The 15th and 19th Amendments: Looking Back and Looking Forward

Episode Notes

Transcript

State Bar of Texas Podcast

The 15th and 19th Amendments Looking Back and Looking Forward

07/10/2020

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Intro: Welcome to the State Bar of Texas Podcast, your monthly source for conversations and curated content to improve your law practice, with your host Rocky Dhir.

Rocky Dhir: Hi and welcome to the State Bar of Texas podcast. So, I know this podcast is not supposed to be about me, but if you could indulge me for just a moment, I want to share something personal.

You see, I took a bit of a big step recently. I turned off the news notification function on my phone and tablet. I used to love being connected and knowing what was happening, you know, having my finger on the pulse so to speak but, over time, the news just got too toxic for me. I mean, I understand that bad things happen and that we should know about them, sure. What got to me though was all the vitriol. If you read the news, it sounds like everyone is angry at anyone who happens to disagree with their particular viewpoint. I did not find that to be true in real life. But on my screen, it looked like everyone has an axe to grind, and honestly, it was starting to grind on me.

I was officially in a funk, add to all that the fact that we have a global pandemic, large-scale protests and rioting, and let’s just say that I could have used a 2020 reset. Thank goodness, though, for Paul Stafford. Paul is a Dallas attorney who, alongside his 25-year business litigation practice, has been a student of constitutional law. And Paul wrote a piece in the June issue of the Texas Bar Journal. The piece was called “Men, Their Rights and Nothing More; Women, Their Rights and Nothing Less.”

The article celebrates something positive about the year 2020, namely that this year marks the 150 years since the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment and 100 years since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Unbeknownst to Paul, his article gave me some perspective, some big picture perspective if you will, that helped bring me back to normal, or at least my version of normal in this most unusual of years. Paul reminded me of what our American journey has truly been about. I think maybe we could all benefit from hearing his perspective. So, Paul Stafford, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.

Paul K. Stafford: Thank you so much, Rocky. I am happy to be here and happy to participate. How are you?

Rocky Dhir: I am doing well and I do not I do not think folks that are listening in know that you and I actually know each other. We have known each other for a number of years now. I am trying to remember. I think the last time I saw you, it might have been extra jurisdictional. I think we were in Vegas.

Paul K. Stafford: Oh, yeah. I remember that. Well, what happens in Vegas gets talked about on podcast, I guess.

Rocky Dhir: It does. It does not stay there anymore. It is a social media world. I think it only stays in Vegas if it happened on the movie Casino. That is the only time it happens.

Paul K. Stafford: Yeah, I think it was March Madness or something, or the other.

Rocky Dhir: I do not remember when this was but it was March Madness and I was actually in Vegas for a business meeting. I was not there for March Madness. I think I walked through the slot area, but I actually was not there for that. But I could not find a hotel room anywhere, it was hard, and then I think I saw you in the taxi line and we were both trying to get to our respective rooms, but it was —

Paul K. Stafford: Yeah, yeah those were good times and enough of that.

Rocky Dhir: Well, I am glad you made it back in one piece, we both did, so that is good.

Paul K. Stafford: Yes.

Rocky Dhir: So, let us talk about this article a little bit. Now, look. Let us first start with some basics for anybody that kind of forgot their pocket Constitution before they tuned in. What are the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments?

Paul K. Stafford: Besides what the Fifteenth Amendment says and the Nineteenth Amendment says in our Constitution, which we should all read, it basically — it being the Fifteenth is basically the last of three of what are called Reconstruction Amendments, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments being the Reconstruction Amendments. And basically, it allows freed slaves of the Thirteenth Amendment that have been declared citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment, the right to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment. That is a one-semester constitutional voting class compelled into one minute. That is 1870, is the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment.

The Nineteenth Amendment effectively does the same thing for women who were already effectively — I do not want to say disenfranchised, but did not have the same rights as men when it came to voting even though additional efforts had been made even while the emancipation and even Abolitionist Movement but Emancipation Movement for slaves was going on. Women were trying to get similar rights, so the 1860s and into the 1870 ramification of the Thirteenth Amendment, but women did not get there right specifically until 50 years later. So, the Nineteenth Amendment addresses the right of women to vote, which you would think came with their citizenship, but it did not.

(00:05:06)

Rocky Dhir: That is what kind of struck me, but there are several things that struck me in the article, but that was one of them. I mean, just looking at the timeline. I mean, I appreciated the fact that you went through the history of it because, you know. So, you got the Thirteenth Amendment. Correct me if I am wrong, that was 1865. That was right after the Civil War, right?

Paul K. Stafford: Right.

Rocky Dhir: And then you get the Fourteenth, 1868.

Paul K. Stafford: Correct.

Rocky Dhir: And then the Fifteenth happens in 1870. So, you got this kind of intervening years between each of these amendments and it almost, in hindsight, we would think all of that would kind of happen together, but it was done piecemeal. Do you have any idea why?

Paul K. Stafford: I have lots of ideas why and the reasons I will discuss as to why on this podcast are in part of addressing the article. But I think it is important to know that a lot of the women involved in the anti-slavery or Abolitionist Movement we were doing so throughout the 1800s. People like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott come to mind in particular. And those two names are really important because of their barring from the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. They were barred from attending even though they were trying to promote anti-slavery. And so, what did they do? They said, “Okay. Well, we will have our own convention. We will have a convention on women’s rights,” and that occurred at Seneca Falls in 1848.

And just to tie that in, the reason that that is important, the 1840 barring of women who were trying to fight for world anti-slavery in the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, which ended up with the Declaration of Sentiments shows that women were on the front line of fighting for anti-slavery and emancipation well before 1865, 1868 and 1870. But they thought that they would also be allowed to benefit from some of the rights which were going to be given to the freed slaves, that did not happen. And so, around the time of 1870 when freed slaves were getting their right to vote, women started to form their own organizations separately that simply relied on or urged the right women to be given the same rights as men.

Rocky Dhir: But this took such a long time though. That did not happen until 1920, right? I mean, what is accounting for this — I mean, what is that? Is that almost 80 years, 70, 80 years before they finally get the right to vote? Do you have any idea as to why it is taking so long? I mean, it is 10 years, 15 years maybe, but this is this is decades in the making. What was going on during that time period that kind of delayed this?

Paul K. Stafford: Well, several things. One, a general sense that women were somehow subjugated to men or subservient to men which, at times, that view shows itself these days as well. So, we can talk about a pivotal moment in American history of 1920 where women actually gained the right to vote through the Suffrage amendment. It is called the Suffrage amendment, but a hundred years later, we often see that sometimes some of those same biases and prejudices and presumptions present themselves. But I think in a more granular way, America is an evolving dynamic idea and the republic is an idea, and I won’t get too esoteric or get into elevated of a space.

But in the article and in studying constitutional law as well as the history of America or of this republic, you can go back to Point Comfort and see the first recorded arrival of slaves or people of African or black descent 400 years ago and the struggle of 250 years that it took for those people to not only become freed, but to become citizens and to get the right to vote. And then the additional 50 years it took to recognize that those same rights should not only apply to men, but to apply to women. But I think it is just a general evolution of God as to equality, liberty and justice, things that we say that we believe and that we have written in one of our foundational documents, but we have had a bit of difficulty actually applying them and implementing them in our society. I think that is the easiest and best answer, and it is also the uncomfortable truth, and sometimes those things go together.

Rocky Dhir: It is interesting because — well, first, let us step back for a second. What made you decide to write this article at this time? I mean, I understand the 150 and the 100 years in the benchmark. But what kind of made you think, “Okay. I want to write an article about this and here is what I want to present”?

Paul K. Stafford: Good question. I am just a student of the Constitution. Obviously, I was a student of the Constitution in law school in Constitutional Law class, but I enjoyed history.

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The only day I ever got called on in law school was the day that they talked about Brown versus Board of Education. And so, being the only African-American male in my entire class, not just that class of common law, but my entire class, it made me think about the Constitution itself that day, I did, and some of the inherent contradictions in what we say that we believe and in the way that we actually behave.

So, taking that forward, 25 years or 30 years, it has been a process for me personally to make sure that people know what we say that we are, what we are and what we supposed to want to be. And so, to answer your question, I decided to write the article because the article need to be written. It is very distracting these days to hear other topics that do not unite us, they divided us. But I thought if the article was well-written and described or explained our history, both as a people and constitutionally, it could be well received. It could be educational and it could be instructive for how to be a member of this republic.

So, I thought a retrospective current analysis and maybe a future insight could be helpful, and that’s how I wrote it. I actually wrote it six months before it was published. I wrote it towards the end of the ‘19 and early part of ‘20 before the pandemic, and it came out in June of 2020 in the Bar Journal. That is the long-short answer. I think it just needed to be written and I did not want to wait for somebody else to do that. I said I am going to write one and if it is not any good then they can trash it, but I can say that I did my part in trying to write an article about something which we should be talking about much more than we are.

Rocky Dhir: You said a couple of things there that I want to kind of maybe expand on. Before we do that, talk to me about your choice of publication. You did not write this as an op-ed in a newspaper. It shows the Texas Bar Journal, so you knew that this was going to be mostly, if not, solely lawyers reading this. Why did you aim this at lawyers and what were you hoping lawyers would take away from this?

Paul K. Stafford: Because lawyers are not only the custodians of the law, but they are agents of change. And they need to realize that if they have not already, that if you go to law school and you learn about the law, you should go to law school and learn about what the law should be and realize that you were imbued with an obligation to try to change society for the better as well as maintain our current system.

So, there is a dual mandate in my opinion and so, in this article, which could have been written more like a law review article than it already is, I tried to make it conversational in a way that lawyers could understand so that they can take the information and realize we should go out and try to realize what these amendments mean and help fight to preserve and protect them. And I actually do know that quite a few non-lawyers read the Texas Bar Journal and so my hope is that others would be able to see it in an official publication of our profession and maybe change the way that we think about our profession and the public.

Rocky Dhir: It is interesting because you said that you wrote this, I guess, in December 2019 into January of 2020. So, this was, as you said, before the pandemic, but that means it was also before this whole discussion about equal rights, black lives matter. I mean, this whole movement that we find ourselves in and that the world has been talking about. You wrote this before all that. So, this is not a response to that particular dialogue. This was done prior to that, it sounds like.

Paul K. Stafford: Yeah. I appreciate the fact that some people — I do not mean this to sound, in any way, to diminish the efforts of the folks that are out promoting social justice in our time, but I appreciate the fact that there is a discussion about social justice and social justice issues, as well as civil rights, a renewed interest in civil rights. But as I mentioned, this is a 400-year discussion. It is really not a four-week discussion and I do know that there has been a considerable amount of history that has gone into the underlying issues regarding what people are protesting about now from 1700s to the 1800s and civil rights movement of the 60s through what we see today.

So, I think in short, you could say we should always be talking about social justice issues and civil rights issues to ensure that all of us are attempting to live up to our creed, promote justice, promote fairness and equality, promote liberty. And it is unfortunate that it took a tragic event in Minneapolis to awaken some that had had deaf ears or had been tone deaf up to this point.

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We will see how this goes in terms of the current energy around the “Movement of 2020.” But me personally, I have been fighting that movement for 52 years and I am going to keep fighting it, whether there is a video of the man in in Minneapolis where there is a social consensus, a public consensus around the movement, or whether it’s just me and a group of folks saying, “This is not right. Here is what we should aspire to and let is see if we can get to work trying to make a better Union.”

Rocky Dhir: What do you think is the is the end result or the desired end result? Let’s say, with the protests and the movements that are going on today, what’s the change that those protesters are asking for?

Paul K. Stafford: I guess that’s the $20 question.

Rocky Dhir: Only $20, that is it? It is only $20? Okay.

Paul K. Stafford: Well, it is only $20. Yeah, it is only $20 and I say that because that is kind of the root of this whole criminal allegation in the Gorge Floyd case, a counterfeit $20 bill. So, it becomes a $20 question.

Rocky Dhir: Okay, fair enough.

Paul K. Stafford: And I think it is what I characterize as Phase 2, Phase 2 of a desideration of trying to be what we are intended to be, because there have been other desiderations in our history as I have said over the past 400 years. But what is the end result? That is that is the question. Phase 1 is definitely outrage, energy, awakening and awareness, again, to the dismay of many minorities actually because many people who are socially conscious, minorities in majority have been expressing entirely and advocating for social justice and civil rights for decades, if not, centuries, myself included.

And so now that we have awakened other masses, that’s great. But what do we do with that energy? What are some deliverables? What are some actionable items? What do we want? How do we get there? How do we act collaboratively? That is Phase 2. That is Phase 2 in my opinion. And Phase 3, perhaps, several phases of implementation. And I think often movements sputter out after Phase 1, the outrage, the energy, and then the actionable items in Phase 2 kind of falls on deaf ears or they meet their demise for lack of will.

Rocky Dhir: What in your view is the is the actionable items in Phase Two to this particular — because you know, again, I turned off my news app because it was just a lot to take in and so I had a hard time sort of compiling what the actionable items were, what the desired actionable items were? Do you have a sense of that?

Paul K. Stafford: Well, again, it is like stages of grief. There are certain stages of grief that you have to go through and you should not really skip steps. So, I do not, in any way, take issue with the fact that there was deserving outrage. And I would say awakening awareness in Phase One and I am greatly oversimplifying this dynamic, but I am calling it Phase One. And I think the tragic death of George Floyd and others, Ahmaud Arbery and others, draws attention to some of the disparities in our criminal justice or law enforcement system. And so, I think there is definitely a need for a discussion and more importantly, there is probably a need for reform of how law enforcement interacts with the community, specifically minority communities or underserved or underprivileged or over-policed communities. And I also believe that in a larger sense the root of a lot of the discontent that we are seeing in the streets, and again, this does tie in with voting and enfranchisement, which is addressed in the article.

Rocky Dhir: It is, yeah.

Paul K. Stafford: A lot of the discontent that we see is rooted in our policies or lack thereof, especially regarding the opportunities for economic advancement or even employment, or the lack of those opportunities in some neighborhoods, the lack of educational opportunities, the lack of affordable accessible healthcare. And those are issues which I believe should be part of Phase Two because simply relying upon symbolism or the removal of symbols which may have been deemed offensive for years and just recently recognized as offensive by some, probably is not going to be sufficient for those that really want exception to the change and they should not be because it does not address the underlying issue.

Rocky Dhir: Well, there are a lot of distractions. I mean, I read recently that apparently who has removed an episode of The Golden Girls because it might offend some people and I think there has been some backlash, saying that that is kind of window dressing. We are not worried about a The Golden Girls episode. We are worried about systemic change moving forward. I think it sounds like what you are saying is those window-dressing actions are kind of distracting everybody from what they should be talking about. Is that a fair summary?

Paul K. Stafford: It is fair. It is not exactly as simple as I have stated it or as you have posited, but it is part of a larger solution.

(00:20:02)

It is not to celebrate those which we know were devices and again, I am getting more into my own personal narrative now, but that is okay because we are having a podcast with me, you and I on this called podcast. But that personal narrative indicates that I do not really run from history and I do not try to necessarily sugarcoat it. No one is perfect. People are good and bad. They have good and bad aspects to just about every aspect of their life. Some of these people have statues and monuments to them. Some of them have become leaders of our country and other countries. Some of them have been vilified as criminals or bad people.

My point is this, they are part of our history. You need to know your history so that you can know your present and work on your future. And if that means removing symbols that are offensive to some, I am perfectly okay with that as long as we realize that if that symbol is not removed, we still have the same work to do.

So, the symbol that you see, if it is a Confederate flag at NASCAR or a statue to a Confederate soldier or general somewhere in the United States or Aunt Jemima on a pancake box or stop showing Gone With the Wind, or let us not show an episode of a TV show that may be offensive to some, that might address what you consider to be the furtherance of microaggressions we can say or promoting a feeling of dominance or inferiority depending on what group you are in.

But I think the underlying issues that we discussed which I call Phase 2 issues, do you have proper health care? Do you have a proper opportunity to thrive as a citizen of the republic? Can you get an education? Can you get an affordable education? Are you treated with respect by those in law enforcement that are given the duty to respect to serve and to defend? Those are really the underlying issues, I think, and that that is not addressed by an episode of The Golden Girls. At least I have seen that episode.

Rocky Dhir: That brings up an interesting question then. From a constitutional perspective, now that we have talked a little bit about the issues and frame them. Let us talk constitutional law if you will. So, there is this dialogue going on between these dueling concepts. They really, I guess — or maybe not dueling concepts, but sort of two parallel concepts of equality versus equity, you know, equality meaning everybody has, at least as I understand it, equality is everybody has the same rights. Everybody kind of starts at a level playing field. Equity is you help those who might have been disadvantaged and give them a boost where they need it so that they also have opportunities that maybe earlier might have been denied to them. From your perspective, and again, I do not know if that is a correct definition of equality versus equity, but that is just how I have understood it. From your perspective, does our constitution demand equality or do you think it is going to, at some point, demand equity as well.

Paul K. Stafford: Well, I think our Constitution demands informed electorate, first and foremost. And it demands that people that have been declared citizens act as citizens, as people that have duties to know their rights, know their constitution, to protect and preserve them among themselves and others. Equality did not really appear in Constitution until 1868 with the Fourteenth Amendment. And so, for 250 years, at least for African-Americans and I am going back to Point Comfort even though — before Point Comfort, there were documentations that African-Americans and blacks in this — we were blacks then. We are African-Americans now. We were blacks in the country before then, but before the founding of the Republican through the colonies and through the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, blacks were a part of that and so the idea of equality somehow did not make into the document that we consider our foundational document. But I do think equality is a bedrock of what we are trying to create as a republic and as a nation.

To answer your question, I think with equality, that promotes equity because it takes away the artificial impediments to progress that get in the way in a free society. And so, in an equity argument, you have to balance that with the free society where people have the right to do or not to do, to be or not to be, as Shakespeare would say, but I think if everyone is treated equally in the eyes of the law and truly treated equally and equality and liberty and justice are promoted, then Equity soon follows. Equity is promoted as well, but I do not think we have actually been consistent in our view of what equality really means and I think in part that was illustrated through the recent acts and the not so recent acts of violence against African-Americans, specifically African-American males. How do we address that in terms of our constitutional rights? You vote.

(00:25:00)

You participate as a citizen. You actually are an active dynamic part of this solution and I think the article will address that that we, the people, be you black, be you previously under servitude or be you a woman or even a male, white or otherwise, all share the same constitutional responsibilities that we say that we believe in. And again, it is illustrative to say, well, some of those groups did not really have the right to participate in the way that they should until 150 years ago or 100 years ago. And so, we kind of handicapped ourselves in the process of creating a more perfect union because we did not treat everyone equally. We did not give them the rights to be full participants and that has soaked the seeds with some of the problems and issues and challenges that we see now.

Rocky Dhir: There was a line you wrote in your article. It was the first paragraph of the last section and it states as follows, “It is also worth noting that even following the presidency of a Black American, the leading Democratic presidential candidate is a 77-year-old white male preparing to face a 73-year-old white male in a November 2020 general election.” Now, you have just talked a bit about the need to vote. I found that line to be rather telling, that sentence that you wrote, because it sounds like maybe what you are implying is that if people voted we would have two different candidates facing off against one another or am I misinterpreting? Let us just ask this. Why did you write that line? What were you trying to get across?

Paul K. Stafford: Well, it is pivot off of it, the one right before it, when we talked about the Democratic presidential primary field being the most diverse in history, which says that for example with numerous female candidates, two African-American candidates, an Asian-American candidate and the first openly gay presidential candidate, the 2020 Democratic presidential primary was the most diverse field of presidential candidates in this country’s history.

However, the majority of those diverse candidates did not survive long enough to see super Tuesday. And so, that is when I said the line that it is worth noting that the two final candidates are presumptively the 77 and 73-year-old white males. I think it is important that we represent people that support our issues, our issues being those that are on the side of progress. That is our, be they black ground male or female, LGBT, whatever, you are on the side of progress. And if those are two white males, then so be it, but we have to draw a distinction between getting participation ribbons and actually winning the race and we can say, “Oh well, we Invited a bunch of people to participate that are from diverse and inclusive backgrounds,” and that is great and that is actually progress.

But in this cycle, in this election, in this time, it does boil down to two white males. For some, that somehow is sipping those defeat for inclusion or diversity, and it may or may not. That is another podcast. But if our views are being presented and those views being on a path to progress, then I believe we can still accomplish our goals of equality, justice, liberty, freedom and other things which are underlying some of the social and societal unrest of today. Do I believe that we were ready for a black president? No, we were not ready, but we had one for eight years and he was good at what he did. Do I believe that we are ready for a female president? I would hope that we are. Do I believe that any of the other candidates, the LGBT, Asian-American, any of the other candidates that were running or have run on either party’s side or any party’s side could be president of the United States? Yes, but they didn’t win the primaries. And so, again, that is telling because maybe as a society we are not quite as ready as we would like ourselves to believe.

Rocky Dhir: But then from a constitutional perspective, there was a there was a representative process that ultimately culminated in two candidates, whatever their age, race, religion or demographic background. So, presumably the Constitution did its job even in this election cycle. Agree or disagree?

Paul K. Stafford: Oh, I certainly agree. I think that the Constitution has done its job and now it is time for us to do ours, which is to exercise our constitutional right to choose our leaders and to that, it entails an informed electorate that chooses people that are actually interested in the republic and in progress regardless of race, color or creed. I guess it is up to us to decide like it was reported that Ben Franklin said when he was asked at the Constitution I have mentioned by a gentleman. He said, “What have you given us? What have you given us?” Franklin said, “I have given you a republic, if you can keep it.”

Rocky Dhir: Right, fair thing he spoke. Yeah.

(00:30:03)

Paul K. Stafford: I really have no issue with a process that is diverse that narrows down to two white males that may or may not be diverse. But if we want to promote a different result, then maybe we need to exercise our rights in ways or our decisions and ways that that culminate in different results. I guess another way of saying is, the fact that neither of the candidates is in conventional parlance, diverse and maybe one of the more of the candidates is not inclusive, that should not detract or dissuade people from engaging in the political process or exercising the rights that people have fought and died for so that they could have the right to vote.

Rocky Dhir: So, the whole point, if I had to see — you know, going back to the question of what inspired you to write this article. It is effectively that now that we all have a right to vote, we need to exercise that constitutional right that did not exist at the very beginning of the document. It took some time for it to evolve. Now that it has evolved to that point, we need to go out and actually, as I say, rock the vote. Is that pretty fair?

Paul K. Stafford: Yeah, it is fair and it is true. And again, from a historical perspective, there were several centuries, 250 years where blacks did not have the right to even be considered citizens. And then they were freed, declared citizens and given the right to vote within a five-year span after a bloody Civil War, of course.

Rocky Dhir: Right.

Paul K. Stafford: But then, women have fought for those rights even longer in this country, you know, just recently got the right to vote a hundred years ago. And so, that needs to be said, it needs to be remembered and it needs to be acted upon in current times. And voter apathy and disinformation or misinformation really should be called out and you should be aware that you are not exercising your right to be relevant, and you are not exercising your right to be in the republic if you’re not voting and if you are not participating in the process in some way that would promote progress. That is kind of the summary of the article. I just think it is important to know the history and the retrospective of it as laid out and how we got here to know where we are going.

Rocky Dhir: Well, we could talk about this for days, but unfortunately it looks like we have run out of time for today. So, Paul, I want to thank you for joining us. Thanks for being here.

Paul K. Stafford: Thanks for having me. And again, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about something that is interesting and dear to me. And again, I would encourage everyone to be a citizen, to be actively engaged in their process and to be aware of the document that we consider critical to our society, especially among lawyers. And we should never forget our dual mandate to uphold the rule of law as well as to be agents of change. Otherwise, blacks will not have the right to vote, neither would women and any number of rights that we hold dear these days would not be the case if not for lawyers.

Rocky Dhir: Well said, well stated and hopefully everybody will get a chance if they have not already to read the June edition of the Texas Bar Journal and take a look at Paul’s article. And of course, for those of you joining in, thank you for tuning in. Before we sign off, I want to remind everybody, please stay safe and make sure to follow all applicable orders for dealing with COVID-19. Please advise your clients and loved ones to do the same. We are in the midst of rising case counts and hospitalizations as this recording is taking place. So, please take extra care in this time. The situation is changing fluidly and quickly so please seek out legal counsel if you have a question.

If you like what you heard today, please rate and review us at Apple Podcast, Google Podcast or your favorite podcast app. Until next time. Remember, life is a journey folks.

I am Rocky Dhir, signing off for now.

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