.
(Music) (Music ends) I see some of you recognize this child.
Now, if he practices for a year and takes lessons, he's now eight and he sounds like this.
(Music) (Music ends) He practices for another year and takes lessons -- he's nine.
(Music) (Music ends) Then he practices for another year and takes lessons -- now he's 10.
(Music) (Music ends) At that point, they usually give up.
(Laughter) (Applause) Now, if you'd waited for one more year, you would have heard this.
(Music) (Music ends) Now, what happened was not maybe what you thought, which is, he suddenly became passionate, engaged, involved, got a new teacher, he hit puberty, or whatever it is.
What actually happened was the impulses were reduced.
You see, the first time, he was playing with an impulse on every note.
(Music) And the second, with an impulse every other note.
(Music) You can see it by looking at my head.
(Laughter) The nine-year-old put an impulse on every four notes.
(Music) The 10-year-old, on every eight notes.
(Music) And the 11-year-old, one impulse on the whole phrase.
(Music) I don't know how we got into this position.
(Laughter) I didn't say, "I'm going to move my shoulder over, move my body."
No, the music pushed me over, which is why I call it one-buttock playing.
(Music) It can be the other buttock.
(Music) You know, a gentleman was once watching a presentation I was doing, when I was working with a young pianist.
He was the president of a corporation in Ohio.
I was working with this young pianist, and said, "The trouble with you is you're a two-buttock player.
You should be a one-buttock player."
I moved his body while he was playing.
And suddenly, the music took off.
It took flight.
The audience gasped when they heard the difference.
Then I got a letter from this gentleman.
He said, "I was so moved.
I went back and I transformed my entire company into a one-buttock company."
(Laughter) Now, the other thing I wanted to do is to tell you about you.
There are 1,600 people, I believe.
My estimation is that probably 45 of you are absolutely passionate about classical music.
You adore classical music.
Your FM is always on that classical dial.
You have CDs in your car, and you go to the symphony, your children are playing instruments.
You can't imagine your life without classical music.
That's the first group, quite small.
Then there's another bigger group.
The people who don't mind classical music.
(Laughter) You know, you've come home from a long day, and you take a glass of wine, and you put your feet up.
A little Vivaldi in the background doesn't do any harm.
That's the second group.
Now comes the third group: people who never listen to classical music.
It's just simply not part of your life.
You might hear it like second-hand smoke at the airport ...
(Laughter) -- and maybe a little bit of a march from "Aida" when you come into the hall.
But otherwise, you never hear it.
That's probably the largest group.
And then there's a very small group.
These are the people who think they're tone-deaf.
Amazing number of people think they're tone-deaf.
Actually, I hear a lot, "My husband is tone-deaf."
(Laughter) Actually, you cannot be tone-deaf.
Nobody is tone-deaf.
If you were tone-deaf, you couldn't change the gears on your car, in a stick shift car.
You couldn't tell the difference between somebody from Texas and somebody from Rome.
And the telephone.
The telephone.
If your mother calls on the miserable telephone, she calls and says, "Hello," you not only know who it is, you know what mood she's in.
You have a fantastic ear.
Everybody has a fantastic ear.
So nobody is tone-deaf.
But I tell you what.
It doesn't work for me to go on with this thing, with such a wide gulf between those who understand, love and are passionate about classical music, and those who have no relationship to nathanstephens@example.com.
The tone-deaf people, they're no longer here.
But even between those three categories, it's too wide a gulf.
So I'm not going to go on until every single person in this room, downstairs and in Aspen, and everybody else looking, will come to love and understand classical music.
So that's what we're going to do.
Now, you notice that there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that this is going to work, if you look at my face, right?
It's one of the characteristics of a leader that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he's leading to realize whatever he's dreaming.
Imagine if Martin Luther King had said, "I have a dream.
Of course, I'm not sure they'll be up to it."
(Laughter) All right.
So I'm going to take a piece of Chopin.
This is a beautiful prelude by Chopin.
Some of you will know it.
(Music) Do you know what I think probably happened here?
When I started, you thought, "How beautiful that sounds."
(Music) "I don't think we should go to the same place for our summer holidays next year."
(Laughter) It's funny, isn't it?
It's funny how those thoughts kind of waft into your head.
And of course -- (Applause) Of course, if the piece is long and you've had a long day, you might actually drift off.
Then your companion will dig you in the ribs and say, "Wake up!
It's culture!"
And then you feel even worse.
(Laughter) But has it ever occurred to you that the reason you feel sleepy in classical music is not because of you, but because of us?
Did anybody think while I was playing, "Why is he using so many impulses?"
If I'd done this with my head you certainly would have thought it.
(Music) (Music ends) And for the rest of your life, every time you hear classical music, you'll always be able to know if you hear those impulses.
So let's see what's really going on here.
We have a B. This is a B.
The next note is a C.
And the job of the C is to make the B sad.
And it does, doesn't it?
(Laughter) Composers know that.
If they want sad music, they just play those two notes.
(Music) But basically, it's just a B, with four sads.
(Laughter) Now, it goes down to A.
Now to G.
And then to F.
So we have B, A, G, F.
And if we have B, A, G, F, what do we expect next?
(Music) That might have been a fluke.
Let's try it again.
(Music) Oh, the TED choir.
(Laughter) And you notice nobody is tone-deaf, right?
Nobody is.
You know, every village in Bangladesh and every hamlet in China -- everybody knows: da, da, da, da -- da.
Everybody knows, who's expecting that E.
Chopin didn't want to reach the E there, because what will have happened?
It will be over, like Hamlet.
Do you remember?
Act One, scene three, he finds out his uncle killed his father.
He keeps on going up to his uncle and almost killing him.
And then he backs away, he goes up to him again, almost kills him.
The critics sitting in the back row there, they have to have an opinion, so they say, "Hamlet is a procrastinator."
Or they say, "Hamlet has an Oedipus complex."
No, otherwise the play would be over, stupid.
(Laughter) That's why Shakespeare puts all that stuff in Hamlet -- Ophelia going mad, the play within the play, and Yorick's skull, and the gravediggers.
That's in order to delay -- until Act Five, he can kill him.
It's the same with the Chopin.
He's just about to reach the E, and he says, "Oops, better go back up and do it again."
So he does it again.
Now, he gets excited.
(Music) That's excitement, don't worry about it.
Now, he gets to F-sharp, and finally he goes down to E, but it's the wrong chord -- because the chord he's looking for is this one, and instead he does ...
Now, we call that a deceptive cadence, because it deceives us.
I tell my students, "If you have a deceptive cadence, raise your eyebrows, and everybody will know."
(Laughter) (Applause) Right.
He gets to E, but it's the wrong chord.
Now, he tries E again.
That chord doesn't work.
Now, he tries the E again.
That chord doesn't work.
Now, he tries E again, and that doesn't work.
And then finally ...
There was a gentleman in the front row who went, "Mmm."
(Laughter) It's the same gesture he makes when he comes home after a long day, turns off the key in his car and says, "Aah, I'm home."
Because we all know where home is.
So this is a piece which goes from away to home.
I'm going to play it all the way through and you're going to follow.
B, C, B, C, B, C, B -- down to A, down to G, down to F.
Almost goes to E, but otherwise the play would be over.
He goes back up to B, he gets very excited.
Goes to F-sharp.
Goes to E.
It's the wrong chord.
It's the wrong chord.
And finally goes to E, and it's home.
And what you're going to see is one-buttock playing.
(Laughter) Because for me, to join the B to the E, I have to stop thinking about every single note along the way, and start thinking about the long, long line from B to E.
You know, we were just in South Africa, and you can't go to South Africa without thinking of Mandela in jail for 27 years.
What was he thinking about?
Lunch?
No, he was thinking about the vision for South Africa and for human beings.
This is about vision.
This is about the long line.
Like the bird who flies over the field and doesn't care about the fences underneath, all right?
So now, you're going to follow the line all the way from B to E.
And I've one last request before I play this piece all the way through.
Would you think of somebody who you adore, who's no longer there?
A beloved grandmother, a lover -- somebody in your life who you love with all your heart, but that person is no longer with you.
Bring that person into your mind, and at the same time, follow the line all the way from B to E, and you'll hear everything that Chopin had to say.
(Music) (Music ends) (Applause) Now, you may be wondering -- (Applause) (Applause ends) You may be wondering why I'm clapping.
Well, I did this at a school in Boston with about 70 seventh graders, 12-year-olds.
I did exactly what I did with you, and I explained the whole thing.
At the end, they went crazy, clapping.
I was clapping.
They were clapping.
Finally, I said, "Why am I clapping?"
And one of them said, "Because we were listening."
(Laughter) Think of it.
1,600 people, busy people, involved in all sorts of different things, listening, understanding and being moved by a piece by Chopin.
Now, that is something.
Am I sure that every single person followed that, understood it, was moved by it?
Of course, I can't be sure.
But I'll tell you what happened to me in Ireland during the Troubles, 10 years ago, and I was working with some Catholic and Protestant kids on conflict resolution.
And I did this with them -- a risky thing to do, because they were street kids.
And one of them came to me the next morning and he said, "You know, I've never listened to classical music in my life, but when you played that shopping piece ..."
(Laughter) He said, "My brother was shot last year and I didn't cry for him.
But last night, when you played that piece, he was the one I was thinking about.
And I felt the tears streaming down my face.
And it felt really good to cry for my brother."
So I made up my mind at that moment that classical music is for everybody.
Everybody.
Now, how would you walk -- my profession, the music profession doesn't see it that way.
They say three percent of the population likes classical music.
If only we could move it to four percent, our problems would be over.
(Laughter) How would you walk?
How would you talk?
How would you be?
If you thought, "Three percent of the population likes classical music, if only we could move it to four percent."
How would you walk or talk?
How would you be?
If you thought, "Everybody loves classical music -- they just haven't found out about it yet."
See, these are totally different worlds.
Now, I had an amazing experience.
I was 45 years old, I'd been conducting for 20 years, and I suddenly had a realization.
The conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound.
My picture appears on the front of the CD -- (Laughter) But the conductor doesn't make a sound.
He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.
And that changed everything for me.
It was totally life-changing.
People in my orchestra said, "Ben, what happened?"
That's what happened.
I realized my job was to awaken possibility in other people.
And of course, I wanted to know whether I was doing that.
How do you find out?
You look at their eyes.
If their eyes are shining, you know you're doing it.
You could light up a village with this guy's eyes.
(Laughter) Right.
So if the eyes are shining, you know you're doing it.
If the eyes are not shining, you get to ask a question.
And this is the question: who am I being that my players' eyes are not shining?
We can do that with our children, too.
Who am I being, that my children's eyes are not shining?
That's a totally different world.
Now, we're all about to end this magical, on-the-mountain week, we're going back into the world.
And I say, it's appropriate for us to ask the question, who are we being as we go back out into the world?
And you know, I have a definition of success.
For me, it's very simple.
It's not about wealth and fame and power.
It's about how many shining eyes I have around me.
So now, I have one last thought, which is that it really makes a difference what we say -- the words that come out of our mouth.
I learned this from a woman who survived Auschwitz, one of the rare survivors.
She went to Auschwitz when she was 15 years old.
And ...
And her brother was eight, and the parents were lost.
And she told me this, she said, "We were in the train going to Auschwitz, and I looked down and saw my brother's shoes were missing.
I said, 'Why are you so stupid, can't you keep your things together for goodness' sake?'"
The way an elder sister might speak to a younger brother.
Unfortunately, it was the last thing she ever said to him, because she never saw him again.
He did not survive.
And so when she came out of Auschwitz, she made a vow.
She told me this.
She said, "I walked out of Auschwitz into life and I made a vow.
And the vow was, "I will never say anything that couldn't stand as the last thing I ever say."
Now, can we do that?
No.
And we'll make ourselves wrong and others wrong.
But it is a possibility to live into.
Thank you.
(Applause) Shining eyes.
(Applause) Shining eyes.
(Applause) Thank you, thank you.
Mia Birdsong: Why is Black Lives Matter important for the US right now and in the world?
Patrisse Cullors: Black Lives Matter is our call to action.
It is a tool to reimagine a world where black people are free to exist, free to live.
It is a tool for our allies to show up differently for us.
I grew up in a neighborhood that was heavily policed.
I witnessed my brothers and my siblings continuously stopped and frisked by law enforcement.
I remember my home being raided.
And one of my questions as a child was, why?
Why us?
Black Lives Matter offers answers to the why.
It offers a new vision for young black girls around the world that we deserve to be fought for, that we deserve to call on local governments to show up for us.
Opal Tometi: And antiblack racism -- (Applause) And antiblack racism is not only happening in the United States.
It's actually happening all across the globe.
And what we need now more than ever is a human rights movement that challenges systemic racism in every single context.
(Applause) We need this because the global reality is that black people are subject to all sorts of disparities in most of our most challenging issues of our day.
I think about issues like climate change, and how six of the 10 worst impacted nations by climate change are actually on the continent of Africa.
People are reeling from all sorts of unnatural disasters, displacing them from their ancestral homes and leaving them without a chance at making a decent living.
We also see disasters like Hurricane Matthew, which recently wreaked havoc in many different nations, but caused the most damage to Haiti.
Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere, and its inhabitants are black people.
And what we're seeing in Haiti is that they were actually facing a number of challenges that even preceded this hurricane.
They were reeling from the earthquake, they were reeling from cholera that was brought in by UN peacekeepers and still hasn't been eradicated.
This is unconscionable.
And this would not happen if this nation didn't have a population that was black, and we have to be real about that.
But what's most heartening right now is that despite these challenges, what we're seeing is that there's a network of Africans all across the continent who are rising up and fighting back and demanding climate justice.
(Applause) MB: So Alicia, you've said that when black people are free, everyone is free.
Can you talk about what that means?
Alicia Garza: Sure.
So I think race and racism is probably the most studied social, economic and political phenomenon in this country, but it's also the least understood.
The reality is that race in the United States operates on a spectrum from black to white.
Doesn't mean that people who are in between don't experience racism, but it means that the closer you are to white on that spectrum, the better off you are.
And the closer to black that you are on that spectrum the worse off your are.
When we think about how we address problems in this country, we often start from a place of trickle-down justice.
So using white folks as the control we say, well, if we make things better for white folks then everybody else is going to get free.
But actually it doesn't work that way.
We have to address problems at the root, and when you deal with what's happening in black communities, it creates an effervescence, right?
So a bubble up rather than a trickle down.
Let me give an example.
When we talk about the wage gap, we often say women make 78 cents to every dollar that a man makes.
You all have heard that before.
But those are the statistics for white women and white men.
The reality is that black women make something like 64 cents to every 78 cents that white women make.
When we talk about latinas, it goes down to about 58 cents.
If we were to talk about indigenous women, if we were to talk about trans women, it would even go further down.
So again, if you deal with those who are the most impacted, everybody has an opportunity to benefit from that, rather than dealing with the folks who are not as impacted, and expecting it to trickle down.
MB: So I love the effervescence, bubbling up.
AG: Effervescence -- like champagne.
(Laughter) MB: Who doesn't love a glass of champagne, right?
Champagne and freedom, right?
(Laughter) What more could we want, y'all?
So you all have been doing this for a minute, and the last few years have been -- well, I can't even imagine, but I'm sure very transformative.
And I know that you all have learned a lot about leadership.
What do you want to share with these people about what you've learned about leadership?
Patrisse, let's start with you.
PC: Yeah, we have to invest in black leadership.
That's what I've learned the most in the last few years.
(Applause) What we've seen is thousands of black people showing up for our lives with very little infrastructure and very little support.
I think our work as movement leaders isn't just about our own visibility but rather how do we make the whole visible.
How do we not just fight for our individual selves but fight for everybody?
And I also think leadership looks like everybody in this audience showing up for black lives.
It's not just about coming and watching people on a stage, right?
It's about how do you become that leader -- whether it's in your workplace, whether it's in your home -- and believe that the movement for black lives isn't just for us, but it's for everybody.
(Applause) MB: What about you, Opal?
OT: So I've been learning a great deal about interdependence.
I've been learning about how to trust your team.
I've come up with this new mantra after coming back from a three-month sabbatical, which is rare for black women to take who are in leadership, but I felt it was really important for my leadership and for my team to also practice stepping back as well as also sometimes stepping in.
And what I learned in this process was that we need to acknowledge that different people contribute different strengths, and that in order for our entire team to flourish, we have to allow them to share and allow them to shine.
And so during my sabbatical with the organization that I also work with, I saw our team rise up in my absence.
They were able to launch new programs, fundraise.
And when I came back, I had to give them a lot of gratitude and praise because they showed me that they truly had my back and that they truly had their own backs.
You know, in this process of my sabbatical, I was really reminded of this Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu.
I am because you are; you are because I am.
And I realized that my own leadership, and the contributions that I'm able to make, is in large part due to the contributions that they make, right?
And I have to acknowledge that, and I have to see that, and so my new mantra is, "Keep calm and trust the team."
And also, "Keep calm and thank the team."
MB: You know, one of the things I feel like I've heard in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement more than anywhere else is about being a leaderful movement, and that's such a beautiful concept, and I think that something that women often bring to the conversation about leadership is really the collective piece.
What about you, Alicia?
AG: Yeah ...
How many of you heard that saying that leadership is lonely?
I think that there is an element where leadership is lonely, but I also believe that it doesn't have to be like that.
And in order for us to get to that point, I think there's a few things that we need to be doing.
So one is we have to stop treating leaders like superheroes.
We are ordinary people attempting to do extraordinary things, and so we need to be supported in that way.
The other thing that I've learned about leadership is that there's a difference between leadership and celebrities, right?
And there's a way in which we've been kind of transformed into celebrities rather than people who are trying to solve a problem.
And the way that we treat celebrities is very fickle, right?
We like them one day, we don't like what they're wearing the next day, and all of a sudden we have issues, right?
So we need to stop deifying leaders so that more people will step into leadership.
Lots of people are terrified to step into leadership because of how much scrutiny they receive and how brutal we are with leaders.
And then the last thing that I've learned about leadership is that it's really easy to be a leader when everybody likes you.
But it's hard to be a leader when you have to make hard choices and when you have to do what's right, even though people are not going to like you for it.
And so in that way, I think another way that we can support leaders is to struggle with us, but struggle with us politically, not personally.
We can have disagreements without being disagreeable, but it's important for us to sharpen each other, so that we all can rise.
MB: That's beautiful, thank you.
(Applause) So you all are doing work that forces you to face some brutal, painful realities on a daily basis.
What gives you hope and inspires you in that context?
PC: I am hopeful for black futures.
And I say that because we live in a society that's so obsessed with black death.
We have images of our death on the TV screen, on our Twitter timelines, on our Facebook timelines, but what if instead we imagine black life?
We imagine black people living and thriving.
And that -- that inspires me.
OT: What inspires me these days are immigrants.
Immigrants all over the world who are doing the best that they can to make a living, to survive and also to thrive.
Right now there are over 244 million people who aren't living in their country of origin.
This is a 40 percent increase since the year 2000.
So what this tells me is that the disparities across the globe are only getting worse.
Yet there are people who are finding the strength and wherewithal to travel, to move, to eke out a better living for themselves and to provide for their families and their loved ones.
And some of these people who are immigrants are also undocumented.
They're unauthorized.
And they inspire me even more because although our society is telling them, you're not wanted, you're not needed here, and they're highly vulnerable and subject to abuse, to wage theft, to exploitation and xenophobic attacks, many of them are also beginning to organize in their communities.
And what I'm seeing is that there's also an emerging network of black, undocumented people who are resisting the framework, and resisting the criminalization of their existence.
And that to me is incredibly powerful and inspires me every singe day.
MB: Thank you.
Alicia?
AG: So we know that young people are the present and the future, but what inspires me are older people who are becoming transformed in the service of this movement.
We all know that as you get older, you get a little more entrenched in your ways.
It's happening to me, I know that's right.
But I'm so inspired when I see people who have a way that they do things, have a way that they think about the world, and they're courageous enough to be open to listening to what the experiences are of so many of us who want to live in world that's just and want to live in a world that's equitable.
And I'm also inspired by the actions that I'm seeing older people taking in service of this movement.
I'm inspired by seeing older people step into their own power and leadership and say, "I'm not passing a torch, I'm helping you light the fire."
(Applause) MB: I love that -- yes.
So in terms of action, I think that it is awesome to sit here and be able to listen to you all, and to have our minds open and shift, but that's not going to get black people free.
So if you had one thing you would like this audience and the folks who are watching around the world to actually do, what would that be?
AG: OK, two quick ones.
One, call the White House.
The water protectors are being forcibly removed from the camp that they have set up to defend what keeps us alive.
And that is intricately related to black lives.
So definitely call the White House and demand that they stop doing that.
There are tanks and police officers arresting every single person there as we speak.
(Applause) The second thing that you can do is to join something.
Be a part of something.
There are groups, collectives -- doesn't have to be a non-profit, you know what I mean?
But there are groups that are doing work in our communities right now to make sure that black lives matter so all lives matter.
Get involved; don't sit on your couch and tell people what you think they should be doing.
Go do it with us.
MB: Do you guys want to add anything?
That's good?
All right.
So -- And I think that the joining something, like if you feel like there's not something where you are, start it.
AG: Start it.
MB: These conversations that we're having, have those conversations with somebody else.
And then instead of just letting it be a talk that you had, actually decide to start something.
OT: That's right.
MB: I mean, that's what you all did.
You started something, and look what's happened.
Thank you all so much for being here with us today.
OT: Thank you.
(Applause)