 Welcome to this panel discussion. Thank you for coming. This is a presentation by the Vaughn-Beichet Theater Project. It's a diverse team of artists and activists who develop and commission artworks based upon the life and philosophy of N.O.P.D. Chief Yvonne Beichet. So first I'd like to introduce our moderator for this afternoon, Stephanie McKee Anderson. She is Chief Artistic Director of June Buzz Production. Stephanie McKee Anderson is a performer, choreographer, educator, facilitator, and cultural organizer born in 15 Mississippi and raised in New Orleans. She is the founder of Moving Stories Dance Project, an organization committed to dance education that provides opportunities for dancers and choreographers to showcase their talents. In 2007, she was awarded the Academy of Educational Development, New Voices Fellowship, and Award for Emerging Leaders. For the past 20 years, Stephanie has been involved with June Buzz Production as an artist educator. Most recently, she served as Associate Artistic Director for the first annual Homecoming Project in 2011, a place-based performance project that addresses the right of return and what home means to communities in post-Katrina, New Orleans. In 2006, Stephanie was one of 10 artists who collaborated to create the original production of Rooted, the Katrina Project, co-produced by June Buzz Production. As an artist and cultural organizer, Stephanie is deeply committed to creating work that supports social justice and aligns with Free Southern Theater and June Buzz Legacy. So welcome, Stephanie, and thank you. Hi, Ron. Thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to today's discussion. Yeah, yeah, I'm doing okay, as well as can be. I'm looking forward to today's discussion. We have a wonderful panel that's put together for you today, and I'd like to introduce them. So the first person that I have here is Susan Hudson. Susan has been the Chief Prosecutor and the Police Monitor for the City of New Orleans for the past 10 years. Prior to this position, Susan worked at the L.A. Police Commissioner's Office as the Assistant Inspector General. The Assistant Inspector General, excuse me. She also worked as the Assistant City Attorney in Corpus Christi City, where she was the Chief Prosecutor of Municipal Courts. She holds a Juris Doctorate Degree from Tulane University School of Law. Welcome, Susan. Thank you so much, Stephanie. I'm so glad to be here. I'm so glad to meet you. Next, we have Brandon B. Mike Odoms, who is a New Orleans-based visual artist who, through exhibitions, public programs, and public artworks, is engaged in a transnational dialogue about the intersection of art and resistance. He attended NOCA, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts High School here in New Orleans, and has worked and created films, murals, installations that encapsulate the political fervor of a generation of black American activists. In 2016, Brandon established Studio B, a 36,000 square foot gallery in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans, as the final part of his B trilogy. Welcome, Brandon. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Good. Next, we have Jordan Flaherty. Jordan Flaherty is an award-winning journalist, producer, and author. His print journalism has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Color Lines. Jordan was the first journalist to bring the case of the genus six to the national audience, and he has so far been the only journalist identified as a subject in the New York City Police Department spying program. Jordan, welcome. And it's good to see you again. It's so funny when I read these things. I know, right? I'm hoping I catch everything. Well, welcome to you all. I'm so happy that you're here and I'm looking forward to a really lively discussion today. Did you guys get a chance to check out the play? Yeah. Yeah. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. So I'm sure we're percolating with lots of things that are on top for us right now. And I have a couple of questions that we'll just be in conversation with each other. Everybody okay with that? All right. Well, here we go. And this is not in any particular order. But as you hear the question and you feel like you want to add to that, please do jump in. So I was sitting down and thinking about the difference between law enforcement and policing. And I got into a really lively discussion with a few people about the difference between the two. And I never really thought about it. You know, there is the law enforcement and there's policing. And in my estimation, the policing means that anybody can decide that they are then the authority and that they will be the ones doing that. But I'm really curious, what does that bring up for you? Is there a difference between the two? Or what does it make you curious about? Well, you know, I'll start off, you know, I've been in this business for a minute and dealing with the police for a minute. I have to say, I haven't really thought about those things. They all kind of meld together for me, right? Because there's law enforcement, the enforcement of the law that sometimes on some people and not necessarily the same on others. And the same thing with policing or controlling people, they all have all kind of melded into one for me. So this is a really special time for me right now where we're really looking at policing, law enforcement, what does that look like? What does it mean? And how what are we going to do going forward in the future? So I don't know if I've answered your question, but be very curious to know the person who put that to you. What did they say about that? Actually, I think I may have said that. I think I may have asked that question. And we just got into a really lively discussion. This was in preparation for this panel, actually. And we got into a really lively discussion. And I was really curious about how you might consider that or what that brings up for each of you. Is there a difference to you and in those things? So it really was out of curiosity for how you think and then worlds that you navigate. Jordan, what about you? Well, if I can just before I start, I just wanted to start by acknowledging the context we talk from that we speak from in New Orleans in the US, that we're on land stolen from indigenous peoples through process of colonization in a place formerly called Bulbancha and in a nation built through the labor of enslaved Africans. And I just also want to say that I'm a huge fan of the work of everyone on this panel. You know, I've known you all for a while. And I'm just really excited to be here and to and to learn from all of you. But for the question in particular, I'd say, you know, as a journalist that's worked on these issues, I think it's an important context to all this, the fact that police and prisons are relatively recent inventions, right? That they came out of a specific context that the first police force was founded in Charleston in 1733. And their main mission was preventing uprisings and escapes by enslaved people. And, you know, in 1865, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, as everyone here knows, outlawed slavery with the exception of those convicted of a crime. At that moment, a new system of policing was born as well as prisons, as we know them today. So all of this context of law enforcement, and prisons and policing can't really be separated from the history of white supremacy of slavery that this country was built on. Yeah, I appreciate that context, Jordan. And I'm grateful to be on the panel and to listen and learn. I think for me, adding to or just communicating with what Jordan is saying, I think when I think about the distinction between policing and law enforcement, I think at his best, there's the thought that one is sort of impartial, where law enforcement seems to be at least at his best, the thought would be law enforcement is about enforcing a law. But then policing, when I think about policing, I think about emotions, I think about fears, I think about how the human aspect of the process gets in, in terms of the way things are, people are profiled, the way, so I think at least the way I would hope it would be is that law enforcement seems to be like, at its best, and then policing is at its worst, in terms of what's required to the structures we live in that we're also trying to dismantle. So that's the way I distinguish it too. For some reason, I think when I think of policing, I think of an individual. And I think of an individual that's afraid of me. When I think about law enforcement, I think about a structure that's messed up, but at least the structure has a way for you to change things, I guess, because laws can change in some points or whatever. So that's the way I kind of interpreted it. It was interesting to me, the question, because I thought, wow, you know, in today's, in the place that we live in right now, today, pretty much anybody can police a space, I can be the one to police the space that's in front of my house or around my house, you know, it just opened up this wide thought process. But you know, I want to go back to something that Jordan mentioned a little while ago, because I think that it has relevance to the question I'm going to ask. You mentioned the first police department being founded in 1733 as a direct response to runaway slaves and, and to things like that. And I, I grew up in Mississippi, part there and part here in New Orleans. And someone mentioned the this culture of fear that has been whipped up here in the, in the United States. And I said, you know, fear, I think all of us have different relationships to fear, depending on where you are, who you are, what you look like, where you come from. And that that that culture of fear is not something that is new, but that it is generational. Because it is rooted in something that is real. So when I sit down and I think about the stories that my father shared with me about being a young man growing up in Mississippi and how there was a conversation that had to be had with him every time he left the house about here are the things that I need you to do in order to come back whole and alive. And it occurs to me that we have a different version of that same conversation that we have. Now it's not even just our sons, our black sons, but now it's our daughters as well. It's our husbands, it's our mothers, it's anyone who leaves out so that that culture of fear is not just something that's in our heads, but it has real root system that's here and passed down to each of us. Why don't you talk to us a little bit, Susan, about that culture of fear? Stephanie, you said a mouthful there. My family, my father's family is from Texas, East Texas. You know, Texas has a kind of violent history as well against African Americans, especially as to policing. But I grew up with those stories. We when we live near Houston and we go back to the country, you know, for family reunions or whatnot, we hear the stories, you know, about being pulled over on Highway 59 and things officers were doing just to humiliate African Americans or rough them up or whatever. You know, we grew up with that. I remember going out to a lake. It was a hot day, as you can imagine, in Texas, and we went to the family reunion and me and my cousins, about five of us, six of us went to the lake, kind of cool off. And we walked apparently place where we weren't supposed to be. And immediately, a sheriff's office person came up to us and questioned my older male cousins about what they were doing with young females, right? We're family at the beach. But we got questioned criminally about something that everybody else was doing. And nobody else was being questioned. And the vast majority of those that I could see around me were white. So I remember that and growing up with that kind of fear. But it wasn't until I had been in this business for many years, it was only maybe six, seven years ago, that my father told me what happened to my paternal grandfather in East Texas. He died when my father was very young. And I knew that so 70 plus years ago. And but I didn't know why no one ever spoke about it. And it's something that this is a similar story throughout African Americans history. Somebody, something happened, especially in the South, the family survives it and flees from it, and then doesn't really talk about it again. And so that's what I found out that my grandfather had been murdered by the sheriff there. And not just him, his brother had been murdered as well. And I found that out through a program who went back and looked at these old shootings later. And so you see that, and you see, you live this growing up. And it's no wonder, of course, you have a fear of police. But today, watching people die right in front of us. And secretive grand jury deliberations, you know, we get arrested like that for something. From shoplifting to anything else, to George Floyd, allegedly passing a $20 bill, right? But officers not meeting that those same accountability standards that the rest of us have to live with. So yeah, it goes down. And I've been trying to read more about this generational trauma stuff. But I'm hearing it. And it's resonating with me deeply. And so as I deal in this job with the families of folks who've been killed by the New Orleans Police Department, as I did in Los Angeles or in Austin, you know, that's something that really just rings true to me as being something that I need to do to humanize, to speak to folks, to treat them with respect, to give them information about what happened, something that, you know, has not happened a lot of times throughout history. So it's something that's really, that weighs on my heart heavily. Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting, my husband and I said, we're going to have to just stop watching television all together. Because there are these things that come up that you, through time, you forget. Well, not that you forget. I think you just try not to think about it in order to just get up the next day. You know, just recently, there was a something that came out, it was like a new show to talk about the shooting of Sean Bell. And you're re traumatized every time you sit down and you think about this young man who had everything going for him and getting ready to be a new husband and embark on another, another step in life forward, cut short that night, the night before he was to get married, is something that sits with, I think, anyone. So Brandon, what does that bring up for you? For me, I think about the idea of, well, it reminds me of a excerpt of a poem from Saul Williams, who in reference to policing, he said, I'm not afraid of you. I'm just a victim of your fear. And I think about, like, the idea of how fear is, is this shadow that, especially as a, as, you know, we can go into the categories of who feels it, but as a black man, navigating, you know, with locks and, and, and I dress, you know, I wear hoodies when I feel like it, it's like knowing that there's association or shadow of fear that you're not responsible for, but that you have to sort of navigate. You know, Darren Wilson, the cop who murdered Mike Brown, said that he was a superhuman demon. Like he said, he saw, I think the quote or something was, he saw, to him, he was a demon. And when you think about like how someone can see someone else in a moment and cast their fears on them to the point where that's what they see and, and argue that that's what they saw. It makes you wonder, you know, as a communicator through images, it makes me that much more sensitive to how images communicate and like who taught us, you know, because whether it's another race or whether it's black people thinking about themselves, it's like who taught us that we should be afraid, you know, who taught me that if I see a group of young black men that I should inherently be fearful instead of curious or open or, or, and so for me, I think about like unpacking that fear and unpacking the stories and the narratives that have enforced the idea that the first thought around what you don't know is to be afraid of it. So I think that's why it's so important, like owning your own story and being able to like this project here or even just within any context of storytelling, being able to fully have agency to disprove and to assert a different thought around your humanity. And that's what I think about when I think about this fear that's often associated around policing, like that quote, I'm not afraid of you, I'm just a victim of your fear. Yeah, it's a lot to think about. It's a lot to think about. It's a lot to undo, right? I think you're naming something that it takes, it actually takes work to undo that. So for as complicated as the notion of what fear is and people use that word, I think, fear in another word that they use safety. People use the idea of safety very freely in ways that sometimes I don't think I have the patience to really, I don't have the patience for it sometimes because usually it'll be freely used, let's say, in a meeting that's fully catered, you know, we're sitting in a circle, everything's lovely and we're having a conversation. And so we want to talk about safe space, right? Because they're uncomfortable. Well, safe space doesn't mean comfortable space. And that's a whole nother thing, thinking about safety. But you know, where I come from, safety is really are you going to make it home? I need my daughter to make it home alive. I need my sons, my husband to make it home alive, right? And so I don't know, I sit and I think about that often, because it's something we do have to undo and we have to use you know, words are powerful, we have to really challenge ourselves to think about the spaces that we enter in and the people that we're around when using that in a free way. But Jordan, what are you thinking right now? You're kind of quiet. I mean, I guess like as a white person in New Orleans, I just I think about how sheltered I've been from this, you know, I, you know, I really honestly so many times I've jaywalked in front of police, I've done, you know, I've broken every traffic law, you can't, you know, I'm mostly a bicyclist, so not really driving law, but you know, and I kind of never get messed with. And I, you know, I'm aware of looking at the records, like how many black people from New Orleans have been stopped for, you know, I've seen like people stop for riding their bike the wrong way down a one way street or not stopping at a stop sign on their bike or, you know, all these petty offenses. And I think part of it of how it is is how much I don't feel threatened by this, how, you know, how this this badge of whiteness has kept me safe through all of this. And, you know, I was back living here a couple months after Hurricane Katrina. And you know that there's 100,000 African Americans that still have not come back, right? And so the varying ways in which and people that, you know, like folks like, for example, school teachers, right, that had, you know, so not even necessarily people that were poor, but people that had middle class jobs, but you know, they were replaced by these Teach for America folks that I now see all over the city, right? And so yeah, how much, how much race is tied is tied into this and how much I've benefited and however much I, you know, want to fight the system. I'm also benefiting from the system. Yeah, it's interesting, Jordan, you and I have known each other for a little while. And I remember you were one of few people here. I think I was here as well. And us meeting each other not long after Katrina. It was not an easy place to turn around and to navigate being here. But I remember the days of being over at the Seventh Ward Neighborhood Center and a couple of events that were happening. And we weren't, you know, I remember clearly coming out of there one time where a man was pulled over. Do you remember that he was on a bike and he got pulled over? I do remember that. Yeah. And we were all there just kind of waiting to see, you know, it was one of those things you felt like at the time you felt like you just needed to be witness to things just to make sure things didn't go awry. And sometimes even in bearing witness to it, I've been over on Bayou Road one time similar situation where we were just as concerned folks and knowing that things can just pop off wanting to just be witness, not interfere. We're just being witness. And I remember being threatened by the cops because we were there witnessing something. So it's you know, yeah, fear is a real thing. You know, it's a real thing and we have cause to feel that way. But I mean, considering all of these things that we have to turn around, I'm sorry, Susan, you were going to say something. Oh, you're just I'm kind of triggered a little bit. You reminded me of just the things that are going on right now where we where you can't even speak in our federal government. They say you can't even speak about some things. You can't talk about critical race theory or you can't talk about this. You can't talk about that in the United States of America with First Amendment rights. But not ever those rights are not enforced equally. Now are they? And so on the one hand, it's a crazy time of just, you know, just unspeakable kind of insanity. And then on the other, I have just a lot of hope right now because we're having conversations we didn't have before. What does public safety really mean? I'm calling myself and I'm very late to the game, but I'm going to call myself a one of the abolitionists because I'm not quite, you know, I don't know enough about it, all the changes that need to be made. But I know that I can now, you know, thanks to young folks getting out in the street and saying these things, I can now imagine a world where public safety is not about the police, right? It's about a lot of other things, a more safe and healthy society for all of us. So I'm enjoying those conversations and trying to do what I can to lessen policing's footprint, trying to work in that in that way and then just learning, like I'm reading everything I can, you know, all the good ones, the new Jim Crow, the white fragility, I read one called cop fragility. I was like, oh, wow, I'm not even seeing that. So that was good. So, Angela Davis, a little bit of everything just trying to to get ready for this moment and to push as hard as we can to get some real real safety for everyone, not one group feeling safe while another is being oppressed. So just I'm kind of hopeful, but but at the same time, yeah. Well, this is an interesting job that you have in lots of ways that question about policing is kind of flipped, right? Because in that instance, you know, there is somebody policing the police. Right? So it's kind of flipped in that way. And even in the instance that we as citizens, when we bear witness to that, it is just that we are bearing witness to that to make sure that if something happens, that there is a group in a number of people who witnessed and more witness to what happened in that and can actually speak so many times things happen in places. And that is by design. And we know that that is by design where there are no witnesses, there aren't any people that are around to say one way or the other. And we know that, like anything, that there are some good people and there are some not so good people that are involved in that and that we need to figure out how to take. How do we turn around and reimagine this? Like, how do we reimagine safety and security in this 21st century environment? Well, since I got already got my mic open, I'll just continue and then I'll stop talking. But enjoying this this conversation, it starts with right layers of better a better way to do things. So like this morning, there was an incident between the police and somebody with mental health issues. In fact, as I read the emails every day about what's going on, there are more and more encounters be between police and folks who are living with mental illness or exhibiting, right, experiencing a meltdown on that particular day or a crisis on that particular day. And just looking at how well, what are the tools in their toolbox be able to deal with this? And what are they doing in other places that is better and is not police oriented? So those are some of the things that we're trying to work on release is kind of reducing that footprint. But in the long run, even after the New Orleans Police Department goes through this consent decree, just like all the other cities that have gone through this consent decrees and these federal interventions, the disparities in who gets stopped, who gets arrested, who gets forced use, that's not going to go away. So I'm hearing what these folks are youngsters are saying right now in the street, which is policing, right? The majority of policing has to go. And if all of it can go, well, put me out of business, I'm glad I'd be glad to be out of business. But this is the time to reimagine everything. Yeah. What do you think in Jordan? I mean, first of all, I'm really excited to hear you say that, Susan. I, you know, I think that I think this is like, you're totally right. This is the moment where a lot of people are rethinking these things. And I think it's really exciting. I've been thinking a lot about this James Baldwin quote, you know, from half a century ago, where he says, I do not claim that everyone in prison here is innocent, but I do claim that the law as it operates is guilty, and that the prisoners therefore are all unjustly imprisoned. And I also want to lift up Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who's been talking about abolition for a long time. And she says, abolition of prisons is not about absence, but about presence, which I think really gets to what you were saying just now, Susan, to it's about building these alternatives. And Andrea Smith of Insight Women of Color Against Violence says, it's not about tearing down the walls tomorrow. It's about crowding out these things with positive alternatives. Our goal is to proliferate these alternatives until eventually they crowd out the prison industrial complex and squeeze out the state. And so I think, you know, yeah, so much of it is about how we can build this, this different world. And I'll just say one other fact that always like sticks in my mind that there's over seven million people in prison jail probation or parole in the US by far the largest prison population on the planet, 25% of all prisoners in the entire world during the US prisons. And according to the nation magazine, it comes out to about a trillion dollars a year that we spend to uphold this current system. And so just, you know, for everyone watching, just think about the alternatives that could be built without trillion dollars a year, how many of the problems of our society could be solved by building up these alternatives to to crowd out the current system? Yeah, I really appreciate that, Jordan. I was sitting there and telling and talking about the alternatives, sitting down and thinking about even in my own family, you know, people sit and I talk about it very openly because I think that it's important for people to know that not only do I have I had people in my family and do I have currently people in my family that are in this prison system now, also at the same time, had a father who was first generation to graduate from college and worked in the district attorney's office here in New Orleans, right? And a lot of the reason why he even went into law, he was young, so he understand the complexities of it. And he certainly didn't understand how complex it was going to be for him to be a black man working under, under Harry Connick at the time. But I'm sitting and I'm thinking about my uncle, who was a war vet. And I remember my father saying one of the best things that could have happened is for him to have gone into the service at that time, because it got him out of Mississippi. It got him traveling, it got him seeing this other world. But when he came back, there was nothing there for him, right? And so he felt victim to, you know, the things that were around. And the lack of, quite frankly, if you didn't have that tenacity to go, if you didn't have just the audacity to believe that you could actually go to school, it wasn't a whole lot of opportunities that were there in that small town. And in fact, you know, I feel like anybody had there not been somebody I know for myself speaking as a black woman. I have a good family. But what if I didn't have that? What if I did have that good family? And my life just took a turn. But for someone taking interest in me and guiding me and pushing me towards some other things and challenging me as well. There has to be other alternatives. I think all of us can name, you know, a list of people that is giving opportunities, other opportunities that their life and the outcome could be slightly different. Right? So you know, what do you think, Brandon? What do you what does this bring up for you? 21st century environment? How can we reimagine that? So yeah, definitely, I think reimagining or radical imagination is is crucial. You know, we've been focusing a lot around that at Studio B. We've been doing these workshops called Black Radical Dream or Radical Freedom Dream. And it's all been based on the book of Freedom Dreams, Black Radical Imagination by Robin Kelly. And he focuses on a lot of the conversations around the different social movements that have occurred in this country, not so much the details of them, but what the dream that they have, like what were they hoping to accomplish? Because oftentimes we can we can articulate what we're against, but we sometimes have difficulty trying to articulate what we're for, or we can articulate what we want to dismantle, but we have a difficult time imagining what can replace it. And so we've been doing these workshops trying to encourage youth to give them the agency to imagine and think about what structures do they want to see? What what what does their imagination send them when we say imagine a world without police or when we say imagine a world without prisons? Like what do they see in replacement of that? And we've been getting all these amazing responses from youth because they do have a little bit they're less connected to the structures as is. So they have this ability to sort of like freely imagine. And and and that's the requirement. I think we live in these structures that have been the product of someone's imagination. 500 plus years ago, you know, I'll be a wicked imagination, but we still years later trying to work our way out of someone else's imagination. And it's going to require a radical imagination to counter that and to replace that. And so I'm super excited about the conversations that are being had now as we're being forced in a lot of ways to to challenge the way we accepted things to be. And that's always like one of the first steps to your imagination is to letting go of what is currently in front of you and allowing yourself to to sort of just freely explore what could be there in its place. So so yeah, so we've been focusing a lot of that. And actually at Studio B we have a we're reopening finally this weekend and and we're opening with that show, Radical Freedom Dream, where we are going to be showcasing the work of of many artists that are exploring. What do we do to replace the current structures that we're in? Or as the quote says in a book, what do we build on the ashes of a nightmare? And that's what we're trying to explore. Like what do we build on the ashes of a nightmare? Thank you so much for that. I. I appreciate always the conversations that are around this radical imagination and the things that are possible because really do feel like the things that are done can be undone as well. It just takes, you know, takes I think a combination of things is the political will, but it's also the creativity that sits there that allows us to turn around and to and to move forward with another way of being that is better for all of us. So it's like our all of our freedoms are tethered to each other, you know. And so this is not just for one group of people. This is really this is what freedom looks like if we're able to go back and to and and to I think examine with the ruthless honesty how this system has dehumanized so many of us and how it's affected all of our families, our way of being the way we are with each other. You know, I'm sitting and thinking about Jordan and not just coming out from a meeting, a community meeting and witnessing that and what that does to us and our own humanity. So I. With that in mind, like Yvonne's words in the play were like so powerful. Those stories were so powerful and I'm wondering like how might. How might you use those words to affect the positive positive change in law enforcement? What are some things or nuggets that you came away with that you think or if you had the ability to do? Let's say you were doing something in honor of because it was something that just really had you thinking something from this play or her words. What might that be? What might you do? That's a big question, but we're dreaming right now. You know, I just have to say this has so much admiration for her and so sad to see that we lost her. The 2020 has been horrible for sure and losing Chief Bichet has got to be right up there with, you know, the top of the list and horrible things. But just in listening to it again this weekend because, you know, we were there when they were creating it and doing it, put it on for the first time and it's so impressed by her. And being a first at anything is really tough, right? But especially when you're a black woman, we get a whole bunch of like just mess put on us. So just to watch her grace and when you see her, she's just as graceful, right? You know, and just the way she, despite the fact that she was not being treated equally, that she was not being treated with respect, she still continued to use that, treat everyone else around her with respect and to win over folks with that. That was her way of doing it. So I just had a lot of respect for that, but just also cannot imagine what the war going on inside of her was like, because you need this this job to kind of feed your family and stay in the middle class or move into the middle class. But you're you're actually at war with your own people, right? You're spying on them. You're a part of spying on them. You you're watching others mistreat them and having to try and deal with that and to be a part of this structure that was built to control and to really just keep black lives down. So black and brown. So. So those are some of the things that really just struck me, her grace in dealing with all of the things. And by the way, none of it's new, right? All those exact same things she was dealing with right then are still sitting right here right now to be dealt with. So that that's what really struck me. What struck me was just how interconnected. I mean, and maybe I can don't speak for myself, but we had a conversation with the crew at Studio B and we were talking about like how to what are some thoughts around policing? And then I asked how many people in the room have a relative or parent or cousin or uncle or that is a police officer and everyone in the room raised their hand. And so it resonated with me with this particular work is is how my grandfather was a police officer and my uncle. I had two uncles actually three uncles. And so it is kind of like how how do you navigate that? And I think that was part of some of the conversations with this particular piece is like, how do you navigate the role, the duality of the role of being an enforcer of the law and understanding the problems in the system while also being part of the threat, I guess, if you will, in terms of outside of the uniform. And so for example, there was my grandfather had this. He's got a this crown Vic that he's had forever. And even after he retired, he still kept the police lights on the inside and he still kept like all the it still looked like a police car. And and I really been thinking about artistically, like so I appreciate how the family artistically used the format of a play to to navigate this because I've been thinking about like how can I use my grandfather's car as a way to artistically explore that duality of him being an officer, but also or even from my perspective, trying to navigate like coming to terms with the fact that I have a majority of my family has had positions in this structure and it saved them in a lot of ways. It gave them a sense of purpose. It gave them a uniform to put on. It gave them the money to sustain themselves in this city, but also understanding overall the duality or the the contradiction of what that could potentially represent. And so I saw this as a way of processing, artistically processing that in a way where you can fully navigate all the aspects of what that represents. And I don't know if that's something that's unique to New Orleans. I don't know if that's something that's unique to major cities, but I'm curious to know, like if there's more thoughts around that relationship between black people and being statistically more of the victim of policing, but also being a part of the police force in that same way. So I also want to some of the thoughts that came to mind when I was looking at it. It's interesting because, you know, that was not always the history of the police department here in New Orleans at all. And so it is, you know, I grew up at a time where the good majority of the police force was actually white and to see that shift and change now and to also hear stories from my father about navigating as somebody that was inside of the you know, that duality that you speak of someone who was not just he was a district attorney and working at like working with the law, but also a black man working in that a black man from Mississippi who's also seen how the law has been manipulated to create victims. And at that time, looking at there was a relationship between not only the police department, but also the district attorney's office, where a lot of cases got thrown out. Like there are a lot of cases that we've gone back to that we know folks were railroaded that it, you know, as the city shifts and changes folks start going into these positions, it used to be there were not a whole bunch of black attorneys. Now there is a lot of black attorneys that we see working in it, but it's still a very challenging system. There's not one person that I talk to that works within that system that doesn't talk about the challenges that are on the inside of these systems as a black person holding that space. And trust me, I don't envy them. I could never do that job. I couldn't. And I and and I'm appreciative that I know people that are cops when something is jumping off that I can pick up the phone and call the ones that I know, you know, and they'll look out for you. Right. So I'm appreciative when those relationships really, really work. But I'm still thinking about there's that's not enough. Right. There has to be other ways to sort of reimagine what this could be for us. What are you thinking, Jordan? Yeah, I mean, I think this is such an important discussion, right, because it's like so many people have have family that are that are police. So many people have family that have been on the other side that have been in that have been in prison and and you know, I just think it's just really important to it drives home this point that it's not about individuals. It's about systems, right? And that, you know, New Orleans had some of the most violent policing, you know, in this nation's history, you know, after these massive changes under, you know, Black mayor, Black police chief, Black people in every leadership of the department, look at post Katrina, the killings of of the the Madison's of Ronald Madison and the arrest of his brother, Roma Madison and Henry Glover, the other folks on Danziger Bridge along with the Madison's Arthur Brumfield outside of the convention center. You know, so, you know, all of this this violence that's that's happened and that it's you know, I think it shows how much it comes down to systems and not and not individuals and that there's, you know, there's good that individuals can do within these systems. But the question become getting back to what Susan has said before, can these systems even be saved? Can they they be reformed? And, you know, going back to that thing of knowing people there, police and then knowing people that are on the other side, too, there's this quote from Daniel Sered that says, no one enters violence for the first time by committing it. And I think about that phrase a lot, right? They're like, they're like, no one enters violence as a perpetrator, the people who do horrible acts have pretty much always had horrible acts done to them first. And how do we how do we break into these cycles of violence in these systems of violence? And I think that policing, you know, it's like it's like when you when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? And so policing has become this large tool that gets used for everything. And so now policing is like, oh, our kids misbehaving in school, let's send in police or the homeless people, let's send in police or people littering, let's send in police, right? And so police have become this is someone's suicidal, send police over there. And I mean, act as a policeman or let me do it myself as we saw Rayvon Martin. That is yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, that gets back to your very first question about policing versus law enforcement and the way in which people, especially, I think white people are people with white privilege, you know, sort of deputize themselves or feel deputized. I mean, similar to that woman, what was her name? Amy Cooper or something maybe, right? Who was like calling police on that guy who was doing birdwatching in the park, right? And so this way in which as white folks, we sort of feel deputized as police to this this ability to police people, you know, even without the badge. Yeah. And we see that now. We see it's so many. I don't want to see another pop up police, you know, self deputized group of people. It's a scary time to sit down and to think about that, because I mean, if we don't have to go that far back to know that even the Klan thought that they were doing things in support of what was right. So if we ever want to figure out what's at stake with this, I'm going to self deputize myself. We don't have to go that far to see how that plays out. And you said something that was interesting to me. Can can systems can they be changed? Can they be reformed? And what's interesting about that is that we have people that go on the inside and, you know, the system we're supposed to say we're saying that people can go into a system, but they don't have to be a victim of that system, of which they're in that they can reform, you know, that they can be reform. And it's interesting because I've known people to go into that system. And I'm thinking about my brother right now, which I want to lift him up. I will lift up my brother, Robert Goodman, junior who did wonderful work who came out of the prison system, who I learned so much from and who gave freely. And he told me, Stephanie, I was a mess when I was younger. I spent most of my life in the prison system. But when I tell you he came out of that system and it was a heart of gold, a heart of gold and nothing but everything he had in him and his belief that things could be shifted and changed. My God, if somebody like that can come out in that way, why are we even questioning whether or not we can actually shift the system? Oh, Stephanie, you're saying Robert's name, you're making me tear up and get me, you know, I miss my brother. March 5th, oh, too soon, too soon. You know, he was part of Stay Street Strong Communities, group that helped put this office together. And I'll never forget interviewing and being asked questions by him. When I got here to New Orleans, he said, they told me, you know, Susan, they're gonna try and wait you out. They're not gonna do anything. They're not gonna do the things they're supposed to do. And I just want you to remember one thing. You have to be willing to fight one day longer than they are. Don't forget that. I was like, man, I know this. I got this, I know this, right? Everything he said was absolutely true, right? And I never forgot his words of wisdom and he was a fighter. Wow, and organizer and great heart, he was a part of a group that we support called Families Overcoming Injustice. You look for them on Facebook, they have their own page and they include the Madison's and the Glovers and the Goodmans and Grimes family and just a number of families of loved ones who have been killed due to NOPD violence. And first of all, I'm trying to change myself too in this process because I was part of the system and I bought into all of the language of it, like it's using force. No, it's violence, it's violence, it is violence. That's what it is. So I'm trying to reform all that stuff but he helped to shepherd that group whom we are working with to make changes in NOPD policy and to try and make some reforms and all here. But that's exactly what we need. If we're gonna, as long as we have policing here, the community has to make decisions about what they do. I do hope we get to the point that we don't need them but while they're here, gotta have more say in what's going on. We will definitely be able to lessen the harms and impact although not get rid of them altogether. And like you said, they're big systems and the NOPD just feeds into the court system and the judicial system and the DA system and so on and so forth. So all those systems have to be reckoned with as well but if our community can have more say in what goes on, they don't, police department gets to decide everything. Whether or not using force is appropriate or not, whether or not an officer gets suspended or not, whether or not who gets hired by the police department. So until we can get to the point where we are all safe because we have a really robust and safe society, I would love to have more folks. I wish we had cloned Robert first because we need about 2,000 of him right now to try and get work done. And I just wanna say how much I miss my brother. Yeah, I'm missing him too, especially in these days, right? Deep breath. So I wanna be mindful of time because I think that there may be some questions that come this way. So I'm gonna be fed some questions by some people, some folk and I'm going to read them to you. So let's see. Oh, this is funny. Y'all remember Officer Friendly? Remember that program? I don't know if it really worked with me. I'll be perfectly honest. I don't know if it really worked with me but I appreciated the effort of like someone coming in and you shouldn't be afraid but what is the Officer Friendly 2020? If so, what would she or he be like? We're gonna do this rapid fire. Like, don't even really think about it. Like first thought, best thought, boom. I'll just jump in. I hate it. I bet I've had a lot of people say that they want Officer Friendly back. I'm one with those who say that when you invite police into your life, it doesn't make it better. You know, if you wanna get to know Officer Friendly when he's not wearing the gun and badge, that sounds all good. But I just don't see inviting the police into your life. Dialogue, good dialogue between community and police? Absolutely. Real dialogue where the ground is a little more even and, you know, not such a disparity in power which is part, something we do as a part of our mediation program but man, that's just my first thought, sorry. Yeah, I think even the language of it implies that this is the anomaly. It's like, this is the friendly one. You know, it's like, and I think young people are wise enough to see through that, to see that, okay, this is the play. Like this is, and so that was always my, and even hearing stories from friends of mine about Officer Friendly, like, I think the effectiveness was the communication was the ability to know, to see beyond the badge of the uniform. But I feel like that should be the norm. That shouldn't be the anomaly. Like the one person that comes in. So that's my thoughts around it. Yeah. I mean, I would also just say, you know, I think ultimately what you both are saying is that it was a propaganda campaign, right? And I think, you know, today's equivalent, look at, you know, 40% of shows on TV, that's a random statistic, not based on anything, are like about like positive police, right? You know, it's just like, there's like how many law and order shows, how many CSI shows, right? So we have so much energy that's put out towards showing us the police, you know, to rely on police. And I think teaching us that there is no alternative, right? When going back to what I said earlier, that we're looking at the history of police is only like 200 years old after, you know, however many years of human society that we've had, right? That's this recent development, but all this media makes us think it's something that has always been and that will always be. And it's limiting our imagination. It's amazing that so much of our fiction entertainment is not about expanding our imagination, but about limiting our imagination to making us think that this is all there can be in the world. And just think about how many positive portrayals of police there are on TV versus how many positive portrayals of a defense attorney have you ever seen? Almost never, right? Almost, I think I could maybe list them on one hand, not even use my whole hand, right? And so many positive depictions of district attorneys. And let me tell you, those people are terrible people. Those are terrible people. I know Susan, you probably can't say that on the record, so I'll say it for you. Those are terrible people. And they are depicted as the hero over and over again on these shows. And you know, when do you ever see the depiction of people building up alternatives? Even our science fiction, right? It's all dystopian futures. When do we see a future, you know, where people have built up alternatives to police? Where do we, where is our fiction that's helping us imagine a better future? Yeah, yeah. It's, they had another question that was around artists, art projects, writers that have been doing work around police reform and transformation are inspiring you. Like what other artists are inspiring you that are doing this type of work and that are exciting to you right now? I can say for me, following the work of Hank Willis-Thomas and For Freedoms Project has been really exciting to think about how there's been this network of artists being galvanized around communicating. Whether it's communicating what's happening now or communicating imaginative responses to the conditions that we're existing in. And then there were two books. I mean, this is not in response to it. I mean, New Jim Crow was mentioned earlier and then I mentioned Freedom Dreams. Like those are great reads around just taking a step into thinking about what could replace or what could be addressed around dismantling the systems that we're in. I mean, I'm really inspired by the work at Be-Mike. I think you are doing really inspiring, incredible work on this. And so, I mean, you know I know this way about you and your work. Also here in New Orleans, Kayela Mumba-Baro and her project, Gallery of the Streets. I think if people look up Gallery of the Streets you should be able to find her work. And she's doing a lot of really interesting imagining around abolition. She along with Angela Davis has also found a critical resistance. She was an organizer, she's now an artist and based in New Orleans here. And yeah, folks like Walida and Marisha who did Octavia's Brew. And also she's part of this project. I haven't dug that deep into it but it's called Wakanda Dream Lab where they've been doing imagining on an abolitionist feature. And if people look that up, that's another. Yeah, that's an interesting project out there. Thank you for that. I'm reminded of like when you kind of go forward with arts projects. I remember we were, Junebug was working on this project called a Homecoming Project. And I remember we had this series of dinners. And one of the things in this lets you know that we understand how the police may work and how they may not understand what you do. I made it my mission to make sure that I invited them always to the dinners to come and to know and I set up a meeting to go and sit and tell them about this project so that they knew. And you never really know whether or not it actually is gonna make a difference to them until it came time to actually have the project itself until we had to get permits and things like that. And it paid for someone to understand as an artist what you were doing. I know we take that for granted, like everybody should know what the art is and so on and so forth. But when we say a block party, they just see block party. They don't see a community engagement active. They don't see any, they don't understand any of that. They see how many people street, you know, I remember saying, oh, we're gonna have like there'll be performers and I will never forget the police officer asking, well, what kind of performers? I was like, oh, we're gonna have this, we're gonna have drumming, we'll have African dance. I will never forget him saying, well, what kind of clothing are they wearing? I paused only because it was like an ignorant question to me, but at the same time, I realized how much work I had to do. I was like, okay, this is gonna be a lot more work than I thought. Let me try not to really show it in my face but break these things down and invite them into a process so that they can learn along with us. So that I'm not gonna do something that's separate and apart, but we're inviting you to come and be a part of community. I found those things to be probably the most enriching, like the ones that I really got something from because I feel like I created relationships with police officers during that time. And that that's important. I know that there are people that are part of the police department that want to have those relationships. Some of them come from the very neighborhoods that we sit and talk about. We're at the Seventh Ward Neighborhood Center. There was some that went to school over there that grew up in the Seventh Ward. How did they keep? Yeah, I'd be curious, we should have had a cop on this one, shouldn't we? They may not have accepted the invitation though, I don't know. It's so interesting because when I get to speak to them just one-on-one, right? When there's no peer pressure or anything around, it's very interesting to hear their perspectives. And a lot of African-American officers became officers because of what happened to them when they were kids, right? They got jacked up by the NOPD or mistreated or something like that. And they were like, I joined the force because I didn't want to have that type of thing happen. But then they quickly incorporate those thought processes and the lingo and all that. And it's just very interesting how it quickly, once they put on those clothes and the gun and the badge, it kind of changed what their true reason for getting on there was. And I've had many of them, and NOPD has such a troubled history, whether it was corruption, issues or violence or whatever. And I've had many of them just say, hey, look, there's stuff going on. I'd let people know I wasn't going to be involved in it. I'm just going to turn my head. I can't tell you how many of them told me stuff like that, which is like, wow, so you knew it was going down but you just kind of walked away and just didn't, that was your way to deal with it was not to cope with it. And that's not to put it, to think of them badly because when I was a prosecutor and I was a defense attorney, I wouldn't tell you I was very much different in trying to reform the system. If I saw cops or people doing things that they weren't supposed to do, there was nothing in place for me to, there was no real process in place for me to hold those folks accountable and to be a part of it. And more likely I would have been a target had I spoken up. So just very interesting perspectives. And the number who said that they were still traumatized after Katrina and got no help of any kind but are still working in the department, there are quite a few, there are quite a few. And that's- We still haven't dealt with that trauma that's there. There's actually a viewer asked a question specific to you, Susan, really quickly. They ask, can artists and storytellers have a role in retraining police? Yeah, absolutely. Art is a means of communication and sometimes more powerful than any words that you can say. We went from having, we have a Know Your Rights and Responsibilities book that we had an artist put some nice cover on that kids could relate to with some art in it and some graphics in it. So it's a way to reach people, a communication tool most definitely. I wouldn't say I'm the most, I'm gonna take a backseat to the others in terms of art but there have been people who've done it. Dillard, excuse me, Xavier had a program where a young man, and I'm trying to remember what his name is, came in and was doing artwork surrounding racial justice and reforms. And it was just very, very powerful, his drawings and his graphics and all. So it can speak to you, I can tell you personally some art that I've seen that was about lynchings was really resonated with me and was really powerful with me. So because it's such a strong communications tool, I would agree. I have to refer to these gentlemen though in terms of who to look for. So this has been, I think, a tough topic and it can be hard to find joy and hope on the inside of police reform on that topic. But I'm curious, this is really about you personally, where are you finding joy and hope though on the inside of all of this? Where do you find joy and hope? I think it's easy to say the process of creating is therapeutic and it allows you to physically work through whatever it is as weighing you down. And I also think that working with youth is super hopeful as well, finding joy in that in terms of understanding that so much is possible and where we are today is a product of all those who fought before us and knowing that at the very least if that continues, then we're going to continue to walk into more just spaces. So trying to keep your eyes on the prize as the elders would say, understanding that you got to go through it to get there. And so yeah, being hopeful as a type of destination of sorts, I think for me is a joyful pursuit, but also understanding the alchemy of pain and the alchemy of being able to not be defined by it, being able to not be ultimately allowing that to be your definition and having the power to perform that alchemy on it and to turn it into something else, which has always been the legacy of especially black people in this country, definitely not being defined by the current pressures of that moment. And so I feel like I'm oftentimes fall back to the guidance of the past and saying, okay, how were they able to, in the midst of actual, the impressions that were in front of them, how were they able to continue to find joy? And it's the same type of processes today. So yeah. What about Susan? I mean, that's got to be, have you got a uphill battle that's going on, huh? Yeah, but I feel good. I feel like I'm doing God's work. And I feel like this is the time, I don't have to look for meaning in my work. People are like, what is my destination or what do I need to be doing? This is what I need to be doing this work. And I'm not going to get the ball over the goal line. The younger generation will do that to get us to that place we really need to be, but I want to help all along the way. And the fact that we're even having these conversations right now and that people like me can get them and are supportive of what our young leaders are trying to do and trying to support their leadership. It's exciting times. I'm part of a national association for officers like ours. And although it is a reform thing and not an abolition thing, communities all over the country are like, we got to get some more control over our police. And I think that's a starting point until we can get to true public safety. So I'm feeling hopeful. Now, I'm kind of praying on the election, but I'm hopeful. Yeah, I mean, first I want to say acknowledge that it is really hard to feel hopeful and I don't feel it every day, for sure. But I do feel like this moment, like Susan and like all of y'all have been saying is this moment when things have been breaking through that we've been seeing more people on the streets than maybe in history, right? Certainly like those protests in early June in New Orleans were the largest I'd ever seen in New Orleans. We were saying in so many cities, right? It was the largest they'd ever seen and so many people protesting for the first time in this moment when people were realizing that we cannot continue, sorry for the background noise I don't know if y'all can hear it, that we cannot continue the way things have been and that we need to change, right? And that this has been a moment where people have been really open to rethinking everything and I don't remember the exact percentage but I remember they did some poll in like June that was saying 30% or 40% of people said that they believed in defunding police and I think 90% of those people had never even heard the phrase defund police before two weeks before that, right? And then suddenly they were open to it, right? So I think, I do think it's a time of great change and it is really being led by so much work by people most affected and thank you so much for bringing up Robert Goodman's name and it's really hard that we never got the chance to properly mourn him and I hope that we will have a chance once this COVID thing has shifted and we have more safety but folks like Robert who had been on the inside were helping to really envision a new world and a different world and there's just decades of history of this leadership from the people in prison, the folks in Attica and New York and Walpole and Massachusetts and Soledad and California that really inspired and led these movements for change. People use the term prison industrial complex a lot and Angela Davis kind of popularized it and people often think that she coined it but the first people it really uses the North Carolina Prisoner Labor Union in 1974 who called for an end to the quote judicial prison parole industrial complex, right? And so this was people in prison that first coined that term that we've been hearing so much today. And so yeah, I'm just inspired and hopeful by that leadership by the people most affected. Thank you so much. Thank you for that. There's one last question as we sort of wrap up. This has been a really rich, rich conversation and I'm really very grateful to all of you for making time to be here and to, I mean, man, we're lifting up two ancestors. We're lifting up Yvonne but we're also lifting up Robert Goodman. And it's funny because the two have never met yet. The work that they do is has and the impact of that is like left with us. And here we are today talking about work that they were deeply entrenched in one on one side and the other on the other. I guess, you know, Brendan, you're right. These things are, I think Khalil Gabron also said that the joy and sorrow, they come hand in hand, right? So these things work together. But here's one last question. And this is Roderick from Across the Canal asks, at the climax of the play, Black and Blue, the character of Officer Reynolds has an awakening where they rage about the cop in our heads. Can a panel respond to that? Can you say that again? You said the rage when he was raging about the cop, the when he was ready to quit. The rage is about the cop in our heads. Oh, I'm not sure. I wrote down some quotes about making us, but I'm not sure it's the exact same moment, but making African-Americans, you know, a society making African-Americans be to blame for their own oppression. And then the part where the officer's like, look, I gotta get out of this. I'm doing all these things against my own people. Those just really, really, really struck me. You know, as a Black police officer, doing all these things on a daily basis. Man, that would be kind of tough. That was kind of tough. Like I said, I was a prosecutor for a while. I hated every second of it. And because it just didn't ring true. What I was doing just did not ring true. So I could definitely get into that. Sorry, and it's just kind of blathering on there, but those are the things that pop behind. No, that's okay. Just as a thought provocateur, though, if you don't remember that, but just as a thought provocateur, what does that bring up? Oh, we can just end with it too. Well, I mean, I love this play. And there were just several parts that I wrote down that just struck me, hit me right in the chest. You know, there was, and not necessarily about that part, but there's a part where, you know, she's at lunch with her white male partner and they don't want to serve either one of them because she's there. And he's like so put upon. He's like, just one instance of this happening to him. And he's so put upon. He's just like, how am I supposed to fight crime and keep you all safe? You won't, if I can't even be fed, you know, he's just so, his life is just, his privilege is so interrupted. And she is just unfazed. She's like, well, I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna make me a really nice meal. Would you like to come along and have some of that? That was just, that just was like, he was just kind of whining a little bit. She's like, I dealt with that. Been there, done that, dealt with it. And I'm gonna keep moving on. And then one other part that I loved when the chief is addressing the young rookie who's dealing with the young boy. And the rookie says to her, you know, you just let him go because he's black. And chief responds back, well, if he was white, we wouldn't even be having, really having this conversation at all. Cause he wouldn't have done anything to him. He would have just gone on about his business. It's some really good points in there that just kind of, I love this play in case you don't know. You know, and I would just, you know, be Mike mentioned Robin D.G. Kelly before and his book, Freedom Dreams. And I think that's such an important resource. And I was trying to find the quote, but I couldn't find it. But he had this great quote at the beginning about how I'm paraphrasing about how poets help us to, you know, imagine the future that we need to have, right? And I think when we talk about building a, about fighting the cop in our head, I think we're also just talking about building a different future and building a better future. And how do we imagine that? And how do we break free of how the cop in our head is restricting our own imagination, right? And, you know, people talk a lot about democracy, but you know, as W.E.B Du Bois talking about the reconstruction era after the end of slavery, the coin, the term abolition democracy, right? And so how do we reach beyond the idea of democracy and talk about abolition democracy, talk about how do we build the alternatives that we need to imagine a different future to have a different society, to have a different kind of democracy because clearly the democracy we have right now is not working. And I would add that that statement is so loaded in terms of the cop in your head that it speaks to like how much of a task is required to reimagine the structures because we're all, sometimes I'm fighting with the thought that is the fight just to replace who's the enforcer or is the fight to dismantle the structure of enforcement in that way. And I think that's a good analogy to have us think about like, how do we treat those who afflict harm on us? Like what is our way of retributing harm? Or I think it starts even on that smaller level in terms of like, do you feel like it's a practical thing or do you feel like even within your own process and practice is it difficult for you to conceptualize another way of responding? So yeah, I think that shows the type of imagination required. And I remember hearing a talk from Angela Davis when she spoke about that, when she spoke about how, I know we were running a long time, when she spoke about how easy it is to just render yourself to the current structure in terms of say, oh, this person should go to prison or this person should be put away, but how much more work it requires you to reimagine what does another type of response look like? But yeah, sorry, I'm rambling. No, you're absolutely fine. I just wanna, this has been a rich conversation. Thank you so much. I wanna give thanks to HowlRound for hosting us and to you for being so gracious and lending your time and your talent. I'd like to invite everyone to visit the Yvonne Bechet Facebook page for further information on this project and for future events. And thank you for also being here with us in the middle of the day. You could have been anywhere, but you decided to come and share your time with us today. So I wanna just thank all of you again. It's so great to see you. Some of you I know I'm looking forward to seeing you again and gathering with you from a safe distance of course and getting past this hump we're in. And to you, Susan, we have a brother in common in Robert and so it's really great to meet you and I wish you the best of luck in the work that you do and please know that you're not alone. We're always looking for ways to turn around and uplift the work of each other. I think most of the people in here, we don't believe in working in silos. The work that we do really is fully integrated. So thank you and I look forward to seeing you again. Thanks all. Thank you all. Bye everyone. Thank you.