 Reverend Angel Keota Williams Sensei is a spiritual teacher, a master trainer, and the founder of the Center for Transformative Change. She is the thought leader who 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 is the author of Being Black, Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace, and lead author of Radical Dharma, Talking Race, Love and Liberation. Reverend Angel is co-chair of Mindfulness, Equity, and Culture on the Stand Up Earth Board of Directors. And Angel, thank you so much for all of your work with us, including this encore today. And with that, I will let you take it away. Okay, because hopefully everyone can hear me. I just want to start by saying hello to some folks whose names I've recognized, some of the folks that I don't. And it would be great to just find out where people are calling in from. I see Rachel Bagby. Hi, Rachel. Oh, it's been so long and it's really great to see you. We're just going to call out some names. Emily Jennings and Rachel Allen. Nina Simons. Great to see you here, Nina. Michelle Roberts. Michael Ray Matthews, who is an Auburn Senior Fellow with me. It's really great to see him. And Marie Elizabeth Molly, who is a bestie of mine. And great to have her. Laura Brewer. Great to see you here, Laura. Folks, just go ahead, start typing in the chat. Let us know where you're from. And that makes sure that we're kind of have our little typing fingers going to ask questions. Judith Lehman from Boston. I know you're from. Good to see you here, Judith. Jill Della Hunt. Janet Maxwell. And I'm seeing Connie Anderson and Kathy Inouye. And Carol Anderson. Connie's from Madison, Wisconsin. Brenda Collins from Atlanta. Great to see you, Brenda. I feel like it's like my whole family here all over the country. And I love to see folks. Alyssa Pizarro is really, really good to see you. And Ann Southcomb. Emily Hill is from Philadelphia. And we have Reverend Faachun from Tucson, Arizona. And Michelle Williams. Rosalind is calling in from Devon in the UK. And sorry about all that's going over there in the UK. And sorry about all that's going over here in the US. It's great to see you all. Melissa Burke, great to see you again also. We see Katherine Ashton here from Chicago. Leslie Reed Harris from Santa Cruz. Great to see you. Donna Ozawa from Dallas. Oh, no, that's not from Dallas. That ran too quick. Donna's from San Francisco. And Drew is from Dallas. We have folks from all over the place. And I'm very, very, very excited. I want to keep on checking in and seeing how y'all are doing. Ann is calling from a village in Spain. Ann Cardonaso. Thanks for calling in. And Murillo from Montreal. And Nina, yeah, so, so good to see you from San Fe. And we also have Stephanie Knox Steiner from North Carolina from Fayetteville. And Janet from Ottawa. Great folks. It's really, really, really, really fantastic to see you. I know you're a bunch of folks that you're also on in the call. And so we're going to get started. I just want to come start off with giving you a little tiny bit of history. The hope here was that we're not going to just redo what we already did because you're a new set of people. And we got a new set of things to talk about. There's plenty of things to talk about as we all know about race and white supremacy and oppression here in America. And the book that we fortuitously wrote myself with my co-authors, Dr. Yasmin Saidullah and Lama Rod Owens is called Radical Dharma Talking Race Love and Liberation. If you weren't here to talk race love and liberation, you're probably in the wrong place. But if you are here to finally get down to the questions that we really need to get down to, the conversations that we need to have, the hashtag we use for Radical Dharma is get hashtag, get in the conversation. If you're ready to be in that conversation because of the wake-up call of the 45th president and the administration or because of Black Lives Matter and the incredible work that those sisters have done and the brothers and all of folks in the background that we don't hear about as much, but truly a movement to bring all the movements of our lifetimes and in this country forward, Black Lives Matter has been whatever reason you're here, if you're just feeling overwhelmed and overburdened by the fact of recognizing that the country that you thought, I'm going to switch my glasses here so I can see, the country that you thought you lived in is not exactly what you expected. If you're here because you realize that this is exactly the country that you have expected and been living under the burden of, you are all most welcome. So I want to just tell you quickly about the book we wrote, Radical Dharma. Radical Dharma was written with this very intention that we like to say and actually one of the reviewers said that this is a book that was made for these times and Radical Dharma was written because we realized at the time what we were saying is the upsurge in the visibility of the deaths and killing of Black men and Black women in the streets of America for things as simple as wearing a hoodie. We all know now for selling cigarettes, for driving, for having legal permits to guns and over time the sense of our sense of awareness increased for many of us. For many of us we've always known this but for many of us it increased. But from whatever direction we came from, what we realize over time is that we really need to be able to finally have this conversation 50 years after civil rights. What we change is some bits of legislation, what we change are some bits of the laws so to speak of America but we have not changed hearts and minds and without changing hearts and minds without getting into the deep conversations that we need to have that recognize the roots of white supremacy as being the roots and the foundation of this country. We're not going to actually be able to achieve equity not only in terms of racial lines but also along lines of gender along lines of sexual orientation certainly along lines of class because that is the fundamental premise of the division of races to keep people separated on the basis of class so that we don't come together organize together and recognize that we are actually the people all of the people and what we're up against is a voracious and consumptive class of people that believe that the resources of the earth and the resources of human beings themselves are there for for the taking and radical dharma is about not trying to divide us but rather trying to help us all come into a place in which we can have the difficult conversations that we need to have with each other but most importantly with ourselves one of the premises of radical dharma is that we need to actually discover our own whole truth and so radical dharma is in one of its many meanings is radical means complete or whole and dharma is a Sanskrit word and it means typically the teachings of the Buddha for those of you that are Buddhist but its wider meaning is dharma is of dharma is truth or path or what it is that we are coming into a universal understanding of about our lives so it's a kind of universal law what is our radical complete truth that is inhibiting each of us and inhibiting us as a society from being able to face the kind of realities that the country has been built on that the country is has been founded on and as a result of those fundamental truths it's keeping us divided it's keeping us across the table across the aisle across religions it's keeping us looking at each other as if we are the enemies from one another rather than recognizing that really we are in a world in which our togetherness is required our coming together is required and we can see on a day to day basis that the our very existence as human beings is under threat by this division but there are certainly forces in the world that are served by this division and so radical dharma is about addressing it at that level but it's also addressing it about the very level of the heart and healing it is about love in our capacity to love ourselves and to accept ourselves and to work through the kind of forgiveness that's necessary the kind of animosity and anger and hurt and pain that is necessary the kind of suppression of our humanity that has been part and parcel of the design of this country and the way in which we have all been raised up so to speak over generations and even if you are from an immigrant family even if you are from a recent wave of of immigrants the overall context of this country is one that invites all of us into i would say the river the great river of white supremacy and as a result of that white supremacy we are all navigating the disconnect from our humanity in relationship to each other but also in relationship to ourselves whether we have white skin black skin red skin yellow skin white supremacy is the scourge of the planet that is actually destroying the planet and destroying the human beings that live on the planet because at its most fundamental level it is designed to disconnect us from our humanity with a sense that there is somehow a race of people or a group of people that should be attended to whose whose ideas whose ways of being whose cultural proclivities whose desires are more important than others and i'm not talking about just white skin people but i'm talking about a concept in which even white folks are being drawn into this scourge and as a result are finding themselves in the confrontation with their humanity and that's one of the the things that i really want to just lay down for folks but before i get to get to that i want to talk about some of the things that we often bring to these conversations that are useful and some of the things that are not one of the things that i think is the most important thing in order for us to have these conversations is really to be able to do the best that we can to find our seat of love when we have conversations about race about white supremacy about oppression and when i say from the seat of love i don't mean that the conversations are going to be kumbaya or that we're going to come from it come to it from a place in which we always have it together and say the right things and have the right answers in fact one of the things that is useful is for us to bring our willingness to both make mistakes and to create space for people as they work their way from wherever whatever location they are currently in in terms of their awareness of the realities of race and depression and white supremacy in this country and so those are things that are useful on the other hand bringing our hysterics bringing our overwhelming sense of guilt that actually distracts us from being able to feel the feelings that we are having is not so useful for these conversations and those that's not useful whether whether we're having conversations in as all white folks or as all people of color or all black folks or mixed races of people if we're having a conversation as first nations people when we sit in the conversation not from a seat of love in other words not with a commitment to having these conversations because we are deeply invested in the injustice within ourselves and justice on the planet then we're not actually in the right conversation or we're not in the right place and we're and we're not in the right time so we're not with the right people in the right place or at the right time and so if you can't find yourself coming from a place in which you are invested and committed to love and justice in this conversation my encouragement to you is to go and find the people the place or the situation in which you can come up from a place of love a lot of us have these questions about how do we reach across the far reaches of the aisle and have the conversations with the most difficult people that are we are feeling the most adversarial towards or are most oppositional towards us and I would say that that's not the place in which we want to actually start those conversations we want to recognize that at the most basic level that this is a conversation the conversation about race and liberation in this country is a conversation that is fundamentally about healing and we can't do the work of healing if we're tearing ourselves apart in the process or if we are entering into the conversation from a place in which we are fully strapped on with all of our defense mechanisms and so a key and critical part in terms of discovering your radical Dharma is to be able to begin the the the very core conversations that you want to have with people that you feel and we we know this the the term safe doesn't apply to you know many many bodies it often doesn't apply it almost never applies to black bodies it often doesn't apply to colored bodies it very very very often doesn't apply to trans bodies and women bodies but you want to have a conversation at least from what I would say is a bold space a lot of people talk about brave space I want to talk about bold space and bold space means that you are in choice but in that choice you are bringing yourself to a willingness to to touch the edges of what feels comfortable for you because it's when we're at the edges of what is our comfort zone that we're beginning to actually learn but you don't want to go so far over the edge where everything in your body contracts and seizes up and you're not able to be in a fluid conversation so uh a good thing is to be in conversations from a place in which you are at least seeking your seat of love and you are invested and committed to justice a not useful thing is to go into conversations in which you're so contracted and so seized up or the opposition or adversarialness of the conversation is so uh strong I'm not saying that the conversation is merely uncomfortable that the adversarial opposition is so strong that you're not communicating a sense of love and regard for the people that you're in the conversation with pick yourself up get out of that room and go find a place to have a conversation because there are plenty of conversations to have and we must have these conversations so one of the things I want to start with which I haven't been able to I did last time but I want to offer for many people because we we often don't just talk about this basic definition of what is race in this country since that's the topic right race love and liberation and we use this definition from Ronald Chisholm and Michael Washington uh who came up with in a book called undoing racism a philosophy of international social change and I highly recommend you look up Ron Chisholm and Michael Washington the definition that they offer that is used further in the undoing racism workshop offered by the People's Institute for survival and beyond out of New Orleans is race is a specious classification specious means that it's something that's not true but it sounds as if or seems as if it should be true it's presented as if it's true a specious classification of human beings that was 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 and maintaining privilege and power and that last part is important I'll say that again for the purpose of establishing and maintaining privilege and power and I offer that because oftentimes we're having conversations as if the construct of whiteness is a neutral concept and and and it's simply not true and that racial construction is a neutral idea that is somehow something that is just what is true in the world it's generic it's not something that we have to worry about and there's people that are making a big deal about race one of the things that we go on to talk about when we offer a conversation and see the conversation in race is to say that the term white used to refer to people was only created by Virginia slave owners and colonial rule rulers in the 17th century before that we had people they were talked about as Christians they would talk about as Englishmen they were talked about as Irishmen they were talked about where they come from so as human beings we are we have always been place-based and this notion of white as an idea as being applied to people was something that was constructed for the very specific purpose of creating a classification in order to maintain power and in maintaining power what essentially happened is that white skinned or europe people of european descent were slowly invited into this class of whiteness that allowed them access to owning property that allowed them access to jobs if they were lower class people so if they were not the owning class you were essentially offered the opportunity to become a property owner and but in order to become a property owner you had to keep yourself divided from the black folks you had to keep yourself divided from the indigenous folks so that division was set up right away right from the very foundation of this country in order to allow lower classes of white folks into this upper echelon in which whiteness was made the supreme value and thereby keeping people that were of different classes from organizing together because they had organized and there was a huge uprising now a lot of us know that and a lot of us don't know that and obviously this webinar is not the place in which we'd be able to go through the entire history but it is something that is important for people to get clear about because a fundamental understanding that we all have to have about the country that we live in that we've grown up in whether that's for generations or as new immigrants or as the original people in the First Nations people here is that America as a nation is consistently and perpetually ahistorical and a contextual and it has to do that and it has to organize itself that way because the wealth of America was built on genocide and slavery it was built on the theft of land and it was built on the theft of people under the guise of manifest destiny therefore it cannot afford to be other than a historical and other than a contextual and when when I say that what I mean is that if we were to honor the fact of our history if we were to really understand the truth of our history and the context in which racialization came about then we would be in a different place in terms of understanding the basic I want to say debate and the basic crisis that we're having now of trying to understand exactly what is the trajectory in the future of America who was America built for and who is struggling over the sense of ownership of America and the truth is is that the America that we currently live in was not actually built for most of us it was and there are particular ones of us that have white skin for instance that were invited but in essence are always struggling to hold their place and of power and privilege in America and that's what white supremacy is set up for that's what the construct of whiteness is set up for is to create a kind of division within our hearts and also amongst us as people that allows us to persist in a state of feeling as if we are not enough and we have to try to keep maintaining a particular perspective and keep appearing a certain way in in people's eyes in white folks eyes in owning classes eyes in order for us to belong what happens when we begin to probe and look at and start to question what is truly the history of America where did my people come from what is what is racialization about and what is its purpose how does it exist in this country what we start to uncover is the reality that we as human beings were as Malcolm X said hoodwinked and bamboozled and that means all of us were hoodwinked and bamboozled into a class divide that was designed to keep us cut off from each other but in order to enforce the ability for human beings to not do the thing that is most natural to us that comes most natural to us which is to recognize other human beings to recognize the suffering of slaves the decimation of the indigenous people we had to be prompted through generation after generation to disconnect from one another as human beings therefore the deconstruction in my view and in the view of our co-authors the deconstruction of race in this country is actually the path to liberation for our society but also for ourselves as individuals and that's a powerful notion it's a powerful undertaking and it's one that if we are willing to invest our time and our heart and put ourselves on the line for the kind of reactionism that reactionary behavior that we're seeing the upsurge of white supremacy cloaked in all kinds of names the alt right the you know whatever it is that people are calling it these days is something that would begin to see its demise the question is are we going to see its demise before we see the demise of the planet so I want to take a moment and say and just say hello to a couple of people and make a few one of the comments here there's some folks here Terrence from DC Benita is checking in from Washington we have somebody here in the Chicago area Chris White yeah we see Chris White here in the Chicago area so I want you all folks those of you that have questions um Rochelle Faithful from DC and Laurie Ruth of Oakland I want you all those of you that have questions and you're willing to come online to get yourself prepared to be able to come up and answer questions um I mean ask questions um in in that be happening in in just a few minutes or so and if you have anonymous questions you have questions or things that you're grappling with and or just comments that you want to offer you can go ahead and type that into the chat and Anne's going to be able to help us out uh in terms of getting that information and so the next thing I want to bring us to is to be uh thinking about therefore if this country is and then just hold that notion for for a moment that rather than continuing to think oh there's something that we have to fix that there's something that is broken in the country and if we just fix it then uh everything will be better that and that's a a fairly constant and consistent progressive value or progressive perspective if we just pause for a moment and say let's let's look at the truth of how this country was designed uh let's look at the truth of the history of uh 375 400 years of slavery let's look at the history of the persistent division of European descended people the persistent preferential treatment to European people there's a there's a fantastic book I wonder if somebody knows the name of it I think it's called the color the color of law that is out and it talks about particularly the the the the era of the new deal which you know those of you that have heard Obama talk about the new the having a new new deal one of the things that we don't often talk about is the fact that for blacks and Latinos and people from uh that were that were brown and black in this country that new deal was always a raw deal that was designed to keep us from being able to have access to the very thing that created the great middle class of America that everybody is scrounging to be a part of and is talking about the fact that it's disappearing well it never actually existed for us and so if we think about the fact that the country was never designed for uh what is quickly becoming the overwhelming majority the majority of people in this country we can actually begin to re uh a lot of people talk about decolonizing our minds but we can actually start with a reframe that lets us really think about how it is that we each as individuals go back and figure out what does it mean to be a part of a country to be a part of a nation to that uh in many that in many ways in very specific ways from uh the legal level down to the very very personal and you know horrific level in terms of violence and aggression against people what does it mean to reconcile the fact that we many of us never belonged uh would never intended to belong and if what would happen if we put aside the idea that we are supposed to go and fix something that we're supposed to figure out how it is that we try to belong to this thing but rather we begin to reframe and think about what is it that a new america would look like what is it that an america that starts from the beginning honoring the uh ways of being the the choice in terms of how we want to live and how we want to show up in the world in brown and black bodies in queer bodies in trans bodies in female bodies uh in white able-bodied heterosexual male bodies that have been under the gun of uh patriarchy keeping them in a position in which they feel under siege and under attack by these so-called other people that are often looking at them saying hey you're the high man on the totem pole you should give us something what would it look like if we as a progressive movement began to re-envision what an america would look like that created room for all of us not just in our bodies but also in the true true heart of where we come from as human beings from where we come from in terms of recognizing our location in and as as uh expressions of the earth not just people that are on top of the earth but as true aspects of the planet uh I personally think that that deep level of healing that allows us to come together to actually find the whole truth of our existence to find and connect through the whole truth of our lineages to look back over our shoulder and realize that our ancestors were put in untenable positions whether they were put in those positions from a perspective of giving their lives over to uh uh doing the labor and building the wealth of other people or if they were put in the untenable position of losing their land of being moved from their original homes that they inhabited for uh as far as we know up to uh millennia here in on on the on turtle island or if they're in the untenable position which I often think is probably one of the worst positions is to be uh located in a place where one is disconnected from their humanity and not in not allowed to recognize the humanity of black and brown and indigenous people of asian people we had a period of time in this country and in which we talked about the yellow plague because uh the owning class didn't want asian people from all of the the asian countries to be able to come in the country after chinese people came and built the country after uh japanese folks came and uh planted the land they were then interred so i want to invite us in this radical dharma in this deep intensive look at who we are and what our future path is to first step back into our history and think about what it would mean for us to revise our history and start our conversations with each other from a place in which we're not they're trying to convince ourselves of how it is that we belong that we actually acknowledge that most of us never belonged and never were intended to belong and what we're really doing here is saying how is it that we can begin to have a conversation about creating space for the wholeness of who each of us are from this point going forward reclaiming the wholeness that was left behind in order for us to find our way into a capitalist economic system that perceives human beings along lines of value based on how they want to resource those human beings and take the resources of those human beings so i just want to like throw that out there and have folks start to think about that and i'm gonna invite you back i know there's uh some questions going on um and we'll get to some of the more personal things as well but i wanted to get people to kind of just start thinking because it's something that i've been thinking about is what if we left behind the notion of the find founding fathers recognize them for who they were in terms of how it is that they perceived and uh uh and and diminished the humanity of the people peoples of of this land and the people that were brought to this land and we start to rethink that not to have a blame and shame conversation but rather to think about what would it mean if we started to create a space that is welcoming to all peoples so and you want to come back on and uh bring up some questions and i'm going to take a look at the chat and see what else is people have been talking about i'm going to bring this this this forward tarence is talking about as a black queer man i use my hang on angel actually our tarence popped up great so just a quick note if you're okay with us seeing and hearing you today we'd love to do that i'm going to bring uh tarence i'm going to bring you in right now so people have been putting things in the chat because we've been hanging out there but if you're okay with me bringing you in so we can see and hear you put your question in the q and a tab if you want to be anonymous today keeping it in the chat is great and sweet i'm going to bring in tarence and it usually takes just a second hi tarence great tarence we can't let's see looks like you're on mute and so we'd love to hear you there you go can you hear us tarence we can't hear you yet i hope we can bring in yeah sorry angel do you want to just go ahead and ask yeah sure um okay so tarence the question i've got is um here we go as a black queer man i use my practice to liberate myself from how i have internalized depression and continue to deal with ongoing macro and microaggressions uh yeah i i don't know about those that microaggressions it all feels pretty macro to me i've been struggling lately with the process of decolonizing my mind but sometimes i feel a tension between this work and still feeling obligated to educate and make white people aware of what is happening i would rather just focus on me how do you deal with this tension i'm so glad that you you're asking that question especially from your particular location as a black queer man tarence i think it's really really important that folks of color and deeply educated white folks release themselves from the place of martyrdom in which they feel that they have to keep centering white people and centering educating white folks that's not to say that some of us are not going to do it but if your internal feeling is that you need to be able to focus on yourself then that's actually where your focus should be and that's not selfish that's actually honoring the healing that is necessary and if we can't have these conversations from a place in which we are feeling it's never going to be perfect but we're feeling sufficiently whole sufficiently able to be able to stand in a place of love in our own place of healing then what we do is we continue to martyr ourselves and that itself is a form of internalized white supremacy in which we are often situated around even when black folks and indigenous folks were breaking their backs doing doing work we were still always organized around how it is we're going to make white people feel better or how it is we're going to get their needs taken care of and as many white folks out there know that that's white white folks work to do so in many instances it's really going to be white folks work to do to do the work with each other for each other amongst each other in order to to get educated and you Terrence should take care of yourself because when you take care of yourself and I will say this from my own particular experience when I decided to turn my attention inward and do the personal self-education and the healing work that I needed to do and to really ground my practice in becoming whole from myself then I was actually able to show up in non-conflicted way in terms of supporting my white sisters and brothers and and not gender non-conforming folks around their journeys but until we can do that the best thing that we can offer people is actually to say you know I'm doing my the work of taking care of myself right now so that is what I would offer to you and all of the other folks that find themselves in that location and I really want to say this again that's not actually about being selfish that is actually the most honoring thing you can do both for yourself and their behalf that doesn't mean that they're not always going to they're always going to be able to understand but that's not your work to do and you need to claim that space and as we rethink centering whiteness as the most important thing to take care of what we recognize is we diminish white folks even when they're asking for it we diminish them when we center center them in such a way that infantilizes their own learning process and doesn't give them the opportunity to do the learning and healing and facing up to the truth that they need to face up to and get educated on their own so thank you for that question um and you want to try to see if we can bring anyone else up yes we've got um a question from william and a question from sapana actually several got lots of questions lined up all right we got a lot of questions just bring someone up come on okay what do you think should we well let's go to william and uh give me just a second here and i'll try to line up uh the the next people while while you're answering william too yeah that would be great all right so we see you in the q and a we're going to try to line you up to get you questions live because we want some uh action going on here not just listening to my voice the whole time in the meantime i'm just going to say uh welcome to to can this can this white and catherine kendall um said oh never mind and and uh uh she talked talked talked about uh people of european descent are willing to do the work with other white people so i want to actually thank you for that catherine uh because that's something that is really important and it's good to actually hear that it's not just never mind because it's good to hear white folks say that they are willing to do the work and to own and to step into a place and one thing i do want to say about white folks doing the work of supporting other white folks drop the perfection and the need to be perfection you don't have to have all the answers what you have to do is be committed to non-harming in the best way that you can and that's why i talk about doing this work and having these conversations and finding your radical dharma from the seed of love william come and talk to us hi can you can you hear me i can totally hear you from fort colin's great to see you william thank you hi reverend angel so my question plays off some of that and how to do that work um you know i'm really curious about how to how to uh encourage and facilitate people making room for suffering specifically considering that whiteness um and white racial identity seems to be really uncomfortable with suffering and that seems to even um i get a sense of that in buddhist spaces you know where we should be um actively embracing suffering but we don't really connect on that level and i'm just curious about how to sort of undermine the orientation towards consumption comfort and instead start to invite people to embrace suffering a little bit more directly just what your thoughts are on that yeah i would say that goes back to the premise that i'm setting up that if we if we reorient ourselves from this idea that like um uh america as it is was somehow set up for us and and recognize that that's actually not actually true then what we're do what we end up doing is we position all of our all of us in into a place in which we have to renegotiate our belonging and a lot of the you know people call white fragility and if you haven't heard the term white fragility please you know everybody just go ahead and type in white fragility and you'll and you'll you'll find out about uh all about white fragility and how basically white folks have been set up for generation after generation after generation to not actually not just feel suffering but to not feel a whole lot in order to and that's what i talk about being a contextual because if we if white folks were able to were living inside their bodies inside their feeling state generation after generation while black folks were being paraded around sold on the corner uh you know as as and became property became the basis of white people's wealth if they actually feeling that i i want to say that i believe deeply in the fundamental goodness of humanity and so if they were feeling that i don't think they could have survived and so white folks have been uh organized into a location of not being able to feel and so when you suppress feeling what happens is when there's intense feeling that shows up it's it's a lot it's it's basically like you have a nervous system those of you the practice yoga you have a nervous system that's not yet toned so white folks are not there's no nervous systems are not toned to the realities of our society and therefore they are hypersensitive and because of white supremacy also hypersensitive and in in a location of believing that their comfort proceeds everything and should be the paramount to absolutely everything and so it's really white folks job in order to deeply question that what is it in me that as i look around the world and i see the suffering of folks of color i see the suffering of black folks i see the ways in which white white cops have been lured into this dynamic and this charade of understanding themselves as being in a supreme location and somehow protecting the the life and the property of of the owning class so that they themselves are also subject to a kind of victimization of capitalism and white supremacy and therefore cutting off their own humanity as they decimate black people in the in the streets and in their homes what is it in you that thinks that you should be comfortable in the in the face of that right and just beginning to probe that question and the the location of probing that question is not what is it that i can do for white for colored people or how is it that i can get better about this so that i can do what i need to do for colored people but what is it i have lost in my own humanity that makes me feel that somehow my comfort is paramount to everyone else's comfort that i can't have conversations unless i somehow feel good about them what is it right in myself what has been lost or cut off or disavowed in my own life in other words what is the suffering that i am feeling and or if i am fearing feeling that is keeping me from showing up and being a full human being in in this in this conversation and when i think that when white folks get their attention off of people of color do your advocacy get out there sign checks you know get in the streets put your body on the line but in terms of your personal work if you're not willing to confront your own suffering and what got lost that enables a kind of fragility that makes you incapacitated then you're not doing not only the work that's necessary for society you're not doing the work that's necessary for your own humanity and healing in your life oh thank you most welcome thank you so much William thanks for coming calling in of course wonderful and we've got uh sapana um should we should be able to bring in i'm gonna if i press a couple buttons here can we hear you hi oh wonderful can you hear me yes we can hear you can't see you yet and oh thank you so much for this amazing amazing event i have so many questions but i'll come from where i've what i've been working on is a little bit more in the international realm i'm absolutely i'm of indian descent and you know i i work a lot on on social justice issues in india and i i'm also wanting to connect you know as an american citizen what i do at home with what i do in my ancestors land and starting to see how white supremacy turns up in really complex ways yes realism and and the ways in which you know things that look like national pride can end up you know you know being against sort of having pride in one's own race like for example that's right pride can end up really being you know the source of it really being in white supremacy and then you know kind of reinforcing divisions and reinforcing oppression among people of color you know whether it's indians in a hierarchy against black people or against you know people of lower caste if you're upper caste or against muslims and how you know all of those ways in which oppression and privilege kind of come together one and then sort of how do we think about working at home and working across national boundaries in this context of global white supremacy and and capitalism i know it's a lot any part of that that you could you know one of the things i want to get to is because people often ask about it say you know well you know race existed before america it's not our fault you know it's been there um what i you know there's there's having a thing and there's perfecting a thing and uh we perfected the thing meaning in in the united states we perfected the thing uh you know the the the british it you know were responsible for the the earliest you know framing of of of a kind of white supremacy and articulating it what america did is we actually put it on the on the books legally and then we turned around and we exported it back out into the world and so that's what we we're seeing is the globalization of white supremacy that is now just taken for granted but what's important to remember is a that it has not always been that way and b that uh it is the incredibly undermining of the our sense of who we are as a people for us to continue to inhabit this and to not reckon to not to stop seeing white supremacy and cast as a conversation that's about people against people but rather a conversation that is that is about a construct against our humanity that if we begin to recognize that what white supremacy is is not about like colored people brown people indian people south asian people against white people but it is about a construct that is designed to to to uh to um uh i want to i want to i want to say um interrupt our fundamental sense of connection with other human beings on an entirely false notion for the purposes of maintaining power and privilege it doesn't exist for any other reason so when we ask white folks and colored folks white folks to deal with white supremacy colored folks to deal with internalized white supremacy oppression and uh racism we're not asking them to figure out how it is that we tear like white people down we're figuring what we're asking people to do is to figure out how we deconstruct something that was specifically designed for us to uh set aside our natural capacity to love other human beings across lines of difference and if you think that you can somehow escape that location and if you're going to be in those divisions of not being able to see people to truly see people when you can't see people in their suffering you can't see people at all i want to say that when you can't see people in their suffering you cannot see people at all but if you can't see people at all it is because you are not seeing yourself and i say that because i believe deeply in and and know to my bones that human beings are fundamentally good and so when there is an inability to see other human beings and the suffering of other human beings and relate it to your suffering it is because you are not seeing and acknowledging your own suffering and that's why a core frame of radical dharma is to say let's stop focusing entirely out there somewhere because that actually reifies the power of the disconnect from our own humanity even if we're well intentioned even if we're well meaning what we're doing is we're disconnecting from our humanity and i know that there are folks on here like marie elizabeth you might have gotten off uh that are powerful teachers and coaches that know that for all of the work we do when we get right down to it that our most powerful and potentiated transformation comes from the internal work that we do with ourselves on ourselves because what that does is it reinstates the natural organic connection to all of humanity the thing that we call oneness that sounds and it's just kind of like bypassing and not really connecting to people comes from our willingness to actually turn the attention inward reconnect to our humanity and then we naturally organically are connected with the humanity of other beings of course we then have to learn how to advocate we have to learn how to show up together we have to learn how to be in conversation in a way in which we stop centering whiteness and the ways that white people do things uh fixation on time fixation on perfection that is actually undermining the humanity of white people and and killing them too you know frankly we're creating a society in which the the the ability to fail the ability to not get things right the ability to not have the answers is something that is uh that we we feel lost in and and that is harmful to all of us as as human beings and so uh i know that was a long answer to your your your complex question but i want to leave people with these important points which is that when we talk about uh pushing back against whiteness and deconstructing whiteness and pushing back against white supremacy we are not talking about pushing back against white people even though white people have been in taught to inhabit those locations inside of that construct because there are material uh benefits and privileges as a result of that what we are talking about fundamentally is deconstructing something that is has been designed to upend our humanity and we see the impact of that on the planet we see the impact of that in terms of war we see the impact of that in our families and our and and with our loved ones all right great reverend angel and and thank you all so much for these questions i am now going to bring up um and please um say your name for us if i'm saying it wrong camila lisa and kandace and i think that you all should be able to bring yourselves in and there was one question while we while we try to get all their video up video up angel and i make sure they're not on mute um there was one question from last week that um that i thought would be really interesting somebody said is it possible for a white cis man to do good social justice work and i thought i'd ask if you could touch on that a little bit while i work on bringing in these folks uh absolutely uh i a hundred and a thousand percent and um i'm i want to say that i first applaud the white cis man that i'm assuming a white cis man ask that question and i applaud you for being willing to put yourself out in that in a in a way that uh has humility just to even ask that question because i know that in the course of our making our way into a conversation about white supremacy that white cis men can often feel the brunt and the burden of the ire of people and the frustration and the anger and that that has to do with that that uh construct of locating white cis able you know able-bodied men on the top of the so-called uh totem pole of society which in itself is is a is a bad an a bad analogy but it is if you recognize that it is one of the things that actually is causing deep harm and i think that's very much a part of why we're seeing the outrageous uh you know drug abuse epidemic amongst particularly white white cis cis men uh because we're in a place in which in our country we're confronting the loss of connection and the loss of um natural organic love with other human beings so that white men and cis cis men are feeling under siege so my encouragement to you is to you know as we're we're doing here is to get yourself educated you know uh it's summertime and it's a great time to read some books Baldwin has a whole lot to say and has had a whole lot to say that is relevant to this very day um and and do the heart work and the healing work of allowing yourself the kind of vulnerability that patriarchy and white supremacy would deny you from uh if you can do that and you can do it from a place in which you are uh both honoring the humanity that is within you regardless of the fact that of what white supremacy and patriarchy has heaped upon you and you can do it from a place of humility that also acknowledges and recognizes that because of your location you have been the recipient of an enormous amount of privilege at the cost at a great cost to other people and so there's going to be some uh you know funk that's going to come your way as a result of that and the place to stand in that is to recognize that it's not personal that we are that we're all caught up in this and that we have to be able to do the kind of work that gives us perspective so that we don't over personalize the the ways in which um we are going we're going to grapple our way and do it in sometimes ways that are untidy if you can do that and you can hold on to ultimately that this is about love and justice on behalf of your you in your own life and also for the the society then you're going to be okay we are all going to be okay i just did we lose our sorry about that angel i couldn't see the screen for a second um so we're going to bring in uh camila yes this is camila hi camila hi my camera doesn't seem to be wanting to work with me today but can you hear me okay we sure can okay great thank you uh thank you reverend angel this talk has been invaluable and it's just always good to be with you it's good to see you um so yeah my question was about just the volume of of you know premises events that we encounter on a regular basis you know as you know i'm i teach mental health i teach you know contemplative practice buddhist practice mindfulness practice to you know manage emotional pain and to work for racial and social justice and i'm just always overwhelmed by the sheer volume of you know racist events and white supremacist events on a daily basis and i you know often want to just turn off the news for a few days and say you know i just really i can't listen to any more of it but then my you know bodhisattva bow kicks in and i'm like i've got a face to this i've got to turn towards the suffering and you know just this is a good time to deepen the practice but i guess my question for you was really about how you manage it like how much news do you watch how much how much do you take in you know i mean do you watch the news every day and if you do how do you stay out of the paralysis of rage and and actually maintain enough equanimity to do something good yeah um i'm actually uh a self-admitted new york times and wash and now washington post whore so i kind of know you know a lot a lot of people in choice about what they do i feel i feel fully in choice about it um and um and what i do is i maintain perspective um and when i say maintain perspective i don't personalize it white supremacy and the the prevalence of white supremacy is in no way new what we do what we we're getting is a very strong dose of access to it on a kind of a concentrated basis that i think is actually while enormously painful and i want to say really really uh increasingly traumatic particularly to to black folks coming in confrontation and in the in terms of the the reality that we we are facing and the the feeling of a lack of fundamental safety in our bodies when we just you know whether we're lying in our beds or walking out our doors i think that this is necessary i think that there are too many of us have been asleep for too long and so the way that i consume the news is i i i read the news i pay attention to issues i don't get caught up in the drama of the uh you know what for me is like a clear overwhelming incompetence that is uh uh destined to cause us a great amount of harm but i need to know what's going on and i uh one of the things that i read in particular is uh what the so-called other side is saying because i think it's really important for us to understand what we're working with um that said i also take and not in like an in some kind of like really you know tight way i take breaks uh most mondays i'm not really uh i don't really pay attention to the news and i don't pay attention to a lot of the rest of humanity i don't take calls i don't um you know i work but i don't work outside with with the world on most mondays um when i was away uh and you know went up to up north northern california here i you know my phone went someplace and i didn't even remember where it was and so i released the relationship to a kind of a fixation and you know meditation practice does that it actually interrupts our compulsions and so i want to say the the thing is if you're in choice you know then that's a good thing if you're in compulsion then uh then it's going to be harmful um and take the breaks that you need and get the kind of care that you need i take care of my body uh when i noticed that it's getting to be too much and i and i'm feeling like um you know it's just kind of like at a point of ridiculous i i put it down and i let myself put it down knowing that it's all going to be there um but you do have to take care of yourself first for fortunately we are not in the place in which we have to run out onto the battlefield so to speak you know all cut up and bleeding there's other folks that are going to run and be available and be present to the front lines when you're not able to do that so take care of yourself wow thank you i really appreciate that because i especially after the castile you know acquittal and just different you know really like you seeing people just dying and you know it's like there are people dying it's like okay how do i deal with people dying so it's useful to hear no folks here's one thing i want to say um and this is the frame that i'm talking about in terms of this new america we have to stop expecting folks are going to be acquitted we have to stop expecting that there is going to be justice because that is an acknowledgement of our own keeping our heads in the sand and not acknowledging the the the social reality the legal reality the historical reality of america for what it is what we are seeing is just the truth of what america is what it has been it has not gotten any worse we are simply seeing it in fact you know i know people say it you know it hasn't gotten better it has gotten better in some ways um and we just have access to information in a way that is playing tricks on our heads but we've we have to kind of fortify ourselves with the reality of the society that we live in and start to have a new vision uh we i i simply don't think that we are in any way decolonizing ourselves as long as we are standing in a hope and expectation that somehow uh there's going to be justice for black and brown bodies that there's going to be justice for trans bodies that's going to be justice for indigenous lands and indigenous peoples there is not going to be justice as long as this is a country that remains designed to serve and maintain the power and privilege of a very very small number of people and we have to do ourselves a favor and and an honoring of our own truth by not expecting it and you know this is a this is the a contextual thing i'm having but i'm talking about we keep looking at it going oh what happened how did this happen it's so obvious it's what it's in the theft of this land from the peoples was not obvious the slavery is not obvious the you know the the um uh voter suppression is not obvious how much do we have to hear for us to stop trying to continue to hope for our uh our rapists for the perpet the perpetuator of of the violence against us to stop hoping that they are not going to do it it's like being an abusive relationship in which you keep hoping that the person that is coming in and beats you every day is going to be in a good mood and going to give you a break today you got to stop hoping for that and you have to start preparing for the fact that they are here to beat you down and they are going to beat you down whether that is a mentally emotionally physically at every chance and opportunity because the construct that has been developed to keep us in place to keep us from being able to look behind the curtain is falling apart and so it's going to get more and more intense it's going to get worse before it gets better and we have to get real wow that's very helpful thank you change what we're hoping for yeah thank you right here here's what we have to hope for we have to hope for no expectation that somebody else is going to do the change work that we have to do the change work in our hearts in our minds we have to do it with each other uh and we we um and we have to do it as as quickly as we can but we have to do it with a with a sense of our uh our eyes open we have to stay woke thank you thank you so much you're absolutely welcome I want to just take a quick moment I know we have a couple more questions but I do want to say that there are a couple of different opportunities there's an email that I sent out that's going around that for being able to do some work in in terms of having direct conversations practicing these these conversations with Radical Dharma and the Radical Dharma team one thing is I'm doing a very rare urban retreat here called Practicing Justice you can go on my website and and look these things up but Practicing Justice is happening here July 20th to 23rd here in North Berkeley and it's an urban retreat format you can read all about it you can get on my mailing list and I'm happy to send you information and then I'm going to be headed up to Shambhala Mountain Center in Red Feather Lakes Colorado we're going to be doing Living Radical Dharma and that's a really fine opportunity for people that are really just like entering into this conversation trying to understand like where do I stand I want to say it's probably is in terms of location there's going to be a very strong white audience that's there and we are welcoming to everyone that comes and that's a great opportunity for people to really just get their feet wet in the conversation there's there's no dumb questions is only not showing up quickly following after that I'm going to be headed down to Tassahara Zen Center up to up to Tassahara Zen Mountain Center which if you haven't been to Tassahara T-A-S-S-A-J-A-R-A you should definitely look it up come and be in relaxation of the hot springs and an incredible food and a beautiful location that is there and I'll be doing that with Abbot Fu Schroeder from Green Gulch and so we'll be there for a few days and then the big big big summer that is radical will take us to the Radical Dharma National Camp at Omega Institute and I want to invite anyone that is interested in really seeding conversations and being in space in which you can be with other people that are engaged in and when I say Radical Dharma I'm not just talking about a book I'm talking about the the idea that you are you are in the process of really truly choosing to reclaim your whole self and to have the kinds of conversation that releases you wherever you may stand whether you're in a white body a black body a brown body a red body to release you from the burden of the kind of racialization the kind of stigma and and and cutoffness from your humanity that white supremacy and patriarchy are and so that's an opportunity for people to get together in a in a whole different way and and really seed conversations all throughout this country so I just wanted to name those things and I want to make sure we're going to go to another question but I want to make sure we give away some swag and because we promise to give away some swag and I have Radical Dharma t-shirts that I want to give away to a couple of folks and so I want to make sure I name those folks before we end our time together so that's terrific Angel and I I've got to I've got to we've got some stand shirts yes I got my Radical Dharma yeah I've got my Radical Dharma sweatshirt on and I have the the back of it and so instead of showing showing you the back back of it and turning around that's the Radical Dharma logo is on the back yes yes yes so you want one of those Radical Dharma t-shirts they are very very difficult to get we're not even make we're not even selling them anymore and so we're going to make sure that we get a couple of them out to out to people I want to point out one question that someone asked about Muriel yes there are scholarships I know that Omega is expensive and we're working on that and we're working on some additional support to to bring make sure that we can bring people we are doing our best and just go ahead and get my website angelkyotowilliams.com go to the contact form and go ahead and put in a query and we'll do our best to make sure that we can try to get you supportive I do know I know they are I know they're expensive and and just going to be honest and straight up about that in in terms of some of the expensive but we but we are definitely working with scholarships for people and all of the places that I go to work with scholarships because that's a fundamental premise of of me doing the work that I do where I do it so yeah let's bring on another question before we end terrific we've got Lisa and then Candice in the queue and I did in the chat and Candice said that she didn't need to be sorry okay yeah Lisa in the queue and we've got I dropped your link to your site and then also to the events page in there I think the only thing that wasn't on the events page was the urban retreat but if they're if they make it to your contact will they be able to find out more about that yeah it's a practicing justice and it's a powerful embodied retreat in which we look at the way impression oppression lives in the body we used to call it oppression in the soma you can definitely go ahead and look it up on facebook and you'll be able to find it but go to universalpartnership.org uh slash pj-apply you got that Ann I think so universal partnership just go to universalpartnership.org I do it with my co-conspirator Rusea and you'll be able to find the information there there are very few spots left the application window is going to close on the 7th and so we'd love to have people there let's go ahead and bring Lisa's question up okay great and Lisa we should be able to hear you hello great hi hi I don't think I'm able to get the visual but I guess you guys are hearing me based upon your we do hear you yeah yeah I was just wondering I teach psychology positive psychology and I guess I'm being dogmatic with this term history yeah I think this kind of perpetuates in the psyche the patriarchy because it's his story and I much rather use the word antiquity because or just talk about use the word past um it might sound like a futile point um but I realize in working with my students that it makes a difference when you say his story versus the truth of things that actually did happen um and I think that kind of frames this thought of there's just one side of life because it's not and a lot of things that were written we know in these books are falsehoods from Christopher Columbus to America well they're they're perspective based yeah yeah I I really I know I stopped using it in my class and my students have commented that it shifts their paradigm to stop using his story yeah and start identifying with terms like antiquity because it's a whole lot that happened we don't know about it's more and more getting exposed because of contact and things like that but what do you think about that am I just being really dogmatic or do you think it's an important point no I'm a I'm a big fan of words and so and I'm a big fan of language and how we communicate I think one of the things that we have to do is make sure we're explaining what we mean as we say it and so sometimes there's kind of the shortcut and uh but it's definitely a point that I would take you know as you you said in the question you didn't say this out loud but you've written question talked about uh the the framing of people of color as a minority when we with people it's like the overwhelming majority of the planet and absolutely it shifts the perspective of people and so I think that's a very important point and and actually on that one of the important points that I I want to make in particular is that it is actually because somebody has asked this before is it important that we use the term white or are we just you know reef using those frames I actually think in the time we want to actually use the framing and I want to say in particular white folks need to be comfortable naming themselves as white because often whiteness goes unquestioned and so when you don't have to say white or when you use the like completely as talk about something false and made up the term Caucasian which a lot of older white skinned people have used uh you you are avoiding the fact of the centralization of whiteness and what it what it does is allow whiteness to kind of disappear into the background as a as a fact right so so the so they become the the central principle around every everything else is black we have a black church in a latina church and and everything else but we but we never talk about the white church and it's time for us to actually name things and I think one of the things that is creating a point of fragility for a lot of white folks is in fact to hear the term white and to use it and what I want to encourage you to do that is to own that and to claim that and to take the term whiteness and to allow it to enter into your body and the meaning of of what it means to be identified in that way uh and and and what pivots off of that right so if you have to actually own what it own whiteness you then have to start to own a little bit of what it means to be white and own what it means to be white in in the particular context you're in so I I think it's very importantly so and um it's is it is it's a little it's a little geeky you know but that's how we roll sometimes and you know and we have to do that I've gone so far to always when I am speaking about white people and in general I'll say European American right and my student said I'm uncomfortable with the fact that you refer to me as a European I said well I'm African American you're European American you let to really help people frame that we're all human beings with just differences right and it might come from places right and the fact that the textbooks don't even they talk about everyone else as if white is everything and you're the outlier kind of thing that's right and it just perpetuates a thought that like you said it it's it's a lack of owning what's really going on that's right that's absolutely right we can't heal we can't move forward and I really like your comment I'll stop here is where you said my father used to always say it's going to get worse before it gets better it is definitely going to get worse before it gets better and it's and it's you know friend of mine always says like gird your loins folks you know get get out of the kind of like naive thinking that doesn't allow us to honor the reality that we're in and that's that's the a contextual right is that we keep going into this kind of like numb space where we're hoping for it to be different than it is and one of the things that having a mindfulness in meditation practice is about when you choose to actually relate to the whole reality that you get rather than just a little piece of reality which unfortunately a lot of practitioners of meditation and mindfulness are choosing to only focus their attention on their navels and and focus on themselves and not allowing their meditation practice to penetrate the bubble that white supremacy and and patriarchy lets people float around in but when you allow the whole reality to come in what happens is I know a lot of people fear that what what's going to happen is that you're going to get overwhelmed what actually what actually happens is that you are you become you come into contact into presence with the with the reality of the suffering of humanity and the suffering of yourself and that inspires us to act from a place that is actually much deeper much more committed and also much more grounded in our sense of limits so it's done like it's like a you know I just went so so wonderful wonder woman it's not not going to make you a goddess but what it is going to do is going to allow you to be in concert and to walk with the truth of your own humanity and do that from in a good way yeah it's kind of like bird you know we have to have labor before we have delivery that that is exactly right that's exactly right so i'm going to give a couple away go ahead i'm going i'm going to do everything i can to be there for practicing justice i cannot miss that okay please please do come join us because we we we have a few spots left and it's a very very powerful retreat so i just scrolled through the chat and i'm just going to like make up stuff and guru karm said that they would love to promote radical dharma with a shirt so please send me your email address guru karm put your email address into the actually you i need you to email a third excuse me race at transformative change.org race at transformative change.org and kathryn we would definitely want to send you one to portland argan i'm not sure who of the panelists are still up there but and i know you have some some stand swag to give away you want to give something away there i'm going to defer to you reverend angel yeah okay um and did you what was the email address that they should email so that you'll have their address was it race? race at transformative change and um we want to make sure that uh there's a couple of people i just want to like really love up on y'all for sending such fantastic comments um people that are saying i don't need swag but i'd love to be a representative of chicago um i'm going to read all these chats i want you to know that i that i read them that i may not be able to respond directly to all of them but i've got two now one from last week and one from this week and i'm going to do my best to respond from them i'm going to like head off to albuquerque tomorrow and so i have a little bit of time when i'm going to uh a conference there that you can read about with the center of action and contemplation um i really appreciate your folks honesty their willingness i i just am glancing some of the comments to um and and willingness to be vulnerable and you know as i said the white cis male that put put him himself out there and being vulnerable this is what we actually do it feels like a hard lift for some of us for some of us it feels like what we have been lifting from uh before our own lives began i want to say to you i have a great great great commitment and belief that when we do this work in this kind of deep way that we get past the like chatter that we get past the you know not not not to your question lisa but fussing over semantics and trying to figure out where it is that we want to fight and we go to the heart of our suffering we go to the heart of our healing we go to the heart of really um reconnecting with our own wholeness and finding the places in which racialization the dividing of us a people as as resources the devaluing of certain people and the privileging of other people we have all lost and i know that that's not it doesn't it's not like that on a material level but at a deeply spiritual level we all lose out and if the thing that we lose out on most love means not just that we lose out on being able to look people across the people across the table it means that we lose out on the capacity and the depth and the organic natural power to be able to recognize and connect with that love in ourselves so you don't have to do this i know there's a lot of folks that are out here that are activists but if you're feeling like kind of cranky and you're like why should i do this i want to tell you don't do it for me do it for you because no matter who you are no matter where you're situated i don't care if if you're like a red neck in a red state and you're and you're trying to figure out how to like decimate all the immigrants and the queers do it for yourself do it for the reconnection to your humanity because i fundamentally know in my heart that when we find that connection to our deep humanity that the only answer is for us to uh start to recognize each other to recognize our our suffering and and to start to do the i don't want to say right thing as in like a right and wrong from from a left and right perspective but a right thing from the deep well of humanity and moral courage that is innate to who we are and i i believe that and so i don't have to be your friend you don't have to try to be my friend i don't have to make friends with everybody else but if you want to do that work and you want to do that with me and and uh you want to come and visit us in any one of the radical dharma retreats or the practicing justice retreats i fully welcome you leave your comments i'm gonna i know a lot of folks have to get off because they're you know hope you got work you got school you got kids to pay attention to a life to get back to i'm just going to hang out here and give away a few more more t-shirts i want to send my love to everyone i want to send my honoring of the the deep well of humanity that is within you we didn't get to do a formal practice today uh but you can always always take three seconds and just bring your feet to the ground root yourself connect to the earth find your seat whether you're standing or sitting extend your crown into the sky and feel the full sense and of dignity that exists in your length extend your shoulders out to the side and really uh take in the space around you and your sense of relationship with the people that are there with the space with the planet with the earth with the animals with the trees with everything that is there around you and most important of all is to really just drop down into your belly and always always always connect to what matters don't do it for me don't do it for someone else out there do it because you uh you believe that you are entitled to the fullest expression of your humanity that is possible and if you do that i trust fully that we are going to end up in the same place together and we're going to end up in a new america that is has room for all of us to thrive for all of us to be in connection with each other and i look forward to that happening with each and every single one of you thank you so much and thank you for the fantastic comments y'all uh so if you if you we got a couple of people we're i'm just going to grab grab some folks so if you're interested i'm we're going to see what we've got left not not hold you up uh too much longer um please please do drop your e email drop your email excuse me drop an email to race at transformative change and we will get the t-shirts that we have for both stand and radical dharma and get get them get them out for people um sapana is interested and thank you for being a panelist so we will definitely make sure sapana does she gets one so sapana please do email race at transformative and change uh runoff thank you so much uh janice thank you so much lori thank you and love to you dona ozawa thank you so much it is a blessing to have each and every single one of you we can do this folks we do not have to do this from a place of anger we do not have to uplift and hold on to that place in which we are seeking to divide ourselves we can do this from the vulnerability of our hearts of our desire to be connected i love that you are doing this uh with us i hope that we get to do this in some form again and thank you so much stand thank you so much for hosting us i look forward to seeing all y'all out there please love me up on my facebook page on instagram uh i look forward to connecting with you again take care of yourselves take care of yourselves take care of yourselves thank you reverend angel thank you