 So I'm going to introduce our next session and then jump in to participate. So we are going to have Neera Tannant, who is the president of the Center for American Progress, a person who has worked with President Clinton, should be President Clinton and President Obama. And she's going to be joined by two extraordinary artists, Hank Willis, Thomas and Mark Bermuthi-Joseph, who have collaborated and of course on extraordinary things independently. And if I had to just say one thing that might define their work is that it comes out to get the public and pull us in. It's work that's in all kinds of media and in different kinds of venues and in the public and it goes after us. So we're all going to be in conversations about how artists and politicians think. So Neera, Mark and Hank, here they come. So welcome. Peace. Thank you. So you guys are familiar. I chose these artists to join me visit a hairstyle. And because we love you, Neera. So Neera just came up from Washington. Mark came in from San Francisco and has an extraordinary performance at BAM. And Hank was on six planes in the last three days actually. So welcome and take a breath. Thanks for being here. So Neera tell us about what's the environment in Washington right now. That got a laugh. Back leader who the through line of everything so far from the first days of the administration to today is a diversionary politics that is really aimed to divide one group of Americans against another group of Americans, whether it's the Muslim ban or Charlottesville or NFL or Puerto Rico. And I'm sure there's 50 other issues that I've forgotten even in that discussion or even in that list. You know, I think we have the normal politics, which is, which is, you know, where we see policies that are really aimed at hurting the most vulnerable amongst us day in and day out. And then the kind of culture, you know, I think it's a euphemism to call it a culture war. We have a practising practitioner of racial, gender, sexual orientation, religious minority, group oppression day in and day out. And and they're interplaying off each other, the coarsening of the political debate and the vilification of minority groups of every kind. Every faith minorities, racial minorities, gender minorities is making is, you know, I think it's really coarsening every part of our culture. And so, you know, I'd say that I think that is a good summary. So Hank, what about you started this first artist's super PAC. So you delved right into the idea of artists and politics and talk to us about that first of all, that intersection. Yeah, well, my friend Eric Goddusman and I and a group of other artists started this super PAC really with the intention of trying to put critical discourse into political discourse because we feel like so much of political discourse is these are these people are good. These people are bad. And no. And what happens often is when we find out that no one is well, it's it used to be that no one is entirely bad and no one is entirely good. We don't really know how to deal with complexity. And we're constantly pointing fingers. And one of the things that we've been really trying to push is this notion that us is them and they are us. Because from their perspective, we are the problem. And from our perspective, they are the problem. So really, how do we start to become united in the fact that we all think that we have something valid and important to say? And I think that the need in our country is to actually really validate the positions of people who we don't entirely agree with. And fine. And I think if we can find that common ground and give that common respect, maybe we can start to kind of live towards this notion of a more perfect union. And this artistic patriotism, which Tonya Vergara has been really critical in helping us think about is something that we need to inspire in everyone because everyone has the capacity to be creative and everyone has the capacity to be political. And so if we're actually not willing to make mistakes and actually learn from them and actually move forward, I think that that's going to continue to lead us down a path we don't want to be in. So hinge on that. So you had this project that you conceived. What about mistakes in it? What have you learned from how it is going out there in practice to complicate who we are and they are and get this message across? I think listening is critical. I think the words you choose are critical. I think often we are speaking for approval of people who we already love and respect. And I think part of our aim is to try to find how to get the approval of people we don't really respect. Because if we can actually win them over, I think we can have this greater conversation. And a fundamental thing that I believe is that love over rules. James Baldwin said that love has never been a popular movement and no one's ever really wanted to be free. Those two things haunt me. And I think this idea of if you believe in love, it's an action and you have to actually live it. And for us, especially at times like this, you just want to like, you know... Kill somebody? I wouldn't say that because I might land somebody in jail. I'm just saying, you know, certain people we have to... Yeah. But in general, just like you just want to like shake and like rage and really recognize that, you know, if no one's going to win, if we're like, we have all this progress in one area, then someone comes and tries to rip it all away just for the sake of ripping it away, not for the sake of actually the value of the policies. And I think a lot of times we've seen the president first be like, oh, this is not so bad. And then really recognize that it's part of the previous president's legacy. And just be like, I'm just going to like rip it apart for that reason alone. And George Bush did the same thing to Bill Clinton. And so we can't, if we're just kind of like trying to erase what the previous person did, we literally cannot get anywhere. And so we have to get our enemies to see our common need, which is to survive as a species. And how we will do that, in spite of the fact that we fail every day is something important. So projects like Four Freedoms and The Truth Booth and Question Bridge are really designed, which are collaborative projects that I've done in Question Bridge was here, really with other great artists to really invite the public to help us make the art. So we don't really always make the art. And often with artists, we're not asking them to do something. We're saying, do you want to do a project with us? Okay, here's a space to do it. And as painful as it is sometimes just being like, let the artist be the artist and not try to get them to do what we want them to do, which I think is another failure of sometimes political art is that it's like, you need to make art towards this agenda, rather than saying, why don't you just do whatever you want to do in this space? And that will open doors for us, whether or not we can punch the number for like its impact or not. So Mark, talk about the two things struck me in what Hank was saying. One is this question of preaching to the choir or getting outside the church of our own values and relationships with friends and get somewhere else. And then this other issue of how does art get political when it's open-ended, what it even is, that it doesn't have a specific agenda. If it's really going to be interesting art, it's different from a message. It's something else. Preaching to the choir. I think we galvanized the committed. Maybe that's a better way of thanking you, which is why I also did not use that term. Yes, he did not. That was my term. I love that. Yeah. And it's also yes, he is. But it's just also so unfair to get to the second part of your question. We place this burden on artists to change the world. Artists change the world. Fuck that. We alter trajectories. We insert creative impulses into common discourse and hopefully we provide a more expansive lens on the world. But there's no rhyme that I can make that will undo patriarchy, white supremacy, hyper militarism and hyper capitalism. And I think that what we do very often is we say, hey, artists, come into my community and through the power of your sculpture completely undo the socioeconomic conditions. And there's no wand. So I would rather talk about modalities and collaborative, you know, the muscle of collaboration and, you know, a kind of way of being in the world that inclines towards inclusivity, that inclines towards equity across all the kind of demographic compartmentalizations that poison our, you know, our common good, that poison the pathway to our humanity. So, you know... So give an example from some of your own work of that muscle of... We, sure, well, a lot of my work is inquiry driven. I'm, my institutional home is Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. But we were actually talking about a certain kind of malaise in the Bay Area, and we were talking about currency and wealth. And so much of the wealth in a place like the Bay Area is its kind of iconoclastic nature. But that wealth, that currency is undervalued right now in our current climate. And I think that one of the ways that we get back to a kind of recalibration of value of collaborative processes is to nurture our culture of invitation. So through the Life is Living exercises, which are something that I co-founded about 10 years ago, we produce environmental festivals in under-resourced parks around the country. But the festival is an outcome of a process of inviting various community members to engage in one central question. And with Life is Living, the question is, what sustains life in your community? And we've transposed that kind of pattern of inquiry of asking folks to invest inside of a question to our arts institution in San Francisco. So the mode of operating and, you know, we shout it Tanya, Rougetta out, now shout her out again, the mode of operating at YBCA is to ask brilliant artists not what they're working on, but what are the questions that they're asking that catalyze that work. And then we invite them together at a summit not unlike this to pose those questions to our community or to our audience and ask them to then distill those questions into more acute questions. So the questions that are circulating through the organization now are, can we design freedom? What does equity look like? Why citizenship? How do you find and empower truth? Can we make creative dissent matter? And where is our public imagination? And I would love for, right, so I would love for the circulation of questions to fuel our policy and also to get us closer to a core humanity that I think we're all aspiring towards. So you're talking about that ideal, this idea of working through invitation and through questions in how, put that in the political context of that some of the people you want to invite into this process are policymakers, elected officials. How does that thinking does that work in in Washington or elsewhere? Does it need to be at the grassroots? How do you respond to some of this? I mean, open inquiry does not seem to be the prevalent way of thinking in Washington. I would like to, I think we've gone through different periods in this, in this, in this world, right? And I mean, the thing I think that is important for this conversation is that I so take the point about it's not preaching to the choir, it's actually engaging people. So much of the issues around the mobilization is that people need to feel they're not alone in this moment. Right? That's the power of the levels of democratic engagement we're seeing right now. So I have been in Washington 20 years and the Trump administration is the most horrifying administration I've ever lived through. But, you know, we are seeing a larger scale public mobilization than I've ever seen either. And it's not just the marches. It's also calls to Congress and town halls. And the one thing I would say about the connection between, you know, a positive culture and political mobilization is that whether it's it's means online or ways people are communicating with each other is a central part of what's happening is that people feel alone and helpless in the face of, you know, sort of overwhelming daily assault on their values. And I think there is a profound need for an antidote to that in the in the way that culture responds as well. And so, you know, I don't mean that in terms of propagandistic, like posters in response to Trump or something, but I really think like there's a new way in which people are organizing themselves online and taking action in new and different ways and and and all of it is an attempt to say that, you know, there are other people like me in a world in which I now feel like a minority within a minority because the political conversation is so distant from where I am. And I do think there's a role, I mean, I say this with great humility, but I do think in moments of such chaotic dislocation and disruption in a country there's just an even greater urge to understand what's happening in new and different ways. And, you know, I think there's a the traditional ways of communicating have like completely failed in the political process. And, you know, I think people are thinking of new ways to organize themselves outside of institutions, new ways of engaging outside of institutions and new ways to understand things outside of institutions. And I'm not saying I think there is a big role for the for the for the arts and for people to engage more broadly about, you know, this really core value. I mean, I just to say it very clearly, we are having the most basic and stark conversations about the, we're having the most stark conversations about some of the most basic questions about who we are as human beings. Like, who, what does it mean to be American? Who is American? Do we value inclusion at all? Do we not? And, you know, these are, these aren't like, you know, we're not really having a conversation about this version of healthcare versus that version of healthcare. We're really having a conversation every single day as to like whether we care about people who don't look like us at all or whether we fear and hate them. That is like what happens is happening every single day in America now. And I don't, if we will, I will say with great humility, if we rely only on political leaders to be engaged in those conversations, then, you know, that is, that is a great loss. And there's a role for every single person to engage in new ways. Jump right in guys. I'm struggling. First of all, I do just pierce my heart with that. And I agree with all of it, but it's hard to hear. See, well, I feel you. Yeah, I mean, at Twitter, don't you like wake up every morning and you look at the tweets and just want to kill yourself or kill yourself? Is it just me? I really feel you. And I think the sense that you're expressing is exactly how I feel, but I know more. The question that I think we're not asking is, does majority rule matter in our country? Because the majority of people did not vote for our president. And many people who voted for him were voting for him as a protest against the loser. And I think that one of the things I really struggled with was this notion of we lost. It's like, no, we are the majority. We're not a minority. And I think one of the things I'm really thinking a lot about is, I think, building off of what Mark said, that I think that great art asks questions. We're not supposed to answer it. And great design answers questions. So questions like, can we design freedom and what is freedom are critical? I also go back to James Baldwin and think a lot about him because things he was talking about 50 years ago are as relevant as they were today. And that should be a lesson for us there. Because I saw Sonya Sanchez and Dolores Huerta and Norman Lear on a panel, and I realized, like, they've been doing this for 60 and 70, right? Yeah, right. Who are we to think that we're ever going to be able to and need to stop? So the road to progress is always under construction, which is why we're so grateful for places like the Center for American Progress that are actually always moving towards progress. But Baldwin said that art of struggle for their integrity should be considered as a struggle, which is universal and daily for all human beings to get to become human beings. And I try to remind people that, like, basically our job is to fail and face and get up and try harder every day. And I think every, so I think the artist struggles basically to become the best person that they can be. And I think when you think about citizenship, when you think about being an activist, a lawyer, a teacher, a mother, father, friend, that you need to actually always be willing to approach that with this attempt to become your best self. And I think if we aren't willing to acknowledge that we are the majority and that love over rules, we're actually going to be distracted by a guy who's literally just made, he's the best distraction ever. And he wants you to pretend he wants us to believe that we're divided. We're not. He wants us to be pointing figures, well, these people don't believe in this. But the more people who live closer together, the more they're accepting and loving with one another. And most people now live close together and that's going to become more and more true. So I think I'm scared, very scared, but I know that it's never going to be over and it's always going to be getting better. I appreciate your invocation of the word love and also your dynamic use and animation of love as a verb. I think that there's like loving my children, loving black women, loving, yeah. Well, okay. I mean, this is a conversation right about, you know, art and politics and there is something political, I think, about expressing love for black women in particular because of the role that black women have played in all of our freedom struggles. And you've, you know, you reference Baldwin, it's just real. You mentioned Baldwin and again the conversation has changed. So I'll, you know, just kind of continuing on the thread. I'll invoke two sisters. First is Alicia Garza, who we'll hear from later, but Alicia and Opel and Patrice as practitioners of a kind of intersectionality who also foreground love as a weapon of choice. You know, the integration of love in our political discourse when the kind of lightning rod for, you know, the current administration of our politics is a nihilist. It's like someone, not that just kind of embodies hate, but really someone who has no beliefs at all. That's right. So the antithesis of that, I think that would be great if we could just activate more in our political discourse, which I do think that artists engage in is love, right? Love of objects, of color, of possibility, of sound. But the other black woman that I want to invoke is Octavia Butler, whose work Parable of the Sower has been deeply meaningful to me and many of us. And in her kind of preamble, she talks about, you know, all that we touch, we change. And Hank, you talked about proximity, and, you know, I'm wondering for the people in this room and, you know, certainly for us on the panel, like, and particularly you who work with your hands, who like... If I touch it, it's gonna break. If we're talking about art in politics, and we're talking about artists and, you know, inspiring social change, what is it that we're touching? And how is it that we're touching? What is the energy that we're bringing to that which we touch? Whether it's, you know, touching of a conversation or touching of, you know, material objects. What is the energy that we bring to our touch? And so, yeah, like waking up in the morning, if that's the end, you know, and engaging in, and it's impossible, you know, especially for someone in your position to, like, turn off your alerts or whatever the hell they're called. He's not on my alert. Yeah. It just happens. It just happens. But then that also impacts the energy that we walk in with during the day. And therefore, all that we touch, we change in a negative way. You know, it's like that anti-mitis. It's, you know, it's like, instead of gold, you just turn everything into wabbiness. Would you like some water? I'd love some water. Oh, it's poured already. Just respond to two things briefly, just for something Hank said. And then just a comment just now. I think I completely take the point, in fact, I think it is even more disorienting to people. I mean, this is my sense, which is you make the point that, you know, we are the majority, right? And so we have to sort of speak with that. And I think, I actually think that that was that's been even more disorienting to people that, you know, we lived through eight years of Obama and you thought things were like, okay, and actually then election happens and Trump actually had fewer votes than the other person. And yet we're living in what feels like almost like a different America. And so I think that contributes and doesn't weaken the sense of disorientation that I think we need to figure out new ways of language or new ways of communicating or new ways of thinking of how people feel in that space. I mean, I would also say to the discussion, and I think this is such a critical issue around, you know, what motivates people and love versus essentially hate or fear. And I have to say, like what I also think is very disorienting about the world and why I think it's really even more vital for a, you know, creative or artistic or response is that I think that the way so many progressives or liberal activists feel in this moment is that love versus hate was on the ballot and one lost. And that hate was rewarded politically. And like it wasn't like people were hiding what they were thinking or how they were going to approach politics. And that's why I think it's like we have to do even more to heal people's also wounds. I mean, I totally heard this issue of we are them and they are us or said it even so much better than I did. But I think like even for people, like there are lots of people I talk to every day who feel betrayed by other people voting for a person who basically attack them. And they feel wounded. And what we have to do is make sure that that, you know, there's a hate foster on one side and not another hate foster or another so that we become a country that's just driven by hate. Because like that's when countries really fail. And so I mean, I don't I'm posing a lot of problems, but I'm not solving them. But I don't think I mean, I guess what I'd say is if we leave it to the political actors alone to heal these wounds and create a space for actually people to engage each other, like that's not going to be enough to save the country or save communities or save, you know, constructs of how we live with each other. I just think we need to like think long term. And one thing you have to say about our president, he's a long term thinker. He's been we don't know if he believes in tomorrow, but but for 40 years, and a brand that most people know was not was really a facade. And his name means win. Yeah, it's a big gold sign that means when. Yeah. And he's been selling everything's the best. I'm the greatest. You're the greatest. You're going to win with me. It's it's not as deep as we like hear that for 40 years. And people just keep going on like, okay, he's a winner. And he's going to win. I want to win. Some people like I want to win. But even with that, he did not have the majority. Yeah, right. A lot of people just didn't vote because they didn't believe love was on the ballot on either side. Right. I think there's a lot of things that we need to actually think consider. I am an optimist. I inherited it unfortunately. My dad's good looks, but fortunately, but no, I mean, I inherited most of my dad's faults, not as many of his talents, but his optimism is one of the things. And one thing I think a lot about is that. And if you think I don't know if you think Republicans are good or Democrats, but a Republican has not won the majority vote fairly in a presidential election since 1988. Yeah. So there is clearly a trajectory that's going on. And so you must ask yourself, how do we keep? Who's the we? It's something I keep struggling with. But how do we, because I've voted Democrat in all those times, but how do we keep losing? Although I am an independent, which I found out when I tried to vote the primary. And then I realized how disenfranchised I am as a person who like, oh, so it's like, oh, if I don't choose a side, I can't actually help choose a candidate, which is even crazier. So I think all of the issues are fundamental that like we don't, we're not a democracy. The majority does not rule. We do not give spaces for people who do not choose to pick a side. We don't even acknowledge that we're all on the same side. And I think, but one thing we can be pretty sure of if we're looking at this trajectory is that we don't let it get stolen again for the third time, basically. Yeah. And so, and I think, unfortunately, when Barack Obama was elected, everyone put their feet up, including me. Like, ah, he's got this from here. He went on to primary words, hope and change. Yeah. They, we still have those. Yeah. And artists in particular. Yeah. So take us out, Hank. We've got to give us some, I'm sorry, Mark, Hank, just, yeah. So take us out on this. I think using those words and remembering those words, you mentioned your, your optimism and again, thinking about how artists impact our political discourse and what politicians might learn from artists. You know, I, Obama, I'm sure could answer the question that Tare asked of Black Thought earlier today. Obama could answer who his top five MCs are. You know, there's, there's, there's a link between our culture and our politics, but even, you know, what those, the, the, the aesthetics that are kind of embedded in the capacity to answer a question like that is not something that I think we normally pose to our politicians. So I think that there's hope and there's change and there's strategic challenge, which is something that artists do like by rote and by vocation. The kinds of questions that we ask of ourselves in the name of the fabrication of something that does not exist, like literally does not exist. And we bring it into being, I would, I would love to transpose that ethic or that kind of set of values of practice to our political realm as a part of our political norms, hope, change, strategic challenge and love. Thank you guys. So I think that means to be continued. Thank you guys.