new year's day on the c-span networks. at 10:00 a.m. eastern, the washington ideas forum with david crane. brown,ve owner warren and inventor dean kamen. at 4:00 p.m. eastern the brooklyn historical society holds conversation on race. from the explorers club, walt cunningham on the first manned spaceflight. on new year's day on c-span2, author hector towbar on the men buried in a chilean mine. on then richard norton smith the life of rockefeller. and then former investigative correspondent for the news, reporting forn on

the obama administration. on american history tv on c-span3, juanita abernathy on her experiences and the role of women in the civil rights movement. to: professor on the link between alcohol and politics in prerevolutionary new york city. at 8:00 p.m. cartoonist --. discusses the presidents of some of their most memorable qualities. new year's day on the c-span networks. for our complete schedule go to www.c-span.org. >> d.c. central kitchen founder ber -- robert edgar speaks about running a nonprofit for 24 says that charitable organizations will be important as aging populations put stress on government programs.

this is 50 minutes. >> i will pause and introduce our keynote speaker, robert gger. years ago, it has been a while. if you read his book "begging for change" you are familiar with his work. cool guy. we are to have him here. think a little differently. you may not agree with everything. i encourage you to keep your questions at hand. we will pause for q&a. for those questions ready when we open the floor. i will turn it over to robert to lead us through the keynote. robert? [applause]

thank you, thank you, thank you. it is a pleasure to be back in washington dc. i spent the last 40 years in the nation's capital, but i have decamped to the community of my youth -- los angeles, where i'm opening the los angeles kitchen. will get to transition. nothing fills the heart more than walking streets you are so familiar with. i spent the past couple of days visiting old friends, seeing old colleagues, going to the biggest shelter in america were i spent 21 years making payroll. at the same time, washington, dc that allows you to re-inspired yourself. yourself.nspire

it is appropriate talk about the 50th anniversary of community action. i look around the room and i don't see a lot of people that are that old when it was signed. i look around the room, i was six years old. i am now 56. there are a few people older than i am, but for many of us, the sign of that era that has inspired so much of our work and the leaders of that era who oftentimes decorate the walls of our offices are things that are memories of our youth. they are things that basically kept our parents and our older brothers and sisters active, and i looked on as a young man with great, great interest. that is one of the reasons i love coming back to d.c. i don't like getting too far ahead of myself, but one of the things i like is robert kennedy's grave in arlington cemetery. i have often found myself walking across memorial bridge to go across and visit because

-- as i said, d.c. is a town full of things that inspire, but as a young man living in southern california, i woke up that morning in june. my father came in the room and gave me the news that robert kennedy had passed. as many of you know, this was just two months after dr. king was murdered in memphis, tennessee. that was a hard year in america. as tough as times are now for our parents and grandparents, that summer must have seemed like a miracle was just on the edge. it was give or take. what inspires me about robert kennedy's grave, and we will talk about that -- you know, after his brother was assassinated, robert kennedy went into a deep depression. really, can't get out of bed kind of depression. dark am a dark place. -- dark, dark place.

he slowly reinvented himself. the robert kennedy many of us remember is a very different man than the man who helped run his brother's campaign. too many he was somewhat of a ruthless man, and he was definitely the man you would have to deal with if you messed with his brother. john kennedy like many ceo's in the room, got to be the nice leader, while the development director and the coo had to do the hard lifting every day. as a young man i became very enamored of robert kennedy. as many of you know in his journey, his resurrection, he went to cape town, south africa and spoke at the university there. i urge you young men and women in the audience, and frankly anyone who has not taken the opportunity -- the glory of the internet is you can go on and hear the speeches and that is one of the best speeches you will ever hear. on the walls of his grave are etched words that still speak to me. every time a person stands up

against injustice or fights for what is right, they send forth a small ripple of hope and daring and from all those energy sources, those ripples can create waves that will wash down the mightiest walls of oppression. to this day, that still reminds me of why i do what i did. i came from southern california here -- really, all i wanted to do was open a nightclub. i have told this story too many times. [laughter] i want to be real clear here. many of us were inspired by those men and women in the day, who really risks things -- you -- who really risked things. that is something we need to talk about, risk. we have come to a point in the nonprofit sector, a crossroads where we have to understand the people we admire, the people we , we honor, they risked.

they were not risking a grant. they were not risking a paycheck. they were risking jail. they were risking firebombs. they were risking police dogs. that is risk. while i always advocate for calculated risk -- and i think it is time for the nonprofit sector to be much more daring -- i don't want us to be belligerent. i do not want us to think that our job is just to be opposed to things. we have tremendous power. and that is one of the things we will talk about, external as well as internal of the sector. as a young man, i left california and i witnessed something that had stuck with me to this very day, which is my parents and their friends argued about politics. we talk about america being divided today. america has always been divided. and it has always been a frustrating struggle. my parents argued all the time about the politics of the day.

yet at the end of the summer of '68, my parents had a party. i watched people who could not agree politically, my father put on a motown record and everybody ran to the dance floor. as a young man, i thought, call me crazy, but the lyrics to this song is saying pretty much the exact same thing that robert kennedy and martin luther king said that got them killed. but people accepted it as entertainment. that is why i wanted to open a nightclub. i understood the power of music. the power of subterfuge. i got to be on "oprah." we can talk about opera at a different time. opera is a preacher. she wants your soul. she disguised her spirituality as entertainment and let people land. -- and let people in. that is what i have always aspired to. for me, running a nightclub was the power of music, theater,

art, dance, comedy. to get people to open up and hear things. let's be honest -- most people in america are decent, kind, generous people. you see people pouring buckets of ice on their heads raising millions of dollars for als. people give almost $300 billion a year to charity in america. we have raised an entire generation, the millennial's, the most diverse generation, they have been raised doing service. and collectively, 80, 100 people -- 100 million people volunteer, and it is not money or time our faith. but most people as kind as they are, want to hold onto stereotypes. if you are poor, it is your fault. if you are in prison, you must have done something to deserve it. to let go of that stereotype may mean they have to think differently about their role. i am in the bravery business.

our job is to make people brave enough to let go of these old ideas that hold us back. for many of us who came up in that era, everything they taught me in church and in civics class, i witnessed as a young man on the streets of america in the 1960's. this is a country where you fight about things, where you are you about things. and you are political about things and you ran for office if you thought you could change things. to me, that is what i thought it meant to be an american. that is the role i have chosen for myself. i came wanting to open a nightclub, but i went out one night, and i apologize because i tell the story too often, but i went by the state department on virginia avenue to serve people who are poor. again, there have always been people on the fringe of america, but this was becoming something too big to ignore. men, women, symptoms family

sleeps in -- sleeping on the -- sometimes family sleeping on the streets. i always say my name is robert and i am a recovering hypocrite. i spent my youth talking about changing the world with music. someone said, that is great. go it on the street and feed one of your neighbors. i used every excuse in the world. i had all of these images of who i would encounter. i went out on this truck. i asked where does the food come from? i found out it had been purchased from the safeway in georgetown, which still remains one of the most expensive stores on the planet. i knew our restaurant industry, the industry i had grown up in, the industry i knew intimately -- because if you want to put on shows in the front, you better know the backend of the house -- i knew how much food we wasted every night.

and before i don't want, can we further,fore i go any can we thank the men and women who served as our lunch today? [applause] i knew how much food was being thrown away. but more importantly, and this is where we really get to the meat of our conversation today. i pulled up on a rainy night in washington, d.c., and commits to feeding minute women who had -- feeding men and women who had lined up down the street as they had night after night. i realized i was the one being served. i was seeing for the first time that while charity is not a bad thing, what it had become was more about, as i like to say, the redemption of the giver, not the liberation of the receiver. and that was what i decided i wanted to flip. i came back a couple weeks later with a small business plan. this is what is important to our conversation. when we talk about transitional leadership, i was just a volunteer.

i was just somebody who wanted to help. somebody came along with fresh eyes and looked at an old problem and a respected, historic solution or process and proposed something new. i just said, look, not only can you get the food from the restaurants, the universities, the hospitals, bring them to a central kitchen -- not only can you feed more people better food for less money, but if you let go of the notion that men and women can wait in line for the or show up and embraced these minute women as neighbors and -- if men and women as neighbors and bring them out of the rain and start a little cooking school, you can train them for work. you can shorten the line. then you can repay the restaurants with entry-level people who will show up on time and start making the money. everybody would win. this is something that stuck with me ever since then. because every single person i went to, every single nonprofit

told me it would not work. they come up with every kind of excuse you could imagine. these were not bad people. mind you, these were very decent, kind people. but the point is, they were so entrenched and they had so much ownership wrapped around the system as it existed that they were unwilling to see a new opportunity. and it got to the point where someone challenged me -- would love in their heart, decent person, make no mistake -- they said, you know what, robert, you mean well, but you are naive to think you can train men and women who are homeless to work in restaurants. restaurants will not hire those men and women. that is the island of misfit toys. i said, you have never worked in a restaurant. [laughter] everybody knows, that is the island of misfit toys acting on those doors. i guarantee you, even today. the people were so resistant to change, they were willing to see

fellow humans as unable to rise up. that really stuck with me. now nobody -- nobody wakes up when they are 20, looks in the mirror and says, when i grow up, i want to lead a nonprofit and stifle innovation. you know? nobody wakes up and says, i want to be a boring old bureaucrat who just says no to everything. [laughter] we know and we see too many of our brothers and sisters have become trapped. they are not bad. you have to really resist. that is what we're going to talk about today. how can you stay true to the dreams of your yezidi echo that -- the james of your youth? that is something i look at. as a young man, -- how can you stay true to the dreams of your youth? that is something i look at. we all look at the mayor and full ourselves with the reflection. an honest reflection. how can i work toward the man i wanted to be when i was 12 years old and looked out at the leaders i saw being murdered? how can i be like that?

there are lots of ways we do this. at the deasy central kitchen i ,- at the d.c. central kitchen i was not the highest-paid employee. i was the founder. i was the president. but my sense of who i was was not derived from my paycheck. my sense of leadership and the reason people followed me was not because i got the biggest check. the notion that that is what leadership looks like -- in fact i became more and more intrigued by the way we view leadership, because to be brutally honest, i have watched as leaders of the community have changed from being white men to people of color women. but too often people still mimic the same behaviors as the people they replace. because that is what we all come to see leadership looks like. no matter how many different colors and shades and genders run our organizations, too many of them are still run in an old way where a single person at the top has to make every decision. this is critical to our

discussion right now, because one of the reasons i left d.c. -- i come from the keith richards school. sometimes it is better before they make you run. -- better to walk before they make you run. [laughter] i talked about leadership. like many in the sector, i had worked and we had almost 100 classes of men and women go through the dce central -- d.c. central kitchen. yet a lot of people i worked with said consistently two-minute women who walk through our doors "you must change your behaviors." yet too often we would do the same things over and over and over. we would tell people on the street you can't handle anymore. yet if we go out to the foundation, we might as well bring a little tin cup with us when we go out. if you're going to talk this, you have got to walk this. it is time for me to move on and let another generation takeover the d.c. central kitchen. but i also was, and i remained

as i like to call it an amateur futurist. i went to an event like this years ago. i met someone there, and they said, oh what to do, what you do? you said, i am a futurist. i said what's that? you said it is about the probability, it is about trends. i said, that is what i do, too. first it was a heroin and alcohol town. then came crack. crack is a crazy drug. still is. and then all of a sudden women were coming out of their homes. i realized i could not just have one kind of program and try to fit everybody into my program. my program had to be adapted to fit whoever's suicide he was -- fit the needs of whoever's society was putting at the bottom.

again, that idea of dedicating our organization, our team, not just to be flexibility, but seeing the future coming to you. when i was a young man, i played a little baseball. c minor baseball, right? i was probably eight years old. middle of the game, coach, timeout, timeout. he starts walking toward me. i thought, what do i do question -- what did i do? he said, son, what do you do at that ball comes to you? i had not thought about it. he said you have a man on second. there is a triple play right here waiting for you. you know what happens. the next ball crack, boom. triple play. they carried me off the thing. the coach said, son, always be ready when the ball comes to you. i discovered -- there are three kinds of leaders. there are people who have their heads down just trying to make payroll. that is understandable. making payroll is hard business in america right now. i respect that. the second group of people is

just like you. they raise their heads for a little bit and they can see, they can hear the fancy pants speaker, they can exchange ideas. too many go back, but their had write that down. -- put their head right back down. that is understandable. respect. but there is a third kind of leader. these leaders see the future coming and say, i am not going to wait for it. i am going to march out to meet it. i am not going to wait for it to come to me. i could sit and wait for the ball, or i could will the ball to come to me. i became almost a hypnotist. i could sit there and make the ball come to me. that is what i do now. i make the ball come to me. i am out there in california. i know what is coming. i do not know how many of you all do pantries or work with a food bank. think about this. our whole movement, our whole movement was birthed at a time in which america was going through an era of extra. world war ii, man, we fed to the world and rebuild the world. our industrial base was completely intact. and the farmland -- talking

about montana. the miracle of central valley in california. produced a crop surplus that allowed you to get a lemon, a lime, a tomato in the deepest, darkest winter in montana. that was an abundance beyond anyone's comprehension. that allowed the nonprofit sector to grow, because we get the extra. i made a living off extra food. extra buildings, extra clothes, give people extra time. that extra was abundant and allowed us to grow exponentially, but that air of extra is ending. the food that all the patches get, that i get, at the end of the day, make no mistake. that is lost profit. people bought that, they could not sell it. they give it to charity. that is cool, but their entire raison right now is not having any extra. predictably you have less food coming in. i moved to california. i have an unlimited supply of fruits and vessels i can get for

-- fruits and vegetables that i can get for free or next to nothing. that is a big, powerful true -- tool. but was and what else is coming. every single morning in america -- every single morning short of an asteroid hitting the earth, 10,000 people wake up 67 years old. and that will go on for the next 20 years. every single morning. the baby boomers are coming. that is profound. get your head around this. the next big wave of poor people in america are going to be our elders. they already are, but we do not pay much attention to them. the way we treat our elders in america, frankly, is one of our greatest chains. -- greatest shames. we have a throwaway society. that humble, plain generation, never complain, don't want charity, no matter how poor they are. well, get ready, because here come the baby boomers. and the baby boomers are not at all going to be shy about

wanting what is their right. [laughter] this is important. of all the workers in america, of all the workers in america, between 45 and 65 right now, has do not have 10,000 -- $10,000 put aside for their retirement. there are those who would see that as a bad thing. many people use the term the silver tsunami as a term of fear. but i go back to that robert kennedy line about how every time someone put -- sets forth a small ripple, they can wash away the walls of oppression. manage if we as the nonprofit sector can reach out to those older americans. that silver tsunami can actually be the realization of robert kennedy's dream. it is powerful, i will tell you. make no mistake -- it is a wonder you can't put your head out in the morning and hear a sigh as 10,000 people look in the mirror and see a 67-year-old looking right back.

you have to figure, a big hunk of them are looking in the mirror, sign, and saying, how did i get so lost? how could i have seen with my own eyes after king, cesar , cesar chavez, shirley jackson? how could i have heard with my own ears john lennon and marvin gaye? how could i be suckered into believing if i just bought more i would be happy? i see them just pouring in. saying use me. i want you to get your head around this. this is the deepest well of experience in america. no other generation has been this rich, this free, this educated. shame on us and shame on us as a sector if we do not bring them in instead of waiting for them to come to us. this is powerful. think about this. you have 100 million people under 30. i want to reiterate.

the biggest generation america, the most diverse generation in america, will soon be the most educated and guarantee the most technologically advanced. these are minimum and raised doing service, and make no mistake, the generation that got barack obama not once, but twice -- every single election, you're getting 16 million to 20 million new voters. people who still believe in the american dream. interesting as it may sound or as far-fetched, i believe that there is a surprising shared interest between those who are old and those who are young. and that amazing opportunity, this is what is really important. oftentimes we think leadership looks this way. organizations run this way. but if you look at history, look at the history of our movement, you realize it was two groups that people thought would not find common ground found common ground and in together. we sometimes look at the united farm workers and think, that was

cesar chavez. it was not just cesar chavez. it was the filipino workers that went on strike and cesar chavez was brilliant and saw an opportunity to make peace. years ago i went to india. i read a little history book that said the british never, ever, ever in all of their years of control of india ever had more than 3000 officers stationed on the ground. never. i will be honest with you. i was mesmerized by that. and i needed a little break from d.c., so i took a little sabbatical. i allowed myself a full month to go over there and study and figure, how did 3000 do does -- dudes control through to million -- control 53 million people? in less than 24 hours i had the answer. i almost laughed outdoor. -- laughed out loud.

as long as the british could give the indians fighting one another, it was a piece of cake. and i left out loud. i realize that was the nonprofit sector in america. eight versus art. it is all -- we have the keys. that is the thing i really want to reiterate. but what is important again, there would be those right now who want to divide our generations, who would want to pick old against young. tragically you see old people being manipulated with fear. to be quite honest with you, man, the oldest people should be crazy in love with new immigrants. somebody needs to come in here and start paying taxes so they can sit back and get their social security. frankly, old people should be out front saying, let them in! the right to work. we have jobs right here. seriously. but let's take one more thing before i break up. i tend to free associate.

in fact, it is funny, man. one of the things that really turns me on most to change was the fact in 1959 miles davis came along and released the album "kind of blue." up until then charlie parker was the preeminent usage and, -- musician, but he was limited to 12 are blues. miles came along and said, i reject 12-bar blues. i came along in los angeles and i am developing new meals for seniors. it is in effect the same plate you see in schools, and hospitals, in prisons, in any institution that says this is where the big piece of meat goes and everything circles around the solar system, but meat is the son. sun. as a society with this many people he will need help, we

can't afford a big piece of meat, nor is it sustainable or healthy. so i am just coming along saying similarly, i reject the plate, the tyranny of the plate. i am inventing a little tiny bento box. i will serve three ounces of protein, but i reject the notion that it has to look like this. i can give people ethnically diverse, beautiful, artistic meals for less money. i can hire people. the goal is to help young women and men aging out of foster care that are statistically on their way to prison or the street. and older people coming out who statistically will make a u-turn and go right back because there are no jobs for them. you know what -- i was you. i see myself. i just got back after 20 years and i am not going to let you go down that same road. an older man or woman can help the young reactor may to change. reactor made -- react lome --

can they learn with and from each other as they prepare meals for the immunity? i have always said, let's remove the false divide of the table that has volunteers serving the poor, and let's bring everybody to the same side of the table. one of the greatest pleasures is saying presidents of the united states come in and work side-by-side with men in women in the jobs training program. and inevitably -- no matter how smart -- god bless bill clinton. one of the smartest men. nobody loves a kitchen more than bill clinton. but i have to tell you, the man did not know how to cut a caret. and the power of someone in prison saying, no, sir, you do it this way. that is the problem -- that is the power of what we can show. everyone has something to contribute. no matter how old, how young. everybody has something to contribute to the great american story. but i think one of the most important places we are going to begin to reframe that, and when you start to look at that next

set -- how do you revitalize immunity action. -- community action. do not forget our charter. you all were the very first on the war on poverty. again, this is no disrespect, because the reality is -- unlike the british in india, the way we get our money, the fact that we cannot being gazed in the political process puts us in a position where it is virtually impossible for us to solve the problems we have been tasked with. but the point is, if we continue to accept the structure -- this is how nonprofits behave, here is how you get your money, here is how you are led, or is how you can speak, then the next 50 years and not going to make them as difference. flowers will bloom in every community, but the garden we sought to plants in 1950 when president johnson signed the fact will remain just as --

signed this act will remain just as elusive. while we deserve much credit for the work we have done, the road ahead cannot be the same road. it is the same journey, but we have to take a very different course and i think many of us can learn from some of the younger men and women humming to our sector. we are reaching a point -- because of low administrative overhead as the intellectual albatross around our neck -- overhead is things like retirement plans for our executives. what you have is a sector with too many leaders who cannot afford to leave their jobs. as much as we talk about people retiring, in many, many communities, you have people who do not have any money set aside. the question for them is, i may not be of the lead, but do i sought to govern the organization the same way i did? can i open up and let younger members of my organization to exert their sense of leadership, their direct and, their new ideas? that has been a big part of my

personal journey. i do not know how many of you do this. i just went through a review by my staff, our staff. and it was anonymous. and it was hard. i am like, hey, i am better than that. i mean, that is cold. [laughter] i can't believe you would treat me this way. i am signing your paychecks and that is the best you can say about me? but again, i don't want to think that way, but that is the point. how many of you let your staff evaluate you anonymously echo and how many of you have the courage to really listen to what they say? this is the biggest discussion we're going to happen our sector right now. how are we going to do away with the old way of having one person make the decision and how do we spread it out? what is going to be exciting for many of you is you people come and just as i did, as a volunteer, with fresh eyes and say, the way we have been

measuring success is not the only way we can. there are three or four new metrics you may be able to use. we were just out in california with the california association of nonprofits that just did a tremendous report on the impact of nonprofits in that state. the one nugget i have been praying -- praying is too hard a word. i have been hoping for. how much money the nonprofits of california bring from outside the state in. that is the first time, to my knowledge, any group has done that. what they clocked in at, $40 billion a year. let's be honest. if i am a rural marion georgia, in montana -- if i am a rural mayor in georgia, montana, and someone says, these nonprofits can bring in a lot of money. a staff of three people brought in $70 million over five years. new money into the city.

man, we are the ace in the deck that most politicians do not even know they have got. we have to help the men and women who run for office realize we are steady partners. we are far from charity. we are major parts of every economy. i really want you to let this sink in. this is economics 101. there is no profit in america without nonprofits in america. you try to run the town -- seriously, you try to run the town, let alone attract new business. it young and dashing young men and women to stay if you have arts and culture, if you don't have health care, if you don't have education, if you don't have clean air and water. that is what we do. you can't make money without us. we need to on that fact that we are not the young brothers and sisters of the.com world. we are equal to business. no recovery plan will work without us in the mix. it is time for us -- [applause] -- [applause] there you go.

if i may be so bold, and to close, this is the kind of transitional thinking i urge you to be open to as leaders. believe me. i do not want to discount the minute women of generation x who have been toiling in the field, waiting for their time. there are so many people with really bold ideas. we have to turn them loose. a lot of our conversation today will be around those ideas. how do we get our voices heard. and how do we learn to the spec not only the people of the organization, but the volunteers. we should open up and say to anybody who comes through our door, if you have a better idea how we can make our own money, how we can be engaged, how we can spread better word about what we do, let us know, we are all years. because we are community action and we are here tuesday. -- we are here to stay. thank you all very, very much.

[applause] >> if there are any questions, we do have a microphone. we will take one or two, given the time. don't give me this quiet stuff. there is a microphone right there. >> and you can just shout it out. >> what if you got? need some caffeine or something? >> if you would, could you give advice to middle leadership to help -- let's say current, seasoned leadership help understand that opening up is not threatening their leadership or their legacy. how would you frame that advice question mark >> -- how would you frame that advice? >> wow. thank you for that question. this is the core of what we are at. this is human nature. what we are talking about is ruffling that sense of i'm good

right here. you know, this sounds lofty, but i think most people -- when i go back to most of those men and women looked in the mirror and they wanted to change the world. very peak -- very few people got in this business because they thought they were going to get rich. they wanted to be part of the american dream. we are the american dream. make no mistake. what we do -- we represent the best of america. we make the best profit and america. i think trying to challenge people to be that leader they wanted to be. this is why i really push for the idea of a can be tough, but that idea of staff evaluation. i frankly think everyone in this room ought to consider going back. it is hard, but guaranteed your staff will respect you more if you ask for their honest evaluation.

you know who we should be studying right now? that the eo of that grocery store in massachusetts who, they fired him and all the employees walked out. and all of the delivery people refused to deliver. the customers refuse to comment. that guy should write a book and go to every conference. who does not want to be that kind of leader? if the board says, your time has come. many of us would go, well, that was nice while it lasted. [laughter] have fun. and frankly, probably thinking, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. >> thank you. >> my pleasure. >> one of the things he said that really resonated with me was your trip to india where you saw how they kept people divided and really wanting to move

move beyondable to the circumstances. my question to you is -- and palm beach county, we see that love of division amongst a lot -- level of division amongst a lot of nonprofits. everybody is competing for resources and sometimes it doesn't create the kind of environment where people are working together and working collectively toward common goals. my question is, what would be your strategy for dressing those kinds of issues and have you seen any communities where they have kind of found the answer and are working together. not necessarily competing against each other, but working together toward the same goals? >> thank you, james. i have seen many communities that are working very hard together. the grant system is, in my opinion a foreign economy. i have written extensively about what i believe are the gender

origins of modern philanthropy. in the 1970's there were only 68,000 nonprofits in the late 1960's. 10 years later it was bumping up on a million. i believe a lot of it had to do with my mother's generation of women who were leaving the home to get jobs because the economy shifted and the one income household did not work anymore. many women -- my mother watched, as she raised us, she watched from the sidelines the a civil rights movement, the migrant farmworkers movement. they wanted to be part of it. women were only 21% of the workforce in 1960 and they were bumping up on 54%. you made -- you had a huge number of women coming into the workforce. i believe they were told by a

large part of society, i love that you want to work, but you don't have skills. you are a mother. at you can do charity. and this was pretty much just white guys giving away other white guys' money. they said, we are not interested in funding economic empowerment. it is always important to remember dr. king was murdered on the way to washington to lead the poor people's campaign 04 economic justice. not the poor people's campaign for food banks and charities. james brown used to say i don't want anyone to give me nothing, just open the door and i will get it myself. that is what we should be working towards. as long as we are funded this way, and in fact this is really even tougher now, because the reality is the people with the money after 2008 are the people who caused the problem in 2008. it for us more and more and more to get the grants we need, we have to go up to the people who have no interest in the conversations we must lead. i have got to remember i am on

c-span and i am out here trying to raise some money myself. the reality is, many of the funders, many of the biggest funders for the lamprey -- for philanthropy are people who do not pay a good wage. or people who own large amounts of food. when we want to talk about nutrition or wage -- which are the two things we should be talking about in my business. again, this is with love in our hearts, but to escape from that, we need to have better control of our finances. this is why i am intrigued, for example, in california -- they have talked forever about a credit union. the reality is if we put our money together, the top 10 nonprofits and anything will count put our money together and say in effect, we're are not going to merge our assets, the we're going to merge our banking business. if you want our business, we want access to capital. i don't know about you all, but in d.c., we had a $12 million

theater organization. $12 million. if i was lucky, i get a 200,000 dollars grant. that was the big prize. you know how much money i may come through there with $12 million every year? you need to start thinking about the merger mentality. the think about all of the different ways we stand together. imagine if we create a little seal of approval. man, if you want less poverty, look for the community action seal. every time you shop in the store, the store pays a living wage. every time you buy here, you make us go away. that idea of channeling the economic power of our volunteers. thank you for volunteering, but think where you spend your money. if you want more money in the treasury, less charity, you have to decide where you're going to spend your money every single day. i tell you -- there are 14

million of us. 14 million people live -- work and the nonprofit sector. i know we are some of the most loyal voters in america, but because our organizations cannot talk about --if someone came to the d.c. central kitchen and said, robert, what you think of these candidates? and i am a pro. i cannot say, based on my experience, this candidate has the best possible plan for limited and the need for my charity. if i do that, i have broken the law. the supreme court says a business can do that all day long, but i can't? these are the kinds of things we need to be much more deliberate about that. particularly for a young man, older leaders will oftentimes say we can't do that. and we have to respect the trials they went through. the point is for your generation, you have to be polite, but firm and say, i'm sorry, we have to go a different road then, because we can't afford this kind of relationship with our government. we are doing too much hard work. we are doing too much artwork

and the committee. -- hard work in the community. it is patently undemocratic for the nonprofit sector to be silence this way. and going back to the risk that our forefathers and foremothers did, we need to embrace the same risk. not reckless, but calculated risk. the law, i believe, is on our side. i will have a conversation with anybody about this. i am living proof of this reality. no matter how efficient i make my business, and i am really good at what i do, no matter how efficient i am, i should never be in this business. i love my work. i hate my job. the reality is, i feed poor people leftover food. that is just not america. that is not the america i was born into. that is not the america they taught me and my history book.