 and welcome everybody and I'm going to just take a moment just very quickly to introduce Todd Paulia. He is our Executive Director of Standout Earth and he will be introducing Reverend Angel. Thanks Anne. So it's my pleasure to introduce Reverend Angel who has been a friend and teacher for dozen plus years and we're really pleased that she's back with us to talk about Radical Dharma. Reverend Angel is a spiritual teacher, master trainer and the founder of the Center for Transformative Change. She's a thought leader that has been designing practices, workshops, and retreats to empower activists to be more values aligned and effective in their work to change the world for over 15 years. She's also a writer, wrote the very well-regarded being Black, Zen in the art of living with fear,lessness, and grace and she's the lead author of a book published a year ago, Radical Dharma, Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. Reverend Angel is also a member of the Standout Earth Board of Directors. She is the Chair of Mindfulness, Equity, and Culture and it's great to have her with us. Thank you so much for coming on a webcast again Angel and talking about your work. I have a bunch of questions. I'm dying to ask you but I wanted to give you the mic for a minute to set the tone. Where are we at? Oh okay, let's, we are here. Radical Dharma is in its, having its birthday right now and for those of you that don't know, Radical Dharma, Talking Race, Love, and Liberation was published right around Juneteenth of last year. It was specifically published at that time because Juneteenth or June 19th is the day that slaves were freed and the final word got to the last slaves in Texas and so it is considered a week of freedom, a week of celebrating freedom and possibility and everything going forth and as many of you know it was also the week of the solstice which is also a time to celebrate what is new and what is emerging. I know that a lot of us have had just a rough time you know since, since November really trying to figure out what to do and if you have seen any of the work that I've done and the articles that I've written in the last six months I've talked about the fact that I think that this is really an opportunity and one of the things that a lot of people don't know is that when what Radical Dharma was written this is really auspicious Todd. We, we really jammed for the book to be released when it was and I mean I was literally writing the book in February of 2016 is when I put the digital pen down so to speak if you look inside of Radical Dharma in the introduction you'll see that it signed off on in February 20, February 20th on 2016 and I was in Istanbul, Turkey at the time and the world has changed let's say radically since then in many ways at least it appears that on the surface but what I've been saying and what I knew and my co-authors knew is that this was just prescient that this is headed that we were headed for a time in which we need need to have these the kinds of conversations that gets beneath the beneath the beneath right like underneath the the real like what is happening in America what is happening in the world and frankly we have avoided it for far too long and so we really pushed for Radical Dharma to be published in advance of the elections and good thing we did because it would have been swallowed up by what what happened in the elections but the great thing about that is that it primed Radical Dharma to be available for people at a time when people really needed to turn to something and start to understand and and one of the things that people have often said to me actually is to put words to things that they have been feeling that they hadn't actually been able to put words to so it's been a sort of strangely exciting year in many ways for Radical Dharma because in some ways you you do a book like this and you don't really want it to become more popular in the sense that it there's more need for it but that has been the truth I'm glad that Radical Dharma is out there I know my co-authors Dr Lamarad and Dr. Yasmeen Saidula are also really really happy to have been able to make this contribution and at this point we we know that Radical Dharma just has a lot more rounds to do a lot more work to do one of the things that we've said is that it's kind of right at its beginning so it's not really that the book has been out and now it's like done for it's it's truly at its beginning it's kind of like getting when water gets on parched earth at first is just to kind of run off and so Radical Dharma has been wetting the soil so to speak of the conversation on race and oppression and getting itself prepared getting people prepared to go to the next level and so that's what we're looking forward to I really thank Stan which I love and have been with for a long time for hosting this conversation and making it available to the kind of people that I know want to be deeply in this conversation and so let's like wet up the soil now that we're we've we've got it all the parched earth a little bit moist let's start wetting the soil and digging deep so that we can get on this path to liberation that I hope that Radical Dharma is going to be a part of for everybody's lives great thank you Angel and there's over almost 300 people joined us for this conversation so there's a lot of desire out there to talk about this stuff we're going to get to the audience's questions you know just a little bit but I wanted to get a sense Angel on Radical Dharma first of all tell us where we can get the book if you haven't read it you have to read it second Angel you've always been an activist maybe even more than a writer so where has Radical Dharma shown up as far as in the real world where you're organizing and working with people on this intersection of mindfulness and activism and and you know and it's changing and evolving and the need is greater than you even probably imagined so how are you handling that what's what's happening are there workshops like how do we get engaged in this after we read the book yeah so I have a big imagination and I I imagine that Radical Dharma was absolutely going to be needed and that it be needed years to come what I didn't anticipate is the rate at which 45 would become the best thing so-called for Radical Dharma business and that has been the case if people have found themselves just like looking over the precipice of where is our country going what is this about what is this revealing for us and how do I locate myself in this conversation in a way where I'm not just a bystander where I'm actually being able to deeply engage the kinds of things that have brought us to this moment and really we have like a 50 year we have a 400 year truly running history that has brought us to this moment and as I introduced and just after the elections that we're where we're at is really a reckoning we're at a place in which we are trying to reckon with like what this country has really been about always and what its potential is for us to go forward in the future but we simply can't do that if we don't get down to the truth and that is what Radical Dharma has been about it's been about setting the the conditions if you will for people to begin to have the kinds of hard conversations that we all know that many of us on the progressive left especially a good well intentioned white folks have been able to avoid in terms of like the deeper conversation we're at that place where we're recognizing you know that racism and depression and you know ordinary everyday racism is not about people in white sheets it's not about the alt right it's not about it's not about the people that do that are like 45 that say brash things that say rough things that say horrible things I mean we got to keep our eye on the prize on that but where we really need to bring our attention is the place in which racism lives in our hearts in our daily lives in the so-called micro aggressions excuse me and Radical Dharma was clearly not written for the alt right it's not written for the Trumpians it's not written for the people that don't believe in love and justice as the place in which they stand and live on behalf of all Radical Dharma is written for people like like yourself Todd like and like the staff at stand earth environmentalist progressive left activists the people that know that the world needs to be a place that thrives for people of different religions different races different sexual orientations transgender folks it's for the Philando cast deals to be able to have a place in which the voice in that has not been heard that has allowed for their deaths to take place to to be heard and where that place has to happen is in our hearts and has to happen in the kinds of conversations we can have all the advocacy we want but if we don't change hearts and minds we are going to continue to see this country be wrestled over because you have a body of people who rightfully I want to say this really clearly that a body of there is a body of people that rightfully believe that this country was made for them it was designed for them it was did not design for the majority of us that are out there in the streets now that are trying to make a space for ourselves and make a space for equality and inclusion and diversity for ourselves despite the intentions of the founding fathers that while they were writing all men created equal they were not considering women they would not considering black folks they were not considering the indigenous peoples whose lands they were taken they were not considering the Mexicans whose border they were crossing over and I think that we have to get down to the bottom of this kind of this kind of conversation where we get out of the denial that America was somehow designed or constructed or built for all of us and start to think about the new America but we have to think about that new America from the place in our own lives in which we are in our radical truth and we consider the things that we had to give up in order to belong the ways in which we became complicit in race and oppression in all of its forms the way we as men well not we as men but y'all as men have been complicit with patriarchy the way white folks have been complicit with racism on a day-to-day basis and I when I say that I'm not talking about some folks you know mean terrible folks off in the corner but just people living their daily lives and the way we have to do that is we have to get woke and we have to stay woke in order to figure out how it is that we are playing a part every day people of color have to figure out their internalized oppression and kind of have the hard conversations in not only which we confront white folks around us but which we confront ourselves and we figure out the ways that we have been internally colonized in our minds that have allowed us to be in some cases the best gatekeepers of patriarchy and white supremacy that the country has ever produced so that's what radical dharma is about and in the last year I've been a lot of people don't know that in addition to writing and teaching as a spiritual teacher I also lead and co-facilitate a race training called embrace which stands for embodied race and power and what we do is we go into communities yoga community spiritual communities buddhist communities and organizations that are interested in going deeply and looking at where race lives in our bodies and how do we do the practices and do the deep work and have the deep conversations that get us out of that but there is one caveat and it is that the only way that I personally do race trainings is when the communities themselves are committed to or willing to engage mindfulness and contemplative practices and embodied practices as a way of facing race and can you talk more about that specifically angel this is something that came up in one of the trainings you did for stand.earth just recently and just talked just a little bit about that as far as like why you know this connection which is not necessarily intuitive for some people between mindfulness and equity and race like what what how does that connect for you I know how it connects with at stand.earth but how did how did you see it I was struck that you only work with groups on these issues if they have a mindfulness practice and that that's fascinating can you talk a little bit more about that yeah you know there are amazing organizations that do race trainings people's institute for for survival and beyond is one of them out of new orleans and of course there's race forward and the trainings they do there's a their organization center for environment for diversity in the environment that do specific trainings for you know particular sectors but I am convinced that if we are not doing trainings in a way in which we are examining our own where we stand literally right in terms of our own participation if we're not doing the internal work then I don't think that we have any choice but to end up in a location in which we are still othering people so in other words if we don't have skin in the game and if we're not able to do the hard work of in examining where we are internally that doesn't come just out of like a Buddhist perspective and one of the things that we've seen is that many other religious organizations and spiritually based organizations particularly yogas christian organizations even evangelical groups are taking up radical dharma because dharma is not about Buddhism dharma is about truth and so you can't get to your truth if you're not willing to do the work and you don't have the kinds of practices that are necessary to be able to sit with what is uncomfortable and truly that is where our country is at that is what we are navigating we are navigating as I often say we're having an identity crisis we're having a spiritual crisis in this country we're trying to solve it with political means and by making the choice to work with organizations and communities that and institutions that are willing to take an embodied and mindful approach to looking at race what that assures for me is that those folks have skin in the game that white folks have skin in the game that they're not running around talking about how can I fix you know race and deal with oppression because I want to fix it for my black friends or my latino friends or foot immigrants but I want to fix it for myself because I know that that slavery the history of slavery in this country that the history of oppression that patriarchy has uh as as as Malcolm X said has bamboozled all of us and that we have skin in the game and that we want to get out of it because what we are left with when we don't examine the way in which racialization and oppression have lived with us we don't get to see the ways we have cut ourselves off of off from love and relationship in our within our organization and institutions we're going to keep having these white run organizations that are trying to scratch their head and say hey what do we do about this when they can't see what do I do about this what is my part in this how is it that I'm losing something in my own life in my own efficacy in the work that I'm trying to do in the world without attacking these issues not from a place of how is that I'm going to fix it for folks but how is it I'm am I going to live liberate myself so that I can have the life of love and justice that I want for myself so for me it's a it's a it's an insurance policy at the very at the least at the very the very very most basic level that people are admitting to having some skin in the game and wanting to do the work of probing what their part is and how how they actually get into the the questions of how race has lived in their own bodies right well I can just say from our our you know my own experience working with you and working on these issues it really helps to have a little bit of distance between you know your your reactions your you know because nobody wants to be a racist nobody wants to be a white supremacist though you know and there's like a pushing away of any labels and things like that because it can't possibly be me and yet our country from slavery to redlining to the creation government creation actually of ghettos to police violence you know that we're seeing every single day almost like there's too many systemic things to not see there's a much bigger picture than whether or not you know you're a racist because you use the n-word or you say you know like that's the smallest sort of piece of racism in a certain way but how do you from radical dharma your own teaching how do you help people what is your advice to people listening who are like hold it like white supremacy institutional racism that's me like yeah absolutely how do you grapple with that how do you have people begin to grapple with your part of a system yes so i think that this is kind of the practical how is that uh without the distance that you're talking about uh you immediately begin to personalize the conversation in in the not good ways so one of the things that people ask always ask me is uh you know would you say so-and-so as a racist would you say uh like one of the questions i often get is like would you say that the police officers that you know have have shot black folks black women black transgendered folks and committed this uh participated in this kind of violence so would you say they're racist and i i pause for a second i said no i would say you know they're not racist i would say you're racist we're racist everybody that's in this room is racist except folks of color because they don't have the power to be racist you can't be swim in the water and uh think that you're not you're not breathing breathing in the water and you're not fish the the racism that uh pervades this country the oppression that pervades this country is not because there's some kind of like small freakish group of people in a corner somewhere doing something this country was uh born and bred on the the falsehood of racism and it's woven into everything that we think about it's woven into all of the images we see it's woven into all of our institutions uh literally we simply can't help in being in a racialized society for everything to be racialized and it's difficult to hear that if you're not doing the kinds of work that allow you to to have some distance from the conversation so that you can begin to observe the history and the way in which history has led up to this moment so that we are all uh actually programmed to view the world in which we live in in terms of a valuing of different bodies in different ways and so it's not that you are a bad person because you are racist you know those of you that have seen the uh the uh video in in which jay smooth talks about you know rate being a racist is is more like dental hygiene and what you got to do is you got to keep cleaning your teeth you got to keep brushing your teeth in order to keep up your hygiene so you can't just make it go away this is just the reality of our country and i think the more and more that we get comfortable in our own skin and that's why again i do contemplative practices on mindfulness practices so that we can have a centering in our own being in order to be able to hear the kind of truths and grapple with the kind of truths that uh unless we confront them and get face to face with them we allow them to be complicit and i want to be really clear about that so if you're not actually working the anti-racist game and you're not working the anti-oppression game then you are actually not only you're not neutral you're you actually are complicit with the furthering of racism and systemic oppression in this country that's the way it was set up it's just because that's the way that the river flows and so if all you want to do is hold your hands up and say listen i'm not doing anything and if i can just be quiet over here you know that makes me neutral the fact is is that you're adding to the force of the river of oppression and when i say the river of oppression it's because race is actually tied to the most of the major forms of oppression in this country it always has been and it always will be and until we unlock racism in this country what we are do what we do is we keep ourselves from navigating the other forms of oppression that racialization was designed to keep in place i'll give you an example of that you know back in the just when our country was you know really you know coming together we were still in colonies what they realized is that the lower class folks which include african the the african slaves the immigrants from ireland and native folk were getting together and they had an uprising and a lot of people know about this bacon's rebellion in 1676 huge you know uprising in in the virginia colony and uh they almost burned the place to the ground and the governor william berkeley of government you know realized like we can't have these folks bonding around class they did not want the only the owning class did not wanting want people that were on the lower rungs of society to bind and that was what was to you know to bond with each other and that's what was happening that was our organizing that was going down at the time you had a bacon organizing the lower classes to rise up against the owning class because we knew who were the real the people that were really responsible for the degradation degraded conditions that people were living under the kind of uh you know you know the the the echoes of what we see in our society today the you know the the poor housing even drug epidemic and epidemics of illness lack of health care lack of sustaining food all of these things were echoes of what we see happening in the country now but when they realized that people were going to organize against the organize with each other around classes what they did is they set up this racialization and they set up the racialization to ensure that lower class uh white-skinned people at the time you never talked about people being white they were irish men they were Englishmen they were Scottish men they were you know they were people were about where they were from so they set these systems up to basically say to people listen if you want to be come naturalized citizens you can't fight alongside the blacks you can't fight alongside the the natives uh because if you do that then you're not going to be able to get access in fact if you refuse to fight and if you're christian and you're in good standing and you're a white you and a man we're going to give you a gun we're going to give you land we're going to give you food and we're going to make sure that you have the capacity to own property but the catch is you can't fight alongside the people that are in the same class position that you are and that started the biggest wedge between people of classes responding and reacting to the low to the upper class to the owning class and we have that to this day we have rural communities rural white communities that actually vote against their own interests to this day because it was set up in our system that it was better to be poor than it was to be black that it was better to be poor than it was to be indigenous that it was better to be poor and white than it was to be anything else and so to this day we're not organizing to this day white women don't organize alongside it until we had the women's march alongside colored women against patriarchy because you needed your man you needed the support of your man you needed the support of the man in the house and so you have yourself subject to patriarchy you would have yourself subject even to rape rather than to be in a position in which you may be kicked out and the worst thing you could possibly be was black so we have the vestiges in this country and that's the thing that I want people to if you don't walk away with anything else is the thing I always say is that it's not your fault but it is your responsibility and Radical Dharma talks a lot about the underpinnings of the ways in which we have been set up in order to buy into these ideas and we start to think that they're our own I've got a dear friend and he he has this quote and I always forget who the quote is from but I'm going to quote him he's he's Greg's Greg Snyder and he's a priest at Brooklyn Zen Center and he says you know we have a lot of people talk about their their personal thoughts and he says there's no such things as personal thoughts we have private thoughts all of the thoughts what we have all of the uncomfortable weird bias thoughts that you have all of the ways in which you other people is something that you inherited there's nothing private there's nothing personal about your thoughts they're collective thoughts all of them are collective thoughts and so if you it kind of get yourself caught up in a sense of guilt about the ways in which you do notice that you have your experience bias the ways in which you do notice that you're thinking well you know should I be worried about the muslims you know really the way that you do look across and you see a brother and you and you and you maybe like you know reach for the door lock so you kind of look around and you feel nervous which you've got to understand wherever you are in society whether you're you're a white woman whether you're white man whether you're people of color you know other people of color and you know cross race cross cross cross ethnicity bias and othering it's not your fault that you have these these thoughts it's it was set up like this and I can't say in in any more uncertain and and emphatic terms that until we really allow ourselves to take it in that our country was designed in this way that our very government designed the system in such a way that really leaves it actually leaves us in a position in which is difficult to escape othering people as the way in which we function I mean as human beings we other people as a way of survival because noticing sameness is a way in which we notice this kind of safety and security but what actually happened in terms of our government and the way that the structures of racialization were set up and and locked into interlocked with other forms of oppression is that we were systematically taught particularly white folks were systematically taught to disengage from their recognition of the humanity of other people and that is the most devastating thing that could have happened because what it means is it's not just that people got privileges and they got benefits but they traded those privileges and those benefits for their own humanity and as human beings we can't compartmentalize that and so we have histories of violence and aggression that still persist right into the police forces of the united states that we were set up for so it's not like the police that are going to the force thinking like i want to like hate on black people i want to hate on latinos i want to go and beat these people you know i'm part of a civil service family and i and and my family went into the police force and into the the fire fire department eventually because they wanted to serve and protect but when you have a system that is set up so that people are oriented to basically fear a black body you know it's just like you're running up against this wall and the only way that you can pierce this is if you're willing to do the work that allows you to recognize the way in which that racialization that oppression that othering that anti-muslim sentiment that looking down on women and thinking they're not you know equal to you lives inside of your body and you got to have the kind of hard conversations where you deal with the discomfort and you deal with the face to face with white folk with other white folks with white men with heterosexual white men that allow you to begin to confront this and can you angel can you give us some some examples from your work practically like it's very hard i can speak for myself as a white male to begin to face some of the systemic you know things and even just the thoughts that you have we have all been programmed along these lines and once you gain some awareness you actually will see some scary thoughts in your own mind happening around issues of equity but how you know in an organization that's working on social justice issues i mean what are the practical steps that you can take um from radical dharma to start surfacing some of this and it'll create a space where it's safe enough for people to face some of this really really hard stuff because if we don't we're not going to get anywhere on it so how how do we do that yeah you know i think the the earliest things that you know first of all your interest is uh is is huge right the fact that you're interested in the fact that you're showing up with the conversation uh and beginning to and being beginning to will willing to contemplate the idea you know i'm racist and i've got racist thoughts and to begin to um start to be able to confront those and give yourself some space some permission and some forgiveness really uh i think a really key part of this is and and particularly Lamarad talks about this is the healing that is necessary for us to forgive ourselves for the fact that we have been caught up and we have been programmed as i said to uh think and feel in in these ways but if we try to remain in these sort of like self-righteous locations where we've got our finger pointed and we're trying to police other people uh we will not recognize that for the distraction that it is of dealing with our own discomfort and that's why i think a mindfulness practice is critical because it allows us to develop the sense of the being able to see the feelings that arise you know as you talked about Todd to have those difficult feelings and to notice them and you know rather than clamp down on them rather than suppress them rather than to kind of get into a a place in which you're insisting that that can't possibly be me just to entertain the question right and to notice uh for for yourself i would say you know to probe in particular for white folks like what does it mean to be white and what has whiteness meant to me and what has whiteness uh gained for me and what cost has that been at at what cost has that been for other people what does it mean that that you as a white person uh can have you know grown up to an adult point in your life recognize the enormous health disparities the enormous education disparities the more the enormous uh disparities in work the uh in balances in terms of like who holds positions and what positions of power that they hold in your organization here's the question you want to ask yourself what did you think was going on with those folks either you believe that they are actually inferior and that's why they don't hold equal positions of power and that they're not entitled to equal positions of power why they live in ghettos why they live under these health disparities with lower lifespans uh why people live in why one in three black men will spend some time in jail in america in 2017 uh either you believe they are inferior or you believe it is the system now if you don't believe it's they're inferior and you do believe it's the system then you have to step into the belief that if the system has been able to maintain this over 375 years 300 to 75 to to uh 400 years you have to stop believing that the system is broken and have to start to come to the recognition that the system is working exactly as it should be and when start with that starting point these two major starting points that a the system is working as it should be and b that i have been complicit in keeping this system in its place you get the kind of core um i want to say set points organizing principles of reevaluating the life that you're living and looking at the world through different eyes and i think that those two things are critical and i but i want to say like put your life jacket on first before you go and start trying to help other people and for me that life jacket is to get a practice that enables you to create the distance so you don't freak out uh every time the information starts to hit you because i tell you when you start to look around and even as a woman of color in a that that a queer woman of color in this body when i started to recognize the ways in which i was complicit in racism it is devastating so i can't even begin to understand what it would be like for white folks to be able to confront the reality that this has been going on all their lives generation after generation and somehow they hadn't seen the depths of it somehow on a day to day basis they don't recognize the way in which they play a role so get your life best get your practice of being able to create a kind of distance i don't talk about race and i'm not talking about impressions so that people can feel bad about themselves i always say if you want to feel guilty which i think is a distraction you can write it you can write me a check i can give you my address at the at the end of this i give you my paypal address and if you feel really guilty and you really want to wallow around racism you can write me a big check with more zeros on the end of it guilt and shame are actually the tools and the weapons of white supremacy and they are designed to keep white folks quiet they are designed to keep them from being able to probe what's going on to question what's going on and the next step is once you have these organizing principles it is to begin to intervene and to ask questions you've got to be willing to ask the kinds of questions of like hey what is going on here but in order to ask those questions you've got to be able to be willing to make mistakes and as we know we have this concept of white fragility in which whiteness and the and when i say whiteness i don't mean white people i mean the construct of whiteness that white skin european descended people have been kind of like dragged into belief in this idea of a construct of whiteness that never existed before this country fully entered it into the lexicon of its legal its legal structures you've got to be able to separate yourself as a human being from this construct of whiteness and start to question it seriously yeah well and i want to say and people of color have to be able to start to probe the way in which the construct of whiteness has become the epitome of beauty of perfection of access and everything that is supposed to be right and good in the world and figure out where that has been internalized and lodged in your body so that we have been set upon to dislike each other to judge each other and to fight against the other people of brown black red and yellow skin in order to continue to uphold white supremacy so we've got to do that work for ourselves instead of spending too much time pointing and and looking at white folks and telling them what they ought to be doing that's great and we have a lot of questions from the audience yeah that's good i'd love to just keep going but i'm going to share you angel okay and is going to take over i'm going to disappear for a little bit and we'll get to your questions okay great i'm going to queue up manuel and tivo and um so we i'm going to make you a panelist and then you can actually choose if you want to be on camera too um and so uh give me a moment to uh queue you both up here and manuel can you uh let's see if we can hear you sometimes it takes a second i have to be a little patient here let's see if i can see it looks like manuel's on uh on mute there manuel oh yeah let me see if i can manuel let's see if you can let's see if i can unmute you and we can hear you again in the meantime i i love you know y'all check out the twitter fee queer body love is uh is tweeting away thanks so much and i appreciate that and uh i'm at zen change angel so if y'all want to like drop me some questions over twitter as well you can do that all right i'm off mute go ahead great manuel can we uh want to ask your question i can hear you really faintly oh shoot okay i'm going to ask your question for you i'm sorry we can just hear you so here's here's your question uh so what's the difference in racism between racism and being racist institutional racism um is it part of systemic or structural i've got a great uh definition here for for race let me start with just race so uh this this is from ronald chism and michael washington who started the undoing racism training race is a specious a specious mean false classic false that that is made to sound true a specious classification of human beings created by europeans whites which assigns human worth and social status using white as the model of humanity and the height of human achievement for the purpose of establishing of maintaining privilege and power and i repeat that last phrase for the purpose of establishing and maintaining privilege and power that is to say that race was only created for the purpose of establishing and maintaining privilege and power and the way that they talk about racism is racism is is race plus power so racism is an institution that is designed to uh is is the the formation that is designed to keep power and place the difference of so and if you if you ask what is the racism angel hold that thought for one second somehow your volume got really quiet too can you maybe adjust your microphone just a little bit if i can do anything yeah i hear you well yeah is that any better yes thank you so uh so you know racist is is in in the theory the belief right in in in race right so if you just take an is right it's like it's the belief in race well everybody in this country fundamentally believes in race and if not in an express explicit well in implicit way meaning that we're all in inhabiting a racialized society our thoughts are racialized and i know there are people that talk about being uh colorblind you could be colorblind but the fact and the the pernicious fact of race and how it shows up in terms of its distribution of of power keeping power amongst white-skinned people and keeping uh or attempting to to persistently keep black brown yellow people people and indigenous people down is consistent and so you know really all of us in this country are a part of racialization it's the the fact that white people have the power in order to be uh lifted up and have the privilege of what that racialization means is what it is to be a racist great men well thank you for your question we're going to move to tivo i'm going to try to unmute you how's that yeah we we got a bunch of folks saying that they can't hear and so rana and uh mary ruth if you would just let us know again if uh you're still not able to hear they said suddenly went very quiet yeah i think that was before the microphone fix hopefully that's true okay let's know if it's a good good idea though let us know if it's better now are you going to bring tivo up i think we should be able to hear tivo great tivo do you want to ask your question can you hear me yes speak um speak as loudly as you can though sorry about that that's okay so you know so in addition to the mindfulness practice and the embodiment practice and i would what i would say the unlearning the trauma and the beliefs it seems like an important piece is building a new story so i just wanted to get a kind of an insight into how that builds into the approach so are you saying tivo building a new story yes yeah i you know and that's why i talk about this notion of a new america because i think that we can't really build a new story on the foundation of this old story if the story began with a very limited number of people in a very particular type of body uh and that this country was designed for designed to um to to to uplift uh to further the lives and enhance the life of until we re re-establish a new story a new america that includes the voices of all of us because you know who tells the story matters and so uh black folks never told this story latinos never told this story uh indigenous folks haven't told the story that we are all uh being fed in america so we actually muslims have not been uh part of telling the story so until we construct a new story for of a new america and we do that collectively that acknowledges our history that acknowledges the context in which this country came into being we won't have the voices of the people that um are currently showing up and making this country the great country that it is this country has never been great without the people that i mentioned it has never been great without queer folks it has never been great without the chinese that built the railroads without the japanese that uh came and you know farm the gorgeous land here without the uh the the the mexican people the that the border crossed over and then land was given wholesale to those people's stories need to be part of our stories i'll say for myself that i don't know enough of those stories and i know a pretty good amount and so absolutely we need a new story we need a new america and we need an america that has the vision that includes all of us it includes the people that live in rural uh white america that are being you know subject to the devastation of an opioid epidemic that comes from i think the deep denial that exists around racialization in this country and the experience of a loss of power in place because the country has been in denial for so long so i want a story that includes them too i want a new america that makes room for them so that they can thrive i wanted a story and a new america that makes room for the indigenous people of this country recognizing that they have not disappeared i want a new america story that acknowledges that this country is nothing made of overwhelmingly made of immigrants and not the not just the people that are recently in the border but that the only truly indigenous people to this country are the native americans and first nations people on the land of of of north america so we absolutely need to fashion a new story and a new america i'm all about the hashtag new america so that we can stop traumatizing ourselves stop traumatizing latinos stop traumatizing black folks um having them believe in this false belief of a founding father that every you know gave a shit about any of us uh that that even cared about the white women in this country we have to stop believing in this false ideology it's like um having someone that abused you be uh invited into you know the and be the foundation of the story that you tell about yourself over and over again when actually they were your abusers they were your captures captors uh they were the people that devastated your people that destroyed the stories that were true to your cultures so we have to let that old story go get out of the denial and allow ourselves to inhabit the truth and fullness of our humanity including the ways in which we have been complicit because the ways in which we've made mistakes or missteped or we've been caught in these lies is part of our story too but that's the way that we begin to heal that's the way we begin to work with forgiveness that's the way we look across the table at each other and we start to embrace the humanity that exists in all of us uh when we tell this new story so thanks Tivo for s asking that question thank you great and um i'm going to queue up daigon and cg next and while i queue them up we had an anonymous question angel that i wanted to um have you have you examine how do you reconcile the buddhist teaching that mind precedes everything with the reality of systemic oppression that mind precedes everything yeah that's how it's written here yeah mind is a construct you know and uh the way i have often talked about it is that whiteness is a construct just like mind is and so whiteness precedes everything in this country and i think it's exactly like mind in that sense in that uh in other words the the um the delusion of that construct uh inhibits us from being able to live reality and the reality i think for all of us uh truly as human beings is the reality of of of our touching into our humanity where we begin to recognize and see each other and see that we share in suffering that we are not separate from each other but this construct of whiteness just like the construct of mind inhibits us from being able to touch that reality and uh in the buddhist idea that to return to touching our suffering and to allow our individual selves to experience directly our own suffering is to allow us to touch into the suffering of all beings is to allow us to touch into to feel the suffering of the very earth and the planet and the devastation that we visit upon the planet but we can't do that if we are being uh inhibited from touching that reality because the construct of mind is trying to protect ourselves from feeling bad from feeling unhappy from feeling um discomfort or on the other hand is luring us into and seducing us into only you know getting caught up in our desires only getting caught up in what it is that we want so we kind of live in this state according to the buddhist sensibility and and understanding in this constant state of grasping after things or of or being adverse to the reality that we experience and so presence however you however you relate to buddhism or christianity or being muslim presidents is kind of the grand central station of all of us meeting the truth of who we are and when we meet the truth of who we are when we navigate the suffering that we feel when we navigate the part of ourselves that we cut off that we left behind the queer part of ourselves the um the um the uh under underdeveloped aspects of ourselves as men because patriarchy told us that we had to leave that part at the door otherwise we weren't truly men the part of ourselves that we left at at the door as queer people because we felt like we weren't entitled to the same kind of access that hetero people were the kind of um parts of ourselves that we leave behind even as people that are differently abled because the uh larger abled society would say that we are somehow diminished or less than because we are differently abled we have to go and touch the suffering of both what it means to have that those experiences visited upon us and to go through the healing process of allowing ourselves to become whole in just exactly who we are great tag on thanks for turning your web cam on i'm going to unmute you it's nice to see you hi thanks angel i'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to um the the ways in which the the white supremacy and and capitalism are playing out within the queer community to perpetuate the separation specifically around the idea that oh we all have to come together or we can't you know adding stripes to the flag is disrespectful or whatever you know i mean i'm hearing so many excuses and and as i continue to do the work and try to inspire others to do the work i'm getting so much pushback and i'm just wondering if you can speak a little bit to that yeah you know i think that dagon and it's great to see you i it's uh you know we have to in in the process of doing this difficult work recognize that our brothers and sisters and our uh non-gender conforming folks uh are are you know as i said earlier hoodwinked and bamboozled and we we have to have a kind of a patience um and extend space uh for people and the recognition that you know this kind of spiritual bypassing this i this bypassing and uh i when i say spiritual i don't mean of a religious nature i mean as as in the the very fact of the things that give rise to life this identity this identity crisis that we're in is easier to bypass that and say hey let's just like all you know get together than to confront how truly painful it is to recognize that we have lost something of ourselves that that there's something in us that makes us disregard the humanity of others and so we just want to like you know push the pedal to the metal and get bit get beyond and get on the other side um you know i connect with the the sense of pain and the ways in which i didn't want to confront that when i realized that you know the colorism that existed and that was part of my upbringing my father's dark my father my mother's fair but i had the uh colorism of you know that that permeates a lot of uh communities of color you know deeply ingrained in me and it wasn't until a very you know dear friend that i loved uh you know stopped me and it was he was uh he was gay and we were i tell the story often that we were getting ready to go somewhere else he was a dark skin brother and and gay and and i was saying you know hey kim stop printing and uh he turned around and looked at me he's very serious in his face and he said you know you're fair skin he said i'm dark skin he said i can't go any place my brother taught me i can't go any place not being clean and looking clean because the the reality that i face is different than the one that you face and you know i'm paraphrasing it but that's what he said and so i know how painful it was for me to confront that and so i just want to say that i know it's difficult when your brothers and sisters you know you want to get them on the program and you got to give people space to come to a place you you got to keep nudging them and to to get woke uh but you have to have some compassion for them too and recognize that it is deep that the impulse to hide behind all sorts of forms of like kumbaya and together and let's not let's just all get along is deeply ingrained because what it means is that people have to confront the truths of their lives of what they left behind what they cut off what they are allowing every day to happen in their own lives right now and i would be in the questioning phase and say you know what is it that might you might be leaving behind and let's not talk so much about like hey go out there and confront racism and oppression and oppression but ask what is it that you have left behind what what of yourself is being left behind that you may not be confronting right now because i guarantee you that that is what is keeping them with their foot on the break trying to bypass as quickly as they can the acknowledgement uh that we are uh in a shit show right now in terms of oppression and we have all been participating and we've all got something to pick up and and turn over and look at in order to find our way into the radical dharma into the whole truth of um how it is that we've been playing a part and also the the that door same radical dharma is the doorway to the liberation so that we can figure out how to be a part of this conversation thank you yeah all right dargon thank you very much and we're going to bring up um cg i'm going to unmute you good another brave webcam hello can you hear me we can great this is juneviev and i'm in seattle and i'm looking forward to being with you reverend angel in december and i'm involved with organizing several facilitated book groups using radical dharma some poc book groups and some multiracial book groups as well and we're looking at this um part on policing we've had some unfortunately in the last couple weeks we've had instances where poc um community members have been shot and killed by police and so we're using this unfortunate circumstances to look at our own tendency to police ourselves and others and looking at specific ways that we can use dharma practices and rituals to um to notice how and where we police in our in our own lives and in our bodies and how we can use these practices to move towards acceptance of ourselves and others and healing around our tendencies or ingrained tendencies to police yeah uh well you know the ingrained tendencies are pretty deeply ingrained uh you know similar to what i was saying to gdaigan is that that bypass has everything to do with the bypassing our own pain um i want to say that you know to all the dharma communities the yoga communities we get a little over the top about like what can we do with these practices and let's just say that you know oppression and racism preceded the dharma in this country so let's just start there folks and not get too crazy and recognize that we have uh resources and information that's going to have to be outside of buddhist practices and uh yoga practices in order for us to get the kind of information that we need that is in context uh in order for us to to really dig down into the you know the history and the context that said you know part of the reason that i wrote radical dharma uh that uh lamarad and dr yes mean were a part of uh co-authoring uh radical dharma is because exactly because it was the practices of liberation that invites us to look fiercely into the truth of our experience that uh really pushed each one of us to deeply have these conversations and to confront the ways in which we ourselves are part of experiencing in the the kind of experiencing we're having in terms of racialization but also the ways in which we are complicit in things like policing other people uh and and the the thing is and that was the one of the key things in terms of the title radical dharma is that you can't take the dharma you can't take the truth you can't take the teachings and say okay i'm only going to apply them to the areas in my life in which it's comfortable for me to look at i'm only going to apply it to the areas that are personal to me but rather i'm going to take a lens to society i'm going to take a lens into to the ways in which i show up and two ways in which i have formed this community when i look around the place uh and so i think you know we have these practices and what they invite is they invite us to to look clearly to see clearly and and look around us and i i can't tell you exactly what it is that you're looking clearly at because that's individual and specific to each community but to uh i i always say that when you feel the impulse to look outside if you can turn that impulse around and say what is it that i'm avoiding that's the beginning question right when i have the impulse to go and police someone what i what i do is say what is it that i'm avoiding confronting in myself now there's a difference between being discerning and naming something and calling something and being honest about uh you know recognizing what's in the room and the the compulsion that is very much a part of our society to other someone to try to bring them down in some way to uh use the back of someone else to to stand up on and to and to highlight yourself and to make yourself right and that's what policing always like and so it's it's the quality and and really what i want to say to you cg is that it is the the practice of the conversation it's not these are not one-off things that you can suddenly you know jump up and say okay i've got the answer we've had a conversation to have a radical dharma to to discover your radical truth to discover what is like deep down inside of you and your communities and the ways in which they've been constructed and uh someone you know invited me to say to say light skin rather than fair skin so i'll say you know i'll say light skin uh or less melanated uh you know welcome all the things um you know we it is an ongoing conversation because as i've said over and over again you know there's a 375 year year momentum and this is not going to be solved in one conversation it's not going to be about like one reading group but it is going to be about us rolling up our sleeves and leaning in and being able to get down with each other and and have the hard questions thank you yeah and and i think you're on um you're on uh i am on you thank you um sorry about that um we have a lot of great questions we're probably going to run out of time before we get to all of them and angel i wanted to check in um todd was thinking that we should probably do a practice too i wanted to ask your thoughts on that we have about you know 17 minutes or so yeah uh so what one of the things that i want to do to make sure that we do before we go is that you know obviously this is a web format and there's a bunch of questions and i love that people are asking us you know so many uh questions um and that i would love to be able to get to and um i can't answer them in the full on way that i would that i would like to but i would like to let everybody know that uh we have a couple of different ways in which you can engage radical dharma directly and uh we're finally going to begin the process which i'm really really looking forward to of um connecting people that have had radical dharma groups together you can go on my website and get some more information in order to get some more information just go on the contact page there uh but we have a couple of events that are coming up and whether you're living east or west there's something for you to engage in uh the first thing and let me just see if i can uh share my screen right quick here here we go uh the first thing we have is uh in the um west coast the next thing that's going to be coming up in july 26th i'll be at the shambala mountain center with both dr with uh both lama rod and also dr yes mean and we're going to be doing a living radical dharma retreat and that should be a really really uh not only um fantastic and powerful retreat but also on really gorgeous land and it's in the mountains of colorado so if you're over here in the west coast so you're willing to come on over here in the west coast uh we're being hosted by shambala mountain center and uh this is going to be especially powerful for people that come from uh sanghas yoga spiritual interfaith and different faith communities it's it's open to all it's a it's a shambala land-based center but it's open to everyone and immediately after that uh also here on the west coast to go to the gorgeous uh tasahara zen mountain center uh there's a couple of folks that were you know had questions here that uh are part of the san francisco zen center system um and again this is open to all and i do this with uh abbas food schroeder uh from green gulch and i'm really really looking forward to that and this is about embodying race love and liberation so it it really is going to take us into figuring out how it is that we embody this idea of a radical dharma oh it's this says met mountains of of colorado but that's not the mountains of colorado that's in the the mountains of uh of tasahara and it is a beautiful place anybody knows about the tasahara hot springs uh please do come and join us there and the big big national uh radical dharma camp is going to be taking place august 4th through 6th and um rime back new york we're being hosted by omega institute who have been fantastic partners both the omega women's leadership center and also omega institute and this is the big national gathering for people that have started radical dharma reading groups and they are ready to take it to the next level to have uh in person direct experience again both uh dr yasmin and lamarad will be there and we'll all be holding a kind of um broad caucus to figure out what are the next steps for radical dharma how do we seed radical dharma cam conversations in communities what does it look like in other faith traditions in yoga communities uh in regular communities your in your churches uh we we really want to bring people together and set ambassadors out into the world to bring this radical dharma into the way that it looks i like to say that radical dharma is the kind of occupy of oppression and racism in this country and we want to have people make it there so please do join us for the radical dharma national camp you can if you're interested in volunteering you can also go on the website and my website angelkyodowilliams.com slash contact uh and uh find me there and uh let's get you involved in some way so i definitely wanted to say that there are ways to continue to engage and um you can uh you know continue to send me the questions that you have i won't be able to get to them in the same way that's why we do the the webinar so that we get the opportunity to do some more in-depth uh questions and answers here but i do but i do want to invite people to come along and uh come to these in person because this is where we really move the needle folks and i think that this year is an incredible time to move the needle uh we know that we're up against uh a whole lot of stuff that's going on in in you know dragging a lot of people down and it's time for us to pick ourselves up and do the work that is necessary we've got a few more years to to to to be able to work and it's time for us to just not like address these things with merely political situation political situations but to but to to really meet the situation where it really lives which is at the core of our hearts and minds to address these questions of identity to address the questions of denial that we have been living within this country for all of these years the civil rights movement was is of course laudable and we always want to deeply appreciate the power but you know a lot of the civil rights folks that we that we know of and we love and we supported knew that there was a lot of work to be done white supremacy is pernicious and it has an incredible ability to keep morphing these days we're seeing a raw and ragged version of it but we've got those of us that believe in love and justice as i know all of you do if you're on this call have got to get it out of our own hearts and and do the practice and get in the conversation in a way that lets us get free get liberated ourselves so that we can take it to the next level and you know and before you go there's one question that i definitely want to respond it's from michael hueman that is here and i see the tail end of the question is to talk about where do we begin with people who are not ready to engage and i want to say two things for people listen there's a lot of attention that we put on like try to do the hardest thing that we can possibly do first or what seems like the hardest thing and it's out there somewhere when people are not ready to engage move the conversation to the people that are that are situated in love and have your conversation begin to engage in the places where there is some love where there is some readiness where there is some movement believe me that when the net the networks of people that are doing their own work begin to ripple out we'll touch those people that seem like they're not ready to engage this is a conversation about moving hearts and this is a conversation that goes deep to the core of people's identity and we don't know what kind of pain and suffering we're touching when we have these kinds of conversations which is why everybody freak you know it used to freak out and i'm really pleased to see the ways in which we can have a conversation and say white supremacy and and know these days that we're not just talking about folks in hoods and that and we have come a really really long way but we want to make sure that what we're not trying to do is to police people or to arm wrestle people into conversations now when you're in situations in which you've got institutions in which people are holding power and you're part of those institutions in your community there is a certain impetus for trying to push at those communities i would say excuse me and push at those level of power excuse me i would say to start with inviting people into the conversation and when they're not ready you got to get with folks and band your arms together and insist because if we don't insist with inside of our institutions inside of our organizations inside of the inside of the communities in which people are holding on to power desperately if we don't insist then we might have to like pick ourselves up and go someplace else what you what we don't want to do is continue to martyr ourselves in such a way where we are broken by these conversations so get yourself fortified with love grab arms with someone that is willing to have these conversations with you and don't go it alone for radical dharma we are expecting to put out a curriculum that's going to help a lot of you folks and so make sure you sign up get on the radical dharma mailing list and uh we'll we'll move that forward too beautiful angel thank you so much that that touched on several questions including Chris a bunch of them trying to do that that was that was very well done um do you want to lead us in a in a brief practice and and then we'll bring Todd back for some final thoughts yeah sure you know um i want to bring us into a practice uh i often do this practice about centering presence and the reason that i particularly offer this is it really has come out of my own experience of my radical dharma is to uh bring myself as present as i possibly can in an embodied way so that i am not uh organizing myself around looking outside someplace else uh before i have this conversation i do the centering practice as i want to say an act of leadership and love and commitment to justice in uh before entering any kind of conversations with people entering into new meetings i did it before getting on to this call and uh you know getting set up with an and Todd here and so uh it's really brief and you know uh it involves us you know being able to bring ourselves back fully present i'm going to run through it quickly there's if you want more information about it do sign up on our mailing list and uh or the contact list and ask for information we just uh filmed a full version of the centering practice but here's a brief one first you want to find your feet wherever you are whether you're standing or sitting i love that cg called in from uh a uh from a car and pull out look like pull over on the side of the road there i you want to begin by finding your seat and finding your feet and when you find your feet what you're doing is sending like a tap route down recognizing that each of us are connected to the earth and it is one of the ways in which we can tap into our relationship with the planet and uh recognize that we're not separate from the planet that we are a direct part of the earth here and so uh by fee finding our feet and getting them underneath us we establish our sense of uh being connected to the root of all things and next you want to find your seat and to find your seat is to really locate yourself in space and to uh if you're sitting it whether you're sitting in a chair you want to have your pelvis slightly tilted forward or if you're standing you want to have your tailbone so that just uh drops down and is uh level with the earth and uh bringing your pelvic girdle underneath you so that you're not kind of pitch forward or pitch back and that really enables us to get our sense of security and safety in the space that's around us next you want to find your length and use your outbreath to extend your crown all the way up to the sky and we talk about our sense of dignity that is found when we extend into our length whether standing or sitting and that dignity is something that oppression robs from us or attempts to rob from us and when it does we can feel the full length of our body and recognize that the dignity that we have is inherent to who we are that the fact that we breathe makes us worthy and that we always have this in this dignity in our bodies in our beings and we can extend right into the fullness of the length of our body to feel into that dignity and then we want to feel into the full width of our body and when we do that extending into our width what we feel is our heart gets exposed and so you get this feeling of your uh heart exposed right here with my my radical dharma sweatshirt i feel that uh exposure of my heart which always has this little moment of when i feel that width of like whoa you know i'm i'm here with people and i can feel my own shoulders from left to right and then fill feel the space around me and if there's anyone in the room around on either side of me i feel and include them in my space and i choose to take up in my width the whole space of the room that i'm in knowing that i am connected to the space to the people whether present in the room with me but also the ones that are not present and feel the expansiveness of what it means to be in relationship with others and from my exposed heart i drop down into my soft belly and right around to the back feeling my full depth by feeling everything that's behind me the chair that's underneath me and recognize that behind me are all of my ancestors the ones known and unknown the ones that i choose in my life and in front of me are the future generations that each of us do our work on behalf of and in our depth what we do is we choose to take up our place right here and right now and so we feel that depth in our connection of the past to the future but also allowing ourselves to be fully in our depth in this moment because the present is the only place in which we can do our work and finally we connect to what matters to us why we would do the difficult work of facing oppression why we do the difficult work of unearthing the racism the bias the white supremacy that we have inherited that we have internalized in our body we do that for a reason it's not just to be good people but we do it because we want to live we want to thrive we want to love and there's something there's someone that wakes us up in the morning that moves us that gets us out of bed and we want to connect to that as the reason that we commit ourselves to justice that we commit ourselves to love that we commit ourselves to the hard work because if we want to enter these conversations and we do it without anchoring it to a real reason to something that really sets us on fire that makes us get out there that motivates us to connect with the world if we do it without that then we do it and we get lost in the head and we're not dropped down into embodied experience of what it is that is important to us what it is that matters to us and that's where we want to do any of this work from centering it on what matters centering it on love because that's the only way in which we are going to assure that the work that we do is about justice and if you haven't done it yet just pull up the corners of your mouth and make sure that you are smiling and staying in joy there's a whole lot of suffering out there and we're not going to pass through it or override it we're going to have our joy we're going to have our love in the face of suffering and we're going to continue to move forward from that place together thanks so much well Reverend Angel uh Suzanne thank you so much just um bring I think um I just saw a flash of okay there you go we got a flash of Todd yeah well thank you so much Reverend Angel um and thanks for so many you know hundreds of people participating in this we have information which we'll be sending out the face-to-face radical dharma sessions the book is available on amazon.com and other places I'm sure I don't know if you have a preferred place that people go get this go to your local bookstores and tell them that we need a radical dharma in a bookstore folks uh you know we we we we appreciate amazon but we want to love up on the local bookstores but we've got to invite them to carry the uh the the books the information ask them for James Baldwin ask them for radical dharma ask them for the law the the color of law that tells you about the the history of the new deal and how it was never made for and it was kept away from people of color black folks in this country get the books that you need get them in your local bookstores and get together and sit together and have those conversations great thank you so much Reverend Angel and for everyone who participated and we hope to have Reverend Angel back again at some point soon so thank you I hope so I want to thank before we get off Ann uh has just been so stalwart in getting us on here and uh you know making this available I really want to uh thank stand.earth and all of the staff that are fantastic people I was just with them last week that have like thrown themselves into making sure that this is available to activists this is a very special in particular outlet and I love that uh you all have committed to and of course that would not be possible without my friend and colleague and uh you know sometimes a guy a guy that would have some obstacles with Todd who's just a brilliant mind and uh stand is a fantastic organization I highly recommend y'all check stand.earth out and thank you all for being here thank you each of you for the questions that you have put in the ones that I could answer the ones I haven't answered yet I'll do my best I hope you will come back and uh I hope to see you real soon. Thanks Angel. Thank you.