 Good morning. What a beautiful day and what a wonderful place to be to see it. I hope you will enjoy this incredible symposium for strategic leadership in diversity, equity, and inclusion. My name is Mary Lee Kennedy and I am the Executive Director of the Association of Research Libraries and it is my pleasure to welcome you here today. We would like to start off this very important event by acknowledging and paying our respects to the indigenous communities from Minnesota. Minnesota is home to 11 federally recognized tribes, seven Ojibwe, and four Dakota, and we're standing and sitting on what was once Dakota land. So please we ask for their kind welcome and learn on lands that they once called home. This symposium is designed to increase our understanding and capacity among academic and research library professionals for creating healthy organizations with diverse equitable and inclusive climates. We hope that the next couple of days a program will help all of us to learn, grow, become comfortable with discomfort, and allow each of us as leaders to position ourselves, our institutions, and our communities to do this hard work to dedicate ourselves to realizing true equity and inclusion in academic and research libraries. The program that has been planned for us represents a broad array of perspectives, strategies and aspirations for creating systemic change within our profession and beyond. So I would like to thank the co-hosts for our meeting, Association of College and Research Libraries. Mary Ellen, are you here please? Please thank Mary Ellen Davis. This symposium and for those who were here yesterday for the pre-conference would not have been possible without the generous donations from the institutions that are acknowledged in this PowerPoint. I would like each one of these institutions to stand and then we will hold our applause and thank them at the end. So at the friend level Cal State Los Angeles University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries, University of Oregon Libraries, University at the ally level, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries, thank you, University of California Irving Libraries, Penn State University Libraries, thank you, University of Texas at Austin Libraries, University of Washington Libraries, Yale-Lillian-Goldman-Loth Library, thank you, York University. Please give a round of applause for all of these and one more generous group of people at the champion level University of Alberta Libraries, Cornell University Library, University of Florida George A. Smaithers Libraries, University of Houston Libraries, Iowa State University Library, University of Minnesota Libraries, MIT Libraries, thank you, MIT Libraries, OCLC, thank you, Texas A&M Libraries, Virginia Tech University Libraries, at the hero level American University Library, the University of Iowa Libraries, the Ohio State University Libraries. I honestly think this is just a testimonial of the amazing support for this type of program and I just thank you all for this, very, very generous of you to do this. So I know I'm standing between you and Mark and the keynote, but I do want to recognize the 11 travel scholarships that were awarded to encourage conference participation by wide range of individuals interested in transforming academic and research libraries into organizations that truly embody these values of diversity, inclusion, and equity. So if you would please stand, Arthur Aguilera from Bay State University. Hi, Arthur. Boise. Oh, how awful, sorry. Danisha Baker Whitaker from Bennett College. Thank you. Hello, Danisha. Mohamed Barry from Florida State University. Mohamed, you here? Thank you. Kevin Brown from the University of New Mexico. Hello, Kevin. Zeida Delgado, University of California Riverside. Thank you. Monica Figueroa, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Federico Martinez Garcia, Jr., University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. There you are. Thank you. Elise Minter, Towson University. She must become. Alana Aiko Moore, University of California, San Diego. Ariana Santiago, University of Houston. Thank you. And Shandra Walker from Georgia College. Okay, thank you. Lastly, but certainly with increasing appreciation for what it takes to do this, I would like to thank the planning group for the week. Members of the ACRL, Human Resources and Personnel Administrators discussion group, they started working on this project last summer and have worked tirelessly to pull this together. Please stand to be recognized. Jeff Banks, University of Arkansas. Thank you. Kathleen DeLong, University of Alberta. Jolly Grayville, University of Minnesota. Melissa Lanning, University of Louisville. Thank you. Laura Lillard, University of Washington. Thank you. And Bonnie Smith, University of Florida. Bonnie, thank you. There were two co-chairs of the planning group, Catherine Kerr, University of California, Irving. Thank you. And Francesca Martini, Marini, Texas A&M. Thank you, sorry about that. As well as the ARL and CRL staff who served on this group, Margo Conahan, ACRL. Hi, Mark. Thank you. Amy Ash. Thank you, Amy and Mark Puente. So now I'm going to pass this over to Mark. Get out of the way and get ready for a fabulous two days. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mary Lee. So I'm Mark Puente, Director of Diversity and Leadership Programs for the Association of Research Libraries. We're delighted to have everyone here this morning. You may have noticed in the program, this in the program, but need to bring this to your attention that photos may be taken as well as video may be taken, will be taken during the course of the program. If you wish to opt out of having your photo taken, please add a green dot to your name tag. The green dots are at the registration table. So please and let us know. And if you see someone taking your photo, call me and I will take them down. So as we said, most sessions will be recorded. These recordings will be shared with with all of the attendees after the symposium on our shared Google Drive space. In the email communication that went out with to all of you, we have some copies of probably very few left and hard copy at the registration table. But you will find also there the code of conduct that the symposium planning group created for this event. We hope that everyone here will take some time to review that code of conduct and will think about centering our minds and our behaviors in such a way that creates a comfortable and inclusive and I hope generative learning environment for everyone attending this event in the event that anyone encounters behavior that is exclusionary and appropriate or threatening. Please know that our program staff are here to help in whatever way appropriate. So please familiarize yourself with that code of conduct so that you'll know who to contact in the unlikely event that you experience or witness behavior that is contrary to this code. So thank you for your attention to that. In case of emergency, attendees can dial zero from any of the phones and there's their scattered throughout in the meeting rooms and you'll be connected to the Marquette Hotel operator. I hope everyone here this morning will be attending the reception this evening. That's in the same space where the breakfast seating area was and so that begins at 5.30 following our program in the star's room. Also lastly, there are a number of flip chart sheets that are posted to the windows. I'm sorry that they're blocking the view but that is some we're trying to get it's a little unconventional, a little bit organized around the unconference sessions that are occurring at the end of the day tomorrow. This is not committing you to doing anything to attending. We're just trying to get a read on who might be interested in what topics. So there were seven topics that were identified through that online sort of voting process. So sometime before five o'clock today, please take a look at those topics and sign your name twice once for round one and once for round two because there will be two discussion rounds. Again, we're just trying to get a little bit organized if that's even possible around that kind of format so we can see where we will be meeting and having those conversations. So I think that is all. Does everyone have a seat? Are we are logistically everyone has a seat who wants a seat? Does anyone have a seat by you that's free? So we have we have plenty of seats. Okay. Terrific. Great. So again, welcome. And at this time, I'm just going to turn the podium over to a member of our stellar planning group. Thanks again to all of you but Kathleen DeLong from the University of Alberta. Good morning, everyone. Hello. Yes, we learned that yesterday. My name is Kathleen DeLong and I'm from the University of Alberta. And it's my very, very great pleasure to introduce the keynote for this symposium. Duree McKesson is a civil rights activist focused primarily on issues of innovation, equity and justice. Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Duree graduated from Bowdoin College and holds an honorary doctorate from the new school. He's advocated for issues related to children, youth and family since he was a teen, working to connect individuals with knowledge and tools and provide citizens and policymakers with common sense policies to ensure equity. Spurred by the death of Mike Brown and subsequent protests in Ferguson, Missouri and beyond, Duree has become a key player in the work to confront the systems and structures that have led to mass incarceration and police killings of black and other minority populations. He is also the host of the critically acclaimed Pod Save the People, a weekly podcast creating space for conversation about the most important issues of the week. This is season two of Pod Save the People. Yay! I'm a huge fan. The podcast is also about making sure people have the information they need to be thoughtful activists and organizers. So I would now like to introduce Duree McKesson to you. And as Duree comes in, I would just like to say that as he usually begins his podcast, let's go. Good morning, everybody. It's good to be back in Minnesota. I actually lived two blocks away from here when the project started. So it's like a homecoming of sorts. So that is sort of cool. I never ever saw the view from this height, though. So this feels very different. You know, you should teach sixth grade math, which was incredible. Sixth grade was the best grade of any of you've ever taught, you know, sixth grade is it seventh grade is puberty and deodorant and it is bad. Six grade is like a still there's still like a lot of magic in sixth grade. Have you never been around a group of kids that don't know they need deodorant and like they all need deodorant? That's seventh grade. But a lot of a lot of magic in sixth grade. And I taught math and I taught 60 90 and 120 minute classes, which is a long time to teach an 11 year old anything, let alone math. And this one day, my students were like, Mr. McKesson, can I can we go to gym early? And I'm like, absolutely. I had them first, second, third, fifth and seventh period. They were taught to me outside of them. The gym teachers were my best friend. So I'm like, you guys can go. So they go. And like 10 minutes later, they're back. I'm like, Hey, they're like, we're back. And I'm like, why are y'all back? Like what happened? And what I realized that they were more in love with the idea of gym than the work of gym. And I say that because in this moment, I think that people are more in love with the idea of resistance and the work of resistance. I've been trying to think about like, how do we talk about the work in a way that makes sense in a way that actually pushes us to have an impact. And I think about how the world changes. I'm always reminded, especially when I come back to Minnesota, which is where I was when the protests began, that if you saw us in the street marching in the beginning of the protests, it wasn't because without marching was a particularly cool thing to do or the most effective strategy. It was illegal to stand still in August and August, September and October 2014. And if we stood still for more than five seconds, we were arrested. And I never forget that it keeps to be grounded in the work because that was a history that we were told was like so far gone and like we saw in movies. And then we lived it. And I always am reminded of that. But we think about what the work looks like. But before I talk about that, I will say that the ideas are important too, that we know that the difference between diversity and inclusion matters, right? That those not just words, the diversity is often about bodies, inclusions about culture. You can recruit 20 more black students and have a racist campus. You can recruit 20 more trans employees and still have a transphobic culture that like people have done the body work sort of well in the past decade that like we're like recruiting all these new people and trying to figure that out. The culture piece, the inclusion piece is the harder place to be. In a lot of companies that have affinity groups and affinity groups are incredible. The black affinity group, gay affinity group, affinity groups for life, I like affinity groups. But if the only place that gay people feel like they can be queer and be safe is an affinity group, that means that you have a broken culture. The only place that black people feel like they can come in and talk about the fact that a third of all the people killed in this country by stranger is killed by a police officer. If the only place where they can talk about that trauma is in the black affinity group, like you have a broken culture affinity groups are a role and a place, but the culture is something bigger than that. The second is the idea about quality and equity. A quality is the notion that everybody gets the same thing. Equity is the idea that we get what we need and deserve. The work of justice is almost always the work of equity. So when we think about school systems like the school system in Minneapolis, one of the biggest achievement gaps in urban America is here in the Twin Cities, a city where there isn't, there's money, right? Like I came from Baltimore, we're like questionable of money. Is there money? I don't know. Here, it's like the fifth highest concentration of 4 to 500 companies. Minnesota is one of the only governments that have a surplus. Sort of, I didn't even know the government could have a surplus. But you think about the problems are still so entrenched in the school system here. And when we think about justice, it's never about equality. We're never saying that we want people to have the same thing. We know that it costs more to educate kids in poverty, to educate kids who are resettling, to educate kids with disabilities. Like the cost is different. We should pay the cost. That we should make sure that we show up for people in the way they need to be showed up for, which isn't always the way that other people need to be showed up for. And that is the work of equity. So those ideas matter. When I think about the four sort of big buckets about the work, the first is this focus on systems and structures. And I'll have you help me at the beginning. So I'm going to ask you on three to turn to the person next to you and tell them something that you can buy for $200. So again, on three, you're going to turn to the person next to you, spend 10 seconds and tell them something that you can buy for $200. One, two, three. Okay, bring it back in five, four, three, two. Bring it back in one. Bring it back. Okay, now on three, what you're going to do is to this, to another person nearby, you're going to tell them something that you can buy for $300. Okay, so one, two, three. Okay, bring it back in 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, one. You know, this is a meta moment, but what's funny about the countdown when you teach young people or even adults, is that you can never lose the countdown. If you ever lose the countdown, you lose forever. So when you, so when I did five or three, two, one, y'all were low, there's a low lose. So I had to go to 10 because like you can't lose the countdown. Like you always have to, the moment you lose it, they know it's not real. So I had to do that because in Virginia, debt over $200 is a felony. In Florida, debt over $300 is a felony. In both of those states, when you become a felon, you permanently lose the right to vote. Now it's interesting because when people think about felons, most people think about like mass murderers, people bought buildings. It's like you have to name things like anything made by Apple. I heard somebody say like a TV, a part, like people are losing the right to vote over like stealing a pair of tennis shoes, right? It's not, this is not some like incredible, everybody's like a mass murder in the world. You all shared things that were $200. There were $300 that have permanently disenfranchised people in this country. We think about 6 million ex-felons in the country can't vote, 2 million of which, about 2 million, 1.6 live in the state of Florida. One in four black people in Florida can't vote, about 40% of black men in Florida can't vote. Those are choices. And it's a lot of people who are stuck in situations because of the things that you talk to your table partner about. And so much of this work is like peeling back the layers so we can help people see what's underneath it. That there's like a layer of storytelling that has actually hurt many people in this country because like you, again, if I ask you what's a felon, like people only say some of the most heinous things. And it's like, I'm not convinced that the, I'm not convinced that the person who stole like a bike at 18 should permanently use the right to vote. I'm not convinced that like the person that bought a T had stole a TV, that that is the same thing as like blowing up a building. Like I don't think those things are the same. The next thing I'll actually do on three, and I'm gonna pray everybody gets this right. No shame if you don't, is I'm gonna ask you how many people are on a jury? Don't cheat. On three, you're just gonna say it out loud. How many people are on a jury? One, two, three. We got a lot of answers. It's 12. Most juries are 12 people. There are some places across the country where there are six for some things, but 12 is 12 is like the magic number. There are two states in the country, Louisiana and Oregon, that only takes 10 of 12 people to convince you of a felony. So Louisiana incarcerates more people per capita than anywhere else in the world, which is sort of wild. It's the only place in the country where you can serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole on a 10 to vote. It's directly tied to integration in Louisiana. So when black people started sitting on juries, we can look at the legislature, the records, and they literally pulled up the proportion of black people in the state. It translated to two on a jury and they made it so that if those people sat on juries and they wouldn't be able to lower their conviction rate wild. Still in practice to today, they're trying to change the law. The district attorneys are against it and they're sort of magical argument being against it because I was really curious. I'm like, what's the reason? And they're like, it's really hard to get 12 people to agree on anything in today's climate. Like, is that the best? Is that like the best thing you got? I say that too because it's like a structural thing that we talk often about systems and structures because those are the things that impact people's lives in ways that we don't often see and feel and touch, but those are like the most impactful things. If there's like a push towards programs and services and programs and services are important, we should deal with the fact that people have been traumatized and we need to respond to that. That is real. That is work that people should do. I opened up an afterschool center. I worked at one of the largest in the country. I get it. I believe in it. I was a teacher. Programs are important. But a couple things to remember about programs. A lot of programs exist because the system and structure didn't figure it out in the first place. So the only reason that we need a million afterschool programs about reading is because we didn't figure out how to like help kids read during the school day. The only reason we need a million math programs afterschool is not, they're not like enrichment programs. A lot of them are like replacing the lack of education that happened during the school day. The second thing is that a lot of programs actually predicated on the idea that poor people and people of color can't make good decisions for themselves so we'll make it for them. And like what we want to do is change the system at scale so people are set up to make the best decisions for themselves so that we can say like we believe that you have the capacity to do this and like we know that some of the disadvantage you experience is actually not your fault. It's a fault of a system greater than you. We think about the three biggest mental health facilities in this country are not hospitals, they're prisons and jails. Like I said, a third of all the people killed by strangers in the country is killed by a police officer. And we think about the racial wealth gap. It's predicted that by in 2053 the median wealth for black people will be zero. The lowest recorded wealth since we started recording wealth in the 20s which is sort of wild. And I say that because four years ago I would have said that I think this is a broken system with bad people making bad decisions. And now what I understand is that this is not a system of constants. This is not a system of chance that this is a system of choices. And so much of our work is about mapping the choices that have been made, understanding the impact of those choices and helping people see that we can actually make different choices. So people say to me the system when we say the system is broken and then people say, oh no, it's working exactly like it was designed. The takeaway that we have from that is that it was designed. That like because people made it people can make something different. So we spend a lot of time trying to peel back the layers so we can help people see like this was created and because it was created we can do something different. So the first bucket of the work is a bucket about systems and structures. It's about saying we're the biggest levers. How do we take apart the house? Not piece by piece. We do think about this as a house built by Legos essentially. And the goal isn't to sort of like randomly just pick apart the pieces. It's about finding the biggest levers where like a whole thing falls, right? The whole side of the house falls down because you now understand the biggest levers. We think that that has to be a core part of the work that's focused on systems and structures. We often sort of organize around the loudest trauma. So like the bigger the louder the trauma the bigger the organizing. People dying is very loud trauma. So people organize around it. There's a lot of quiet trauma that's ruining people's lives every day that we just don't talk about. So you think about there are six states where if you get convicted of a drug felony you lose the right to food stamps. That doesn't really make sense to me but that is real and impacting people. The largest sale in the country the Cook County Jail in Chicago they don't consider, Chicago actually doesn't consider public housing a house in many circumstances. So if you get released from jail like before your court hearing on your own reconnaissance and you live in public housing they still code you homeless so they won't release you because you technically don't have a house. It's like those sort of things are like sort of small but they are like big in their impact. My last visit to the Cook County Jail as we were walking through intake I looked and I saw that some of the staff was writing on the wrist of detainees and I was like, what do you write? Like, what could you possibly? Like, I don't even know what you could write on people that made sense, right? Like, what are you writing on to shop you with them? And that is how they in 2018 that is how they ordered them to go before the bail judge. Like, you got like a one, you got like a two on your wrist and that's how you moved them. And it's like, so I'm talking to the award and being like, hey, I think that's sort of dehumanizing and inhumane and he's like, to red and even none. I'm like, huh? But it's like, these are the things that are like quiet. You know, I'm not the only person who's ever seen that happen. There's like a whole staff in apparatus that does it every day that sort of seemingly let it happen. And like we focus on these sort of systemic things because we think that those are the biggest levers. The second bucket is around the importance of imagination. So I went to Bowdoin, which is in Maine and Maine is a special place if you know what I'm saying. But during our pre-orientation trip, we went whitewater rafting. So raise your hand if you've ever been whitewater rafting. A lot of people keep your hand up if you fell off the raft. I'm happy to see all of you today. I thought I was gonna die. I was like, you know, live a good life and it's over. And I'll never forget it because the thing about if you've not whitewater raft, the current is actually just so strong that it doesn't really matter if you're a great swimmer or not. Like if you get stuck in the current, you're sort of stuck. So I fall off the raft and I'm like, shout out to Brian Wedge, the guy who saved my life. I feel like I owe him something every time I talk about it. And the thing that I remember the most about falling off the raft is that as I was trying not to die, the only thing I could think about was my next breath. I wasn't thinking about my father, my sister, joy, justice, college. It was literally like, and I'm trying to breathe. And I think about that because that's one of the things that trauma does to us is that when we experience trauma, we get trapped in the present. And there are people who, like, they're every day is experiencing trauma, like some sort of like confrontation or proximity to trauma. And when you are that proximity to trauma, you're like trapped in the present. It's like a survival thing. You see what's in front of you and you like focus on it because that's the thing that's gonna get you to the next breath. And like that is what, it's like a cycle. You're like trapped in the present, you're trapped in the trauma. And the hard thing about being trapped in the present is that you can't really imagine when you're trapped in the present. So like you lose all ability to think about a future, to think about like what could be different because you're just trying to get back on the rack. Like that you're just trying to like level back up. And the thing is that we'll never get free if we can't imagine that it's hard to fight for things that you can't see. It's hard to fight for things that you like don't think are possible. And for so many of us, we've spent a lifetime looking at the constraints in front of us because we needed to see the constraints so that we can like move on and get to the next day. But part of our work has to be to log the constraints to name them and then imagine a world without them. So we think about the police. So we would say that this is that, you know, people think the protesters are sort of against the police and we're like, ah, none is like against the police. But I do think that we can live in a world with like this is not our response to conflict. That we believe that there will always be rules. There will always be people who break rules and there will always be a set of consequences. So that we, that is sort of like a part of the deal with what it means to live in community. The question becomes like, who makes the consequences and who enforces them and who makes the rules and what does that look like? And I'm not convinced that the people who go like find kids who skip school need to be the same people who go find people who blow up buildings. Like that seems like we can sort of build something different. I think about when you see kids in the corner like just randomly in groups and like, what would it look like instead of calling the police people called like the after school providers like, hey, can somebody come sign these kids up and run out of school for a bit? That's like a completely different way of thinking about being a community but a completely possible way about thinking about being community. And what we think about the case for abolition is that what we would say is that what's interesting about the police is that they employ a wholly negative power. The police take, detain, like arrest, they kill, like they have a taking power. That is like the power that they employ in communities. And it's the only part of society where our response to conflict is only taking. So you think about when kids misbehave, we don't like lock them in closets. We don't just like take things from them. Like we have a positive response to the conflict that they employ because we know that we're teaching them and we're giving them skills so they can make different choices. Is that we are actually saying that like the response to conflict in communities has to be something that is not rooted in a taking power. That it has to be about something different. And like we need to push each other to imagine that. So if you've seen things like Stefan Clark got killed in Sacramento, which is probably the story that most people know recently, is that Stefan got killed. And what's interesting is that some of the response to it, it's like the Sacramento Kings and some other sort of wealthy people in Sacramento created an opportunity fund, like a fund around opportunity. And a reporter called me, I was like, what do you think about the fund? And I'm trying to be positive because I generally think that like money in communities is good. But I'm saying to them like, remember the lack of opportunity isn't what killed Stefan Clark, right? It wasn't like if he had been in three more after school programs and had like been in a job force readiness program, he would have. It's like that isn't what killed him. It was like the police saying he was armed in the middle of the night killed Stefan. And when we think about that instance, what's interesting is that, we did the first public database of police union contracts in the country. And in Sacramento, there's a clause that says the police officer disciplinary records get destroyed after one year. Their written reprimands get destroyed after two years. California is one of three states in the country that makes all police misconduct records a secret unless in a court proceeding. So they're so secret that other police departments can't tell other ones like who got fired and for what, like that is illegal in the state of California. I was in Portland, Oregon recently and I met with the police chief and, you know, I like look like I'm like a kid and you know, I guess in the room. And she sort of looked at me like, you know, I gotta be with this kid. And she's like very, very nice but sort of looking through me. And I say to her, I'm like, hey, we should talk about your police union contract because you guys have this clause, it's so weird. And she's like, what's the clause? I'm like, it literally says that police officers in Portland have to be disciplined in the least embarrassing way possible to the department and the officer. And she sort of looked at me like, he probably just paraphrased that really dramatically. And I'm like, I think that's what it says. So she's like, let me get my contract. And then she reads it and she's like, okay. It's like, cause that is literally what it says. And it's like, we say that because it's like a pulling apart of the system that like people would like to like to paint us as like the crazy people who are getting to police. And it's like, I don't, I don't know how you defend that. I don't know, I don't know about your jobs as librarians but I can tell you as somebody who used to be the TPM and Capital of the school system that we surely weren't deleting teachers disciplinary records after one year that that was like a parents and communities with a lost their mind. You think about any of your K-12 experience. It's like your disciplinary record followed you all the way from K to 12. And then you all know those people who did something wild as 12th graders and their colleges knew about it. Do you know what I mean? But what does it mean that we create an institution that has so much power and so little accountability? And that is a part of the work that we think has to be on the horizon. And a part of that is about imagining a different way of being in community, a different way of holding each other accountable and a different set of standards. And a lot of us who see the constraints and we believe that the constraints are like the way the world has been. There's some of our best writers who sort of paint a world that says that God created earth, man and white supremacy. And we will never concede that that is sort of just a condition of the world. We want to say that that is sort of where we are today but we can build something different. We can make a different America and we can make a different world. Now the third is about this conversation about power. But what it looks like, what it feels like, how we undo it, how we redo it. There are two ways that we can think about power. One is this idea of power over and power over is like the power that we know the most. Power over is this idea that power is like a finite pizza pie with a finite pizza pie with an odd number of pizza slices. And some people always have more and some people have less. And that game is about making sure that you get as much so you're not being harmed. Power with is this conception of power that says that power is infinite expansive and it is most potent when it is shared. That is the power that we know very little of. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to name the mentality of power over and disrupt it so that we can like build a different way of being community that isn't a game of winners and losers, that isn't this zero sum sort of world and doesn't create this cycle that says the only reason that you're not being bullied anymore is because you become the bully. Like we're trying to actually change the cycle so that like bullying in and of itself actually goes away and we build a different type of being in community. One of the interesting things about the way we think about whiteness is that we don't often understand the way that whiteness is about power. So when Baldwin says whiteness is a metaphor he's really saying as whiteness is a metaphor for power over this idea of like domination that we can actually build a different conception of power that is this understanding of power with. I tweeted not to go and go watch whiteness work. I tweeted often because whiteness is always sort of working in its own way. Most people think about whiteness as like lynching and enslavement and like that makes sense but that is not the totality of the way white supremacy and whiteness sort of works in our society and I tweeted it and this guy in Hollywood emailed me and he was like, Dore, I'm sort of disappointed in you because you said whiteness and you didn't say white supremacy or racism and I was like, well, can I have that whiteness? And he was like, yeah, this is long email and I was about to be launching and I was like, I just can't, I don't have time to send you back long email. So I wrote back to him like send me your phone and let's talk about it. Sends me the number, I call him, I don't know this guy. So we're on the phone and I'm trying to explain to him that like the fact that nude is the color of your skin and not mine is power. Like that is a choice that is power. The fact that band-aids look like your skin and not mine, that that is power. And he's sort of like, I don't get it. I'm like, okay, we sort of do that for a little bit. And then I say to him, he works in Hollywood and I say to him like, remember the fact that all the characters we read in text are white until named other? Like that that is power. And he was like, I never thought about it. He's like, I read scripts all day and I just assume the characters are white until then. And it's like, yeah, that's what power looks like, right? The fact that like white is normative and what it means to be human and that that is baked into society. Like that is a function of power. And part of our work is to help people see that power is always sort of moving in the world and it's always manifesting. One of the things that we do in classrooms when we sit in the back of classrooms observing teachers is that we can literally just chart the negative to positive things that teachers say to students. And we can look at the way power works in the classroom. We can look at the way the discipline is gonna work. The way behavior works literally just by charting and saying to teachers, you say three negative things for every one positive thing you say and like the balance is off in the class. In the workplace we look and we can chart who speaks first. So looking at like how straight white men often just like talk all the time, like just because. And like just mapping that for people. So it's not like an emotional thing anymore on our behalf. We can just say like, hey, you know that you only allow like women always talk forth in meetings you run, right? It's like a way to just help people understand that power is sort of always moving in spaces. And then a lot of people that don't understand power until it is like literally killing people. But what all of us who are in minority communities know is that like power is always sort of moving and you're always aware of like, when you have it and when you don't. And what that feels like and what it doesn't feel like. And part of our work is to like disrupt the way that power normally functions. I think about my role as a teacher, I taught sixth graders and sixth graders is amazing. And I'll never forget, I didn't have, there were two sort of big rules in my class. One was that there are no real rules. And the second is that you can always choose your seat and you don't have to raise your hand to sort of move about the classroom. Like that was a big thing. And at the beginning it was a nightmare. But by the end, what was great about it is I was trying to help them understand the power over their own body that it's like a big deal that the only time you can move in a classroom is when I tell you can. That seems to me like too much power. I'm like, I don't, like you at some point need to learn how to manage your body. And I don't think I'm teaching it, teaching you well how to do that. If like every moment you need to move, you need my permission. That's it a while. Like we'll figure this out. And it was sort of interesting to see young people like learn how to use that power in a way that made sense. And like they did it. And it was like definitely a thing that we had to like learn and teach each other how to do. But like we sort of made it work. And that was really incredible. The other thing I'll say is I remember I was here in Minneapolis. I was a senior director of human capital. So I managed all of the hiring for all staff including our teachers. And when I first got here, we were getting all these discrimination complaints that I think were probably right. And so I was like we're gonna interview every teacher who applies. Like anybody who applies to be a teacher, everybody gets an interview. Like nobody else say they were denied an interview because of anything, because everybody gets one. And we started to ask a set of questions. And the third question we designed then was do you think that students from high need communities can achieve the same grade level standards as students from wealthy communities, wealthier communities? And that was the question. We trained people to ask it and deliver it with like no inflection, no facial things. Like sort of a basic question, right? We did a lot of training on the like how you deliver it. And then how you like receive people's responses. And I'll never forget there's this 25 year old white woman who I interviewed and she goes, Derey, well kids in color communities just can't. I'm like, what? I'm like literally like, am I getting pumped? Like I'm just like, yeah. And it was incredible to ask people the question because we thought it was sort of a basic question. Like do you think that kids from like poor communities can achieve the same grade level standards as students from wealthy communities? And what was interesting is about 30% of the people we interviewed just said no, some version of no. They were either like the parents care more or like they just have more access or like they're just some deficiencies in communities. And it was one of those things that helped us see that like part of what we have to do is actually tease out people's mindsets and beliefs in this work, like more than we often do. That sometimes we just assume that because people sort of have certain identities or because people like lead with their heart, especially in education, Lord knows the things that we allow people to get away with because they're like good people. And then what we realized is that like the mindsets and belief stuff is actually really important and an indication of like how power will be distributed in classrooms and in schools. And we had to do our work to like tease that out on the front end. And it was hard because we weren't hiring people who like didn't believe that all kids can learn because we thought that was sort of like a basic, right? We're like, well, if you don't make that like every kid can learn and like this doesn't seem like a good school system for you. But when we put that in place, it was like really contentious. It was like sort of a wild thing to do. The other thing we did here specifically is that when I first got there, there was no hiring process for principals that was real. So we did this thing that was experienced really radically. We were like, everybody wants to be a principal has to like look at a teacher teaching and get feedback. We were like, that seems sort of basic. And it was like 40% of the people who did it failed and then there was a nightmare and then people were like really upset with us. And we were just like part of the way that sort of power is interesting is that some people have to buy by set of standards and some people don't. And what was interesting here is that the people who were around almost most vulnerable students were people like grandfathered in because they were like nice people. And we were like, that doesn't make sense, right? Like if you can't talk about instruction or like which we think is like basic, right? Like we think that's sort of like a basic idea. Then like you shouldn't be able to be around our kids. Like that just seems like a fair thing. But there are a lot of places in society where people just get a pass and there are no standards and no rules. And then there are people who have like a million standards and a million things put on them every single day. And we wanna name those things so we can help people like tease it out and break it apart and do something different and remind people that like what it means to empower somebody is like I can't give you power. What I can do though is help you find the power that you have. And what good teachers do is help people find the power they have. When I think about being in the street, it's like the thing that gives me hope and joy is like I've been all across the world seeing people find power they didn't think they had before. Like that to me is like the radical hope and like the radical difference. The fourth thing is this question of like who are you in the world? I think that there are three sort of big buckets of people. That there are the salt shakers, there are the sugar high chasers and then there are the bridge builders. Now the salt shakers, salt shakers, sugar high chasers and bridge builders. The salt shakers are the people who drive me like most nuts. I think they're my personal pet peeve. These are the people who sit down at the dining room table and they put salt in the food before they've even tasted it. They just like are like shaking. They're just like it must be awful, must be good. And these are the people in the work who just like walk into the room being like we're doomed. And you're like, well, that's just like a hard way to plan about a future. If you like sit down at the table and you know, like you haven't tasted it, haven't smelled it, but you just know something must be bad. And the pessimists are sort of interesting in the moment because what they do that is actually I think the most damaging is that they pre-contaminate every solution because they walk into the room and be like well just must be doomed from the beginning. But we got to eat because if we don't eat like dying is just not cool, right? That's sort of like the way that they say they participate in all the meetings that in a doomsday sort of spirit because like to not participate is not okay. But like part of showing up has to be being critical only so that we can build something else. We believe that we take apart the house because we know a better one can be built. We don't like take apart things just so we can destroy. Then we think about freedom is not only the absence of oppression, but the presence of justice and joy. And so much of our work is focused on the absence of. It's like taking down the bad systems and do the like that has to be a part of the work but we can free everybody from jail. We could like close the racial wealth gap and that does not automatically mean that the world is like just inequitable and joyful. Like we actually have to build to that world. And like we have to remember that. When people ask me like why does the right have a much easier time about messaging? It's like what make America great again isn't necessarily like a complicated idea. It's an idea that we've sort of lived through before. So it's not hard to recall all the images of overt white supremacy that we've endured for generations. When we think about a world of equity, justice and joy we're like making it up. We've never seen it before. You don't know what it's like to come into a workplace or the world every single day and it's just like equitable. Like we know what the idea is like. You couldn't explain to people your life with single payer healthcare. Like you can imagine a world where everybody has healthcare. You don't know what that like looks and feels like in this context. We're always sort of making it up on our side. And that is just like a harder part of the work. But it's hard to make it up when there are people at the table who just are like, well, can't do it. And you're like, well, that's just not helpful. The sugar heart chasers are the ones who I think are the most interesting because I like don't know where it comes from. And I was flying to San Francisco to do a talk not too long ago. And somebody DMed me and we're like, direct you're coming to San Francisco, you coming to the protest. And I was like, what's the protest about? And she was like, I don't know, but I got my sign and I'm like, I don't know. Like you are, you're chasing something. Like, I don't know what you're chasing. You're not chasing the work. You're not chasing justice. You're not chasing freedom. Like you're chasing the high. And we have to be honest and name the people who are like the high chasers in the work. And I think about even being in the street, you know, we're in the street for 400 days in the first wave of the protest. And there are people whose identity was like rooted in battle. So like when the battle stopped, they no longer understood who they were. Like when we stopped being in the street every day and like, I get that. I also know that one of the conditions about being marginalized, right? Is a two-level in the margin. And on the margin, you're often unheard and unseen. And at moments like this, people get heard and seen in ways they've never been heard and seen before. So people get addicted to being heard and seen more than they get addicted to being free. And I get that. But the reason that we name what people chase is so we can like help them see it and help them pivot to something else. The third is this question about the bridge builders. Now most people think about the bridge builders as important because they like build a bridge and that's sort of obvious. But the cool thing about the bridge builders is not that they build the bridge per se, like that is important, but is that they see an open space and they believe something can go there. And we need more people who like see these spaces that don't have anything in them right now or have things that are broken and deficient. And they think they can put something there that is better than not only services them, but services the whole community or whole population. Like that has to be a part of like how we think about making the world a better place. And when we think about the power stuff, it's interesting because the images that you learn and like the stories and ideas that allow the most insidious things to happen are things that we learn pretty easily or pretty early. You know, I even think about what the police, what's interesting is that you grew up watching like decades of footage of like the police can sort of do whatever they want as long as they catch the bad guy. So you think about bad boys, if any of you remember bad boys, it's like the number of communities that they just like run through, like literally just drive through crowds, shoot in the crowds, knock over people. And it's sort of just okay. Cause like they found the bad guy. Have you saw Bright, that really awful Netflix movie? Anybody see Bright, the Netflix movie? Millions of people watch this thing. I mean, it was also bad. So Bright is this really bad movie with Will Smith on Netflix and millions of people watch. And it's like there are orcs in it and then there's like the Will Smith. But see, you're like, uh-huh, you watch it again. It's like literally first scene in the movie, the orc police officer is walking to like a bodega. And he just like pushes people over. You're like, this is crazy. If you saw Zootopia, did you remember Zootopia? There's like a part in Zootopia where like the smaller police officer, I don't remember what animal she was. She was like, a bunny, right, thank you, a bunny. She's like, what? Judy. Judy. Thank you. Judy's like running trying to get the bad guy and she literally, they're just like running through neighborhoods, like people like flying out of the way. And like we have been brought up on this idea that like at whatever cost it's sort of okay, right? Like at whatever cost, even in things like Zootopia, right? Which is like a children's movie. And so the ideas that you find that like actually create space for these things are like embedded all across society. And we have to uproot those. And I think about the bridge builders are the people who like see those things. They see it and they're like, okay, got it. Gotta build something better. Now leave with this question that I heard in a sermon. I was moderating a panel between two people you probably don't know. One is Jerry Lorenzo, the designer for Fear of God which is a fashion label. The second you know of him, Pastor Rich. He is the pastor that married Kim and our beloved Kanye. Kanye, what do you do about Kanye? But I was listening to this sermon by Pastor Rich in preparation for this moderating thing. And he asked this question that I thought was so powerful. He said, if God entered all your prayers would it just change you or would it change the world? And I think so many of us, we don't understand that the work of justice is always about having a prayer and a dream that changes the world. Thank you. I think we're doing questions. Questions. I think there are mics. The room is tight enough though that I think you could just stay in, but I don't know, I'm not in charge, I'm just here. I don't want to be twisted by that. Hi, Durey. I'm Julia Swanson. I'm from the University of Colorado Boulder. And I also went to go to college. You did? Yeah. And I was the senior when you were a freshman and I totally remember you running for class president. Was it your breakfast when I, you were that, I think you might have been the first year when I walked away from the podium. Was that your breakfast? No. You would have remembered, it's okay. Yeah. I was giving the speech and I just like, what? I just had a really tough time in the college. I was a two-term senior body president, three-term class president. And I literally, I met the podium and I started talking and I'm just like, I don't think I could do this. And I literally walk off. Every time I see somebody from that class, I'm like, hey. Yeah, so my question is sort of about all of us here working in higher education and the concept of bridge builders. So how can we, as people working in higher education, sort of foster the next generation of bridge builders? The question, I think, when I think about, my advice to students is always like, you need to make sure that you leave that institution. I've got a reader, writer, and thinker than you were when you came in. That the only thing you've done in four years is fight the institution. You've got a bad deal. Like that just isn't a good deal. And there are a lot of people I meet who like, they spent four years fighting. They got a dope statue made. They changed some cool policy. And they get out and can't rewrite and think. And you're like, that was, you got a short end of the stick. And I think what the best adults do in higher education is that they help create this space where young people, not only learn information, but skills. You got here because you have a set of skills that are real things. You learn a set of skills. And a lot of activists and young people believe in a better world who either come out with a lot of information and no skill. They can't, they don't really know how to research. They don't really know how to take apart a primary document or put something. Those things are skills. And people, you'd be shocked. Maybe you're not shocked because you were in higher education. I'm shocked. What did you do? You were there for four years and this is all you got? So I think that the best adults in higher education push students beyond the place that they think they can be with the focus to skills. And what is interesting about low-income communities and with people of color is that we often do the, well, love is a skill. I can't tell you how many after-school programs I've been to, but it's really like love is what they're teaching 90% and then there's something else. So it's like basketball and love. And white kids are going to skiing and science. And black kids are in love and love. And you're like, that is... If love was the answer, there's a lot of love in the black community already. Like people, like if love could give people out of poverty, it'd be over. But there's sort of this idea that like, oh, we need to keep these kids safe. And it's actually like an act of charity and it's not an act that you believe that they can do something. Like it's actually a manifestation of low expectations, it's how it actually translates to not push people and hold them to high standards and just like believe that they can do beautiful things. And you went to Bowdoin. One of the things that I sort of loved about Bowdoin was that I was in all these places that just like touched me, right? Like I'd never... I remember I took this class called the Bible and I'd never ever seen somebody talk about the Bible as like a piece of fiction before. And she was like, I cannot believe God did that on age three. I'm like, what is this woman? God is about to smite her in the middle class. But it was such a different way to read, right? And like, I think about all of those places that I was in where there were adults who just like pushed me beyond what I thought was possible. Like the best adults do that for people, especially who come from communities where that is just not sort of the normal practice. Hello. I just met you. I was wondering, you're doing difficult work and it's not going to come to an end for a while. I was just wondering if you would talk to us about how you deal with self-care and how you deal with the emotional labor of activism. And also I was wondering if Clint got his shoes. I love Clint. I love that you listened to the podcast. So it's funny, you know, Baldwin has this great quote. I'm writing a book which is killing me. And Baldwin, this quote is in it, but Baldwin has this great quote where he says, the impossible is the least that we can demand. And I love that because I'm reminded that like, I think it can actually change in our lifetime. I don't think this work has to be like a 10 generations work. But if they can rewrite the tax code on the back of napkins and paper towels, then we can actually fix all the other stuff quickly too. But it's never a matter of like, are there resources? Trump just gave $700 billion to the military. It would take $125 billion to take every single person in a poverty. It's not a matter of resources. It's not a matter of can we, it's always a matter of will. And the question for us as organizers is like, can we tell the story in a way that helps more people believe that this is like possible right now? And that I think will be the test. Like we might be able to tell the story that convinces people that it's possible one day, which is different from helping people understand that this is possible like today. And that we can actually force like systems and structures to do right by people right now. But like I think that I can, I feel more confident than I can experience sort of the take down of all the bad things in my generation. I think if there's anything I worry about, I worry about the rebuild, that there's so many people who like all they know is the take down. Like so when you ask them like, what should safety look like in your community? They're like, I don't know. Or like you ask them like, what does a great school look like? They're like, I don't know. And we spend so much time on like all the bad things that I don't think a lot of people have invested enough energy in the like, what do you, like what would a safe neighbor for your child look like? If you could just like let your kid go out and roam, like roam the neighbor over two hours. Like what about that would make you feel safe and not like you needed to check on them every two seconds? Like those are imagination questions. And I don't think that we have enough spaces set up to like imagine differently and turn to self care. I'm pretty basic. Like I just need like four walls and a door. Like I just need like simple, quiet, like that helps me like a recenter because I am always on the move. And that is sort of enough in my, you know, I have a sister who is great and my friends. My sister's name is Teray. We're not twins. We're just black and Baltimore with Robin. She's great. And she and I are really close and my father. So they keep me, keep me like, okay. I want a dog one day. This is completely random. I just said that. My first public announcement. I want a dog. Well, I hope your dreams come true. Dogs are so cool. Thank you for your talk. One thing in particular stuck out to me and that is that you said at the only place someone can talk about truth is within an affinity group. The culture is broken. Can expand on that. And have you helped an organization go beyond that structure and actually talk? Yes. So I think about, there's an interest. So like every time the police kills somebody, mind you to police kill people a lot. There are all these like black employees that are reach out about it, which makes sense. Like big companies, like big like tech companies and do that. And it's just like, this isn't just like your problem. It's not just like the affinity. It's not just the impact of people's problem. I'm trying to get another way to say it. Is that like the police got a lot of people and what was interesting about it when we were in the street in Ferguson is that people thought that it was a problem in Ferguson. They didn't think it was a problem in America. They were like, whoa, those people in St. Louis. And then the police started killing people in their neighborhoods and like, oh my God, I didn't realize how bad it was. So you think about like what we would say is that the problem is actually coming to a neighborhood near you soon. So like the, if you help us get rid of it in general, like you will make sure that it's not proximate to you. But it's like in these companies, it's like there are the friends of black people, the families, like all the, it's not like black people live in like a vacuum. So this is like a company, like the way that black people feel in the company, whether they're safe or not safe, whether they feel like there's a welcoming environment or not, it's like a part of your bottom line. It's a part of like the way people like interact with each other. This is like a community conversation. I think about even like the gun balancing. It's like, you know, when the shooter shot up YouTube, it like changed the way YouTube got about the gun work, right? Cause it's like, yeah, this is like just two hops away from being an issue that impacts you too. I think me too is a great example of like, it's not just a women's issue. Like we should be talking about like sexual assault and like gender equality and feminism in like companies, right? They shouldn't just be at the women's affinity group. It's like, wow, sexual assault is like a bad thing. It's like that sort of was like a big thing. And there are a lot of places that I think people get nervous. I think that the inclination to put into figures comes from like people's nervousness. They're like, well, I don't know how to have the conversation. I don't know how to participate in the conversation. So I'm gonna like let the people most impacted sort of lead it. And leading is one thing, but being confined to one place is like another thing. So in a lot of places I've gone to, it's like just saying that is enough to like help them. So I think I was at this big company and like the senior vice president for insert long title here was like the executive sponsor for like the black people affinity group, right? And I like I've met him a day before I like he was like five and they the employees were asking me something about some racial incident and I said he was like saying the next to me I was saying like this guy has like too much power to just come to the meetings, right? Like that's just not he's like the senior vice president of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah at this huge international company. Like you need to ask him to do something with that power because like he had like if he's actually going to be the sponsor in the group he should be like sending a message to the whole company about how this is an issue. Like I don't know he should be doing something more than like showing up at your meeting and being like I believe you like that's just not that's like not actually what it means to show up. And I was talking to another university president actually he was like directly this racial incident come and he's like we have forums and it's like what actually matters that you tell the community that you think this is an issue like not that like you met with the black people like that is sort of one way to do it. There's another thing for you to just be like I think this is wrong, right? And like that is not a message for a whole community and when we think about people's values it's like your value should show up whether I'm searching for them or not. And a lot of companies are like the values only show up when I'm like digging. You know Starbucks is a great example. It's like Starbucks first apology was like not an apology. Then people got really upset and then they are like oh my god we believe in community training. You're like well if that is true that should have been the thing you live with, right? Like that should have just been true regardless of the outcry, regardless of people's asking for it. Like values show up because they're just the right those are the things you've committed to already. And a lot of places were like we are searching for the values and like the values can't just live in a group of 10 people like in an affinity group. The values have to be things that just like show up. And I think about like you know I was achieving Calvin Baltimore and we made some decisions about personnel that were like hard decisions but they were like the right things with our values. So we're like suspending this person, discipline this person. People we loved who did a lot for the community but broke a set of values. And it was like either the values are our values or they're not. They can't be like person dependent. Cynthia Henderson from University of Southern California, the other USC. And I'm still processing a lot of the things that you said particularly about the statistics about the police and their you know history of conflict and involvement but I'll be looking that up. But anyway I had a question, two questions. How do we help people find their power? And the second one was how do we move people from being a salt shaker to a bridge builder? Yeah I think that the how do we find people is interesting is that some of it is as simple as like believing it. So I think about with young people it's literally like there's so many classes at all ages with people where like we just don't validate the stories they bring to the classroom. We sort of like only validate the stories that are in the classroom. So if I ask a group of 11 year olds right now have you experienced racism? They probably look at me and laugh right because they're just like I don't know what you mean. But if I said do you think you've ever been treated differently because of the color of your skin? They're like yes right? And that is a like that is my work to help like validate the way they think about the world and the way they come to the classroom as like a real thing. Like that is real the way you did it and then using that experience to like highlight a bigger truth as opposed to me being like if you don't have the language of racism then you don't get it. And that's like actually a lot of communities are in or like if you don't get it this way then it's not real. And it's like some of what we have to do is say like your life is real right? Like that's like a real thing and like creating space for that is like huge. And even if people don't communicate that it's huge it is huge. The second is like living in a little bit of disbelief. So like one of the way systems and structures work is that they are designed to make you think you know you can't make an impact. So when I was in most of you who work in systems, all of you that I think have experience with this is that when I was the chief of human capital I was just wrong for hiring all teachers in Baltimore and Minneapolis. And last year I opened schools last year in Baltimore. We had a one classroom in the school that had 40 kids in kindergarten, a big class which is like too big for kindergarten. So we get an email from a parent to the superintendent. It's like hey superintendent, sent to Lisa. My kids in a class has all these kids in it blah blah blah you do something about it. She sends it to me because I'm in charge of a hiring. She's like direct you do something. Mind you, 50 people report to me. We have 11,000 staff members. It's a $1.3 billion organization. I have staff to sort of represent all the schools, all the principals at my cell phone. Like this could have gotten to me a million ways, but it got to me through this random parent, right? So because it's one parent email the superintendent. Sonya, the superintendent emails me. I call her and I'm like I need a little bit of money. Like I can do something, but like I can't afford it. Can you help me pay for it? She's like cool, got you. We split the class in the next day, like all because it's one random parent, right? But the system is not designed for me to loop back with her and be like hey, thanks for emailing us. Because like selfishly we can't do, I can't deal with 1,000 emails from parents. Like I just don't have time to do that, right? But she mattered. And like she'll never know that the only reason they changed like the directive of her kids' learning experience that year was like her sending us an email, you know? And a lot of people who like just don't believe that that is like a way to make it, they just don't, you've never seen it, you know? So some of it is like living in disbelief and like doing the right thing anywhere, like pushing and because it's like the right thing. Your second question was give me a reminder. Oh, the salt shaker to something else. So the salt shakers I think are people who are like I've tried, it didn't work. I like invested before it didn't work. Like I think that the salt shaking comes from a not bad place necessarily. I think that when it gets bad is when people are like I'm telling the truth and you're delusional. That's sort of one of the ways it shows up. Another way that it shows up is this idea that like I'm actually the most honest because I'm the most, that all I do is critique and because I know how to tear things apart, like that makes me honest, right? And what we would say is that like the critique only matters because you can build something else. It doesn't, the goal isn't to like tear apart society and like leave it torn apart. The goal is to like tear it apart so we can build something really cool and that like we need to name that. So like the way that I've done is like pushing all the people who are like most pessimistic to be like, hey, what can we build? Like just literally like forcing people into this build conversation. Like, okay, I get it. I get it's broken. How would you fix it? And sort of just like sitting in that and like helping people start to like exercise that muscle. Even if it feels like ridiculous and crazy, like that's really important. Thank you for your comments. I think they were really helpful. But I come with a heavy heart, given what happened to the two native students at Colorado State University and given what happened to the students who were pushed off at graduation. And I say that because so often this work is motivated by a crisis. And my question is, do you have any thoughts on how we can make this work sustainable? Because suddenly there's this flurry of activity on these campuses when there's a crisis and we act like we're starting from ground zero, like nothing has been done. I mean, how do we build on that? And maybe you, you know, so that's just the question that I hope to address it tomorrow as well. Thank you. Yeah, I think it's the right question. One of the things that I'm interested in is like, how do we start to talk about race and especially the history of race and like normal tones and like less like the facts are dramatic, so I don't need to be dramatic, right? And I think about, I was at this event and I was wearing this outfit that had facts on it and one of the facts was that white high school dropouts have more wealth than all black college graduates, which is true. And the sky comes up to me and he's like, Doreen, is that true? And I'm like, yeah, it's true. And he's like, I don't believe it. I'm like, okay, I don't even know. Okay, so we sort of get through that piece and he says to me, so I'm saying, you know, he says to me, Doreen, well, the reason that white people have so much wealth is because they're more of us. Like the government, just like a law of distribution, right? And I say to him like, the only reason there are more of you is because you killed half the people and enslaved the other half, right? It's not like they're naturally more of you, like you killed everybody, right? But what was interesting about that exchange is that like I delivered it like just like that. I was like, yeah, but it's because you kill half the people and it's like real basic, right? And it was one of those, I could see him squirming because he was ready to dismiss it as passion, but I was like, just real chill about it. And I start there only because I think that some of the ways that we talk about the worst parts of the history, we do it in a way that like I don't think conveys just how like real it was, how crazy it was, and how persistent it was, and how like damaging it's just like a norm like that happened. And sort of forcing people to reckon with the like the fact of it and not like my delivery. And I think that so much of the pushback that I've seen people deliver is actually like to the so much of the pushback that I've seen people sort of push is like to the delivery of the fact and not like the content of the fact. And I think about, so I think that that is like really important on college campuses and everywhere to just be like, hey, like when people talk to me about the wealth gap, it's like we gave white people wealth. We did. We like gave white people to work hard. They didn't have to be all small business owners. Like we just gave them one person housing loans. We gave them free education like, but when we think about people of color, literally it's like small business. Everybody has to be a small business owner. Everybody has to be the most motivated. It's like lazy black people should eat. Lazy black people should have water, right? Like those things are sort of real, but when we talk about it in terms of whiteness, it's like we just gloss over just how we did it for all of them in a way that is like really sort of wild when you think about it at scale. So in terms of these incidents, I think that I'm hopeful that the public pressure from them has like created more conversation. I don't know if you saw that another person got beat up in a waffle house by the police yesterday, which is like crazy. So I don't know what's going on in waffle houses, but I'm hopeful that the public conversation has like led to it has led to like more examination of exploration. I'm interested to see if we can organize in a way that like shuts down the economic power places like that. The last thing about how do we not recreate the wheel? I think some of it is people feel like if the wheel works so great before that then like we wouldn't be here, right? So people feel like we should at least be open to updating it. And the second is, and I'll say this to somebody who is steeped in this work now every day, is that sometimes it's hard to find out the work that's been done before because people keep it so close to themselves because they want to be the only conduit for the work. And there are a lot of people who are just over that, right? Like I'm down to organize with you, but I'm not down to like be forced to do it in this one way and not be open to talk about how we can update it or change it. And a lot of people who sort of employ this, if you don't do it with me or like me, then you're not real. And I think there's a generation of people who are like done with that. I think these are going to be the last two because we're at time. Thanks so much. I'm curious about how you, what's your strategy for dealing with the backlash? So we had Obama for eight years. I was living in the South at the time. None of my white friends would ever talk about politics. You just didn't. And then I moved. Thank God to New York. And of course all my white friends voted for Trump. And thank God I'm not living there. So my experience is that we have Trump because it's backlash from eight years of a black president. And so how do we, like what do you do about this backlash? These people have power and, you know, they want, like yesterday we learned about this concept of their seats. You know, they want, they don't want to lose their seats. So how do we, what's the strategy for dealing with that? So a couple of things. One, I do think that the, you know, talk about system structures because I really do believe that we're just playing different games. I think about like the police. We're just playing. The police don't care if we protest every day. And like, I didn't get that four years ago because they're just playing a different game. It is all, it is so hard to indict any of them because of the structure and system mixed up that like until we play that game, we're just like, doesn't matter. Right. So like, I don't even know if that's a backlash per se. And I tell you, like the police union contract stuff, it's like, well, if all the discipline and records are destroyed and everything secret anyway, and like, and, and, and, and then like it doesn't matter if we win the public conversation. It doesn't matter if it's a world class prosecutor. Like we're just like playing a different game. And I think on the right, they're just playing a different game. So you think about the, but the strategy for taking over the state legislatures isn't because they like, I mean, it is partly because they want to introduce these state laws. But they were actually trying to build a critical mass and Trump sort of screwed this up because he's just so wild. But they're trying to build a critical mass that the states could call a constitutional convention and then they could rewrite parts of constitute. Right. It's just like a brilliant, just plan like a complete different game. One of the biggest funders of resettlement services for displaced Puerto Ricans from Puerto Rico right now are actually the Koch brothers. They are funding like the probably most expansive literacy job placement, all this stuff for displaced Puerto Ricans because they know that they're going to have all their names, addresses, phone numbers in 2020. It's like brilliant and insidious organizing, you know, and I think that we're just not, I think we're just playing a different game. So in terms of backlash, I think what happened in 2016, I remember a lot of activists being like, president doesn't matter. Right. Local is where it matters. Both for your city councilman, both for your mayor, I've never seen the president impact people's lives. And now it's like your friends getting deported and it's a bad thing. It's like sort of screwed that calculation up. But it was, but it was people like feeding that idea because it worked, it like worked for a set of people that it worked for. I think now people get it better. Is that like just from a raw number perspective, if the left voted, if everybody voted, we'd always win just from like a sheer number game. It's why we talk about like the things like the $200 is the felony that you permanently use the right to vote like in Oklahoma that over $50 or the felony until 2001. That's crazy. $50 is like all of you probably are felons who stole something over $50 by mistake, you know. And it's like, I think that the, I think the backlash is not actually just like an emotional thing. I think it is the culmination of playing a different game. And I think that what we see with Trump is like, they're just playing the different. We didn't even know the government could move this quick before because like it's never moved that quick, you know, is that he's done things so quickly. And like at such like incredible speed with no pushback from like the own party that that has been sort of incredible to watch happen. I think if anything, it's reminded that like when the other side gets in power, we should just change it. Let everybody free from jail. You know, just like in one day, just like end everything. And I think that'd be like incredible too. But I think that the way we do it is like organ, we like tell the right story about a world we want to live in. We like build the structural power to do it and we find it every level, which is I think what they're just much better at. And then we focus on running our resources in a way that actually has a translate into something. And if anything, I think that that's what I worry about that we will either look back at this decade and be like, wow, look at all those people who worked really hard. Or we'll look at this decade and be like, wow, look at all the change that happened. And I think that we're sort of like, it's a 50-50 about where we go. Last question. Mentor, I'm a librarian. Can you hear me? No. Is that better? Yes. Okay. My name is Elise Mentor. I'm a librarian at a public university for your university in Towson, Towson University outside of Baltimore. I live right around the corner. Yeah. We actually met briefly at Afropunk last year. You probably don't remember me, but it's okay. So I was going to say that, let me turn this. I heard Vernay Myers, who is a change management consultant, speak recently. And she says something to the fact that she talks to a lot of C-level sweet leaders who want to do the right thing and want to affect change, but they don't know where to start. And so I was wondering if you could speak, we've talked a lot about police brutality and systemic racism and loss or lack of equity, which is all important. But I wonder if you could make a little bit of a stronger connection to what that means to us who work in higher education, at libraries, with students, but also thinking about what it means to think about that from a organizational perspective and how that relates to creating policies and hiring and retention of professionals and things of that nature. Yeah. I think it's all, when I think about system infrastructures, I think about them at every level, not just, I use the police just because they're like an easy example to me. But I think about being the chief remit capitalist school system, and it was never lost to me that like the way I designed that form today would be the way that we collected data for the next 50 years, right? So if any of you have ever had to do the EO, most school systems have to report data to the EOC in a certain way. And like, for instance, we don't collect data on biracial people in a way that makes, it's like, you have to check white and then something else, like that's just the way the data is collected. So people would ask us like, what's the breakdown of whatever. It's like, well, I can tell you the number of people who checked like more than two races is how we collected in Baltimore. I can't tell you anything else. So like, what about the number? Like in Latinos have to check more than two races. Like that's what the box is literally called more than two races. And it's like, that actually, that fundamentally changes the way that we make decisions in the district because we have no data on Latino employees. And we just like, doesn't exist, right? And that's actually like a system level decision that is about equity and race and justice that like doesn't look like it's about equity, race and justice. So I think about, it was never lost to me that we did those. I think about even being the chief or like being the senior director here, the way that we interviewed people. It was the first time we'd ever asked people mindset questions and we thought that was like the right thing to do. And that was like from an equity perspective. So when I think about people who work inside systems and structures, it's like trying to think about like the leverage and the decisions that you're making today that you know will have a long, like they will be things that live beyond you. And how can you set them up so that they actually like mean something or like collect data in a way that makes sense or push policy like those things I think that we take for granted. And as it, when I was in Baltimore working back in the school system, you know, we employed many people as many people as the city itself. So when I thought about like how we let teacher P.D. you're like how we hired people who we recruited and how we recruited them like all those things are like sitting down and just asking the tough questions. About like, did we do this right? Have we recruited in the right places? Why don't we have enough teachers of color? Like why people quitting? Like being in a place where we could ask those questions and like force answers was actually like really powerful because like I was just a chief and like this superintendent also agree with me. There's also a question this thing about like where do your values show up is that like we made a lot. I was the only person that could hire and fire people and it was this thing about like where do our values show up? And what you find in a lot of human capital stuff is that people's values change depending on who the person is. And like that just isn't fair, right? That's not that is the opposite of what equity looks like. And then like we had to figure out how to calibrate like the values sort of a consistent regardless of what the outcomes were for people and that we like led with that as like a real thing. So when I talk about the police and like systems and police union contracts and stuff, the only reason that we did the police union contract project is because I used to manage teachers, teachers union contracts. Like I knew what contracts were like because it was my job to manage the implementation of them. And I saw that there are all these like random things that you know it's like the lesson plan as we turn in 30 minutes. There were all these like random things that we agreed to that like I don't know if they made the most sense for anybody, teachers or students that made me that helped me think about like larger systems and structures. So my advice to you would be that like you know a part of the world really well and that you'd be shocked at how like you knowing that part of the world really well actually sets you up to think about like everything else really well too. Like it helps you think about like the questions asked the levers to push the like who probably has power that you that doesn't look like they have power but actually has a lot of power. Like all those things come from knowing one thing really well that you can sort of extrapolate that out to. And then we do think about like the justice work is everybody's work that like the police safety mass incarceration education like it's as much your work as it is mine whether it is like your formal work or not. Because like you all live in communities and it shouldn't take the crisis sort of hitting the workplace for you to understand that this is actually like an issue that is as big as you are. So the question then becomes like how do you use like your unique gifts and talents to like set people up to make different decisions. Whether it is helping people like access content that they didn't know existed. I think about you know one of my biggest frustration with the academic community is that so many people have actually studied so many of the problems that we never thought about. And like I call this we did we did the first ever examination of policing Congress in the country a hundred contracts at the hundred biggest cities. We call this random professor that we had gotten tipped off that he had done work like this to after we did ours. And I'm like can you send me the contracts that you have mind you we just did this three years ago so it's not a lot of time. And I call him and he's like oh Daryl sent you everything I got he sends me 800 contracts. I was like were you just like sitting on like what were you going to do with them. He was like that is so crazy to me that you had 800 like literally the single he's a single biggest set outside of ours and eight times as big as ours. Just like randomly sitting in a spreadsheet like he sent it to me in like 10 minutes and you're like whose job is it to make sure this stuff gets around to people who can do something with it. And I think about all the information that you probably have proximity to and know about and see that is like life changing and game changing and nobody will ever. And like that is that is wild to me and trying to think about how do we bridge that gap that like there are people who are focused on these issues that don't know about that study or don't know about that thing. I did a talk at Johns Hopkins and there was this nurse who was like she did a study on like cigarette use in the homes and like why people are like smoking around their kids. And she was like one of the reasons is because people in Baltimore don't feel safe smoking outside because of the police like that was one of her findings. And she was like I wrote it in the journal and they literally would not publish it because they thought that was too controversial. Then she was like the protests started and all of a sudden they were like it's OK to publish right. And it's like that is a fight that I don't even know where to start like I don't have any proximity to waging that battle. And it's like I think about people like you who like you are around like these communities of the people in journals and it's like what does it look like to fight for like different access and different stories and like sort of connecting people who do the work with people who study the work like you just have you just are in a community that we don't even know how it works. Right. And trying to think about how you use that in a way that actually sets people up to make the best decisions. I think it's some of the most powerful stuff you can do. Thank you again. DeRay. Thank you. Thank you very much. How many of you know Crooked Media and DeRay's podcast Pod Save the People. Oh wow there's quite a few people in this room so a shout out to Pod Save the People. I have to tell you that it is one of my absolute favorite podcasts and if you see me with my my earbuds in I'm you know I'm usually listening. I've usually got DeRay's voice in my ear. There are a number of podcasts of his that I actually go back and listen to every now and then. And I just have to say that the one that I would encourage you all to listen to because it's something I've listened to more than once and it gives me a lot of hope is DeRay's interview with or discussion with Brene Brown and it was around joy, privilege and discomfort. And it's something that we all have to think about in our lives the joy that we need and the joy that we deserve. So check out that podcast. And thank you again to DeRay and DeRay I hope that in you know when you're thinking about future strategies bridge builders that you think about librarians because we are important to your struggle and to what you are trying to achieve. Thank you very much everyone and I guess we're going to have to say goodbye to DeRay. Okay we now have a break and our concurrent sessions begin again at 11.15. We are in the galaxy room and here in the galaxy room we are going to be in the session where do you work, rooting, responsibility in land. And the Creating a Residence Program, the ACRL Diversity Alliance is in the universe room. So head there after the break if that's what you're interested in hearing more about. Thank you very much.