 hope a pandemic be epicenter for everything becomes so tragic we are so crazy we're zooming deep and somebody please come and save me so we have really felt it it's hard to imagine how we hello everyone welcome to copa pandemic and i'm karen finley and this is george amelio sanchez hello how are you hola buenas noches how are you i'm doing i i'm doing uh i don't you know that's just how i'm i'm so tired of when people ask you how you are during here it's such a nice bag right but i'm glad to be here and it's good to see you it's great to be here and i think people are going to be in for a real surprise because i think we've invited some special guests and we're going to be talking about some really important important things people are doing and how they can remain creative and have power and visibility for themselves and then for others with their projects so i'm so happy to share this space with you likewise and we george and i have known each other uh for some years and we're really pleased to be here at lamama and to be sharing this time with artists and all of you uh with new york and the world so uh we've got some wonderful guests and our first guests that we're going their guests that we're going to be are we ready to bring in our first guests yes oh great well our first guests are from what what would a uh hiv doula do and i saw their work that they were doing uh about looking at comparing the language for with hiv and covid and this is a collective that is just so extraordinary and today we have two members of of this collective jd david and we also have abdule ali muhammad who will join us so welcome can we all say welcome to them and we're going to be hearing and it's so great how are you uh tell us it's nice to see both of you and tell us a little bit about the collective and about this what you're working on here hey thanks for having us here i'm going to share my screen and tell you a little bit about what we're doing what would a hiv doula do is a community of people join the response to the ongoing AIDS crisis we understand the doula as someone who holds faith during times of transition we understand hiv as a series of transitions that begin long before getting tested or getting a diagnosis and continuing after treatment we know that since no one gets hiv alone no one should have to deal with hiv alone we doula ourselves each other institutions and culture and foundational in our process is asking questions i'll highlight that asking questions so we found ourselves here and coming up with 27 questions for writers and journalists to consider when writing about covet 19 and hiv aids i know for me for a while there it seemed like most people who weren't involved with hiv aids didn't know what shit was going to come down with covet 19 even the beginning of march so what we saw things rolling out and then some writers and journalists started asking questions of the same five to seven white cis guys and one cis woman about this misunderstanding that hiv history is just one thing so we know we know the desire to compare covet 19 hiv aids is understandable we know the response to hiv provides an inspiring roadmap for how to save lives but we are looking at what was going on and what people were coming out with and well we have some questions so we're here today to share some questions with you we are not going to give you all these 27 questions now and there is not a quiz but i'm just going to drop a couple on you there some of my favorites this is one of my favorites 13 will your writing consider the range of people with illness will it center people living with hiv and covet 19 who are most vulnerable at risk be served and represented how do race class and gender analysis inform how you write about covet 19 and hiv aids are the people with covet 19 your story all are mostly those who are ostensibly healthy and non-disabled at the time of the pandemic are your expert sources are your expert sources people living with chronic illness or disability how are you writing position people who are ill or who are placed at risk of illness how do you resist the labeling of some people as a problem and others as a hero you know what i thought was that i wasn't the audience because i'm already sick with other stuff and um new york times was telling us you know back in march all we had to really do was was wash our hands and make sure that elder people were connected to services we knew that wasn't right then it's really not right now so i'm going to now turn it over to my comrade abdulla lee um who um in addition to being an hiv doula also has written this important piece about if you're looking at hiv and covet 19 something to think about thank you thank you jd and thank you to karen and to george and to um all the people watching this and listening in and la mama um so jd has touched on the 27 questions i'm going to talk a little bit about what inspired me to write uh this piece for race baiter um and the title of it is what can we learn from history of hiv surveillance during the era of covet 19 the reason why this is so important to me as someone living with hiv is because uh looking at the landscape like jd said of the news right um and noticing that people were highlighting um the narrative of contact tracing of using you know networks um to kind of hone in on covet 19 infections networks of people and following those networks um it reminded me of hiv criminalization laws um in the history of that and the impacts that hiv criminalization has had on the most marginalized of us all including black folks brown folks trans people queer folks etc and so it reminded me of the need to problematize surveillance because all of the news was mostly oh this is great this will end covet 19 um and so in the piece i talk about the the use of archetypes to criminalize people to begin the process of criminalization um because it doesn't happen overnight right first it's those those promiscuous gay people who have brought hiv onto themselves or as those black people who aren't taking care of their health that is making them vulnerable for covet 19 but what happens next right is uh you know resources are sometimes given to those communities after a fight or after long uh long movements um uh of activism um but then the the resources are tied to criminalization laws and i just want to give a little bit of history um alex which is an organization that makes template legislation for states to um to pass um in their houses um was an organization behind template language for criminal for hiv criminalization laws um they were the ones who also gave you template language for stand your ground which uh we know about because of the death because of the murder of the ground it was also behind uh hiv criminalization laws and making template language because when the right and right care act was passed in 1990 um part part of the way to access it if you were a state was to enact hiv criminalization laws which tied transmission to um you know to to or made criminal made saying quotes because oftentimes transmission didn't happen but made the idea of transmission um criminalized and right now what we see is folks romanticizing or talking about surveillance as if it's good or it's going to end an epidemic and we know that one it hasn't ended uh an epidemic before it has exacerbated it and it has made uh the most vulnerable of us more um more vulnerable and incarcerated so that's a bit about that piece thank you so much for both of you for what you are presenting here in this important crucial work that you're doing it just is important and isn't spoken about enough and we really wanted to start our show off with what you are doing this is this is important work and could you please let our uh our viewers know uh about the website too so we can um and also if you can please uh let us know because we'd like to keep up with what you're doing and we want when we're writing about it when we're speaking about it that we understand and have a history and especially with these ideas of surveillance and um so thank thank you so much yeah and thank you so much for doing what you're doing the work is really important and we're so glad that we could put you on this so that people can be have access to it because it's so vitally important so thank you thank you thank you let's uh let's give a round of applause and thank you for your uh your activism and your courage and your inspiration thank you thank you thank you and now we are very pleased to have another artist activist join us and that is Viva Ruiz who is also an artist activist and I've had the pleasure to get to know her this year when we both appeared with Andrea for an Andrea Dworkin event that was so much fun and you you give me so much uh joy Viva and uh as I understand too you really have been touched by the by the virus in your own life with your own mother and we want to send our love and uh joy with you because your mother is recovering and so we're so happy to hear that and we want to welcome you uh Viva Ruiz uh for also from thank god for abortion thank you welcome hi everybody so nice to see you thank you for the invitation thank you to JD and Abdul I've really needed to hear that um thank you for your work uh I thought I would share just some notes I've made recently um just some notes and then you can chat maybe a sec uh I want to time myself too so I don't get crazy okay notes on agony agony is a word I've been thinking about a lot in this in the last few months in the last couple months just since all this okay notes on agony uh trigger warning suffering uh death hospitals on calling 911 taking a deep breath understanding that I have a job to do regardless of how I feel about that take a breath more than more than cry something that's more than crying call 911 be on the video call uh removed I'm not in the same house uh nobody speaks English in the house nobody speaks Spanish an EMT or the hospital mostly my experiences in the hospitals too I'm just gonna improvise and fill some of this in be on the video call be the translator no one ever speaks Spanish why be is this New York be positive and smile for mom you are the coach and cheerleader that's your job rewind at the onset of pandemic at the first mention dread dread knowing that she could not escape my mother living with many of my migrant relatives in the same apartment relatives my cousins my aunt my uncle working in factories working as deli at deli counters working as pizza delivery people aka essential workers now those people are called essential workers in and out of the same apartment with my 74-year-old mom diabetic mom respiratory history mom nowhere to run dread from day one pandemia and it all did happen pass that now at the second hospitalization the first day of the second part in palliative care the doctor brings up the dnr which i know from my father's illness nine years ago i know what that means i stay calm i stay strong i stay positive i explained to mom that she shouldn't sign that because normally she would seeing what my dad went through in his illness and i know that she would never she never wanted to sign a dnr but i explained that this is different that the ventilator is the next right step and that's what is normal and it's it's what should happen next and please don't sign that dnr and having these conversations brightly with her with the doctor in the room and translating i explained that our cousin's mom is on a ventilator and they expect she's going to be fine i'm on to fury hospital my cousin works there and he said now a few weeks into this people are coming off the ventilator more than they were in the start explain that to my mother she's comforted that somebody she knows is on one and she agrees to not sign the dnr so i explained that to her i hear her fear and i pretend i have none and in that moment i don't because i just need her to know she can hold on to me i'm strong and i am in some kind of control and i want and i won't let her go even far away that she feel me holding her she concedes we continue she ends up being one step away from a ventilator for a week on 100 oxygen being pushed through this mask onto her face finally one day she can tolerate a different mask the next mask down called a venti mask and begins this slow stepping down of the oxygen miraculously she's home now coughing recovering my cousin's mom never was able to come off the ventilator and passed a few days later meanwhile white people lounge maskless in chelsea amikaren park 40 of the wealthiest neighborhoods in new york city are empty meanwhile peak dissonance peak cruelty peak evil and somehow right now i'm valuing for the first time in my life this thing called positivity as an effective tool for healing at the same time i don't see any of this getting better in new york or in the states i don't see it getting better and somehow within that i'm committing to some new levels of brightness and relief mostly i'm tired but i'm committing to this these new for me positivity never really was a thing but now in this sense positivity and hopeless hopelessness levels are high um but i'm really happy my mom's home so maybe positivity is pulling pulling a little more weight ta-da some notes so now i invite karen and george back into chat with me if you would like to of course thank you viva thank you so much wow hi that was so heartfelt and intimate and thank you for your generosity of sharing this your personal story with us and there's a lot going on my heart just hurts for everybody there's so many as we said there's so much anguish there's so much anguish right now and for me it's like it's it's really peak dissonance that so many people are still not touched by this in in in the same neighborhoods and yeah i'm at a loss to be honest but uh well viva if it's the dissonance we see that dissonance right i mean i was just talking to uh my neighbor down the street who's a bus driver and about you know she was upset because all these people were out without masks and her mother's asthmatic and you know so the dissonance is something we see every day i mean yeah and it exists we know it exists we're not naive this is the state we know about state violence we know about you know black people are haunted by the state and never have not been and you know migrant people are disposable to the state they're siphoned siphoned from and that's it you know i think i have new levels of rage too but i'm really not in touch there yet because the grief and the anxiety oh that's a big one and also the the relief you know are so turned up right now but i'm i'm like i'm normally a very angry person at rest like my levels are in red at rest so i don't know what's going to happen to me a little even past this but i'm excited to see to be honest i i hope that you're going to be continuing to be making art and expressing and hearing your work as an artist and as a human recording and documenting what we're going through i it has some because it's it's a human thing to do and i am touched by your your genuineness and not having a Pollyanna kind of you know the the inspiration kind of situation and i i find comfort in being able to have that space of what you're offering us to offering us thank you yeah your hat alone says so much you know what when in doubt maybe one word but it says a lot that for me can really pull me through a lip a lip color a hat a chapeau a look it really can make a difference um and i know about your rage you know i have Ecuadorian roots myself yeah and also Wayakil being one of the other epicenters of this right so which is it was yeah it's just a devastation out there and and i want people to understand like if you don't know please know people are in agony they're in agony this aspect of this pandemic that you can't be with your people is is is just this i can't there's no words really to put to it um but anyway yes there needs to be art there needs to be some kind of like we need to get into these hospitals and and reach everybody that's in there that's that also is what i want what i'm putting out there um you need some more of spirit lifting in these spaces well thank you viva and my heart our hearts goes with you and my best to your mother and thank you you're such a vibrant person and thank you for being so intimate with us thank you thank you viva thank you bless you for the gathering i might have to split because i'm a nurse right now all right bye thank you what a beautiful space for us to that we're all so many of us are feeling and then being able to express for us and here in this room and beginning with looking at the language of covid illness hiv and then bringing to viva's experience uh it's continues here today uh george we have are you any comments are you ready to have our next guest here oh yeah no definitely you know i'm definitely ready yes it's a total the total counterpoint to this which i i love because it's a the switch right but it's beautiful this is this our next guest is a switch uh is is john sims and you can go to his website to john sims projects and i would like to just speak for a moment about him john and i've been friends and colleagues and artists and today he is presenting his work which is called corona killer and it's a game that you play and it's a fine art video and he's going to play it and share it with us today and george and i've spent some time with him and we really were inspired by what he about the dedication how he's offered so let's welcome john sims everyone hey hey john hi john all right well i'm about to share my screen with you guys and um get a crack at lacking first of all i want to think can you guys hear me okay is everything all right yes okay good i first of all i want to think um um karen and george for giving me this opportunity to share my work uh this is um you know incredible time um and you know art is a very important part of of being able to sort of um help move through the space um for the last 20 years i've been very active in the fight against the confederate flag on many levels as i see as an object of fear and and like the corona virus fear is a very very um powerful um space to be in and me personally i found the process of art the art of creation the creative process has helped me uh confront that fear and so um this corona killer project is really about that and before i get into the game i really want to talk a little bit about what inspired that game and it was a self-portrait and um this self-portrait um is called a date with fear a self-portrait in march 2020 and um you know i've lost uh relatives to this virus complications to the virus and friends and um and it's a very um crazy space because here you have this virus that you really can't see and uh so the fear something you can't see like ideas right like the isms um it's a very powerful psychological thing and so uh this inspired me that dynamic inspired me to create this self-portrait with the idea of what would it be like to walk outside and see the corona virus these viruses as big as golf balls and how would that inspire or enrage or create a sense of stabilization or destabilization and so i so i ended up coming up with this piece which is the idea to confront fear and if you look at this portrait you'll see in my glasses you'll see that's the the cross is from a cemetery and then on the right you'll see the globe this idea of how this is affecting the whole world coming out of this the death toll and and and how death is a way that unfortunately forces us to reckon with very very important ideas on an emotional level then also you'll see the upside down flag on the lapel and this is showing how this image this this idea of the corona virus and the illness is exposing the craziness of americanism american society the xenophobia the racism the sexism the class warfare the medical racism and on and on and on and it's turning our country upside down and and i guess part of the even with all this stuff i guess the mission the idea for me is that how do we protect the love and in all of this how do we move forward and this is where we have the rose so this piece really inspired this idea of how do we confront the the the coronaviruses and i also want to give a salute to our immunity system you know those those those particles that are fighting every single moment to keep us alive and and so it got me thinking about you're on that level on on on on the on the cellular level of how this fighting is always happening uh that preserves our lives and i think we we need to pay how much to to those killer cells that that protect us in lots of ways too so here i want to move into the game and uh john sims projects uh you can see here corona killer and so let's let's go right into it if you go to this page you can play the trailer and you can go right into the game so we're gonna go right into the game service service announcement you click here so i'm gonna play an intro right here that is it's based on the self-portrait tactic a selfie shoot slide right left to the moon success with great work killer cells kill the passing back for the spirit of the energy and avoid hurting them when they are disembracing and fighting you have three levels to go for it so keep your viral load down and keep your energy levels up maintain focus light the fear one chance one body one work this is not a game this is not a prayer fight for health so now we move into the game we have three levels first level uh you uh up to uh five thousand points once you get five thousand points you can move to the second level and ten thousand points you get to the um to the third final level how do you get points well you can shoot the bats you can shoot the coronas obviously you also have these oxygen bubbles and life bubbles that give you life and energy energy bubbles if you hit them you you lose points you have two metric bars one for your energy and one for your viral load as so you want to keep your energy levels up and you want to keep the viral loads down and then every so often once you get over a certain amount of hours you will get an opportunity to absorb uh one of the um medical icons here um to alleviate some to get rid of one of the viral bar here after twenty five hundred points you will be you will be given another life so let us get into the game top two the corona killers so doing quite nicely here uh argentine and you can see i got a very small score so this is the game um and in some ways it's uh uh it's a fun way to approach this but also i think the metaphor is very powerful in terms of this idea of being able to see the things that um create fear and being able to confront it um and uh gameplay is a serious industry and another opportunity to use art uh to do some of these work-related issues thank you john that was just this is really fantastic thank you that was just wonderful i just i mean it's just it's it's it's such an odd dystopian game and quality and everything about it and it speaks on so many levels the you know the commercializations the war you know the war on covid and you just you make it new it's i hope it's going to be successful too i mean i could see you know as a strange john real quick like what did you think of doing this and how long did it take you to put it together well here's the thing like i said after i did that um the self portrait um you know this idea of being out imagine you know coronaviruses everywhere you wouldn't your impulses to get rid of them to shoot them to you know to hit them away you know that type of thing so um the game came rather quickly so i put together a really a good group of folks um a team uh you know programmers and uh you know various uh design folks and put this together almost in three weeks wow you know working on it uh and there's a lot to go into this it almost felt like putting together a film to be to be honest you know you put it together fast and then stimulus checks came out that's that's absolutely true and my hope is that this is a way for people to take out the you know because fear creates anxiety and anxiety is a very very you know interesting thing so you know this can help folks focus that anxiety a little bit and also pay attention to this this terrible virus that is serious and um and and it seemed like it's here to stay so we're going to have to develop a relationship you know there is a one comment here in our chat which says i wish the human element was in there too not just the bats what do you what do you think about that of yeah well i think that well on the cellular level i think that the cell the killer you know the killer white blood cell is the human element it's that that's the part that protects us on the cellular level that allows us to wake up in the morning and after like we're about to fall over the bat you know it's a reference to the source of these viruses and and then you could also argue that the medical icon is the human element of confronting this these issues these health issues through science and through vaccinations and through medical deliveries so i think there's some human elements it takes it takes a whole culture and a whole science to be able to galvanize right um to battle with this very small microscopic agent you know that that that sees no color in a lot of ways sees no a you know it just comes in and you know and as we find out more about it um you know it will probably change and and come back and come back so um yeah i totally understand the element of and i think part of me my intro right it's that is also a human element me talking about you know uh creating a challenge to to find i mean that that's also part of of the whole game well we can i'm gonna for time here i'm gonna be having to leave it here but this is so uh your work is you you know how much i love your work and you as an artist and also all of your work that you've done on the confederate flag and the reclaiming and the recoloration is important work that you've been doing for years and i want to thank you so much for your for the work that you do and your commitment and uh thank you for joining us here thank you and do it to the habit thank you john and thank you so much all right all right uh there's we've been we've been here for about 45 minutes and we've seen a lot of different things here and that's i am feeling some comfort here and i hope our viewers are just being around artists and thinkers and that's something that i have missed so much is going to lamam on being in the audience you've just seen my friends and going to so many of the different performances cultural events and just the transactions so it's i'm glad i'm being able to see some some of you here tonight with us and thank you for joining us george do you feel that way too or no this is like a blessing this is a blessing we all need it we all need it plus i know what's coming so i'm really excited and we are who's going to be joining us next is dusty chillers and it's such a pleasure for you to be joining us dusty and we've known each other for about a year and it's i'm such a fan of your work and thank you for preparing something for us to today welcome dusty hi um okay so hi how are you um so the thing that i am presenting is a video so i'm just going to intro it just for a few minutes uh it's a short video um so i am a person who has sort of um entered the art like performance art world through um having shown up at events for years and years i've been living in new york for 13 years i just progressively sort of just like wearing wearing things i am just wearing things and eventually it became this this moment where someone was like oh are you performing and then i was like no i don't perform and so basically uh sort of my public art is is wearing clothes right and so um at home locked in doors uh afraid for my life uh catching this this virus um i haven't been able to do that i mean you know there are people who have been doing really wonderful things like that about that putting up photos photo challenges i just couldn't participate um because i need people to be i need proximity for for what i do with with this so um i just sort of inside and you know going a little mad you know and the thing that has really helped me is my dear friend machine dazzle is uh is in hawaii and um has been foraging for pieces of natural materials and making these beautiful head pieces you should look at machines instagram and um was sort of documenting making them um by going on instagram live and so i was like it was like a little hangout i could sit there and watch and so i've been ordering you know i'm here in brooklyn and i've been ordering shit on the internet like non stop and so it comes in and there's all this packaging and so the packaging was making me feel crazy but you know so i'm inspired by machine i decided to make something out of it right so then i made something out of it and documented that and then made a video so in collaboration with my boyfriend shane o'neill and my friend bridget who social distance videoed me we made a video um and so this is this is just in the words of my dear um genius um the person that's the tip top of my mountain just the Vivian bond says keep it pretty keep it shallow keep it moving and so this is that and just so you know i put a comment i'm gonna do it again um there's a comment in facebook you can watch so watch the video here but there's something fucked up with the sound and we tried to publish it i don't know what the fuck is going on so it's a whole actualized thing with a beautiful soundtrack that we've worked pretty hard on and so watch it here and then you can watch it again if you liked it um share it if you like to put the link so i'm gonna do this thing now i hope i don't fuck it up so share a screen okay great okay hold on one second sorry guys um this is a lot of work here this stuff share a screen okay great here we go love you very much hope you like it know that the sound isn't perfect i apologize i'm a Virgo um okay so here we go thank you dusty that was just wonderful it was just fantastic love that yeah so it's just basically about um there's a lot of a tip for everyone who's doing a video this can't really do much nuance sound unfortunately so a lot of it probably got lost but there's like all these beautiful sound clips that i went foraging for as an homage to like you know um machine making these things and so um there's like the clip from Goodfellas where the woman is yeah the hat i gotta go home and get my hat anyways it's it's magnificent you are a Virgo this is a fantastic work of art what it really is it's it's the it embodies this space of a strange sense of jubilance and freedom but yet you know enclosure and the quarantine and how you put that together and still within this this fashion and making something out of the throw away what's being discarded uh is such an adjustment and then and then you discarded at the end i mean it's uh it's really it's fantastic well i learned from my roommate i i guess i didn't realize that like sort of a main i mean maybe i'm misquoting this but like one of the main points of a mandala is to like make it and then and then and then get rid of it and so the idea of like the um you know spending the time and there was like all this video glitching that happened and like i lost all the video and had to start over and all the shit so it just seemed like there were a lot of things happening to sort of keep this from occurring and so it's it's kind of the it's kind of apropos to the time is that like you can't expect anything to just there's always smooth sailing you know that's for sure thank you just i love you thank you so much thank you for having me and we look forward to seeing more of your work and keep keep making art and having us feel and getting in in contact with these these feelings that are so troubling and ambiguous but yet have jubilance to it thank you thank you look i'll talk to you soon bye dusty oh my goodness i i have a smile on my face here and it's so nice to be seeing the work that we're seeing here and also be thinking of the energy that the artists here today of the time and the focus to engage in our evening here today in all of our different ways is you know just it's moving in its in its own way it makes me feel connected but you know the small gestures and large gestures and everything but also to be in the time where everyone has been so challenged that hopefully we're a little more open to other experiences other imaginations other perspectives and sort of see this everybody doing what they're doing facing the same thing it's really you know it's eye-opening it's comforting i don't know we have somebody else coming out right we have something else coming up and before we're going to do that i want to take a moment out to be thanking people here too before at the end instead of having it at the end i just really want to be thanking la mama the incredible staff here the technical support and everyone that has been working so hard and the audience the publicity everything to be making it together because we're all just working here just kind of making this happen and i appreciate all all of your work that you're you're doing it and thank you and i also want to be thanking uh the work that i for our opening intro video and music that was made by pilot over and and kc wyman i want to thank you for your work so let us uh have our is that our last guest here next guest our next guest and hey i think that it's pamela sneed welcome pamela i'm coming hi how are you it's so good to see you well we don't see her yet oh we don't see you yet well it's so good to hear you oh there she is and i want to get this out too beforehand is pamela is an extraordinary writer and has a wonderful book that's out now sweet dreams but there is a wonderful book that's coming out in the fall with city lights books and make sure to look for that funeral diva which i'm reading now is a just because i'm i can so welcome pamela hi hey all you radicals out there good to see you and we'll thank you it's good to see everybody thank you for doing this i feel like we should do it every week we need the covid cap day and uh would you like to read what would you like to present today ready to present i am i'm going to read a piece called a tale of two pandemics and it's from my book funeral diva which is coming out with city lights and if you go to the page at city lights you can sign up for an alert for when it comes in and also my watercolors are the background and basically it's all about incarceration and it's and it's called a quarantine quote speaking of covid 19 the headline in yesterday's news latter tale of two pandemics shocking inequities in the healthcare system what got me was the use of word shocking in two those of us who lived through the 1980s early 90s age crisis already knew about the existence of two new yorks two 20 30 40 50 americas may be more depending on age race class citizenship citizenship status entirely different systems for those who aren't white straight middle class those of us who saw our brothers friends sisters die at the hands of a system that shunned refused to treat threw away the unwanted still can't forget a gay friend waiting for medicaid to treat hiv it was weeks he got sicker and sicker i asked what took so long with medicaid he said they're waiting to see if i die first that wasn't the america that i learned about in elementary school whom i was instructed to put my hand over my heart stand for and salute this wasn't the free america we're saying of people who are lgbtq i already know that there are two americas a doctor who kept forcing me to take a pregnancy test even after i insisted and blurted out at the time i only have sex with women i saw his scorn still a test he may be paid for and then those women who were forcibly sterilized had their wounds their life force taken left dry barren by doctors who never even stopped to explain felt entitled to take scar women's bodies breast cut off no options or consolation given women who aren't rich and white already know invisible lines you can't cross with no insurance or medicaid forced into black markets for drugs a land of botched care botched procedures black people already know separate doors separate entrances treatments options existing long after jim crow and i have waited for this moment this time of a medical me too when those who suffered from botched procedures and the indignated indignity stepped from shadow speak and name the atrocities committed medical malpractice i won't blame all doctors some are good just middlemen like so many in a broken system doing what they can and i'm grateful for the ones for the good ones in this pandemic risking their own lives but the image of doctors we see in movies and on television who understand a complex problem pour through the medical books and science read through night under dull lamp light to find a cure whose eyes weep with concern are mostly false uh rare like the ones who find a cure and refuse to patent or personally profit those days have become a myth what's replaced them now are businessmen wanting status amongst peers entry to country clubs in power gaslighters hustlers and actors like trump there's a doctor at mount sinai star of his field charged with drugging and raping his patients no one believed it until it was proven his victims were only black women the rest he left alone the tale of two pandemics thanks wow i'm a love misneed wow thank you so much uh it really it's it's so true it's so i kind of just speechless and you're putting the words to what is happening here into the realities of what what we're living with and and also seeing your quilt behind you beautiful just thank you thanks let's keep doing it thank you speaking truth to power truth to power thank you for the work that you do and you're always a voice and you you speak up and out and and your passion and the way that you feel for for for humanity is inspiring for us here and i want to thank you for for the work that you do and that you continue to do when it's so difficult during these times and and your great and your gracefulness thank you and before you both real quick i'm going to include you on this one karen for karen and pamela you know because i've done this 24 hour event the last three years on gun violence and pamela's been there all three years you've been there the last two years and uh it's just you're both so powerful but pamela your words you always do this you always you wake people up you know it's just powerful and uh and i want like karen said just really want to thank you and thank you for all your work yeah well the same you know i'm glad that we're all here and that we're doing this and i'm like looking to all my peers you know i mean we are the essential workers um and uh yeah along with others and uh and it's important that that's recognized and i'm really grateful for everybody on this program and for the two of you because you always inspire me and i have people to be radical with amen well thank you thank you pamela thank you uh i i i just want to just also thank um real quick i wanted to call out there's so many people and uh i'm going to say violet and casey because they helped me with the music for my opening theme song that i thought was never going to work and they made me feel like it worked so i want to thank them for the music uh i want to thank chris ignacio specifically from the mama who has been a real angel in in supporting us and doing this and we came at him with a lot more than you first imagine so thank you thank you thank you and i want to thank you karen i'm going to thank you you you've been it's been welcome we wanted to do this but i didn't imagine it would be like this and that it would be not just us but it would be a community of of people that are all fighting the fight and facing the struggle and learning how to continue to transform so i want to thank you um george it's wonderful to be here and spending this time here with you and with the other artists i feel i feel less disconnected yeah yeah um so yes oh so i was gonna say is that now we're going to i guess now it's coming to sort of towards the end of our evening here and our end of i want to thank all of our guests thank you so much for for joining us and preparing and taking the time out and we know how much work it is to do and all of us the cognitive just being the focus and doing it so thank you for putting yourself out for for your originality and dedication and what we'll be doing is george and i have a duet that we're doing in a way a diptych and george will be giving some final words and i have a video here of artworks that i've been making which are words of the epidemic that i've just been focusing on and we have a short film that uh violet overt has put together and with k c wyman and so i appreciate that with their music behind it and so let us continue here and thank you everyone for such a wonderful evening here i invite everyone to close your eyes we have been here before not the we of we the people but the we of never good enough a pandemic is not new nor will this one be the last dust to dust eye to eye day by day moon tide by moon tide sunrise to sunset the times they are blazing as the search for a vaccine for covet 19 continues the question remains when will we find a vaccine for the invisible enemy that continues to allow people to believe what they see like the lines on a map and not see what is hidden by those lines of division decolonization is not a metaphor facts are real believing is seeing what is not there but what is right here now open your eyes look around see