 Hello everyone. Good evening. Welcome and thank you all so much for coming out this evening for our conversation with our amazing lesbian game changers. This is one of many women's history month programs we have going on in March. Check out sfpl.org forward slash events for the full list or pick up the March newsletter. My name is Kevin Darlene and I'm the LGBTQIA center librarian here at the main and before we begin the program I have a couple of announcements and thank yous and I will begin with a land acknowledgement. This is Aloni land the San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramya Tush Aloni peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We acknowledge that we are the uninvited guests and we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and we wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramya Tush community. I would like to encourage you to visit the Hormel LGBTQIA center on the third floor of the main library which is the gateway to the library's broader collections documenting LGBTQIA history and culture with a special emphasis on the San Francisco Bay Area. Our new exhibition The Cockettes, Acid Drag and Sexual Anarchy just opened on March 12th and it runs through August 11th and we're having an opening reception this Thursday at 6 p.m. in the center and we hope to see you there. I'd like to thank the Friends of the Library for their support of our programs and a big thank you to our media services team and all the behind-the-scenes staff for making this in-person event as well as the virtual live stream possible today. We will have an audience Q&A please write your question on a note card and then we will come by and collect those and we will have a book sale at the back after the program. You can buy a book and get your book signed and now I would like to introduce our moderator for this evening Robin Lowey. Robin is a speaker, author, filmmaker and queer historian who seeks to elevate the discourse in our country surrounding the role that lesbian history plays in advancing LGBTQ plus civil rights and social equity. Lowey is the author of Game Changers, Lesbians You Should Know About and the executive director of Lesbian Game Changers, a nonprofit that provides schools with valuable resources that fill the gap in education about LGBTQ plus history. Now in its second printing Game Changers 1 best LGBTQ plus book in the next generation indie book awards. As a pioneering queer parent and an activist Lowey's work focuses on LGBTQ plus achievements that have advanced a more inclusive society while seeking to address the unmet educational needs of a culture that continues to oppress queer people. Please welcome Robin Lowey. Hi you guys I'm so glad you made it and thank you Kevin. Kevin Darling has been an incredible support throughout this process and when I think about how lucky we are to live here with this kind of a library in our backyard it is just amazing. We have a gentleman in the back. Wow. Anyway I wanted to also say I'm honored to share the stage with these three women. This is Olga Talamante, Carla Trujillo and Crystal Jang all featured in my book and we're gonna hear a lot more from them. I want to thank you all for coming first of all because I know you had to put down your wordle and your pickleball paddle to be here. Anyway so without further ado I wanted to show a quick film that will explain a lot about what we're doing and what this whole thing is all about. So it's very short I promise. Is spreading the stories of LGBTQ leaders who made lasting changes on the movement. KPX5's Jackie Ward shows us the unique way she's reaching the younger generation and tonight's original report. Robin Lowey is on a mission. Her dining room table is stacked with copies of her new book Game Changers, Lesbians You Should Know About. I got the idea that I should be the one to create this fun book about lesbian heroes that are living who created queer culture now and they're sort of the people that young people today should consider as their heroes. So far Robin's donated around 1,500 copies to over 300 schools reaching 300,000 students. A graphic designer by trade Robin created Game Changers to look and read like a graphic novel. One that showcases the crucial role lesbians have played in the LGBTQ movement. 30 women including Robin herself leap off its colorful pages like well super heroines. The criteria is that they're alive and that they're over 50 and that they came out young and that they created significant cultural contributions to queer culture specifically. Crystal Jang says writing her essay for the book brought back memories of fun times in 1960s San Francisco. We came and remember the rebels, a lesbian gang. We drove around in a rambler sedan, smoked cigarettes and wore black puffed jackets. We've come a long ways in terms of being visible, but we still are in the same sort of spot in terms of being understood. Robin's own journey as a lesbian mom of two sons and her role as a guest educator on LGBTQ history for several years from the Wren County Public Schools inspired the book as a way to educate others. Now the women profiled in the book include military personnel, legal experts, artists and educators. Robin says she has many others to profile and she is working on plans for a second edition. Our guest tonight is the author of Game Changers, Lesbians You Should Know. Let's welcome Robin Lowy to the program. This book is so cool. I've gotten so much great feedback and the educators love it. The kids love it. People love it. I get invited into the classroom a lot and I do these presentations and I have this kind of colorful thing and I kind of go through basic LGBT history facts and I had a girl, maybe a 17 year old girl come up to me just in tears saying I saw your book and I can't believe you're really here. And she was hugging me and she was just so thrilled that there was a representation of her life in her classroom. My name is Robin Lowy and I'm the author of Game Changers, Lesbians You Should Know About. The reactions to the stories of these amazing women, especially by students, has inspired me so much so I decided to produce short films featuring lesbian game changers from the book and new ones. These films are in line with my mission to foster an atmosphere of LGBTQ visibility and inclusion. When I was growing up and when I first came to consciousness as a lesbian, I thought I was the only lesbian in the state of Utah because I never saw myself reflected in any story. Look, I'm almost 60 years old but it is appalling to me that in my lifetime when I was growing up there were not stories about who I was. That's what we need to do. We need to provide those images and those representations. If you do not see yourself reflected in stories about people who came before you, it is very hard to chart a path for yourself and believe in the future. Young people can see their families represented, their friends represented. It is so important. This can save lives. It can literally save lives. It is awesome to be LGBTQ. It is something that should be celebrated. It is something this culture should celebrate but it's never going to be celebrated if the stories don't get told. This project has been a labor of love for many years but there's a lot left to do. It's really going to make a difference in the world. Thank you so much for being a part of it. Kudos to my partner who is the filmmaker, cinematographer, editor all around champion and if you see her skulking around here be nice to her because I love her and she's nice. Thanks, Eliza Carlson. I am here with these amazing women. This is kind of loud. Do you have your, does everyone have their, okay. I wanted to introduce each of them with a short bio. I'm going to start with Olga Telemante who is an activist and she brought her lesbian lens to all of her activism work. She was executive director of the Chicana Latina Foundation where she served since 2003 and she just recently retired. She's won many awards including the women making history award and the SF commission on this, I mean from the SF commission on the status of women and she's also listed among the most influential Latinos in the San Francisco Bay Area. Crystal, let's go in order. Okay. So Carla Trujillo is an editor and an author and she is the editor of two groundbreaking anthologies. Chicana lesbians, the girls our mothers warned us about 1991 and living Chicana theory 1998 that both garnered prestigious awards and made quite an impression on me personally. Her 2003 novel, What Night Brings, a book I loved, won the Marmo Prize focusing on human rights and the Latino Literary Foundation Book Award and her latest novel published in 2015, Faith and Fat Chances was a finalist for the Penn Bellwether Prize for socially engaged fiction. How about that? How about that? Crystal Zhang is a community bridge builder, a fourth generation Chinese-American and elder activist. She has spent the last six decades dedicating her life to pushing the boundaries of API queer visibility. One of the first out educators at the San Francisco Unified School District, Zhang is also co-founder of Older Sisters in Solidarity, Oasis and Asian Pacific Islander queer women and trans community and the red envelope giving circle. Welcome, Crystal. There's so much more. These are very small for how big these women really are, but that's just a start. So I wanted to introduce one at a time and give them a chance to speak a little bit about why they qualify to be lesbian game changers and a little bit about their lives. So I'm gonna start with who's my first victim. Let's go in let's go and order Olga. Olga, she spent her formative years in a farmworker labor camp in Gilroy, California. Some of her impressionable teen years or early preteen years and this really informed her political consciousness. She became a lifelong activist. She's still working very hard on the front lines of very important issues. She's a community leader and I'm really proud to call her my friend and I'd like to hear more about your life and how you became a lesbian game changer. What you've done to create queer culture and help the movement. Thanks. Thank you, Robin. Okay, good. Thank you and I just want to say again you know in terms of your book it really is so important and I'm so glad that it is in all of the various schools that it has gotten to. I certainly grew up with not having those kind of books around me or those kinds of discussions and and that kind of acknowledgement you know so I think in addition to what you said Robin yes I think my political consciousness was very much cemented by growing up as a farm worker in Gilroy, California and from there I think it I just developed this question in mode is like well why do the people that own the ranch have all the comforts of life and we don't we work really hard and it was because they own the trees you know so you start learning about class relations you know it's like who owns what and and what difference that makes in terms of the work that you do and and what happens to the families just to do some highlights in terms of my life going to UC Santa Cruz I was ready to join organizing for the UFW because if it was gonna there was an organization that was going to fight you know for better conditions and so on so I think in terms of game being game changers United Farm Workers Union sorry the being game changers I I see myself more that I was able to join movements that were game changers yes I played my role but definitely joining the United Farm Workers Union then joining the student movement the Chicano student movement definitely made progress there in terms of representation you know for Latinx students especially and then learning continue to learn about the world and seeing that inequities just lived everywhere I happened to go to Argentina where I was a political prisoner for 16 months after having been an organizer and I was able to be released because of a grassroots campaign that took place this is in the 70s and from there I went on to Washington DC to cut off the military aid to Argentina because I knew firsthand how repressive the government was and what was happening to the people so that's part of like changing the the policies right I mean that's how you be in terms of being a game changer it can happen in many different ways I think one is changing policy and I think that's what we need to do and that's why I was part of the board of the National Center for Lesbian Rights because it was absolutely changing policy and and you also do it by changing people's hearts and minds right by by by dealing with the cultural elements and and I think that I know that we don't have a whole lot of time someone has stopped soon but it's the current moment in terms of the social you know reckoning in the social justice reckoning is such an important moment right now so I again I see myself I haven't been a game changer by being in the movements that create change and I think that I'm proud to have been part of those movements and to continue to be part of the LGBTQ movement of the solidarity movement of the Chicano movement and of the other of the awareness movement right I mean it's just like what can we say about we can do the list of everything that is going on but I'll talk a little bit after my colleagues here answer this first question about becoming a game changer I think it's like you know sometimes I think you may have some choice in some things I don't think I had a choice so I don't give myself that much credit because it's like how could I not try to change what I was seeing around me both in terms of my upbringing and the social conditions and how could I not try to change to see the attacks on our LGBTQ community and especially right now against our trans community in particular so how can I not how can I I have to have that hope that we can change things anything and change is a big word here and how can I remain you know on the sidelines when the children that have been separated at the border over four years ago remain separated you know and so I think if you want to be a game changer then you just like step right into it and do your thing you know for whatever needs to be done thank you Olga that's wonderful you you mentioned NCLR and I'm remiss in acknowledging that both NCLR and our family coalition played a part in this event and very much help promoted and our co-sponsors so there there's that all right I wanted to introduce our next panelist and we've already had a brief introduction but Carla I've known her for a while and I want to tell a quick anecdote about the time that I took my son on a college tour and we ended up at UC Santa Cruz oh anyway we were at UC Santa Cruz and and we saw a beautiful mural and it said Chicana lesbians the girls your mothers warn you about and and I was like wow that's that is that is the of course the name of the anthology that she edited that's just so groundbreaking and I said to my son who's kind of a lesbro and a good feminist and he and I said you have to go here and unfortunately that didn't happen but you know anyway onward and upward with Carla's story and your game changer status so I I think that what I started doing was writing I met Shari Maraga and Gloria Zaldua at a conference when I was in graduate school and I they had just finished editing this bridge called my back and I and I thanked them for doing that and I said it was so helpful and inspiring to me and they said no now you go home and write and I said oh no no no can't write I can barely write and there no no no go home so I went home started writing and I realized it was basically saving my life because I grew up very poor and and went to UC Davis and then Wisconsin for graduate school so everything in Wisconsin was white the people the snow the the the the everything I I felt myself disappearing and I felt like you know like there goes an arm and there goes a leg and it was just this weird strange feeling of disembodiment anyway so I started writing and I wrote more and more and more and I became very inspired to do more and see more representation of of who we are in this world and and so I edited you know I met Norma Alarcon and she encouraged me to go ahead and edit a book on Chicana lesbians and so I did not knowing what I was doing and it was really funny because that cover that original cover Chicana lesbians had la Virgen de Guadalupe on the back it was a esterinandis who's a fabulous local painter it was one of her paintings and she had painted la Virgen de Guadalupe on the back of a woman and then that she's looking over behind behind herself and that cover caused so much hell and a lot of people so wonderful that it was on a mural in UC Santa Cruz I was shocked when I saw it so anyway a lot of people just didn't think that Chicana lesbians could have access to a religious icon so I was so inspired I wrote an essay about Chicana lesbians and la Virgen de Guadalupe and I ended that essay about what if la Virgen de Guadalupe was my girlfriend so how I would treat her I treat her a heck of a lot better than you know Joseph would or anybody else you know who is or anybody and I thought so I wrote about it and anyway that was fun so but you know I was getting a dissertation I was doing a dissertation in Wisconsin and I started talking to faculty and I said how is it that you interact with people of color and women talk to me the doors close I'm taking no notes and they started spilling their guts to me about how they didn't know how to interact with people of color in the classroom and I was blown away because they were just really talking to me in a real heart and soul kind of manner revealing these things about prejudice and and differential treatment so I decided to study that for my dissertation so that was my first big game-changing activity was in grad school and I barely got out of there because people didn't like that I was raising that kind of hell with with the dissertation so then I put in 30 years at Cal and I was a diversity director at Cal and I decided I would be a change agent and try to like get the faculty to think differently about women and people of color and the one thing that I don't know if you can hear me if it's on you can hear me um the one thing I wanted to do using interactive theater and using all kinds of methods was always try to get the faculty to think it was their idea that my idea was their idea and therefore they were that the proponents of change so that's that was my goal and then last but not least board work also Lambda Literary Foundation and a Macondo Foundation we're just gonna ignore this buzz what can we do all right so thank you so much Carla that was awesome okay last but not least is my dear friend Crystal Jang who has been you know when I started the book um I didn't know Crystal I knew these two but I didn't know Crystal and she was recommended to me by Jewel Gomez and she has been one of my biggest champions all along the way and I just love you to death thank you for being here um Crystal was raised in Chinatown here in San Francisco and this was during a time where where the mayor was actively saying there are no gay people in my community and Crystal was one of the the first Asian-American to step up and say claim that she was gay and made a big fuss and it was groundbreaking she became a well when I say community bridge builder she has developed all kinds of liaisons with important community connections and just become a lifelong activist and an educator and I'm just really excited to hear more about your life so let's let's go Crystal well first of all thank you very much for having me and having us tell our stories and you have to excuse a little bit of the list here um as we get older some of us have to do other things to our bodies and part of it is I have to wear a retainer so if you don't understand what I'm saying or you need to ask me to repeat myself please feel free to do so I didn't want to do this because I said to Robin I hope they understand what I'm saying but she said please come anyway okay so um gosh game changer I think uh it was I can't even begin to think when it happened as I know that uh growing up in Chinatown in San Francisco we lived pretty much in a 10 square block where everything happened where we were surrounded by our aunties and uncles and community who took care of us uh we surrounded by uh all the necessities were there we did our shopping there we were educated and it's 10 square blocks and but it was also sort of a prison in a way we were confined to this area and we we sort of knew nothing else but we were very comfortable we could run the streets we could we could do anything we wanted we had our doctors there we were you know our aunties and uncles looked after us neighbors looked after us and it wasn't until we crossed the boundaries um so for the first 10 years of my life I basically lived in this really great rich and powerful community where we were all pretty much equal but however our roles were very defined in terms of our ethnic identity and in terms of our uh being a woman being Chinese being a daughter being granddaughter being um a dutiful daughter our roles are pretty much defined it wasn't until I was 10 and had to start going to elementary from elementary school to middle school that I had to cross the line into another world basically I had to go to Italian town through Italian town and cross over to go to frances school middle school and it was then right as I crossed that line I didn't realize how different we were and how much we were considered the other and considered uh basically Chinaman we were chinks we were people that were not were dirty we were poor um everything that you can imagine we were not liked at all so it was quite a journey to go these three squirt three blocks over to a whole different world and to understand that we were just not liked not wanted so it was then I discovered that race was a real big issue race and and cultural identity were a real big issue so I went to middle school and it was in during middle school where I came across discrimination that I really didn't realize to happen and uh this is the time that I started to think what could we do about it so I started writing stories actually I wrote plays and which I never really told anything about and I wrote plays with all the characters in the neighborhood and actually became sort of built myself up as like um I don't know like a Nancy Drew type character and uh started to to really study what was happening in the schools what the relationships were what the teachers how the teachers responded to us how other kids respond how the white kids responded to us and then started to understand that if I wanted to do if I wanted a different world I had to do something about it as I went to high school I realized then it became about gender being a girl and not being able to do same things that um you know guys could do we were not allowed to be playing out different sports we had to play basketball with a two bounce have you heard it have you ever played basketball two bounces and you had to stop it was pretty difficult and you could run you could only play half the court or you could run the full court two people could play half the court two people can be the shooters and two people can run up and back and forth so that was another change that we had to do but the biggest change was that we were not allowed to be um mascots or we're not to be cheerleaders we were only allowed to be song girls song girls who you know had the pom poms and everything like that but I wanted to be the mascot so the first thing I did was I petitioned the school put out my first petition went to the principal and asked them if I could be a cheerleader they did not allow me to be but they said you could be a mascot only because I was covered so I wore a lion suit the whole time so nobody actually really knew who I was anyway but that was my first four way into activism really um so uh from then on it was just non-stop I was very very lucky I think we all were to be born times where change could happen so so much so much change happened and like Oga pretty much I was carried along and opportunity happened and we were able to carry along and we could move with it either we moved with it and it was just a wonderful wonderful experience so change later on though um pretty much as an educator I discovered that this is where you could be the most powerful visibility was really really important visibility as a lesbian visibility as an asian lesbian was the most important thing so for myself pushing the boundaries of visibility across all of all the lines was what I needed to do and what I wanted to do and that's what I've done my whole life oh thank you crystal wonderful well I think in order to stay on schedule being that we start a little late and that went a little long why don't we take just a little less time to talk about uh what we're doing now and why it matters why it's important um and then we can move on to the juicy questions um and have plenty of time for that so how about that we maybe two to three minutes each on uh why what you're doing now is important and tell us a little bit about what's what's new with you so let's start with Olga um I mentioned about the children at the border and I have postcards that uh in the back that if any of you can sign would be great let me tell you why the postcards are important uh a year ago when the Biden administration came in and the children at the border had many thousands of them had already been separated from their from their families uh when the new administration came in he formed a task force the task force is made up with the most important agencies in the government uh homeland security health and human services the state department and the justice department that task force was formed a year ago they have united 100 children so this is what has spurred us into action again I'm serious based on their latest report there's still over 1200 children from four years ago that are still separated and I know that we all I mean my heart just breaks right and yours probably does too and at the same time it's not in the news it's it's not anywhere for us to find that information about it so uh our caravan for the children which we formed two years ago is back on it again we're back on the caravan because we say we have to do one last push and so these are postcards uh they're in the back together with the books that you're going to buy the lesbian game changers book um and these are directed to the task force and say we're saying task force do your task task force do your job and so that's uh a big part of what I have been involved in this last period of time I continue to be active in boards Green Lightning Institute, Concilio San Mateo County and the Chicana Latina Foundation that I retired from a few years ago I was also besides NCLR I also served on Horizons Foundation I know we have some folks here from Horizons Foundation and was able to be co-chair there and you know and when you work in a board you're not you're not a game changer but again you can be part of what can create change with NCLR I think we we really instituted an in what was called an intersectional lens at NCLR and then with Horizons Foundation I think they are the programs that they have been and organizations that they've been supporting absolutely reflect the diversity within our communities and I'm very proud of the work that we did there to to make that happen so aside from the the postcards let me just say I am going to follow the footsteps of my comrades here I'm going to start writing now because I am going to write a book and I'm writing a book to share the organizing lessons to share some of my about you know my life that could be useful to whoever wants to read them and and I think more than anything and I've learned this from my comrades who are in the in the academia like Dr Teresa Carrillo and Dr Belinda Reyes that I hear they they tell me there are not that many first person narratives and to say it's the same concept this lesbian game changer's book if we don't tell our stories someone else will tell them for us and they're not going to be accurate and so this is also part of my commitment then to be able to tell my story in the the story of the of the people that were part of the committee a grassroots committee that no one would have thought was going to free a woman that was in a prison in Argentina for 16 months and they did it they did it through organizing through mobilizing people through encouraging people and in having the hope that they could do it and they brought down the Argentine military out to let me go and then we cut off the military aid to the Argentine military based on the the the tenets of democracy that we do have here and that we do need to utilize I know I'm doing a lot of political jargon stuff but I'm also a really fun person okay so I just want you to know that and my my my sweetheart Vola can attest to that sometimes a little too much fun sometimes she dances steps backwards and yes and then I I fall and break my my my wrist but anyway um but I'll I'll pass it on now okay and also we are in the middle of a film about Olga and it's it's really cool if you want to see excerpts of that you can go to my website at lesbiangamechangers.com and it's there's there's quite a few clips from the film in process and it's really good stuff she's it's in her own words and it's it's brilliant there's a lot of graphics associated with her imprisonment and it's just um interesting so moving on let's hear what you have going on Carla well I'll be brief I'm still writing and I've almost done with a new novel um and I tend to write about things people don't like to hear uh in the big presses a lot sometimes um queer kids and um immigration issues and poverty and violence and I always toss in love um so love seems to transcend so much I think um I'm doing art I've been doing art more and more so um and I've enjoyed doing that um so I'm probably gonna stop there but I do want to say one thing about being on boards and trying to change policy Olga mentioned this Crystal I think you mentioned it also it's very very empowering to be on a board um but I have to tell you my very first experience um because it's not always easy when I was at UC Berkeley and I went into engineering and in my job description was simply increase the number of women and people of color in the College of Engineering so my boss put me on a board and he put me on um the Graduate Study Committee and every single person was a man and there were no people of color and it was me and they were just the meanest they were so mean and I remember coming back to the office going what what did I just do I what is this job it's just so awful you know these people are just they are white bulldogs so I just called them the white bulldog committee and I finally had to figure out what makes change what can make them think differently and I did and it worked thank god how fantastic that's it for now Crystal I have to say you know in a way I've stepped back a lot from community organizing in terms of organizations but as I age I realize that priorities of age change so right now my partner and I Sidney and I do a lot of caretaking of our own community members which I think is a very important process and an important thing that we don't think about because a lot of times we think about organizing in the big picture but what we like to do is boots on the ground sort of thing um be food runners or cook or help community members our elders we think that we're old there are elders that are beyond us who have set the foundation for where we are today and sometimes they get lost along the way and when we go to community organizing and we go to organizations and we go to I wish we could go to events now but we can't when we see them in need we try to do something about it so we're food runners we're we actually are taiko players and we taiko and we do community events we work in tai chi and we also have our role models are people older than us our role models are those who have struggled without the language capabilities without resources and we want to make sure that we share our resources and we're really and we really feel that's really important not to let people sort of fall on the wayside I'd love the big picture but right now we're sort of doing things closer to home in a way because we are getting to the point where we're losing people as well and we don't want to lose anybody else so Women's Cancer Resource Center is another place that we really put a lot of energy into they have a swim a mile coming up in April so if any of you like to swim walk you know bike a mile please support them because we're losing too many people to cancer so Women's Cancer Resource Center swim a miles coming up so please support them so anything you can do I mean in terms of changemakers we feel like any little thing you can do whether it's donating whether it's donating your time energy whatever listen look at people hear them feel with your heart what they need and make a difference by supporting them that's beautiful thank you I couldn't I couldn't agree more okay so you guys might have cards in your hand and a pencil and if you had a question for any one of us please fill those out as we as we keep going and then we're gonna answer some questions if you want to learn more about crystal's whole life story she is in the book with a whole illustrated timeline with pictures of hers that mascot and all kinds of crazy stuff it's good it's really good and you I guess you saw a little bit of that in the film so I have questions that I developed with a little help for each of you and I'm gonna start with Olga okay so in regards to intergenerational involvement Olga what is the value of intergenerational connections and how does community community organizing benefit from intergenerational participation well I think clearly learning from each other and learning from the different the younger generation in my case and them learning from the older generation in their case I think is is is crucial for the the changes that we want to create I I know that you know we can look at it in a different way so we think about like okay so this is the system that we all live under that it has been created not necessarily for for people like us not for LGBTQ folks not for people of color so how we're gonna change it we have to engage the younger generations that are going to live on longer than we will be and that's just the fact I know that I have lived longer now than I'm gonna live on forward and I remind the young people that I work with that I've been so blessed to work with young people for most of my professional career because I before Chicana Latina Foundation which works with Latina college students I worked with and Rose and that was also working with students of color that wanted to go into business and community leadership and then recently the caravan organizing that we've been doing it's really like what you're saying at Crystal because it's it's it's it's you know it's underground we're actually trying to save these kids lives by doing some of this work and it's it's very intergenerational I think I'm the oldest person in in the group and we have some of the young very amazing young leaders within the the the Chicano and Chicano movement and I'm not gonna paint a rosy picture I mean it's not that it's just you know like a slam dunk or you know it's it's difficult it is difficult for us to understand each other to understand the perspectives and this is probably a very obvious you know example but the technology and the technology that they are able to manage and that they are able in that they utilize to communicate I can barely keep up I do my best and I do I do I think I do okay but it is absolutely something that and it is a way of organizing so I have to learn it I mean I can't just say you know like some other people like you know some people in my family is like you know like what you know like Facebook you know I'm not even Facebook I mean I know that's old news I know that I I age myself when I when I talk about Facebook because it's way past you know all the various other platforms and so on but aside from that is it is sort of you know it may sound kind of like a jingoistic but it it is part of keeping you know the lessons of the past because we do have to learn from from what has happened in the past and also keeping the you know the reality of the present but in the in the vision of the future and so all of those things have to come together I think for any kind of attempt at change and and and the change can be you know helping doing doing the food running absolutely that's taking care of our people and that that has to happen and that and there is change in that because you probably also affect other people that they will see you doing that and they can also be changing the policies that are left over from from the past administration I can't even say the name but that they had the zero tolerance policy for the kids but this administration is also responsible for things and so we have to just stay stay with it and and we need the the the eyes and the ears of the young people and the things should also programs should be youth led and and live like really youth led I mean I think that's one of the the things that we must insist on as elders and in this movement when young people are brought in they they have to lead and they have to be supported to be able to lead I love this you know this is one of the nearest and dear to my heart subjects my whole effort with this book is was started out very top-down like oh kids need to know about their elders and their the leaders and their role models and you know as I got more and more into it it became it became important more and more important to understand that it isn't about what I think people should know it's about what do young people really want what are they interested in and I've been blessed with two sons and and have gone to them for their advice and my youngest now is is one of my the guys who sits on my advisory board and and gives me active advice and really shuts me down when I'm off base and you know it's just it's been such a pleasure when I think about what we can learn from the younger generation and how important it is to to let them lead I love that so moving on to you Carla I have some questions for you oh okay in regards to feminism and women's empowerment which you spoke about briefly how do we become change agents how do we empower ourselves to create a better world and how do we keep going three easy questions to answer um I I think everybody can be a change agent and just put your mind to what you think needs to be changed and and move forward and if you don't know what you're doing it's okay you can make mistakes along the way and I most certainly have made many and I I think being willing to take a risk and sometimes it's scary to think about doing something different that you've never done before but youth you see a need and and you see something that has to get better so you give it a try and you talk to people talk to young people and people who are experienced people who normally don't get asked questions and I I like doing that I think it's I think um um my family really wanted me to just be a quiet obedient wife and they trained me to do that really really well and I can make tortillas even yes I can um but I had a different idea about how I wanted to be and I'm telling you even now I think they just want me to shut up and um they wish I would just be quiet and not raise hell but you know um that wouldn't be me and I also think that um I told myself around I think the age of 16 or 17 that I had to honor myself growing up with a a lot of duress a very difficult family environment I said you know what if I don't honor myself no one will only I can honor myself and if I can do that forever perhaps I could also help others honor themselves and so that's really what I think is the first step to honor yourself in the world and therefore it will jump to two other places to honor one another um it also helped to grow up in the civil rights during the civil rights movement I had a patch on my jean jacket that said chicano chicana power chicano power I think back then um it was chicano power with a brown fist and you know that was that was when I was young and it was it was just fun yeah here we are you know so um so I think the spirit is going on I love seeing young people making change and and being feminist and I and and recognizing their rights in this world and I I love having allies you know and I was surprised with the necessity of allies and the importance of allies and um I I continued to be inspired um to find more allies and to find more personal growth in myself um so that I can try to keep moving forward to answer that question how do we move forward so I hope that tapped into a few thank you um I love what you're saying about allies and I think about uh that it isn't so much the queers that are going to make these changes it's our allies I mean we will do our best but it's it's the allies that have a better upper hand on really changing things sometimes so I you know when I back to my kid's story when I had my kids I thought oh my god I'm bringing two young men in the world um what am I doing and um they've turned out to be more than allies consider themselves part of the queer community and I even had my son say to me um mommy have you ever felt really bad that both your sons turned out straight and I said no no that's that's fine that's great because you know they're they're white heterosexual tall successful men in the world and you know those are the people that are going to have a voice that I can't have and and I I demand to have that voice but they just automatically get it so it's kind of awesome so let's bring more men feminists in the world and um crystal I'm excited to hear from you and I have good questions okay uh let's talk okay where are we let's talk about queer culture and intersectionality you're a queer and elder lesbian person of color how do you prioritize anyone over the other and how do we bridge the queer generational divide solve it right now I think we get that question a lot about how we prioritize whether we are female or whether we are of color or whether we are a certain age economic ability but I think definitely what I stated is I can't I can't separate it out it's so difficult to separate out that when our experience of life in the world is combined um I'm often asked you know what kind of discrimination is the worst and how can you separate out which is the worst or whatever it is if you go into a place where the other day I think my partner I just came back from calistoga and we had a wonderful time we went into a wine shop one of these fancy wine tasting places and I was asking and I'm a non-drinker and so I was asking for non-alcoholic wine do you have anything that's non-alcoholic and they showed me out of thousands of bottles of wine there's one bottle I think it was a Germe Rose non-alcoholic wine and he looked at me and he said it goes really good with rice I was shocked I mean it struck me and this was two days ago so you know what was that about you know and then I I sort of didn't say anything because I felt like was I being too sensitive did I hear it right or you know or should I say something so I had the you know I was doing around and I was trying to figure out what to do and I figured that okay then I started it started to come back to me about all the times that I would walk into a place and something would happen I wasn't recognized go up to a counter somebody else gets waited on going to a gay bar a guy gets waited on in front of you and you get you know totally ignored what is it about why am I being ignored is it because of my gender is it because of my race is it because of my age is it because I'm short I don't know you know so how do you separate and segue all these different things so anyway we're back to this guy and said you know actually I think it's better with noodles and I think he couldn't figure out what I was saying but you know but it really I had to say something but I was shocked that even then at this point in time two days ago that still happens and is it then you start to in those ways try to understand why you're so sensitive to it sensitive to it because it always happens and you can't figure out why it happens so it's a little bit crazy making sometimes but I really want to know I want to be conscious of it and I want to make sure that for me it's about being visible and about being visible in all the ways that I can be as a lesbian as a woman as an elder as a short person you know as a person of color so to me it's being visible and doing the things and being proud and being open and being heartfelt and having conversations with people and really speaking up for ourselves because that's the time that I really think that in any way possible you think it's happening it's happening so speak up for yourself and speak up for other people listen with your heart speak with your heart and speak heart to heart to that person speaking of which I went and met with crystal's mother how old is she 103 103 Robin came to the house it was really wonderful we took pictures and everything she presented a book and your mom was so thrilled to see you in that book and and to see your picture and to see what you've done she was just delighted that was although she hated the blonde hair well that was just a phase just like being a lesbian I guess um are there any more questions out there come on we could use some more let's let's think of something come on if you got something anyway I'm going to read these um this is for Olga how else can we help the kids at the border and thank you for your work PS thank you for your work how else can we help well definitely sign the petition we will do some fundraising to send materials to the the centers that we know about what's really crazy is that some kids cannot cannot even be found because they didn't keep good records they just know they're out there someplace so I think at this point this is what we're asking this an online petition that also people can sign on to and and definitely the postcards there are other organizations we've done we've made trips to the border and taking things you know that that that the people told us they needed we've gone to Washington DC to meet with representatives and we're just mounting this campaign right now so thank you for asking that if you want to talk with me afterwards I'm happy to and say you know there are other organizations that are also doing work um that I can you know let you know caravan for the children is one of the ones that you can go to and and you can find more information there perfect thank you um someone said I'd love to hear about change across differences Karla did you how did you change the white bulldogs you know I started an interactive theater program with Edith Ng my co-worker and we decided to use theater to um talk about the difficult issues related to race class age disability those were our first starts we wrote a grant and and um started working with the dramatic arts department theater dance and performance studies at Berkeley so we had all these little skits scenarios and then got student actors um to portrayed these scenes so that was one of the things we did and the way I could get faculty and I wanted faculty in these workshops and I don't know if any of you are Cal grads um and so or or or maybe some of you are Berkeley faculty um but you could see that they're well you probably should know that trying to change a mindset where somebody thinks that they walk on water is um really hard um and I say that facetiously there's a lot of faculty that I love and became my ambassadors for change and um so the interactive theater program was one way we did it and I had some extra grad student researcher positions and I said anybody that comes to the workshop can have a raffle and I have the money for a grad student research position and they just flocked to the workshops and um and and that was one way it started and so that's amazing yeah that was one way this question goes on this question says crystal and Olga what are your reflections on change across differences I don't know if you know what that exactly means but I'm going to let crystal answer that one thanks cross differences change across differences so that's that place to your question about intersectionality yes it does actually as I age one of the things change across differences is different intergenerational definitely um I have a difficult time with the technology as well and always it seems to be taggable on facebook or instagram thanks a lot but also um I just think what I really miss right now during the pandemic times is the face-to-face contact the in-person feelings about being in a room and sitting and listening listening openly and again I'm always going back to the heart again too listening with your hearts and those are the things that I think how we make change individually with each person one at a time I'm sort of a I don't know a small change type of person I guess but that leads it keeps growing and growing and growing but if I can sit down in a room and speak with somebody even if they live the most diverse opinions I feel like it's my task to listen my task to feel what they feel and to have them feel what I feel and that little bit one person at a time it makes me really small but that's that's what I really feel it is the most important work that I can do right now um start feeling a little modest when you what you actually wanted to do was smash capitalism and smash the patriarchy and smash homophobia and so I and I think those are those are still my goals eventually and I hope that you know whatever generation it may take that's why I'm working with the young people you know because I'm hoping that they will take up those banners but in all seriousness you know of course we have to be practical many times and realistic and and and really try to figure out how is it that we can make those changes and sometimes it can seem impossible I mean I think we've seen some some some some things that have happened you know even in the last period of time some some changes I mean the soccer team did get equal pay I mean you know this is like hey that's not bad um and I think there have been some changes out of the racial reckoning that we have seen you know some changes a lot of backlash and so I think you know unfortunately I think this is this is this is it is is the progress in the backlash and the progress in the backlash look at all the progress we felt we had made after you know the prop eight and and then overturning prop eight and then um and then look all the attacks across the country you know about not even using the word gay you almost like I'm almost feel like I don't I don't think that's happening is it like is it like really you know and it's like yes it's really happening it's really happening it and again I mean the just the brutality at the border against the families against our our peoples from the southern part of the continent I mean it is it's you know it's it's brutal and and and okay want to talk about the world now and talk about what is the geopolitical you know dominoes and and and and how it is really the people on the ground they will pay for what the designs of of a larger designs that have to do with resources and and where the resources are located um so but bringing it back I think on the ground as as as crystal saying is like yeah it is each us with each other it is us with each other convincing each other changing you know across differences it really has to do with us talking with each other and talking with some people that disagree with us and and and I've had my share in my own family um and and it's just an ongoing thing in a little ray of hope my little Trump is little great nephew who is gay um this weekend I know it's like this weekend said yeah I want to tell you something I'm go okay I don't like okay it's getting worse than your thoughts no he said I I'm changing my views I you know I read what you write I talked to other people it really was actually the most heartwarming thing and it's like because I have been suffering by having this person in my family and I love him dearly in many ways so this is I mean you know change across differences it a lot of times it actually really does start with the people closer to us right the people in our families or the our neighbors or or or whoever we come in contact with our colleagues at work so um and I I would add I love your your phrases of of with your heart um crystal and in Spanish we have another phrase which is with my heart in my hands con el corazón en la mano I come to you con el corazón en la mano with my heart in my hand and that's how vulnerable I'm being to share with you and I just you know following that thread and um I don't know if we I don't know if we're closing I just want to say how great it is to be with the two of you Carla and Crystal and just feel like hey we still got it in us do we still get we can still make some changes and I'm inspired yeah I'm inspired by the two of you and I think we all do it you know how we need to do it and how it makes sense for us and also thank you again Robin for bringing us together thank you so much you guys this has been so great um I wanted to remind you all I think we're about going to wrap up that in the back table we have free game changers masks and these cute little lesbian pins and some beautiful as San Francisco library bracelets and we are selling books t-shirts and some game cards my my original first book had a whole seventeen or eighteen uh lesbians and little game cards with their cool little illustration and on the back was fun facts about them and I have little packs of those which are for sale and there's an e-book also that's available and again I wanted to acknowledge NCLR and our family coalition for stepping up to help co-sponsor this event and if you are an educator or um a librarian we have books for free for you back there and these women are going to sit down for a minute if you'd like to speak to them personally and signbooks um and Olga's postcards are there so please join us and thank you again so much for coming really appreciate everyone showing up Kevin's going to close us out Kevin Darley um thank you all again so much for coming out this evening and thanks to our virtual audience as well um thank you Crystal Karla Olga and Robin for bringing us this wonderful program and yeah we'll move to the back to buy some books and we uh should exit the library uh by 745 at the latest thank you so much good night thank you zoom attendees and youtube attendees we are wish you could be here with us but we're glad you are here it got dark