 Hello. We made it to the last panel of the day. How are you guys feeling? Good? I'm a little tired but I wore my special shoes with bootstraps so I can pull them myself up by them in case I get tired. So, yeah, I have the honor of introducing our panel for expanding the table, intergenerational activism and policy change. So, first of all, thank you to the panel right before us for setting the historical context for this conversation we're about to have, kind of discussing how to center youth voices and also navigate activism intergenerationally, what the best practices are, what the strengths are, but also what our personal experiences are in doing so. So, I'm going to let the panelists introduce themselves, but just for names, we have Tatiana Benjamin who is an American Studies PhD candidate at the University of Maryland College Park, who just, I've heard, defended her dissertation over here, Tatiana, and closest to me, I should have gone closest to me farthest, but we have Aisha Gardner who is a poet and activist for Split This Rock, and then at the end we have Sumi Yi who is a community organizer for the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium. So, that's a lot, and before organizing this or having helped organize this with Melody, Fyerson, and Becky Chow, I wasn't really familiar with these organizations, so if you could start by talking about your organization, your work, how you got into it, and sort of what your journey has been, that would be great. So, usually in these times we do rock, paper, scissors in Nakasek, but since I have the mic now, I'll just, okay. Hi, like she said, my name is Sumi, that long organizational name we actually just call it Nakasek, and what we primarily do is work with Asian American communities, and so we try to organize the API, Asian American Pacific Islander folks to really get active and engaged in terms of social and racial and economic justice, and so we're a national org, but I'm actually out from the Virginia office, and so we'll be doing a lot of that. In terms of how I got involved, it's actually a funny story, so before I got here I actually never heard of Nakasek. Before this I was actually working for a state delegate, and I just told my delegate, I was like, you know, I really gotta find my roots. I gotta see some Asian people, like I am out here, and I don't see my Asian folks, and so I really want to know what my Asian community needs, and I just want to hear them out, I'm just curious. And so I moved back, I was out in Roanoke, which is the southwest part of Virginia, and I came back to Northern Virginia and then found this organization, and so my best friend, her name's Sandy, and we went through high school and college together, and also elementary school, so we were like blood sisters at this point, and she really talked to me about what it means to be undocumented, so she was the first person, and she's the one really that really fuels my passion for doing this work. We were in high school and we were talking about our FAFSA and talking about college, going to public colleges, and talking about getting our driver's license, getting a car, and there was Sandy who couldn't be a part of that conversation, and to feel uncomfortable and feel like you have to hide and run away from conversations that are just things that we all want to talk about and be engaged in, I saw that that was a pain that I never felt, and working with Nakasek I saw so many youth who had to struggle with the same things and even more, even folks with status struggle, with getting out of college and all the debt, paying off things and really knowing what to do with our education, but that is amplified, those struggles are amplified for those that are undocumented, so that's just a little bit why I'm doing the work, why I'm still here, even with all the farmers' tan and all that, but yeah, so I think that's my story. Hi, I'm Asha Gardner. I am with Split This Rock, nonprofit organization around poetic provocation and witness. I have been with Split This Rock since 2012, when I was a sophomore in high school, I was a sophomore, yeah I must have been a sophomore, and I started out, okay, a little bit about me in my life. I was a natural, like, poet artist, you know, raised up in an artistic household. My mom was a visual artist who is a librarian actively now, and my sister's father, who was my male influence in the house, was a drummer. He drummed with the likings of Jonathan Butler and currently is with, who is he with right now, Valerie Simpson, so I grew up in this really like earthy arts environment, right? I went to high school at Woodrow Wilson High School, which is in Tinley Town, right, so that's in a predominantly white area of D.C., and for me, I noticed in high school, right, there was no place for me in my music department. There was no place for me in my theater department, right, so if I was to decide to go out and try out for the school play, and I wanted the main role because I can sing jazz, you know, I can act, they've trained me my whole life for this, I've been exposed to artists and people, right? I can do that, I can claim that role. I would get responses from the people who are in charge, the directors of the plays, and you know, the sponsors of the program to say, like, you are amazing, so we want to give you an ensemble role because we can know that you can support the cast so well, right, and you look at the ensemble year after year after year, and it's full of colored kids, you know, and this is just where they get their space in school, and that was not enough for me. So I went to my librarian with a group of my friends who were also my tried and true ensemble friends, and we saw my mother happen to be the librarian of the school, we were so upset, we're like, Mom, they're keep doing this to us and we're better than them, I know we can do better, and she was like, I dare you to start a club. Start some kind of club, do something, and at that time, Split This Rock was just opening the Louder Than a Bomb competition for high schools. Louder Than a Bomb is a competition that started out in Chicago to bring their area high schools together to get all the students on stage for poetic exchange, right, so bring your personal stories, your thoughts on politics, your view into your world, and let's exchange it from all corners, and they brought that to the DMV. We're like, we want in, we want to be a part of it, we don't know what it is or what it entails, but we want in. And that year, we co-founded Motley Society, which is the current standing poetry club and team at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School. For my friends, we named ourselves Motley Society because we were a group of people we said we could not fit in, we just couldn't for the likings of us, you know, we were arch kids, I was a poet, we represented a full diversity, you know, it wasn't just black, it was Afro-Latino, it was, Latino, it was Caucasian, it was everybody, you know, all together in this, because we shared a completely different idea, external to what stood, you know, and split this rock came and gave us coaches. They gave us two cool dudes to come and just summon as many kids to get our message to more kids who might be feeling our way in our school, right? And we look up one day, and we have a whole team, and we're all writing poetry together, and we're like, poetry is nothing but songs without music, but rap without a beat, but, you know, a monologue without like all the cast and costumes and all that kind of stuff, so we can live here, you know. Currently, I've gone on to use split this rock and the things that they've taught me on poetic activism to go back to that school that I graduated from, and I'm currently a facilitator of their poetry club as it stands now, through split this rock. We are participating in that same competition, we went on to win the first two years of it that year. We went on to, you know, keep in all the festivities, you know, that there are students around all the high schools that felt like we felt at our school, you know. It didn't matter about the demographic, it didn't matter where it was, it felt like there just was no, there was a confined space that a minority artist could exist in, you know. So we broke that. We completely changed it up, you know. So now, I sit on a board with youth facilitators of all walks of life, you know, and we come together, we work with students to get them into a place of feeling like they belong, if they have a place for themselves. Your talent is not going to go to waste here, it's not going to slip away from you, you're not going to age out of it, this is your time and you can't do it. So that's a little bit of a... As stated, I'm Tatiana and I'm happy to share this space with both of these wonderful people and all of you. A little bit about me and my story. I am a graduate student at the University of Maryland College Park. I'm not officially affiliated with any organization, but when you start graduate school, you have to find your research project. And I was reading a book one day and one of the scholars stated that a respondent said to them, study yourself, study people like yourself. Oftentimes, you find research around blackness, being done by scholars who are not from these communities or communities of color. So I wanted to tell that story. And I grew up in New York and I grew up in a family, a mixed status family, my family's Jamaican, but I had folks who were documented and undocumented. And I was like, well, why isn't this story being told? So often the immigration, race and ethnicity narrative is about black immigrants advancing, that they're doing better than African-American counterparts. There's this kind of model minority myth around the success of black immigrants. But what about the narratives of black immigrants who are working class? Folks who are undocumented, who have been deported. Within my own family, I've had two people deported. When I was about eight years old, my eldest brother was deported back to Jamaica. Then when I was graduating high school, I had an uncle deported back to Jamaica. And I was like, well, what's happening here? Why is this narrative not being told? We now have a movement around dreamers, but often the representation in that image is of non-black Latinx people. So where are the dreamers who are black? Why is their story not being told? Why are they not being represented? How come they don't have access to documents? What is that narrative? So my dissertation itself is about how are immigrant advocacy organizations addressing the needs of a growing historically disadvantaged black immigrant population? How are orgs like the National Immigration Law Center or other orgs that seek to serve all immigrants, all low-income immigrants doing intersectional work, and are that work being done well? And how can it be improved? So I have worked with orgs like NILC. I've also worked with the Undocked Black Network as some of the orgs that I've been able to work with and knock it back as well during the AAPI Immigrant Action Day. So the goal has been to really understand blackness more broadly, and that's been the goal of my work. Thank you all so much. So a common thread I'm seeing, and this is applicable to me too, as a former foster youth who's doing research on foster youth and does activism in that community, we're all connected to our activist communities through personal experience. And so my big question here is we cannot make change or we cannot grow a movement just by the people who are most affected by those issues. So how do we incorporate more young people with diverse experiences and different backgrounds and motivate and engage them in activist work that may not be directly relevant to them, or even if it is, may not be accessible to them? How do we center young voices? I can speak on that. I feel like my young voice was centered at one point in my life. How can you just reach out? When you see a student in my programs, I imagine in other programs around, there are this wide access to a large diversity, a large demographic of students from all areas and all walks of life. In that process, whatever program, whatever curriculum your program entails, you notice the moment they are stepping into themselves and you see the fear in them. You see the unsure youth, you're watching them struggle under the judgment. You push them into greatness. You challenge them to challenge themselves. You challenge yourself. You challenge your curriculum. You challenge your program because it's all subject to change. That's the only way we can make a change, is to change how we currently exist. I can speak on an instance with this rock. My poetry club recently, I allowed them to be involved in a conversation instead of practice for the day where their school was having a diversity task force around a play that they wanted to do. The play was Colored Museum. I don't know who many people are familiar with Colored Museum, but it is an African-American satire on the black experience in America. It was being produced by a group external to the school of predominantly white kids. They had casted black kids for the roles. These kids had never had an opportunity to participate in theater. They were like, I got a role for me. I can do this. Everything. I saw a need for communication. My poets who spend their time studying African-American experience, they stay in the library reading up on their history and their lineage to students who didn't necessarily have that first inclination. Me as a facilitator, I say, go join the conversation. Let's start there. Inevitably, you get around, the kids decided they would not go on with the production, that it was something that they had not thought on completely. I looked up now, and my poetry club goes from being four, goes to being nine. These kids are seeing me as someone who wants to be a part of the conversation. When the kids are getting riled up and in their tears because their lives are real, they sit in classes and they feel under the pressure of society, of stereotypes, of constructs, of just being life and their circumstances, the cards they were dealt. Those are real moments. We have to acknowledge them. They have to realize that they're real and not subject. They aren't just something they put together in their mind. I give them their validity in that moment. I tell them, you are entitled to go through whatever process, but we have to come out of this with a resolution. Before we leave and wipe these tears, we have to walk out knowing what we're doing tomorrow when we come back. I feel like it may be stressful for me as a facilitator, but I know it gave some kind of change to the temperature. Getting kids involved, this is simple as acknowledging them and being aware of the processes when they're put in front of you. Zuni Tatiana, have you seen any strategies work? Yes. I would add to that. Youth are passionate. They want to get involved. They see things happening. They're trying to figure out how can I get involved? What can I do? My advice is pick an issue. You can't solve everything at the same time. Pick one issue. Go learn about it. Maybe today you go read a book about it. You go find somebody on your campus or at your school or your organization because youth are also watching you. They're always watching. They're always looking. Then the next step is if you have questions with dialogue, I'll answer your questions. I'll talk with you. If I don't know the answer, I'll find the resource with you. Teach them how to do the research. Go out to that one movement, to that protest, to that event. Go learn more about it. For me, I think education is so important. Are we teaching youth how to find out more about the institution and the structures that are causing the issue? Regardless of their issues that are a part of your own identity or not, do you know the root cause? Anti-capitalism. Let's talk about anti-blackness. Those that have the same roots. How do we talk about power? I don't know if everyone here knows what organizing is because I sure didn't when I first applied. I was like, what is organizing? I heard this term, it's a grassroots consultant. You're really going to your communities and listening to what it is that's the problem, that's the issue that concerns our people and our neighbors and our families. Your question on how we can get people who are not directly impacted to get involved in this activism work is I myself am not directly impacted by the things that we've been working on, which is Dream Act, DACA and a lot of our undocumented people who go through struggles every day. I see high schoolers, I also do a youth program and they are not impacted, directly impacted. I think that there is a need for change in how we phrase those who are allies because we say we have directly impacted and then indirectly impacted. But at the end of the day, every single one of us that are involved in this movement in the society, we are all impacted in one way or another. I think that's the one thing that people tend to forget. It's like, oh no, we have to put those that are directly impacted at the forefront. They are also important but we have to recognize the need for allyship and I think once we recognize what kind of power those who can support and really be the voice that sometimes through voting and civic engagement that undocumented folks or other folks that are oppressed can't have, that's an important role. And so I think educating, like you said, educating our young people but I think also showing them that it's all connected, that the issue that we face personally, the issues that your parents face and the issue that an undocumented family faces, the issue that black people face, these issues are all connected. And that's one thing that folks forget like, oh, we got to think about immigrant communities and then within those communities it's like, all right, we have the black community and then we have the Asian community and we start separating. And I think once we see that there is a connection amongst all of us, that we are all oppressed and that's why we're in this movement now, is when we can have that involvement of everyone. That's like everyone terms as indirectly impacted but I think there's a need to say we're all impacted and that's why we have to be here. That's why we have to fight this movement, fight this battle. We have to do it together or it's just not going to happen. Wonderful. Sumi, I want to build off of something that you said about measuring impact. So that word gets thrown around everywhere in the activist space, measure impact, count how many people showed up. But beyond quantitative measures, how do you measure the impact of a movement specifically with youth activists where a lot of times they're disenfranchised, if they're under 18 they can't vote, if they're undocumented they can't vote. How far can youth activism actually go and how can we measure that distance and anyone can answer not just. Well I actually want to touch on that because it's so funny so sometimes when I'm in the shower or I'm doing my makeup I like listening to podcasts. I'm like I'm going to do something productive so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be learning while I'm showering like this is going to be a productive day. I'm like you know I got the panel let's start it with a podcast and I don't know if you all know Simon Sinek he's like this really big guy in leadership and he was talking about leadership in a very in a really simple way and so I always say that the first thing that's always on my like New Year's resolution is I'm going to go to the gym every day. I know all of you share that resolution and I failed to do it all for like 23 years but you know I there's never that consistency but you know we have that urge to want to get involved to want to go to the gym the first few weeks we're going and we're going every day and then you know at some point we fall through and that fall through may take a long time and then next thing you know you're just never going and so what he said was you know just like leadership and also that impact is the same way going you know going to the gym once you're not going to look any different than you're going to the gym twice it's still not going to be any different but if you're go every single day and have that consistency you will see a difference at some point and then you will realize oh something's happening that's the same thing with the movement that's the same thing with an impact you participate in one protest you're not going to see a difference you go to one you know a legislative meeting that's still not going to make a difference but if you consistently move trying to make an impact day by day and you just fix some of these habits that maybe is is feeding on to this oppressive system those little changes will one day you will see that there is a change that there is we are making a difference and there is an impact so when we think about of course we can look at and once we get to a point where we're making that impact I feel like it's easier to measure you'll see more people come you'll see legislation and policy going towards the change that you need and so it's just about I feel like it's so important to always consistently be involved in that fight and that movement I want to touch on that what Suni said about presence I completely agree with presence as I've told you guys before I was a youth of Split This Rock who is now a teaching artist at Split This Rock I've been involved in almost every youth program that Split This Rock has had to offer around poetry and spoken word I was on DCU Slam Team and again another year on DCU Slam Team I'm currently on there you Shindee a performance troupe at a time there was no there we had a concept of like okay activism we're in school we can talk about our problems with our coaches and our sponsors and our librarians our English teachers and they're gonna like our words because we're being you know proactive citizens and stuff but where does it go after that you know the people who are supposed to like what you're saying are gone you know and I look up now and they have you Shindee so you Shindee performance troupe is a space for performers artists you know activists between the ages of I believe 18 and 25 who go around they they hold they carry on the traditions the culture of what we stood for as you and poetry and spoken word right so I look up now and I look at all of the generations that have gone you know come back from oh my gosh from like 2009 right who were my elders before and they're like on tour now and they're oh I have one of my coaches who was nominated for a Grammy and I'm like oh my gosh you know I'm watching all of this happen in front of me and I never left you know I've watched their students I've seen who started off shaking they couldn't even self tell you their name when you ask them their name they break out into a fit of nerves you know and I watch them now stand in front and give valedictorian addresses to their classes and I'm so amazingly proud of them you know that's change you know and being present for every part because at some point you know that kid wasn't sure of themselves at one point that kid was so sure of themselves you know he thought nothing in the world could break him the moment before he got on stage he reverted back you know and you're like you got it you can do it's like okay this is this is it and you're like wow you've you've you've bloomed into a butterfly you've gone through the whole stage and here you are you know and that's the change and you don't see one kid like that you see groups of kids you see like whole graduating classes from 16 17 schools around the tri-state area who are coming out and stepping into their power being able to say ouch that hurt yes I like that I don't think that's healthy for the environment you know and I'm that's that's the change you know and that takes being present to witness that process you know everything is about how people showed up today to this event but the conversation we're having right now excuse me matters this conversation will go somewhere it will be on your live stream somebody will see it you know I work in the lgbt equity center now and student groups meet weekly sometimes it's just the facilitator sometimes it's five people sometimes it's ten but it's the consistency it's the going it's the community building if one person can have a conversation they can go talk to somebody else right the focus on if if one person's impacted by immigration that should matter to all of us if one person is affected by homelessness that should matter to everyone it doesn't matter if it's a hundred people or one person we should be able to have the resources and use the resources to solve the issues that people are facing regardless of numbers the impact is in the consistency it's going to take time to see it the same thing with any kind of presidency we're not going to know the effects of any presidency so after they're out of office truly right like that's just a reality that doesn't mean that there wasn't an impact that there wasn't change it requires going back it requires going back to the history that's where the data should thank you so a common thread that's been coming up throughout the symposium today is the role of technology in each of our spaces and you know needless to say we're pretty weary of it but also hopeful that it can really advance and move our movements quicker and in the activist space it's very important for organizing and i'm curious what your experiences have been with technology using it what are its drawbacks and uh is it is it our panacea can it cure our can it cure our social ill i don't think so to clarify is that technology as far as social media or technology as a whole uh social media i feel is very relevant to activism especially when you start talking about slackivism i think so like i said going back to organizing we do a lot of that grassroots work a grassroots work voter registration canvassing going out doing issue id seeing what the community needs are like what issues that's really impact them and what kind of changes we need to see in our legislative system and i feel like technology for me as an organizer is a hit or miss sometimes so you're right i can reach so many more people using that nice uh nice little technology saying hey hey guys hey everyone this is great can you come out to this event or we're doing canvassing what what issues are concerning you at the same time one of the most one of the most things that i i feel that we are now losing is that relationship the genuine relationships that we're able to create when we have those one-on-one conversations and we genuinely care about what's coming back in terms of response and as much as i love reaching to me i know it makes an impact to reach a lot of people but at the same time uh i feel like it's really important that we also make sure that our conversations stay genuine and that using when we're using that technology we have to remember that the purpose of it is to get these people involved you don't want it to be a one-time thing where they're like okay i saw the message and turn it over you want it to be a genuine conversation we're like oh hey hey hey gen can you come out today you know i didn't see you last week and so to know that you're paying attention to their presence and to their activism i think it's really important so yes it speeds up the process but we have to make sure that we use it effectively and and make sure that we don't lose the genuine genuine relationships that we should be building with our community members i agree with that i mean the technology is hit on the social media particularly one how many things do i scroll past the day that i'm like i'm not reading this like i saw the headline i'm not engaging that that does nothing i haven't clicked on it i haven't looked at it you know um people can also create worlds where they don't engage other things they can create bubbles that's also dangerous they're not abreast of the issues in the world um i think a good space honestly has been twitter i will give twitter that facebook i'm like i don't i don't care what you have to say um everybody's auntie's uncle's on it talking crazy i don't have time but what twitter allows me to do is i'm able to see so many conversations twitter town hall meeting people are able to ask questions um scholars that i've read i can say hey how are you or people i've never seen before i can follow hashtag i get so much more information that way um so i will say i'll give twitter that um technology has also connected me to people as somebody who grew up in an immigrant family i can't see my family in jamaica i can't see my niece but what's that allows me to talk to her often right so there's connections in that i can you know sometimes it's just telling somebody hey i haven't seen you in person but let me tell you to see how are you today or i like your photo or self confidence right um we all talk about young people having confidence issues um self-esteem issues the levels of mental illness or depression and things like that i'm like sometimes posting a photo is somebody's way of saying see me i'm getting that life matter i'm getting that comment matter so i don't know i hear you on the hit or miss it's a it's a fine line to walk definitely um i deal with everybody's social media and everybody's technology every day after school um and it is indeed a hit or miss um i don't know if you guys are familiar with like the whole cyber bullying and everything right um in my poetry groups you know in order to prevent that because in their high school they have this ongoing thing around everybody's class every teacher has the same issue as me um where they talk they have separate conversations they'll have like multiple group chats in the same room so if i'm sitting with 10 people uh three of you in one group chat seven of you in another group chat me and my best friend and in our own personal and i'm just like that is so disrespectful like that is so like it doesn't on as the honor system you know the honor code you know of being able to be accountable for the words that you say you know and and the way people receive them so if i say something that offends you you are entitled to feel offended you know and you are entitled to tell me you know how that hurt you and it's my job to say i'm sorry or i don't care you know and that's how conversations start you know and we get around to getting to the root of these issues and if we never address them we hide behind all of our group chats and it's like putting up doors like this is my my mic and my conversation we can't i can never get anything beyond the other side of the curtain you know my side and your side is completely different um however google has been a really great um assistance for a spoken word artist in this whole competition process um i don't know if you guys are familiar with the difference between regular poetry and spoken word poetry right spoken word poetry doesn't just live on a page it lives on the stage it's live in front of you right so their action word their movements that accompany words their tonalities that change right and that's so hard to communicate just across paper but google and google docs allows you know for bowls and italics and also to like add p have people who aren't present for the meeting you know adding in on their poems going home the kids never stop writing you know whenever they want to they can just add something to a poem tomorrow they're like hey we finished a whole poem like wow won't you guys find time for that you know and i find that um in sharing it and all of that it's it's super purely really really effective you know um at uh you know keeping everybody involved that way so i would say like for us my solution for that between google and the group chats is um purposeful you know use of technology like right now we are working you know so if you need to use your google you know crack out your phone so be it i'm watching you you know i'll hold them accountable myself you know as as someone who's responsible for creating a space space you know so it's work time be work don't use this time talk about the gossip so oh yes and i will also add um i wasn't here for the earlier panels but think it historically um think about the civil rights movement in vietnam right in the protest against vietnam that happened because we were able to see on tv what was happening in the rest of the world twitter has allowed that facebook has allowed that google has allowed that right that we are able to connect we're able to hold other governments accountable and those governments can hold our government accountable but we can be in a global human rights movement because of technology so i just wanted to give that that positive as well yeah so technology social media in particular allows us to communicate with each other a little bit more and have access to more people but it doesn't necessarily mean that we're connecting or learning or actually doing anything for the movement so beyond hashtags we can go out and actually see each other in person gather at rallies and make a difference through organizations and individually um so i guess that leads me to my my next big question which is how do we how do we get involved like what's our next steps what's what's most important to start first uh i know we we talked a little bit in the back room about culture change versus policy change um what are where do we do we start by changing policies and then adjusting culture do we start by changing the way we think about things and then hoping policy will go along with it what where's the most important starting point for people who want to become activists i keep ending up getting the mic first but um i think there's so many ways there's so many opportunities for us to get involved but because we see that there are so many different ways for us to get involved we we start wasting time right oh man i don't know what to do do i go to a protest do i do i join like do i become a member of this organization what do i have to do but really you just do it you just gotta do it if you see someone that's that's knocking on doors to get you know to understand what the issues are you join them and if you see that if there's a protest with the purpose not just any protest but a protest that shows that there is there is an issue and there is a concern and that they're really trying to be vocal and make their voices heard you join that i think the more time we spend thinking about how do we make change happen the more time we're losing and the the farther we get from the movement and so i really do believe that it's really important that we get involved by just doing whatever is at our at our you know at the front of our door because at the end of the day it's all connected and as long as it's it's it stems to the values of what you believe in and you start making small changes like that then you know at then at some point in our lives we'll see a change happen i agree and it's both and i don't know if you have to do one or the other it can simultaneously occur right late we're all on this panel doing something different engagement different work but all of our work goes back to the new project right the issues are racism gender bias um you know sexuality all these other things but the sorry i have to hold the mic right here i'm very bad at this um it's both and it's always both and um start somewhere just go and do it i agree you know if that means that you spend your summer interning somewhere then do that maybe you'll find out i'm not really a fan of interning i don't want to do policy i want to be on the ground maybe talk to you every day is your thing maybe being in the office maybe tweeting behind the scenes technology you only need to find that out by trying by getting out there you don't have to stay with anything long term for that adding to that um definitely being the change that you want to see in this world right um coming out of high school i'm like i'm an adult i can make my own decisions i have power right with that power i didn't want to just be loose with it go have fun with my friends and like go party party but you know i wanted to i wanted to do something because something so profound had been done in my life right i little personal history about me um i come from a background of domestic violence and for me getting through high school that was the most traumatic years of my parents divorce so i found this piece in poetry i found this space to address the issues that i had been silent on that people in my family had been silent on that i felt needed to be addressed for the safety for the health of our future and longevity you know and i was like who am i to be selfish and keep that to myself you know so i was like where can i go to continue this work what can i do to continue this work if it worked in me you know um and i started reaching out to every nonprofit organization that dc had to offer around um poetry and activism and change and youth work um and i found split this rock i held on to split this rock i found there's a few of them that are going on um and i kept going you know i started just attending the shows or just going to the open mics and seeing what the kids are doing being a good spaceholder like while some kids were on stage getting through hard poems being that person after to go up in there and be like i'm so proud of you i don't know who you are but it took courage today to go do that and use that's something you never let go of you know and i don't know why it came there but maybe that was that one reason i was there for the day i felt like i did my part you know and going on from that i'm saying okay now if i can support kids who are i don't even know these kids you know i can like work with students to believe in themselves before they hit the stage you know so let me go figure out how that works okay i like how this works now how can i go do that with myself with adults who have already mastered that process to go make a bigger impact in the world you know so it never stops every time you decide that you see something wrong and you fixed it yourself it's almost your obligation you know to walk someone else through that process you know if you don't no one else will and if that knowledge gets lost history you know cultures traditions things get lost in processes if they're never passed down if they're never taught no one ever takes the time for understanding you know that reminds me of one of my favorite activist models which is silence is violence if we're not saying anything then we're if you're not saying anything you're part of the oppressor so very interesting and i'm curious practically in your organizations and in your activist work now or in your academic work what's next are there are there upcoming events what what are you guys what's the next step here so poetry people i don't know split this rock is so cool oh my god i really love them they have a poetry festival that i believe is still happening it's for the old the old the old cats you know the people who know and have been around in like artistic you know you guys want sophisticated environment um you can go and split this rock.org to find out all about that information um but when i'm more first in is they're cool louder than a bomb competition the tri-state area dmv is happening this saturday at woodrow wilson senior high school um come out and see them do their like prelim stuff their finals is happening may 5th i believe at the millennium stage at the kennedy center and you guys can definitely come out but split this rock.org you can find all of the cool things to be involved in academically i don't know what i'm doing with my life i'm at the end of my journey so i'm trying to figure that out but i will plug undocky black um undocky black is a great organization doing great work follow them on twitter follow them on instagram they have a website google them um read i know i keep saying this but honestly educate yourself hmm misinformation is out there so much and everybody thinks they're doing they're like oh yeah i'm being intersectional what does that actually mean when you hear these words these catchphrases look those up so that's my point um for me i think um so with knock-a-sec we do a lot of crazy things we did like a campaign out in front of the white house 22 days 24 hours yeah we were like those crazy people and we're starting a new campaign called um citizenship for all so we're like if you're not going to give us a little dream act that we're going to ask for the entire pie so we launched a campaign it's a 45 day campaign starting august 15th and we're going to bike for about 20 2600 miles and go to all the strategically congressional strategic congressional districts and try to listen to the voters and um of course there's there's that there's like that big leap in our national level but i also wanted to ask who here is from virginia anybody hi one one lone soldier you and i both um so uh there's a lot of local things happening either that be local ordinances um for us it's midterm elections everyone everywhere you all have a state i'm sure at some you guys go home somewhere so um there will be midterm elections go canvass go help do phone banking go make sure that you have the right person in power and that you elect the person that you want to represent you and so and that is next and the last thing i would say is listen and be more aware is to listen not not just think about your own issues but listen to what your neighbors are dealing with listen to the the problems that are going on in your society just be more aware and educate yourself um and that's it for me wonderful i also want to put the audience on blast um so if you look to the center of your tables there's a card there that says now what on the back uh you can find links to a lot of our panelists organizations as well as a few other resources um but i recognize that there are a lot of amazing people here and i kind of want to flip the flip the dialogue and put it on y'all to um say what's next with your organization so if we can get a mic passed around um raise your hand say your name your organization and if you have any upcoming events or activist priorities that you think people should read about or focus on or just anything that can that someone can do next um now is the time to to announce that to the room anyone no brazil okay um well hold on to that definitely it's something that i'll run around asking people at the reception because it's important that this work doesn't stop uh whatever you care about whatever that issue area is gun control immigration it's important to tell other people and to keep up the the good work so um yeah let's with that move on to our question and answer with the wider audience and while people are thinking about questions that they want to ask our panelists um i will go ahead and start us off with one of mine so this is one that i think about quite often and it's how do you maintain momentum especially in the current political landscape the way that people have been talking about making change federally versus you know the pause there how do you stop from getting tired and wake up the next day and go yeah this is something that still matters that i still care about and go out there and put your all into it will motivates you community um i have the greatest friends um so just a little bit um a couple years ago i lost my mom i was still in graduate school i'm still trying to finish and honestly it was the folks in my friendship circle who was like one go to counseling you need it you need friends to be honest with you get those folks in your life um i also live in a house with people so that helps me in terms of motivating me every day to get up i have people to talk to every day i also work on a canvas with undergraduate students so i put myself in spaces where i see people constantly um and seeing them going keeps me going um and then in terms of just i watch Netflix sometimes i'll just chill out i i don't talk to anyone i stay by myself i rejuvenate i regroup i think about it and i always keep with the forefront of my mind is what's my biggest goal here what is ultimately what is it that i want to do and that is to in fact change in order to do that i have to get up every day how do we keep momentum right um so for me in in what i do as a youth facilitator as a teaching artist um i deal with these kids in their most rawest forms you know they come to me when they're like the most you know gassed up to do poetry or they're like the most angry and they want to put their anger into words or they are a bucket of tears and they're just falling apart right and i have to remind myself every day not to internalize you know their issues as my own but remind myself that i care and i see them and and to an extent in some of their stories i can empathize with them on a personal level you know and for some of them i can look at them be like i would not wish that on you you know but we're going to deal with it and that's the thing that keeps me going every day we have to deal with it like we can cry in a day but tomorrow we got to wake up and do something about it you know and i that's that's what i constantly hold on to um i always think and i laugh with my my coaches who who are now my like peers in this whole teaching thing and i tell them like i now understand like what you meant like leaving us and be like i'm going to go have a glass of wine don't call me till 2 p.m. tomorrow you know i understand that you know because in this process you have to take yourself out of it because if you don't you come with all of the aggression from everybody's argument including your own so i'm upset that someone hurt my kid and now i'm upset with anyone who looks like they're going to hurt anyone else to the extent that someone hurt my kid you know and i'm like uh now i'm upset that you would even try me you know so that all that stuff has to be decompressed you have to say we made it through today you know now we have to make it through tomorrow and we have to have ourselves in pristine shape to make it through tomorrow you know um yeah it's about it's definitely about self-preservation in the process well i'm just gonna i did owe everything um but really i just kind of look in the mirror i'm like man my reality sucks like i gotta change it man i have all this debt like this is awful look at my friend her reality sucks then i look at look at my parents i'm like oh man that sucks too i'm like well it's not gonna get any better if i sit here and do nothing it's not gonna get any better if i go and find if i look at a job i'm like i'm going there because of how much is gonna pay me because will it will my life get better will my dad's will my my friends and i don't think i don't think it will so that's why that's what keeps me going every day so that i can get out of this this hole that i'm in and get other folks out of that hole too i have an announcement and a question so i'll start with the announcement um my name is sakina i work for dc hunger solutions and if you are a district resident um the council is in the middle of their budget cycle right now primaries are coming up and on may 15th my organization um as part of the fair food for all coalition is hosting a candidates forum to talk about issues related to food insecurity health equity food access urban agriculture and economic development um for people running for council positions and specifically um the chair position uh phil minnowson and ed lazier and so if anyone is interested in that and you're a dc resident or just want to be involved i'd be happy to you know loop you into that um i have a question about language specifically um from an academic from an activist from a a poet and we're all those things mixed together um i think that a lot of times the term people of color can sort of flatten experiences um and so my question is when do we as as writers as artists as managers as people who um are concerned with the experiences uh more largely of poor people when do we get explicit in our language when do we say black when do we say native when do we say latin x or even more specifically mexican savadorian korean you know when do we get explicit in our language versus um using the catchall phrase people of color which i think has a lot of power in it but i think doesn't always honor um or recognizes the explicit experiences of people that are struggling and so i'm asking maybe how does that show up in your work or maybe in your in your analysis and in your activism in your poetry when do we get explicit and when do we sort of group um in poetry um it's a very fine fine place we walk right um it's figurative language right these are words that were chosen on purpose right so um i'd like to believe sometimes when people use the term people of color they lack knowledge you know and that's all that they have and that's something that can that gives people representation enough you know and it's unfortunate that that's enough but that's that it gives in our society it logs you know exactly who you're talking about when people add color you know to that part um what i'm learning now which is really cool about what my students did with the diversity task force is to be impeccable to be accountable for your words speak in truth and speak in purpose you know so if i if i when i say caucasian or i say white i'm not saying that in a derogatory way you know if i say black i say african american or negro i'm not saying that in a derogatory manner you know i'm i'm saying that in the context in which it applies you know so when you take your out your little form you check off that you know race what race are you box i'm using the terminology that you would check off you know as far as i'm concerned you know or for as far as you whatever knowledge you've given me um which is really it can be scary in certain environments right so when we had our conversation around the colored museum we asked the students to use the terms in which they meant you know not the ones in which sounded good or not the ones that were derogatory you know to anybody present in the conversation because if you can imagine a very segregated conversation you know a white cast who didn't understand what the issue was with wanting to give this play to the community because they're like you know our our mixed demographic does not show in our department and so let's do this so we have presence right context is everything you know and and when you say black are you saying black with an amount of you know normalcy are you saying it like okay you are black you are african-american right that's what you are or am i saying black like it disgusts me you know am i saying black like it's an issue am i saying black like it scares me you know that's when it becomes scary when you apply all of the the stereotypes that come along with each race you know the tones the connotation the context behind the word is the scariest part of it all and that's all can be guided by your personal intention you as individuals as people who can speak we have a vocal cord and like a pair of lips you know in a mind that controls it you choose what words come out of your mouth with what tonality backs those words you know and what positions at what time in which you say them and you use them you know and as poets that's what you find my students are not allowed to use vulgar language no curse words no slurs no name calling no nothing right so they have to be very mindful about what they say so i have a student who has done a poem about like antagonists in history right and i'm saying when you're speaking on the spaniards in the conquistadors and everybody else you know make sure if you're using names you're using names and you're saying them in the way you mean it you know you're using them in the context in which is relevant you know you're not just saying it just for shock value you know and i think a lot of times in our society people say things just for shock value you know literally just to agitate someone into conflict you know and i think we have to as a society decide that chaos is not the best form of entertainment you know and i think we haven't decided that so in the process we love the stereotypes of it all and i feel like we entertain that more than taking the time to get down to the truth you know behind those terms um i i actually want to um i'm one of those people that is in this process of learning so in in college i in high school i thought uh defining the black community as black community was wrong because they would say oh excuse me you can't say black i'm like okay the what do i say and they were like you use african-american i'm like okay and i started using that and in college they're like excuse me not everyone is from africa you can't say that and i'm like then what do i say i i learned that i can't say black and now i i can't you can't judge where where the person's from by just looking at them so what do you want me to do and you know over time i i was like i think it just you have to see if they feel comfortable and then i came here at knock a sec and then started working with undocumented people so when i hear people say illegal i get i cringe i'm like oh man don't say illegal that's not right but i had um and we always call folks undocumented right but um we had we had an impacted person um who was documented say i'm gonna own the word illegal and i'm gonna call myself an illegal immigrant and i'm gonna own that word but um at the same time you have to understand you can't own that word by yourself you do not represent every single person in that community for the word queer community in the lgbtq community that was adopted because that although at some point the word queer was a derogatory term to phrase those folks that were in the lgbtq community over time they took you know the community took ownership of it but that was only because lots of people in the community accepted that and said we can take ownership but one person saying i can own the word illegal and and be illegal immigrant that wasn't something that came by the voices of everyone so i think we are walking on fine lines we are trying to understand what words what words fit and how we know at the same time i don't know the entire history i don't know when so i think it really you can just ask you can just ask like what's the best and at the same time you're you're learning but if you ask and you don't apply it then there's a problem so i think it with language it's really of picking up if who's comfortable and where what setting you're at and making sure that you learn from that experience uh yes i personally use black over people of color um but that's context today um if i was talking about a group of people who are diverse i would say people of color in my own personal research i am talking about black immigrants and i use black broadly speaking right so that encompasses caribbean african um afro latinx all of that but then even when i get deeper into my work i'm like okay i'm about jamaicans here i'm talking about ghanayans here um so it's about intentionality about being as explicit as possible and also just because i call myself something does not mean that you get to call me something and you should ask right um i guess i identify myself the way that i want to i use black because my family is caribbean but i also want to encompass that i grew up in an african-american setting as well but i don't always use african-american so it's it's about intentionality what are we trying to get across be explicit because their experience is tied to specific populations to specific histories so it's not just people of color are affected no latinx non-black latinx are affected in a particular way mexicans are affected in a particular way the narrative created around that around mexican people as being undocumented or illegal has a particular representation right um blackness or um some other term has a particular representation to it so what are we saying about those experiences and how are we talking about them be explicitly intentional wonderful i'll take another question uh yes one theme i've noticed fairly across the board were one of the first things we talked about was that young people have different you know more diverse than any other generation different views the fact that we're having this conversation now you know 60 years ago absolutely not um i'm wondering what the you know based on the industry that i'm working in i work for the democrat governor association and kind of some of the things i've seen only third week on the job but you know at least uh for elected officials you know whether it's state local federal it depends on ear time for them you know who they're talking to um to be informed regardless of you know who they are it's about you know who's their advisors and who they're talking to from outside interest and something i've seen is that you know if it's government relations professionals at all levels not a lot of diversity there and uh some things i've been thinking about is least of you know a two pronged approach one and maybe it's both and this is a lot to ask about um is it trying to make sure that there's a pipeline for um you know people of color and you know for regards of education level as well it's not just you know race or ethnicity it's across the board income um education how can we um you know get a pipeline going so that you know when there's these conferences with uh government relations professionals it's not just caucasian people there at the same time you know do you have any suggestions on organizations that are effectively lobbying you know going to dc for example i'm from los angeles and there are definitely more advocacy organizations going to dc in the belair area as opposed to the south central area and i think that's important for elected officials to have both perspectives but from people i know working on the hill they're getting much more of that belair uh lobbying experience or lobbying than the south central lobbying which i think is um not as uh not what we need right now in terms of diversity so i just wanted to see if you have any thoughts on uh that overall and what we can do to promote uh diversity in lobbying i think one thing that's important is that we get out of our comfort zone so for me i if there is all these tables and i see an asian person i go to the asian person because it's i feel more comfortable um and when i was at an organizing training we had a lot of organizers very diverse and we always said but we don't want to work like we can't work with white people we can't it just it's because there's we talk about colonialism and how there's a lot of that that oppression that's coming and how privileged white people are and that it's not it's not fair you know and then i'm thinking it's i'm like you know we have to all work together we gotta all bring we gotta we gotta work together and get out of this idea that we can't we have to stick within our community and that our community is the only one being oppressed we have to work with every single uh kinds of uh of of folks that are being oppressed like we are and so in terms of how do we get folks that are more diverse into these kind of conferences and doing that it's we go into communities that we've never been in before we go and make sure that we go introduce ourselves to organizations and say hey let's collaborate with youth let's let's do something together and and once that relationship builds up and and we do that then we can see that these conferences become more diversified and there is not there's no more barriers that say we're different because at the end of the day we're not because we're fighting for the same cause so i think there really is a need to just get out of comfort zone go do something sit at a table that you've never met before uh with people you've never met before that with people that don't look like you try something different and and i think that's the only way we can we can get that started um no one wants to be a token so a lot of times the model for diversity and a lot of orgs is just getting a person of color it doesn't matter the person of color all right so they identify it's agent or black or whatever oh yeah we have a person of color they're gonna talk to other people of color how many orgs are you connecting with not just this one black org is your one black org but how about five other orgs in dc just connecting like i don't go to a lot of places that are predominantly white because i don't want to be the only person there that's a black person i spend a lot of time on campus at maryland i'm like what is the goal here in diversity is it just about having one person and we can just say oh okay we checked up our box for black we checked up our box for latina we checked up our box for lat um for asian american whomever so my suggestion would be to your organization is who's on your listserv what orgs are on your listserv what orgs have showed up who do they know send us a five people or five different black orgs or five different asian send to knackersack and if i ask knackersack hey who do you all work with right and i'm not the black who are you working with maybe they're working with bodgy i don't know right but also the burden shouldn't be on just asking people of color either like what model is already in place and what's what's happening with those models to speak on like the you go you're going through like the real process of what the high school is going through right now and trying to figure out how do we diversify their music department right um what i've seen them do which i i feel like is so profound and what they've done um is stopping everything you know they stop pressing for the deadline they stop reaching for like they are upset that they spent money on the script already and money on the costume they're like forget the money you know their people's feelings mean a lot more than this money and the time that we say is like document like we have to like monitor every minute of it right um and they said let's figure out how our high school came to have such a racially tense environment in the first place you know they sit with the librarian who's on the board of the alumni association and she's getting to understand like what is the history of black and white presence at wilson high school right and they're learning that wilson was one of the one of the last high school first high schools to integrate and at the start of that integration a lot of the white family said that's disgusting we're leaving the city they moved them they bought other houses and other parts of this area so there was like a small moment of time in the 60s where woodrow wilson high school was predominantly black but the circumstances you have to understand the context and the history behind that to know why it was predominantly black you know it wasn't given to black people like here take all these great resources and and finally better your education it was given to them by default you know and they had to sit there for that year when those kids came back and you know they realized they couldn't stay at those private schools and those public schools that okay now we have to have this conversation because my parents have been telling me one thing about you and my parents have been telling me something about you so let me know what your parents have been telling me about telling you about me okay and i'll tell you what my parents have been telling me about you now we'll pick out the truths and stuff together so i'll say that even if you have two people going in different directions to get different kinds of of knowledge so someone's in oakland and someone's you know wherever else they come back together you know and you say like what did the people in oakland have to say about the people over here and what did the people over here have to say about the people in oakland and then you start to pick together like what are just the opinions you know of the people what is the bias of the people you know and where is that rooted and what is just truth you know what is that one thing that ties them all together yeah and i'm actually i'm gonna speak to this question as well really quickly um one is we need to get rid of the idea that naming race is partisan um right now a lot of people hear black brown or spanish um and immediately if they're republican close their eyes stop listening we need to get rid of that idea because race is something that applies to all people uh well not race is something that matters um and uh two you know there are black hispanic asian people here in dc already we need to hire them and we need to respect their voices and listen to them and we need to do that by addressing systemic barriers um people who are low income can't take the day off work to come lobby on the hill people who um have who live in the suburbs because that's where they were redlined two fifty years ago uh have problems with transportation we need to address that so there are so many systemic policy things that we can do to increase diversity beyond just our individual actions and the way we treat people um so i encourage you all to to read to look into those issues as well so we're running out of time i'd like to take one really really quick question and maybe rapid fire answer if there is any no okay well we'll be we'll be here after come bring your questions directly to us thank you thank you to the panelists for being here and thank you all this is our last panel so i'd like to introduce uh read kramer the panel was great really compelling thank you for being here we're closing the symposium now and we would love for you to join us upstairs on the 10th floor i think there's a nice deck we'll be able to get outside today for a reception so please join us up there and thank you for your time and attention today yeah thank you