With crises appearing frequently in the news, we revisited who qualifies as a refugee and why it matters. We invited four experts to discuss this topic at George Washington University on November 18th, 2019. Experts included: Chris Boian, Spokesperson and Senior Communications Officer for the UN's Refugee Agency, Alex Nowrasteh, Director of Immigration Studies at The Cato Institute, Mike Watson, Associate Director for Hudson Institute's Center for the Future of Liberal Society and Meredith Owen, Deputy Director of Policy and Advocacy for Church World Service's Immigration and Refugee Program.

Co-hosted with GW Young Americans for Liberty, Roosevelt at GWU and GW College Republicans.

Music: How Does It Feel? by New Parliament

How Does It Feel?

Pop-Up Talk: Who is a Refugee and Why It Matters

Jacky Clyman, Vice President of Cockpit USA, discusses why the clothing manufacturer decided to produce personal protective equipment for the fight against COVID-19 and how the apparel industry was able to respond so rapidly. Recorded: April 6, 2020.

TRANSCRIPT: You can make a mask out of cloth, which is washable and serves a purpose for the general population. Which is what we've been working on for over a week and a half to see what the best solution is. We happen to have a lot of elastic because we use it for production for the jackets, but our capabilities, of course, are in sewing. Then you have to find the actual cloth that can work for that. It’s very difficult. I guess over two weeks ago, my husband, who’s president of the company, tried calling the numbers where it said “please call if you think you can provide any of these gowns or masks” and he left his number. And “yes, that sounds really interesting” and never got any calls back. Yeah, exactly. I know somebody that I'm working with had a huge cache of masks coming in from China, which he offered to various governments and a lot of them said we want American made. I'm not quite sure what it is. Either, we don't want Chinese goods because we don't want it on principle sake or we don't want it because from what I've heard, and again, this is all hearsay, some of the stuff that came in China was not up to par.

PPE Makers: Jacky Clyman, Vice President, Cockpit USA

Elbert Chang, CEO of LAmade, discusses why the clothing manufacturer decided to produce personal protective equipment for the fight against COVID-19 and how the apparel industry was able to respond so rapidly. To support their mask donation efforts: https://themaskmovement.com/
Recorded: April 7, 2020

TRANSCRIPT:It's not that difficult to make compared to the clothes that we usually make. It’s actually much more easier from a production standpoint. And number two, since March 19th, the government has issued a stay at home order. Most of us, including ourselves, were forced to shut down. All the work that was pending, was completely put on pause. So we're not able to continue that work. All the stores are closed, so we weren't able to ship anything either. So, it's either we transform quickly, let the workers come back and do what the government's asking for, or there's no work at all. Hospitals are asking for donations. There's, there's a few different types of initiatives. One is that we're doing it on our own, donating it to hospitals. And there are ones that the hospitals themselves contacted manufacturers and they have a certain way of making the masks that they asked the manufacturers to do. So there's two types. For us, we started out with making our own masks to donate and that's the Mask Movement. I'm talking to some hospitals that are trying to make their own masks. They supply the materials which are medical grade. The ones we're making are not medical grade. So far, we have about 20,000 masks that need to be made and donated to local hospitals throughout the US. We have about 1,000 masks already made and we're trying to ramp up to 2,000 masks a day. In 10 business days we are able to complete the order.

PPE Makers: Elbert Chang, CEO, LAmade

Alex Dabagh, Founder of Made By Alex, discusses why the clothing manufacturer decided to produce personal protective equipment for the fight against COVID-19 and how the apparel industry was able to respond so rapidly. To support their mask donation efforts: https://www.gofundme.com/f/masks-amp-gowns-made-by-new-yorkers-for-new-yorkers
Recorded: April 5, 2020

TRANSCRIPT: We’re a factory of 40 people. We've been around since 1982. We’re one of the last factories in New York City and one of the largest factories in New York City still standing and operating. We predominantly do leather goods, handbags and accessories. We're a lot smaller, so we're a little more resilient, and it's easier for us to flip on the drop of a dime. We have all the machinery and capability. We’re like the little engine that could. We're the innovators and creators. It’s maybe a group of 10 people or a group of 50 people. It's not a group of 500 or 1,000 that you got to go in and run protocols. There’s nobody faster out there than us because everything's right here. And I say the same thing with our production for fashion. Anybody that does production overseas I always tell them: the advantages you have domestically are more beneficial to the company than anything out there. Because A; we could switch things up on the drop of a dime if there's a problem, if there's a hiccup, we can fix it and continue. You can come by the factory and assess the production model to see as it's going through, make sure everything's running properly. You have more control of your output, your quantity, you don't have to order 100,000 units. You could do start small and then grow from there. If it works, you keep adding. And then again, we need the resiliency. We can pretty much make anything. We're going to be able to produce anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 masks a week once you really get the ball rolling. So, when this happened two weeks ago, I was the first one to call to [Andrew] Cuomo, the phone number they put out there and email. And nothing really happened. There's no information. Like what the FDA is sending out is like very complex instructions. It’s item numbers and code names for stuff that they work with. So how is a person like me or the general public supposed to understand that? Like how is the general public supposed to understand what CXT289 means? Or these little code words and names that they use in the industry? They’ve go to dumb it down and make it easier for everybody to understand. It's just, we need to know what you want. And that's the bottom line right now. That's the main issue that I'm having with any city, state or federal official, is they're not telling us exactly what they need. They keep saying they need XYZ, but they're not leading us to the well. Ok, you need masks and gowns, but what materials do you need? Where do we source the material? You need help, but you got to give us a little bit of assistance because we've never made this.

PPE Makers: Alex Dabagh, Founder, Made By Alex

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