Civic Engagement and Minimum Wage ProgramLauren Bayne, MV SAVP 2018-19

Touchstone Text:“Any argument which is for the sake of Heaven will ultimately endure, and one which is not for the sake of Heaven will not ultimately endure.” ~Pirke Avot 5:20

Goals:1. PPs understand more about political polarization and echo chambers2. PPs will experience firsthand how divisive politics can be, especially when you do not

have all of the facts3. PPs will want to be informed citizens and VOTE!!

Objectives:1. ALL PPs will be committed to vote, whether they can register or not2. PPs will know at least one method of combating political polarization

Materials:● 20 Copies of Appendix PRO-A (1 per 2 PPs)● 2 Projectors/Speakers (1 for each room)● 4 Copies of EACH ARTICLE from Appendix ANTI-A● 10 Giant Post it Notes/Butcher Paper (to write the statements from Appendix PRO-B and

ANTI-B)● White construction paper (11x17)● 2 Copies of Program (GL #1 Copy)● 2 Copies of Program (GL #2 Copy)● 10 Sets of Markers (5 per room)

People Needed:● 1 PL● 2 Moderators for the debate/discussion (one is PL)● 4 Group leaders (two for each room)

Space Needed:● Area with FOUR chairs set up in the front and the rest in rows as if they were for

services (for the debate)● Large area or room for PRO● Large area or room for ANTI

Time Table:00:00-00:25- Time in Echo Chambers00:25-00:45- Debate and Discussion

Detailed Procedure:

00:00-00:30- GL will welcome participants to the room and first have all of the PPs watch a video (https://youtu.be/GOqtl53V3JI for PRO, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIBlNLyvZKU for ANTI) about the federal minimum wage. Then PPs will be given time to look around (all materials for decorating the room and articles will be in APPENDIX PRO-A and PRO-B for those FOR federal minimum wage increase and APPENDIX ANTI-A and ANTI-B for those AGAINST federal minimum wage increase), read the articles and the posters, and learn the “facts” of their side. After about five or so minutes of the gallery walk, GL will sit the PPs back down and lead them in a discussion about what they learned (questions will be worded with super biased language without being too overt...see Appendix PRO-C and ANTI-C for how to word questions. These will be the questions in the GL copy). After that, GL will say how other participants are learning about the other side, even though their facts are wrong and biased, and the PPs will be debating the other side in front of the whole region. Each side will choose TWO PPs to represent them in the debate and will then divide PPs for various jobs:

1) Some will help the two PPs who are debating build their case and write down facts2) Some will create posters supporting their side3) Some will create cheers and chants about their side to keep up the energy (have one-

two people serve as the side’s whip/hype person)As all of the PPs work on their section, the GLs can help get PPs excited for the debate. Play some upbeat music (similar to the way music is played at campaign rallies) to get people in the spirit!

00:30-00:45- PPs will be welcomed back to a neutral area, with each side sitting on opposite sides of the room. The PPs who will be representing their case in the debate will come up to the microphones. Lauren and Julian will serve as the moderators/emcees for the debate. Lauren and Julian will get the crowd hyped with their chants and showing off their signs, and then they will give the rules for the debate: you must debate in favor of the other side. Lauren and Julian will then turn to the crowd and ask for that same spirit for their new side (although now cheers and posters will not match whatsoever). The debaters will be given a minute to try and fight for their new position, but they will not have the facts to back it up, so it likely won’t work. Lauren and Julian will then begin an all group discussion on polarization and political inclusion, concluding with civic engagement as the most politically inclusive social action topic. PPs will then be told how the (ideally) most politically inclusive issue is civic engagement, since no matter what side of the aisle you are on, every person should have the right to vote. (See Appendix D for discussion guide).

Appendix Pro-A (Article)

The benefits of gradually phasing in a $15 minimum wage by 2024 would be far-reaching, lifting pay for tens of millions of workers and reversing decades of growing pay inequality. (Economic Policy Institute)

● Gradually raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024 would lift pay for 41 million workers—nearly 30 percent of the U.S. workforce.

● Affected workers who work year round would receive a raise on the order of$3,500 a year—enough to make a tremendous difference in the life of a preschool teacher, bank teller, or fast-food worker who today struggles to get by on around $20,000 a year.

● A $15 minimum wage would begin to reverse decades of growing pay inequality between the lowest-paid workers and the middle class. For example, failure to adequately increase the minimum wage accounts for 48 percent of the increase in inequality between women at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution since 1979.4

● A $15 minimum wage by 2024 would generate $144 billion in higher wages for workers and would also benefit their communities. Because lower-paid workers spend much of their extra earnings, this injection of wages will help stimulate the economy and spur greater business activity and job growth.5

The typical worker who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage is a 36-year-old woman with some college-level coursework who works full time

● Fewer than 10 percent are teenagers, and more than half are prime-age adults between the ages of 25 and 54.

● More than half (56 percent) are women.● Nearly two-thirds work full time.● Nearly half (47 percent) have some college experience.● 28 percent have children.

● The average worker with a spouse or child who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage provides 64 percent of his or her family’s total income.

Raising the minimum wage to $15 will be particularly significant for workers of color

● Two-fifths (40 percent) of African Americans and one-third (34 percent) of Latinos would get a raise if the federal minimum wage were increased to $15.6

Not just on the coasts, but all across the country, workers will soon need at least $15 an hour

● By 2024, in areas all across the United States, a single adult without children will need at least $31,200—what a full-time worker making $15 an hour earns annually—to achieve a modest but adequate standard of living. Workers in costlier areas and those with children will need even more, according to projections based on the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator.7

● For example, in rural Missouri, a single adult without children will need $32,502 ($15.63 per hour for a full-time worker) by 2024 to cover typical rent, food, transportation, and other basic living costs.

● In larger metro areas of the South and Southwest—where the majority of the Southern population lives—a single adult without children will need even more than $15 an hour by 2024 to get by: $16.65 in Fort Worth, $16.54 in Phoenix, and $18.40 in Miami.

● In more expensive regions of the country, a single adult without children will need far more than $15 an hour by 2024 to cover the basics: $25.53 in New York City, $20.47 in Los Angeles, and $24.71 in Washington, D.C.

Workers in many skilled jobs—widely considered to be middle-class jobs—struggle to get by on less than $15 an hour today and would benefit from a $15 minimum wage

● Nearly one-fourth (23 percent) of workers in manufacturing industries would see their pay increase.

● About one-fifth (21 percent) of workers in the construction industry would get a raise.

● One-fifth of educators and one-fourth of health care workers would get a raise—not surprising given that the median pay for many jobs in those fields is well under $15 an hour: preschool teachers ($13.84), substitute teachers ($13.47), nursing assistants ($12.78), and home health aides ($10.87).8

● All together, more than 12 million workers in construction, manufacturing, education, and health care would see a raise—almost one-third (30 percent) of the workers who would see a raise.

● The $15 minimum wage would also boost pay for workers in other jobs where median pay is under $15 an hour, ranging from child care workers ($10.18) to bank tellers ($13.11).9

Growing numbers of business owners and organizations have backed a $15 minimum wage

● In states that have already approved $15 minimum wages, business organizations representing tens of thousands of small businesses have endorsed a $15 minimum wage.

● Business groups that have endorsed a $15 minimum wage include Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, the American Sustainable Business Council, the Main Street Alliance, the Patriotic Millionaires, the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, the Northeast Organic Farming Association—New York Chapter, the Long Island African American

Chamber of Commerce, the African American Chamber of Commerce of Westchester and Rockland Counties, and others.

● Growing numbers of employers have raised their starting pay scales to $15 or higher. These include insurers and banks such as Allstate, Aetna, Nationwide, USAA, First Green Bank, and Amalgamated Bank; tech leaders such as Facebook; and major health care and nursing home employers in at least six states including the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Minnesota’s Allina Health, and Florida locations of Consulate Health Care.

Our economy can afford a $15 minimum wage

● Today’s low-wage workers earn less per hour than their counterparts did 50 years ago.

● We can afford to pay the lowest-paid worker in America today substantially more than what her counterpart was paid half a century ago.

● The economy has grown dramatically over the past 50 years, and workers are producing more from each hour of work, with productivity nearly doubling since the late 1960s. If the minimum wage had been raised at the same pace as productivity growth since the late 1960s, it would be nearly $19 an hour today.

The benefits of raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2024 far outweigh the costs

● The potential benefits of a $15 minimum wage—$144 billion in higher wages for 41 million U.S workers—far exceed the potential costs.

● Opponents of a $15 minimum wage are likely to rely on a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the likely impact of President Obama’s proposed $10.10 minimum wage. Serious analysis

has called CBO’s assumptions into question. But even CBO’s methodology implies that the benefits of a gradually phased-in $15 minimum wage vastly outweigh its costs.

● If job growth does slow, some workers who work less can still come out even. There is significant churn in the low-wage labor market; as many as 10 percent of the lowest-wage workers leave or start jobs every month. So some of any decrease in the number of new jobs created will mean that there are workers who will take more time finding a new job, or have to work fewer hours, but who will not see a drop in their annual earnings because of their wage increase.

● High-quality academic research confirms that modest increases in the minimum wage have not led to detectable job losses. It is time to support a bolder increase.

Employers that pay low wages force their workers to turn to safety-net programs for support, at significant cost to taxpayers

● Safety-net benefits for low-wage workers and their families make up more than half of spending on Medicaid, welfare (TANF), food stamps (SNAP), and the earned income tax credit, and cost federal and state taxpayers more than $150 billion a year.

Appendix Pro-BThings to Write on Sticky Notes to Hang in the Room

1. The $15 minimum wage is the only way to protect all citizens.2. Fight for $15 = Fight for Marginalized Groups3. All jobs deserve a living wage.4. $15 today, living wage tomorrow.5. The economics are simple: raise the wage.

Appendix Pro-C Discussion Questions WITH THE GROUP

1. Why is it so important to have a living wage?2. Many cities are switching to a $15 minimum wage, and major companies such as

Amazon are doing so as well. What are the economic benefits of this switch?3. Why is there so much false information out there about the federal minimum wage?4. How did these facts change your perspective on the federal minimum wage?

Appendix Anti-A

The real value of a $15 minimum wage depends on where you liveBY DREW DESILVER, Pew Research Center

The movement for a $15-an-hour minimum wage got a boost earlier this month when Amazon – which has drawn criticism for its pay practices and working conditions – announced it would raise its base pay for all U.S. workers to $15 an hour. The new minimum wage takes effect Nov. 1 and will affect some 250,000 full- and part-time employees, as well as the 100,000 or so seasonal workers Amazon expects to hire in the next few months, according to the company. (The raises will be offset, at least in part, by the phasing out of bonuses and stock awards for hourly workers.)

How much of a real improvement those workers will see in their daily lives, however, depends very much on where they live. Local living costs vary widely in the United States, and Amazon has more than 150 warehouses, sorting centers, distribution centers and other facilities scattered across the country. A $15 hourly wage yields $17.10 worth of purchasing power for a

worker at Amazon’s Spartanburg, South Carolina, warehouse, for example, but only $13.57 for a worker at the warehouse in Kent, Washington, a Seattle suburb about 20 miles south of the company’s headquarters.

These estimates are calculated by using data on “regional price parities,” or RPPs, for the nation’s 382 metropolitan statistical areas. The RPPs, developed by the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, measure the difference in local price levels of goods and services across the country, relative to the overall national price level (set at 100). So, on average, prices in the Seattle metro area (RPP of 110.5) are 10.5% higher than the nationwide average, while prices in Spartanburg (RPP of 87.7) are 12.3% below average.

In general, price levels are highest in urban areas and on the coasts – not coincidentally, areas where the push for a $15 minimum wage has been particularly strong. The three most expensive metropolitan areas in the country are all in and around the San Francisco Bay Area; there, the real purchasing power of $15 ranges from $11.80 to $12.03.

Beckley, West Virginia, has the lowest RPP of any metro area in the nation; a $15 hourly wage there has real purchasing power of $19.04. Austin-Round Rock, Texas, and Vineland-Bridgeton, New Jersey, have RPPs of exactly 100, making them the only metro areas where $15 really means $15.

Living costs not only vary widely throughout the country, they can vary a lot within individual states as well. In California, the priciest metro area (San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, more or less synonymous with Silicon Valley) is 42.3% more expensive than the least costly (El Centro, in the Imperial Valley across the border from Mexicali, Mexico). Metropolitan Miami is 30.3% more expensive than Sebring, Florida, roughly three hours to the northwest.

Giving low-paid workers everywhere in the country the same real purchasing power would require hundreds of different minimum wages, scaled to each locality’s cost of living. For example, giving everyone the same purchasing power that $15 has in Pittsburgh would translate to $19.41 in New York City and $16.51 in Chicago, but just $13.46 in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

A Case Against The Minimum WageBy Gary Wolfram, the William Simon Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College. (Forbes) In the Sherlock Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia, Watson is chastised by Holmes for not knowing how many steps there are from the ground level to Holmes’ apartment. After informing Watson that there are 17 steps, he says that Watson’s problem is that he sees but he does not observe.Bernie Sanders and those who support a minimum wage are like Watson — they see an increase in the minimum wage, but do not observe the unintended effects of the law. In fact, an increase in the minimum wage harms most those whom the law is supposed to benefit.

Let’s start with an obvious point: No one can stay in business if a worker can only produce $10 an hour of value but the government forces them to pay their workers $15 an hour. A pay raise may sound compassionate, but it is not a sustainable option. Once a minimum wage is passed, the cost of producing goods made by unskilled labor will increase. This in turn means that fewer units can be made and that the price of the good itself will also increase. Because of the increased price, fewer units will be sold – which ultimately results in fewer workers being hired. As the price of labor goes up, producers will have an incentive to use machines to replace labor. In fact, such replacements are already underway: Google “Robot Hamburger” to see what machines are being developed to replace the labor in fast food restaurants.Producers will also have an incentive to eliminate entry-level jobs. Decades ago, many gas stations included “service stations.” You drove your car up to a service station and a teenager came out and put gas in your car, washed your windows and checked your oil. At the time, this was the first job many American teens had. They learned basic skills like showing up on time, following instructions and interacting with customers.But these jobs and others like them no longer exist. To lower costs, gas stations have substituted your labor and machines for the labor of the entry-level worker. Nowadays, you put your credit card in a machine and pump your own gas. Increasingly, restaurants and retailers are following these trends: You order at a kiosk and pick up your own food at the counter, or scan and bag your own items. Admittedly, not everyone loses: The executive at the top will in fact keep his job and earn even more. But the entry-level or unskilled worker will lose his job to a machine or to labor that comes from the customer. And the greater the incentive to replace labor with machinery, the more jobs will be lost. Suppose we increased the minimum wage to $300 per hour. Do you really think that most of us would keep our jobs? Of course not – there would be no incentive for employers to retain us. My children can bypass the minimum wage. They have the skills and the family structure to support them working for free in an internship and getting on the first rung of the employment ladder. But a black youth in Chicago with a single mother doesn’t have the same kind of support system

and background that my kids do, and can’t afford to work for free. What is the solution to this disparity? First and foremost, it’s not to yank the already-limited job opportunities away from him through more federal interference. The unemployment rate for black teenage males is in excess of 30%. Increasing the minimum wage will only prevent him from finding that first paid job and will keep him in a perpetual state of unemployment. But, even more importantly, it’s to find ways to equip him with the skills and support that my kids have. Ludwig von Mises pointed out 90 years ago in Liberalism in the Classical Tradition that the only way to increase the income of the poor is to make them more productive. This may sound callous, but it’s actually the opposite. It means that instead of politicians deciding what the wage should be, they focus on improving our education and job training system so that this young man has just as much to offer a company as my kids do. It means addressing the disparity holistically instead of merely slapping on a surface-level solution that covers up the real problems. In other words, it means observing – not just seeing. It’s elementary, my dear Senator Sanders – elementary economics.

Why The $15 Minimum Wage Will Cost California 400,000 JobsBy Michael Satlsman (Forbes)

In the new year, less-skilled workers across California will face an old, familiar threat to their employment: A soaring minimum wage.

In 2016, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that put the state minimum wage on track to reach $15 per hour by 2022. The next increase—from $10.50 to $11.00—is scheduled for Jan. 1, 2018. If you’re a business in one of thirteen different California localities–from Mountain View to Milpitas, and from San Jose to Santa Clara–the required wage floor will rise even higher.

When he signed $15 into law, Gov. Brown seemed to understand that the increase was a bad idea, acknowledging that “economically, minimum wages make not make sense.” Today, California’s good intentions are catching up with it.

The warning signs started early; dozens of stories chronicled businesses closing, cutting staff, or leaving the state. A rash of restaurant closures in the Bay Area led one food-industry publication to describe it as a “death march.” Even child-care providers were hurt. (Some of the closures are featured in the video below.) A team of economists at Harvard Business School and Mathematica Policy Research determined that the rising minimum wage in the Bay Area contributed to these closures.

A new study released this week by the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), where I serve as managing director, takes a longer-term look at California’s minimum wage experiment. The state’s minimum wage began to deviate significantly from the federal standard in the late 1990s, a trend that continues today. David Macpherson of Trinity University and William Even of Miami University analyzed employment data over this time period, with a specific focus on industries with a higher percentage of lower-paid employees. They find that a 10% increase in the minimum wage causes a nearly 5% reduction in employment in these industries.

Based on the state’s historical minimum wage experience, they estimate California will lose approximately 400,000 jobs by 2022 when $15 is phased in. Retail and food service employees are hit especially hard by wage increases; nearly half of all job loss comes from these industries.

None of this should come as a surprise. The minimum wage is one of the most-studied topics in economics, and the consensus view of the research is

clear: Raising the minimum wage reduces job opportunities. A summary published in late 2015 by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco put it this way:

Recent research using a wider variety of methods to address the problem of comparison states tends to confirm earlier findings of job loss. Coupled with critiques of the methods that generate little evidence of job loss, the overall body of recent evidence suggests that the most credible conclusion is a higher minimum wage results in some job loss for the least-skilled workers—with possibly larger adverse effects than earlier research suggested.

Job cuts in the service industry don’t happen because businesses are mean-spirited. Rather, it’s because they’re caught between price-sensitive customers who can always stay home if a burger is too expensive, and narrow profit margins that provide little room to absorb the cost of a mandate. The only option is often to reduce staff, perhaps opting for self-service technology that takes the place of a job once done by an employee.The empirical consensus has failed to sway politicians inclined to support a wage hike for ideological reasons, or editorial boards at papers like the New York Times. They take comfort in “reports” from sympathetic researchers from the University of California-Berkeley, who were caught this year working closely with politicians to undermine credible research on minimum wage consequences. Meanwhile, the victims of the policy–small business owners, young disadvantaged job seekers, and nonprofits–suffer in relative silence. In 2018, it’s time to tell their story.

Minimum Wage Doesn’t Help The PoorBy Kristen Lopez Eatlick (Employment Policies Institute) Eatlick is a senior economic analyst at the Employment Policies Institute, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to studying public-policy issues surrounding entry-level employment.

Friday, Connecticut’s minimum wage will increase to $8.25 per hour, making it the third highest in the nation and $1 an hour higher than the new federal rate. This increase, which passed after lawmakers overrode a veto by Gov. M. Jodi Rell in 2008, comes at a particularly damaging time for the state’s entry-level work force.

In passing the higher wage, well-intentioned politicians hoped this policy would benefit low-income workers, spur job creation and “help families that are really struggling.” But decades of economic data show the opposite is true. Minimum-wage increases make it harder to find employment, particularly for the most vulnerable job-seekers.

How is it that a higher wage would hurt low-wage workers? It’s the law of unintended consequences. The minimum wage affects employers who largely hire from the entry-level work force. This year’s wage increase of 25 cents an hour translates to $10,000 in annual costs for a business with 20 minimum-wage employees.

Businesses with small profit margins need to increase sales by hundreds of thousands of dollars to generate the profit to pay those costs.

When businesses can’t make up those costs in increased sales, a real challenge in today’s anemic economy, they find other ways to cut expenses.

They are forced to eliminate jobs or reduce employee hours.

Even if jobs are not cut, companies respond to higher labor costs by shifting their hiring focus to higher-skilled employees whose productivity can match their higher salaries. This move effectively shuts low-wage and entry-level

employees out of the labor market. These workers may lack tangible on-the-job training or have a lower level of literacy, and are most in need of the employment and experience.

According to research from the University of California-Irvine, the negative effects of minimum-wage increases are overwhelmingly concentrated among the most vulnerable employees, particularly young minorities and high-school dropouts. In a weakened economy, and in a state where the 8.8 percent unemployment rate represents a 44 percent jump from a year ago, these vulnerable Connecticut job-seekers will have even fewer employment opportunities.

So if minimum-wage increases deprive vulnerable workers of job opportunities, who does benefit?

When the legislation was introduced, an Employment Policies Institute analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed 85 percent of those who would benefit from Connecticut’s minimum-wage increase had no dependents and either lived with their parents or another relative or lived alone.

And almost half of the expected beneficiaries lived in families with incomes exceeding $75,000 a year, given that the minimum-wage employee is generally not the primary family wage earner.

Historically, the idea that a minimum-wage increase helps to lift poor families out of poverty hasn’t been supported by results.

Research from economists at American University and Cornell University in 2008 showed the many state minimum-wage increases between 2003 and 2007 did nothing to reduce poverty rates. And economists at Ohio University found the federal minimum wage didn’t decrease poverty, and may actually have increased poverty for certain subgroups.

This is because the negative effects hit the low-skilled, and the majority of benefits go to families that aren’t poor.

It’s time for Connecticut to face the facts: the minimum wage is no longer an effective anti-poverty tool.

Another Side Effect of Higher Minimum Wages: Lower Health BenefitsBy Gene Marks (Washington Post)

Although the national minimum wage remains stuck at $7.25 an hour, a wave of states and municipalities have taken it upon themselves over the past few years to raise the amount, in some cases to as much as $15 an hour. Advocates believe that paying a higher wage provides a better quality of life to workers and helps to spur consumer spending.

But many business groups that oppose it say a higher minimum wage limits their ability to hire more people and forces them to cut back on workers’ hours, hire part-timers, outsource or invest in more technology. A controversial study conducted in 2017 appeared to bolster that position when researchers at the University of Washington found that the costs of a minimum-wage increase in Seattle — the result of employer cutbacks in workers’ hours — outweighed the benefits of the increase by 3 to 1.

Now a new study further supports the anti-minimum-wagers.

A working paper released this week by researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at employee pay data from 2011 to 2016. It concluded that employers who were forced to raise minimum wages for lower-paid workers also raised the hourly wages of higher-paid workers to maintain parity. However, the same study also found “robust evidence” that employers who raised the minimum hourly wages also reduced the amount they paid for their employees’ health-care benefits to cover those added costs.

According to the research, workers whose minimum wage was increased by $1 found that 9 percent to 57 percent of their wage gains were offset by a decline in their employer’s health insurance coverage. The study also found that many workers who lost their health-care coverage went without insurance rather than seeking out subsidies from the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

The minimum wage debate is far from over. The study’s authors suggested that more research should be done to quantify the effects of raising minimum wages on benefits other than just health care, such as the flexibility of work hours and occupational safety.

Appendix Anti-BThings to Write on Sticky Notes (to help decorate the room):

1. Every city is different. So why should the minimum wage be the same?2. Higher minimum wages = lower health benefits.3. The economics are simple: the minimum wage shouldn’t be.4. Fight for $15 is not inclusive.5. Raising the minimum wage will not help the poor.

Appendix Anti-C

DIscussion Questions WITH THE GROUP

1. How can we make sure the federal minimum wage is inclusive of ALL demographics across America?

2. What do you feel might be a harm in raising the federal minimum wage?3. Why is there so much false information out there about the federal minimum wage?4. How can we make sure to protect all working class workers from this problem?5. How do all of these sources change your perspective on minimum wage? Did you know

all of these facts?

Appendix DREAL Discussion Guide

1. How did you feel when you were asked to switch sides?2. When you were in your room, did you think about the other side?3. What is an echo chamber? Where do you see echo chambers in your own life?4. What can we as NFTYites do to ensure political inclusion and prevent political

polarization?5. Why should we as Jews care about political polarization?6. Are there any political topics that can be considered politically inclusive in this climate?

Why or why not?a. Talk about civic engagement here!!