With the general an think taking place . I know whether its emerge or care, i helped start a Youth Leadership symposium in houston where im from and its still very, very difficult for us to get people engaged to sign up for these programs. So you can talk about putting these programs in the mosque or starting a sunday school class about it or putting ads in your local paper, but theres still a very, very large divide in having people in the Community Involved in this. What are suggestions practically speaking on apathy . Okay, ill go first. And thank you for sort of thank you for the question. Something that id eventually speak about when i was up there. One of the ideas we have tried to quote unyoet get the Community Involved and engaged is to get them to run for Political Office at the lowest level. There are thousand chairs in the city of houston. And about 10 of them are from our community. Our population is less than 1 or 2 approximately. Many times, its not that difficult to get somebody elected because many of them maybe be in we live in quote unquote areas that are majority of the republicans, but we obviously many of us happen to be trats, so we get democrats elected in republican areas, then turn around and go to ideas that are democratic and i can remember who can get elected. That is one way. We have all 300 delegates from just the city of houston to the state convention. 70 judges. Election judges, who are muslims, so thats one area we try to focus on. Youre right. You are part of the Youth Leadership last year. Starting one this weekend and its gone up by 50 . Total number of applicants, or 50 more than we had last year. Many challenges, some communities facing. And what i have seen is that it is substantial amount of activism. In the community. Whether its goal oriented, thats a question. I see a good number of just hyper activity. People are doipg more of what they were doing. Because theyre nervous about it. The industry has worked substantially. Just one person speaks up and the board, hey, this is politics, you cannot do it. Board freezes. So, education is needed. 80 of everything in politics can be done by 51c3 without any, so, education, what can be done. I would also say you know, i have written a lot about rethinking mosques, so i dont want to call that. You can gook l me gle me on the issues. Some mosques are better than others and working with those to open up the rest of the mosques will be a good strategy. At a board member is talking we do this, we havent done this. We have achieved this. Their organization will accept. I have also found that the regional organizations, which are developing like in chicago, Islamic Organization of chicago, i was a shay for 40 years. Started without a budget of 40 thourk. In a year, it was a budget of 1 million. And there were nine full time staff working there. When people saw that example, more and more mosques wanted to be affiliated with that. They wanted to be part f the success. I believe its changing. And change will come fast. If younger people commit to institutions which are already built. There are complaints on both sides. That young people do not show any commitment. What commentment are you looking for . Younger people are are saying youre not giving us space. Then you ask, what space do you need. So, dimpbts community and different people have dimpt way of mobilizing, but if i see many, many cities where i visited, more and more two weeks ago, there were more muslims present there than there were catholics. More muslim present than mormons. So, muslims are engaging in a larger way. I like that to be appreciated as many times in mosque institutions. Im sorry, im the director for the virginia chapter of emerge usa and my question is for randa. This round of elections, i was in charge of doing endorsements for virginia. And i uses a template questionnaire, which was deficient in some areas, so i had to tweak it and really do some research to make it more relevant. So, i wanted to ask you, what are the main things that youd look for in a questionnaire that eququalifies candidates and can come by and sit with you and go through it . Sure. So, as a community, you have to decide what are the questions you want to ask because you want to get answers. So, what are the top ten questions or issues that are important to the Muslim American community. Give me five domestic, five Foreign Policy and ask in a way that gives them a lot of leeway in answering it. I have a candidate and i sat on the other side. I was not the candidate, but i was the staffer to the candidate, who was often responsible for answering that questionnaire. We would say to ourselves within the campaign, gee, is this a community that matters . Is this a community that votes . This is a community, that gives contributions. Lets face it. Moneys still the mother milk of politics. Okay, is this a community that if we dont answer this questionnaire, were going to get a lot of raf so, what are the pros and cons of answering. We are ging to answer it how in detail . Because maybe the campaign themselves doept have very flushed out positions. Look at trump. He sounds great on television, but his positions arent that a well flushed out. Flush out your tax policy. Tell me about this wall youre going to build. People are starting to ask. So, to the extent the cans themselves dont have those questions or issues flushed out, they may or may not answer they will. Those are the things that candidates are looking for and that you as somebody who wants to get your questionnaire answered, should do its best to try and focus on, to get them to answer it. I think thats what you focus on. Sometimes, you need to pressure within the campaign and with some of your most active members within the community to say to the candidate, hey, we gave you a questionnaire and you havent answered yet. Wed really appreciate you answering it. Okay. So, if that is the policy of the campaign and that is of many campaigns, fine. But make sure that theyre not answering any other Interest Groups questionnaires, like for instance, the National Rifle association or aarp, who are famous for their questionnaires or you know, any one of these issue groups. Who have questionnaires. So, if indeed, its their policy, you could easily find out whether or not you know, dont let them pull the wool over your eyes. You can easily find out and many, by the way, that is the policy and that is why open forums are so important because they view that as the ability to answer those questions. Sorry, thank you. Im bob moreau, from the adams community. I have a comment with a lead to a question. You know, a lot of what weve talked about today in all the different panels, its something adams is doing. As a mosque, we started out in early 18 19 80s with about 1 people. Right now, our e prayers draw in 15,000 people. Probably about 50 to 60,000 people. Thats a significant number of people. Weve used that for leverage. Not just for political, but interfaith. Two of our branches are in synagogues. One is in a church down the street. Episcopal church on 13th street. We have interfaith saiders every passover, so we reached out to all of the communities. On the political side, this past election, election in virginia last week. We had at least 35 candidates coming to our prayers or the e prayers over the campaign season. For the last 12 years, every governor candidate, attorney general candidate and most senate, the delegate and others have come to adams. For meetings with the community and you know, in terms of how do you energize the community to go out and vote, when they see these candidates coming, people will get energized and remember there is an election coming up. The candidates themselves, we can then press them to see if we can keep them on our side. Virginia has had an antisharia bill introduced every year for the last several years. In 2012, we formed a coalition with jewish groups, others, interfaith groups. Got that bill defeated and every year since, when ever its been introduced, our friends have pushed it back and taken it out. This year in the general assembly, unanimous approval for resolution commending adams for all we do in civic responsibility. In fairfax county, unanimous approval from the board of supervisor frs the same thing. Weve gotten people involved in internships with political officials. Weve put people on to campaigns. There are several whove had Muslim Campaign managers. Were trying to educate. We issue press releases when ever theres a major story. Weve met with yeah, all right. The question is, weve as you said, the mosques can be the epicenter for getting this word out. How can we do this . This is a great event, but an annual event. How can we do this so we can share these lessons, share nl÷m were trying to do and learn from each other. Were not saying we have a lock on this. We want to learn from you, but we think we can help teach you. But this is something, i hope youd be willing to do this, not every year, but at least every quarter. Especially in a campaign season. Electoral season is a great time and people are willing to learn and things like that. In a measure of three months, i trained 950 people, workers. And so, were all busy doing 10,000 things in our life. You can have a drag to run for the office. For the next year, or next term. You can have drag to support candidates which you like. A great example of the mosque which im talking about. In each city, i found two, three moss bs of this time. I believe that a National Organization are all rated and mosques are underrated. Its higher than now any of the National Organizations. So, when you Pay Attention to those two, three, highly publicized, make a big deal for the mosques, were willing to come if you want, well do it a branded presentation for your mosque. More than happy to do it. Along the line, election season is a great season. The process gets really tanked up for the first primary in february. So, starting this week, already have messages going out to the messages. In houston, there are a ton of them. And doesnt have to be within the same organization, but separate organizations, will come and give a presentation, which is bipartisan an will identify the opportunities for people to become delegates, chairs and to be involved and engaged. If we really focus stuff that weve done every four years, the drop off as weve seen in the 2010, 2014 elections, that midterm elections, such a low voter turnout, that you have frankly extremes of both Party Candidates get elected who dont represent the community. So, collaborations with messages, but also identifying how to get the general public engaged and involved is a critical factor. Before i have a question for the audience, but i want to ask you about stock ticking. You talked about islamaphobia. How would you rate the american Muslim Communitys response to a lot of these themes going around . Ben carson, trump. Seems like its getting worse. What do you make of how muslims are responding to these kinds of argument sns. Its interesting having worked on a lot of different issues with a lot of different communities. Every community is the first to criticize itself about how bad its response is and if i see any common theme, everybody thinks that their community is more dysfunctional than the next and quite frankly, i did a lot of organizing in the lgbt community, which is how i originally had come to, was asked to do this work and i think we made a lot of mistakes in that movement early on from a Communications Perspective and had very high pro file losses like prop 8 in california. But we learned from those mistakes and did things differently the next time. I mean, i think its interesting here. Theres been a lot of success. Talking ability defeating bills. There havent been that many mistacks in terms of an actual policy outcome that went the wrong way, right r, and that garnered national attention. I think there will be a moment when that happens. That will probably be a really key moment i think of reflection about okay, we used this strategy, this time, it did not work. What are we going to do last time, but fortunately, sounds like there has been a lot of alla ally building. These fringe bills that have thankfully not really passed, so pat yourselves ton back for beating those back. It would be nice if they didnt exist at all, but its almost impossible to stop the crazy fringe from putting forward crazy things. Any questions to the audience, im going to ask you a question. Good. Thank you and i want to say thank you to this panel. Ive been waiting all day for this panel. Everything youve said has rung true to my heart. I want to touch base, what bob said about the adams community. Im from the best place in america to live with four out of ten, are you from Montgomery County, too . Where about . Bethesda. Potomac. Rivals but friends. Montgomery county is home to four of the ten most diverse cities in the country according to the u. S. Census wur row and is home to 10 of our county, 1 Million People is muslim, so, 1100,000 people total. Belong to the islamic faith and i want to bring it up because in the last couple of years, weve seen a huge outgrowth of Muslim Political involvement in Montgomery County and weve had two elected in montgomery and prince georges county. Elections last tuesday and on top of that, the young Muslim Community, Young Professionals community has been driving hard to involve the Greater Community into the political spectrum and were looking to have in the next four year, as many as five to six candidates run for state delegate and really what a. J. Was saying hit home to me as a board member about engaging at the presimgt level. How do we take the monte dpomry county model and adams motd el and ek port that across the country so we have this strong model that we can use to empower Muslim Americans to move beyond is civic discussions were having here and go into driving into making america what it can be through our involvement. Thanks. I just want to mention one thing for Montgomery County. A great example of being locally involved is the school board, so, the Montgomery County school board, you may or may not have known, Montgomery County public schools, they allow vacations for the christian holidays. They allow vacations for the jewish holidays and when the Muslim Community stepped forward and said, may we please have the holiday for and at least an excused absence for the islamic holidays and the school board said no. First. And then they went back and r reassessed and said, well, they didnt want to say yes, they said were going to take all religious holidays off the calendar and have winter breaks, were going to call them, that of course include the christian and the jewish holidays. But certainly not the muslim holidays. It is a crazy decision. I give you and your colleagues kudos for continuing to push on this issue. And the way that you continue to push is that you work with the school board and you nominate new candidates for the school board. And knock people out of office that dont agree with you in the democratic kind of way, until you get the change that you want. With respect for having a Network Across america, that takes organization and it takes money. Like we talked about today. There are many wonderful american muslim organizations and i know within every community, theres always rivalry, but if you took the top ten active american muslim organizations across the United States and put a little red pin in where theyre located, and you guys all came together, men and women, and decided to do a political oneonone training. Very much like this. Did a road show. In all 50 states. I bet you could cover the whole United States within a couple of weeks. Two questions. Alex, you mentioned that after the initial struggles with the lgbt community, you moved forward with the lessons learned. What were those and how did you move forward as unified front. We find that we are sometimes our only worst enemy. You mentioned that its important to keep the our Public Opinion officials accountable. How do we do that, especially the movement, i think i mentioned after the failure of marriage bill, Ballot Initiative in california, prior to that, the message that had been in use in most states about why we should support marriage for lgbt people had been from a rights perspective. Everybody deserved the same rights you get from marriage. Well, when people think about marriage, we ask them and you know, research. Why do you get married . Is it for the rights . No, because i am love, i love and am committed to my partner and this is a public expression of that. So, there was a huge disconnect of what we were saying about why gays and lesbians deserve to beeried . Right. Everybody agreed, yeah, you should have the rights, but they didnt think gay relationships were real relationships. So, the strategy after california was put forward stories of the couples themselves and lean into this person doesnt want to get ma y married for the rights. This person wants to get married because theyre 85 years old and been together for 55 years and just want to be married like everybody else. That was the key learning that then got implemented in state after state and we started winning. I think it goes back to where i was talking about how you tell the american muslim story. That to me are critical elements of how to tell that story in order to beat back this muslim as extremist stereotype and to try to put to rest these fears about muslim does not equal americans so, its not like theres a sort of high profile issue here that has caused the collision point that was so clear after california, the whole Community Came together. And was like, what are we going to do differently next time . I know t