 Thank you. Okay, welcome everybody. Sorry for the slow uptake. Let's see what happens when you get home. So we have with us today, the wonderful inimitable, you should be a late night talk show host, Rebecca Ratliff, who after years and years and years of trying to teach the insurance industry how to humanize claims handling has now moved into humanizing conflict resolution, where we know she's gonna be a lot more effective. Bill Harrison, our reading criminal defense attorney, one of our leading civil rights attorney and a brother of a different mother. So it's just the three of us today. This is just your trio, you know, piano, bass and drums. So Rebecca, you're the keyboards. What would you folks like to talk about today? There's so much. There is. Well, let me start you with something. I was just reading that the Republican Senate is now unifying to demand that President Biden remove Deb Haaland as the interior secretary nominee. Hopefully, knowing Joe Biden and the rest of his team, that one will fly just about as far as a wing Donald Trump. But to me, it's extremely offensive. Not just because my grandmother was Latino, Native American, but because if that time has not long since passed, to me, that's pure racism. The reason they're trying to get her out is because she will put a stop. And it's a privilege to things like the Dakota pipeline and things like that, that are just as egregious treaty violation as the things that Andrew Jackson and people like that did. But when we're talking about white supremacy, racism in America, we ain't talking about just black and white, indigenous peoples have been mistreated as badly or worse as any by white leadership, intentionally for a long, long time. Well, we have to start from the historical perspective here. Number one, this is America was Native Americans. That is America. And as most imperialists do, they take over lands that they come into contact with. There's a belief in ownership that ownership can be in an individual or a family or a nation. And clearly, if you talk about indigenous peoples, they see that very differently. The land that they are on, they're caretakers of that land. No one owns that land, but the man upstairs. And so they have a total different perspective on that. And clearly, when you have a very conservative white America trying to oust someone like that, it's back to where we started. It's back to where we came. It's imperialism, white privilege at its worst. Basically, if a president has a right, traditionally to pick his or her, cabinet members, body affiliated members, people that they believe have the same agenda as they have. And so that traditionally has been our political structure to do that. And so this not only smacks it against that, right? It's from how forefathers had written in the laws to this whole idea of imperialism at its worst. And instruct, yeah, and obstructionism. These are obstructionists who have no clear reason why they don't want this choice except to just give the new president a hard time. It is really a sad time in America that we've come to the petty fights. And we used to say, we'll talk about the devil, but we really didn't know QAnon is in Congress. And it is just really an interesting and sad time for Americans like me who believe that the race that we are all called to care about is the human race. And it is just, this is really something to watch. I didn't know that in my lifetime I would see this type of behavior, but it just feels like we're living, we've moved back into the 1800s almost. Or worse, yeah. Or worse. Hey, no, and it's pure white racism. And there just isn't another name for it. And it's overt and it's intentional and they know it is. And 45, and they think they need to do that to hold on to the Trump's chair of voters. The sector of the rural, less educated evangelical population that really thought he was standing up for them against everybody that didn't look like them and talk like them. Exactly. And I want to make a point here. I think that the president, the former president basically used religion in the wrong way because obviously there are evangelicals who obviously are not of the same ilk as the Trump supporters. And like you say, they really catered to the uneducated group of folks there to use them as sort of their shield as they ran towards America. And so it's really unfortunate that people fell into that sort of mentality and allowed Trump to do that and use them. Christianity is the foundation of our country. It's the backbone of our country. And the mere fact that people are Christians in and of themselves doesn't necessarily mean that they're conservatives in some respect or that they have a political bent such as a Republican bent and so on. I'm Christian and I'm Democrat, right? So, and there's a huge bunch of folks out there that believe the same way I believe. And it's unfortunate they've used that, the Bible and that Christian belief to really use that and ostracize people and also to force their agenda on people which is really unfortunate. Well, the Bible was used to keep slavery going. It's, the Bible has always been used in the manipulation of people and that's coupled with fear and just other tactics that have been used to oppress people, keep people down, make people concerned about their fellow man, just the mistrust and then add to that misinformation and disinformation. I actually had to look in the dictionary to make a distinction between, I had never, I don't think I had ever heard the word disinformation. Of course, we know misinformation is wrong information but disinformation is wrong information on purpose. And I don't think I had ever heard that word. So I had to look up the distinction between the two words but it's just, this is manipulation at a very high level. It's very highly motivated clearly because we have what we know to be intelligent enough people just continuing lies and just the falsehoods for political gain, but I have to believe that there's more to it and maybe somebody's put it in a time capsule and we'll hear about what really happened. Maybe my son will actually hear what actually happened back when somebody writes the book. But I don't think we have any idea what's really going on here and where the motivations truly come from. And there are people who are well-rounded historically like Heather Cox Richardson who are really starting to bring out elements of truth. Hey, Isabelle Wilkerson with her book, Cats. Things that we really need to understand that have been suppressed, that have been intentionally twisted withheld, very thick because what we've been seeing in this country are not just the last four years or the last 40 or the last several hundred is intentional inequality. It is a platform, it is a principle that the Republican party has adopted. Can you imagine in our history a political party comes into the presidential nomination and comes out of it with no platform. Just whatever he tweets, that's our platform. Now, that's not embarrassing, that's shameful because what he tweets is racist, it's misogynist, it's extremely destructive and it's anti-humanity. And I think for those of us whose values be you Christian, like Bill and Becca or Zen Buddhist, like the underneath, respecting the equal value of the human spirit in each person. What they do with it may be different, how they express it and treat people may be different but that innate human spirit in and of itself has a value that should unify it. And you don't have to be religious to see that, you just have to be fair-minded. When my son was five years old, we kept reading to the kids up to five or six or even seven because it's such a nice way to end the day. You're lying down up against a pillow, you're reading to your kid, there's a closeness, there's a quiet and books take you into a world that you can go in together with your child and it's just wonderful. So I was reading to him about racial tensions in the inner city back in the 1950. And he looks at me but I didn't really do that. He said, oh yeah, much worse than that, much more cruel than that. Five year old looks at me, shakes his head, one word, stupid. I have come finally, almost 70 years later, to understand where that came from in him, what it meant to him. What it meant to him was they don't have the human intelligence to be a human being or treat people as human beings, they're just not smart enough to do that. They're not morally bad, they're stupid, they're lacking in that intelligence to recognize and value humanity. Disconnect and decency. But you also hit on systemic racism, structural racism, it's baked in bias, it's worse than that. It is the willingness, regardless of the evidence, to the contrary, to participate in systems that keep people down. Black and brown people, maybe people who are, I don't think we use the word handicap anymore, people who have a disability, whether it be physical or mental, we ostracize people as a society. But then those, the structural racism piece further, just it keeps people out of neighborhoods and it keeps people out of jobs and it restricts participation and inclusion. And it's a cancer in our society. Yeah, no, and I agree with that, absolutely. And one of the things that I keep going back to religion, one of the things that was part of serving this past weekend was this whole idea of selfishness and pride and how those two things really can destroy, obviously unity, most importantly, unity, because a selfish person is not selfless. A selfish person does not think about anyone else. A selfish person lets pride get in the way of proper decision making. And so I think that that really on top of stupidity is a real problem for a lot of people. And that we have to refocus and we think about our selfishness and what we want. It's always we, what we want, what I want, okay? Instead of what the community deserves as a whole and what we best for the community. As we as a civilization never made it anywhere without a community. We didn't make it, the single people, single individuals throughout history never made it. It was the community that always supported the person and that community existed, thrived, survived. And we have to get back to that mentality of selfishness versus selfishness. That's a good point, Bill. So is it unwillingness or is it inability or is it incapacity? What is it? It's a wrong mindset that we are as from childhood and a lot of communities that mindset is instilled in us that we come first, that we are the best, that you don't get anywhere in this world unless you're the best and you have to scratch and climb over people to get where you're supposed to be. We had that in our former leader, okay? That was his mentality and his upbringing. And we have to get away from that. So obviously it's a disconnect from the old and a reconnect to a different mindset. It really is a mindset. And as Chuck is saying, it starts with families and children and properly raising your child and instilling in that child those types of moral beliefs, understandings, educating them in the proper framework, laying down with them before they go to sleep, reading them to them, very critical reading to them and children understand that. People say, well, you can't read that stuff to children. Yes, you can. Because they definitely have the capacity to understand. So we need to rethink how we address our views, our societal views in the sense of being selfless versus selfish. And I think, Bill, that you folks have hit right on the heart of the matter. Just going through this with my MBA class. We had that one time. Wonderful students, best students I ever had. They live in a collective society. So they have a kind of advantage which honors ancestors and generations and connections and relationships between. Anyway, we were exploring, what is it that cultivates and motivates, that greed, that selfishness, that really disruptive manifestation of self? And when the choice and the ability to connect with people of choosing the opposite is so much happier, so much more rewarding, brings so much more people. Hey, and one of the students, very insightful young man, as you know, maybe we're all insecure. Maybe sometimes the insecurity, we feel we're not going to be able to succeed in that competition. We're not going to be able to get those rewards where it's a zero-sum life game. And that makes us more competitive. It makes us less trustful. It makes us engage in more of the conflict behavior, less of the collaborative behavior. And we thought about that. We talked about that for a little while. And then we started to see, looking at the most destructive leaders in world history, Hitler, Trump, others, Mussolini, right? These are all people who manifest that extreme insecurity. These are classic textbook, Narcissus K. But it's not the insecurity that makes them the most destructive. They go public with it because they are overconfident in their ability to get away with it. That they can manifest that insecurity in destructive negative emotions, hacking people, tearing down people. And that will somehow build them up by tearing down the other. And they pick on the people that they feel are least like them. And they do it very superficially the way they look. I was in a book club conversation, I think we talked about this a little bit, where a wonderful participant, nice older white lady asked the question, how do I not be seen as just another Karen? Hey, and it went around for a little while. And so her friends in the book club said, oh, don't worry about that. We all know you. We know you're very open-minded. You treat people all fairly. And another person said, yeah, plus we're in Ann Arbor. It's a bastion of liberalism. We don't have to worry about that. Hey, and I thought to myself, well, number one, if you really want to not be another Karen, and I would be the male equivalent, whatever that is, you have to not be another Karen. You have to be a person who is not just seen but known as one whose closest friends, whose family, whose chosen companions in life are diverse people, older, younger, people of color, people of different backgrounds. And my kids have become those people. I've tried to live to become that person. My mother, a small town, Louisiana woman, white woman, live to become that kind of person. It's so much better choice. Jump into the salad bowl. Join the daikon and the lemon grass and the lettuce and the tomatoes and the cucumbers where everybody has their own texture and flavor and value and color and everybody has a place and the salad would be less if we weren't all in there. That's right, join the, yeah, the sweet, the salty, the crunchy. Yeah, the experience is much more rich and so is the flavor when you have that inclusivity piece. People get diversity and inclusion all mixed up. It's first diversity and inclusion was the tag phrase. And then it became inclusion and diversity because inclusion was the piece that everybody was missing. So look, there are two black people in the room but they're not saying anything. They're not making any contribution and they have a special set of skills that you're not using or enabling. And then so it went from diversity and inclusion to inclusion and diversity. And then it went to DE and I, diversity, equity and inclusion because we had to drive the point home a little more by adding equity. And now it's diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging because guess what, still institutionalized didn't really understand the inclusion piece. And now we have to add the belonging component to try to focus on retention because you may get some bright stars but it's hard to keep them because they don't feel like they belong, they're not supported. So it's, we have these struggles in our country and if we all stick together and have open conversations, Chuck and I are famous for our good trouble conversations and projects, I believe, I have to believe we'll be okay because a lot of people have worked very hard for us to be okay. And there's one more. Diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging are absolutely wonderful but until you have crossed the bridge with those two empowerment, you're not there. So I think what we're talking about is not just a seat at the table but a decision-making influencing her seat at the table. That's H-E-A-R-D, not H-E-R-D, right? That's equity partners in law firm. That's the suite in corporate. That's department and agency heads and deputies in government. Those are what we need to see. That needs to happen. We need to look at a society in which our leadership reflects not just the best of diversity but the best of diverse choices because we know statistically the more diverse your decision-making group, the more comprehensive the perspectives, the understanding and the more sustainable the decision and the action taken will be and the more beneficial for the greater range of people. And we'll see you here today because we love that mix, right? Go over there. Well, you just gave me another title. I'm listening to you talk about herd H-E-A-R-D versus herd and then I wrote down from C-suite to C-suite and I meant S-E-E suite. We don't just want to see people, we actually want them to be in leadership positions, in power positions, in decision-making positions. That's exactly right. There are all these optics sometimes that we see in corporate America where it looks like it looks good but the boxes are just being checked off and the people who really are making decisions they don't look black and brown. They don't look like other diverse, people in other diverse categories. We have to get there. Exactly. You need to open the door, you need to open your mind and take a little praise from Rebecca. You got to rewind at that point. And it really is as you're indicating Chuck, it really is an idea that once we do this it's better for everyone. Obviously not only for the person getting through the door but that person is going to lend so much to the dialogue, to the conversation, to the growth of where you want to go because you don't know that perspective and that perspective completes the pie for everyone. And so it's about getting as well as allowing someone to get. It's just the other half of the pie. And as we move into our last couple of minutes where we are, maybe one of the things we can think about is we're not just opening door. We are making conscious intentional choices of diversity or diversity, equity, inclusion and empowerment state because it brings more value. Exactly. And I look at, somebody asked me, what's the biggest difference for you in the pandemic? And I said, frankly, more choice. If we really, and I think that's the result of this election we finally have back more real choice. Let's use that choice to elevate the people who have been marginalized, the people who have been underserved, the people who deserve to have their value recognized, honored and to have places where they can have a voice in how they're treated. Thanks for being part of that. Last thoughts, Bill, Rebecca. Inclusion, not exclusion, unity. Race that matters is the human race. You got it. Thank you all. This has been wonderful. Uplifting, hopefully. And we'll see you all in two more weeks. Thank you. Thank you for raising your hand back. Thank you. Stay safe. Don't stay silent.