 Welcome to Coast to Coast. My name is Lily Weinberg. I'm here joined by my colleague, Lillian Corral. How are you, Lillian? I'm good, Lillian, how are you? Doing well. What's new in LA? Nothing much, there's lots new, but nothing new that we haven't already talked about, but excited for today's show. I am particularly interested just in sort of hearing a little bit more about this topic of cultural bridging, and one thing that is new in LA is just a conversation around how not just white Americans, but all Americans and then immigrants, in particular, really think about being a part, an ally and a supporter of the work that's happening, especially being led by our black communities in the U.S. to address racism and to bring it to light and to talk about it and make sure we're really thinking about transformational change in our states. So that's a lot of what we've been hearing here in LA, and so I'm excited for today's show. Yeah, me too. I'm really excited. I'm happy that you are the one who called attention to this subject, what you're seeing in LA. We're also seeing this in Miami, and Miami's an incredibly diverse community, but we also have quite a bit of anti-blackness, and so we will dive into that. I think what's also been really interesting that I do wanna highlight, we talked about this in the opening of the last episode about the transformation that's happening at a municipality level in cities, and the actions that are being taken, but we're also seeing that, and I'm seeing this, and I'm sure you're seeing this in the tech world, organizations are also, they've made their statements, but now the real work is happening, and hopefully the real work and the actions, and I think that's two problems. One is looking at leadership, but then second is really doing a deep dive on where the money is going, and an audit of that with respect to vendors and all sorts of things. And I do wanna just call out that I sent this to you earlier today, Jay Pitter who's gonna be joining us shortly in our conversation, she had a letter, a call to courage, which really outlines very specific practical steps and actions that urbanists can be taking in their work. So really, really love that, and we can link to that in our chat box. But can you tell us a little bit about what the purpose of Coast to Coast is and why we've been doing this? Yeah, so for our guests, Coast to Coast has become sort of this weekly sort of topical show around the issues that are really driving discussion in our communities, and we're really focused at night and thinking about how both the information that's circulating in our communities, but also the way that people are engaging really helped to build the vibrancy of the place that we live in. So a lot of the topics that we've talked about have focused around placemaking, have focused around public spaces, especially in the early phases of the COVID response, and then obviously now we're dealing a lot with issues of race and equity, and are these spaces in these cities, the spaces that really are inclusive to all of us, or just some of us, and we think about it really from a perspective of like the future of the city and how are we making sure to your point that the tactical approach of that Jay or others really help us drive new strategies in our communities so that we're building those future cities with everyone in mind, so. Yeah, that's great framing. So I will move forward with talking about episode seven. Lily and you did a great job of setting it up, but I'll just say a few more words. So for episode seven, we will be looking at how we build connections across race and ethnicities. We'll do a dive into how addressing anti-blackness across diverse communities and forms our conversations and action, really looking at that action piece. We'll examine what it means practically. We'll give some historical context and we'll look at how we can move the needle forward in our communities. So I'm really excited to do that. And I think we have the right guests today to join us today. So we have Jay Pitter and Anna Sophia Pillies. Please join us. Hey guys, how are you? Great, how are you? Thank you. Doing well. Well, I'm thrilled to have you join us today. I'm gonna just do a brief introduction for who you two are. You have amazing bios and then we'll just dive right into the conversation, okay? So Jay Pitter is an award-winning placemaker whose practice mitigates growing divides in cities across North America. She spearheads institutional city building projects and specializing in public space design and policy forgotten densities, mobile equity, gender responsive design and inclusive public engagement and healing. Jay is also just a friend of Knight Foundation, both of you are friends of Knight Foundation. So Jay, thank you so much for joining us. And Anna, co-founder and executive director of the Miami Freedom Project, which aims to transform Miami political culture through educational outreach, communication strategies and movement building to bring about a more just and equitable city. Anna is also an award-winning food and culture writer who has organized Latino Get Out the Vote efforts since 2016. Anna, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. And of course, you're based in Miami and Jay, you're in Toronto, right? But work all over, so fantastic. Thanks for being here. And so I just wanna take a couple of seconds to talk about how we're gonna structure this. We're gonna take 15 minutes to have a conversation between the three of us. We're, I'll ask a few questions and then we're gonna open it up to the audience. And that's really a big part of our conversation. So audience members, please put in your questions into the Q and A. We also have this live streamed on Facebook. You also can put in questions in Facebook, hashtag Night Live, and let's get started. Does that sound good? Okay, let's do it. So question one, and Anna, I'm gonna have you set some framing for us. So what underlying tensions and conflicts has the current moment brought to the surface both within and between racialized communities? You know, I think it's, if I can speak specifically to the Latinx context, in South Florida, for example, we have a majority minority city where part of our origin story, what we pride ourselves on is being a city of immigrants and very much a city that we want people to look to as an example of what immigrants are able to accomplish. But the immigrant story is very complicated for everyone and the Latinx community in this moment, particularly because in and of ourselves we have racial, we bring to this country racial hierarchies, colorism, inequities between us, a very rich culture that represents all of these communities that we're very proud of. But then incoming to this country and has part of that assimilation process we're asked to make different choices. And some of the work that we would have done within our community to unpack these racial questions that's almost disrupted in the face of assimilating to a new system. And that new system requires you to make a choice in a lot of ways. And in assimilating it, you almost are asked to become a model for the system as being representative of what that system makes possible. And in exchange, you're upholding that system and you're celebrating that and you're very much part of what's keeping that system in place. So to the extent that that's not there, the inequities in that system, they very much become a part of your story. They've become part of what you're defending and seen as representing. In the Cuban American example where a Cuban American led organization with this moment brought to us was how can we, we're very proud of our Cuban American success story in the United States. But then now that that's being challenged, how can we speak to this moment as a community? And what we found was that we had to redefine who that we was. We are a very diverse community in and of ourselves and we wanted to make sure that in speaking to the Black Lives Matter movement in a way that shows allyship and listening and a proximity to, we recognize that there are people in our community that are very much represented by the Black Lives Matter movement. And there is no distance between the movement, what it's asking for, what it's trying to correct and address then to what they're seeking in their own community. So we needed to find a way of representing, having a Cuban American platform that could speak to this that represented the diversity and the richness of who is in that community. So that was the first challenge and that was the first question we had to ask ourselves. And it was a long time coming. I think when you're in the immigrant experience you can kind of put those kind of soul searching questions on hold and that there's no more time for that we really need to speak to this moment. And you feel like it is happening now within the Cuban community in Miami. There's a movement to have this conversation. I think it's happening in our community. I think it's happening in other Latinx communities. It's happening across the country. But as you said in the introduction it's the challenge is gonna be how it can continue in the healthiest, most productive way. So that it keeps moving forward. It goes beyond the statement to real action. Yep, yep. And we'll get into that more. Thank you for the framing there. Jay, same question. And if you can reflect a bit on what Anna said too. I think this conversation is so overdue and urgent. One of the reasons we haven't been able to have a complex and rich conversation like this one is because generally speaking the story about America is a black and white story. And what happens in that framing is that a lot of people who are not black or white get erased from that narrative. And also what happens is that people who identify as black or white have different dimensions of their identities erased as well. And so I think the first thing that I just want to underscore is that we need to think about these stories and these spaces and these cities where we're aside each other. We need to think about expanding this narrative beyond a black and white story and the spectrum that is incredibly polarized with nothing in the middle. So that's the first thing. The other thing that I would say that really resonated with what Anna said which I thought was very courageous to say because we don't often say this out loud. Black people tend to make the distinction between sort of being people of color and black people because it is true that black people have a very distinct experience of racial discrimination just based on our histories of displacement and how we came to be in the US and how we came to be in Canada where I live. And it is also true that we are often put in a terrible position where we don't want to call it anti-blackness in communities who are also facing discrimination and are also equity seeking groups. So we see anti-blackness not only in Anna's community but in among the feminist movement, right? Among women we see it with disabled peoples but we're hesitant to call it because we also are very aligned with those equity seeking groups and we'd like to get justice for all. And the last thing I'll just say to this question is that as a way of framing this conversation the two things that I would say is that it's very important to remember that in 1968 when the Civil Rights Act was advanced, people see the civil rights movement as being a movement to advance black people. Very few people recognize that the civil rights movement actually supported the feminist movement. It supported movements against homophobia and even in that act it speaks to immigration. So a lot of racialized communities living in North America enjoying privileges and having model minority status, actually that was made possible because of bad non-model minority black people. So our civil rights movement paved the way for immigration and I just wanna underscore that so much because if you think about the civil rights movement it was very focused. The people on the front line were the people who were descended of enslaved African Americans. So certainly immigration was not their problem. If you think about like what their fight was but they made it their problem because when we start to talk about equity if we are not intersectional and truly talking about everybody and if we're not fighting for everybody then it actually isn't equitable. And I think that I'm so proud of my community for modeling that and in this moment I think we have the moral authority to call not only on white people but to call on other racialized and equity seeking groups to mirror our dedication, our values and our commitment to wide scale wholesale social equity. So we've been failed not just by white people but also by either racialized groups. And so this conversation is very urgent and important. Thanks Jay. And so we dropped in a few links earlier discussed the call to courage, your amazing letter but then also some historical links that you provided Jay. And one thing that I just wanna before pivoting to the next question one thing that you're really great at doing Jay is looking at the history and especially with your place-making work and you just discussed the history of the Civil Rights Act and all that. Why is that so important to highlight and elevate when we're talking about this subject matter? I just think that in my place-making practice overall we're all given this dominant story and very incomplete. And so we end up doing harm inadvertently. I don't believe that people are bad necessarily. I think that people are incredibly misinformed. And so because I'm both a place-maker working on public sites but I'm also an author and so story is so central in the work that I do. So I'm always thinking about who are the whose stories are we not hearing? What voices are not coming to the table and how do those stories help to inform the ways in which we perceive not only our cities but our relationships with one another. And I just wanna make another quick note about relationship. In this conversation we often talk about allies. I have very mixed feelings about that because that is war language. And while I understand that we've been combating anti-black racism for centuries I do not want my identity or my experience to be framed as war. There's so much more to my black experience than that. And in my experience in doing this work across many, many cities is that the allies I'm not looking for allies. I'm looking for friends. I'm looking for authentic relationships. And so just as we even go on with this conversation it would be good if we could center friendship, relationship, not just allyship because what are we saying when we use that word and are we not just replicating this thinking that keeps us in battled social locations with each other? I'm just not interested in that. That's a great point, language matters. And it also matters who's around the table. So I'm gonna move on to our next question. And so Anna, so what are some of the examples of cross-cultural bridging that could be the basis for reconciliation and solidarity between racialized communities? And Anna if you can kind of, if you could also build in what you think will happen next to in this answer. I mean, I think it's a really incredible opportunity for us to look at how, I think we think of ourselves as a very multicultural country. I think it's something we pride ourselves in. I think in the Latinx community I think it is a very much a point of identification. We see ourselves as a multicultural community. We celebrate Afro-Cuban, if I can use the Cuban example, Afro-Cuban writers, poets, politicians, voices, as much as we celebrate people who we think of as European descent, it's very much, and as we look back on our culture, we very much identify with and celebrate a culture that's very diverse in and of itself. It's a point of identification, a point of pride that it is so. But we also can't let that be a substitute for the real work that has to happen. So when you think about Miami, for example, as a city that's very diverse, multilingual, but you still see these inequities. So if we're comfortable with each other's music and we're comfortable with each other's food and we're comfortable with each other's languages, that's wonderful. And is that gonna be the foundation for the real work that has to happen? To the example that Jay gave us of the civil rights movement, are we looking at the issues that are impacting Black communities as being also issues that are impacting our larger community? So if we have, get to the point where culture has brought us together in a way that we see each other's humanity, we identify with each other's interests, loves, joys, can we get to the point where we then also want to support each other in these actions? So Miami, for example, we have climate change. Are you going to, that's going to be inadvertently affect Black communities? Are you only gonna advocate for climate change or are you gonna advocate with it the intention that it is having a disproportionate effect on members of this community who are of African descent? So it's also doing that cultural work and then working with intention to advocate to bring about the equity that should be the kind of natural outgrowth of that positive experience of just enjoying being with each other and seeing each other and understanding each other. That's really fantastic. And that climate change example is so relevant within our community in Miami. How would you, how would you, how do you rank us in Miami for this type of work? I mean, how are we doing with this type of work? I think what Miami has going for is that it loves to talk. And I think that's the beginning of any initiative, any time you need to, you really need to get people in communication and being forthright and honest about where they're at and how they can see a best way going forward. Something we do at Miami Freedom Project, and I know that Jay has, I've discussed with Jay how she brings us into her work as well, is about bringing small groups of people together around a dinner table to discuss a topic and have that be the direction and not have a sense of where the conversation needs to go, but really have a sense of what the questions are and that everything is open. And it's that power of representing that community as you think about what you wanna see happen in your community. So it's about bringing people into your home, it's about bringing people, having an experience through your culture, through the most fundamental way that we express that, through food, through conversation, through relationship building. So I think that's something that, I think people are very open to in Miami and they're very receptive to. So it's really about continuing that and seeing that just keep that growing and make that a part of this conversation. So if I hear you correctly, and I agree with you, that's the most basic form is breaking bread together, right? But if I hear you correctly, the conversation is there, people are talking, there's momentum, but we still need to get to the execution part, right? And that's where we're gonna have to work that muscle probably. Jay, same question for you. I'm gonna repeat the question for the audience. What are some of the examples of cross-cultural bridging that could be the basis for reconciliation and solidarity between racialized communities? Okay, I'm going to quickly speak to what Anna said about the limitations of celebration. In my book, Sub-Divided, I talk about the fact that, all of those diversity strategies from the 1960s, what they did was they encouraged us to celebrate each other's cultures and individual accomplishments. So people did a bunch of potlucks at work and they learned about, we got holidays where we got off, we were able to take our holidays off. What the stats show is that while we increased diversity and celebration, what also increased at the same time was social and urban inequity. So what that shows us is that celebration is not enough. In fact, celebration is a smokescreen. So we're celebrating people and then it gives us the false sense of actually taking action to create systemic equity, right? And so I just want to just very much agree with what Anna said about the limitations of celebration. Now, in terms of what it looks like to do some cultural bridging, Lily, I'll just mention an example from a project that you're super close to and was really instrumental in supporting and that was reimagining cheap side. So I work on a lot of projects where cultural bridging is essential because I work on Confederate monument sites and other sites with prop histories and a lot of pain. So most people would think that with a project like that, I would be engaging, again, black Americans and white Americans and especially because that's how the narrative sort of works. But the truth is that in healing the past and reimagining that site, I also needed to be very aware of other people in Lexington from other racial backgrounds and a large group represented was actually Latinx folks, a whole generation of dreamers. And so during that process, they really educated me about also feeling not welcome at that site with the monuments, not feeling comfortable or safe in public spaces. What we don't talk about is that black and Latinx people are often criminalized in urban communities. They often have more barriers within the educational system. Like there are a lot of overlaps in some of the challenges. And so in that particular project, I engaged Latinx folks from Lexington and they got to have a voice in reshaping that space as well. And so in terms of the cultural bridging, a major strategy would be to be able to hold two things at once. Let's in every single project hold the history and of the most impacted groups. So in that situation, African-Americans make sure that there's enough space for them to have a voice in the process and for them to shape the process. But I always say that there's enough justice for everyone. So I was able to do that while also holding space for people from other backgrounds who might not feel comfortable in that space for multiple reasons. So dreamers, single mothers didn't feel comfortable in that space. Poor people didn't feel comfortable. People who didn't have access to good transit didn't feel like they could even access the space even after it was reimagined. And so as someone who works really holistically, I'm always looking in every single project for the opportunity as we envision a future city to create space for everyone to have input so that we can create a shared reality together. And as you said before, who are we missing around the table? Who are we missing and looking really deeply at that? I'm gonna call in Lillian. There's a couple of questions. So thanks. Yeah, no, great discussion. And it's, you know, time is so short on the show. We can't always dig in deeper. But one big question that came up, so maybe both of you can address it, is it's a question around the use of the word minority. And so do you think if we were to, as it frame the identities of people and drop the word minority from our lexicon, like would that help us like make some forward progress in the movement to address issues of diversity and equity? Like any thoughts on the pros and cons of using that word? Okay, so fast. I don't identify as a minority. I think the fact that, you know, Miami's considered a minority majority city speaks to a lack of willingness to just acknowledge the people who are in a particular place. That framing is actually incorrect and it's an oxymoron that can't happen at once. If you are the greatest population in a place, you are not the minority. You're in fact the majority, but that term comes out of fear of having racialized bodies and black and brown bodies in a space. And so this effort to keep like black and brown people in this, in their place, in a minoritized space is where those kinds of terms come from. So I totally reject the term. I did just use the term. So I can say I totally reject it. I think we love the shockness, the shock value of it, which is why I think we do use it in Miami. I think as it applies specifically to Miami, its majority is defined by mostly more foreign-born residents than people born in the United States. So it speaks to the immigration experience. But I would never necessarily, to your point, identify myself as a minority. And I do think it forces you to lead with a less than. So I think that's problematic. I really think it's about kind of focusing kind of like where the numbers are adding up. And I think there's a power to that term because it shows that there's a certain kind of, an imbalance that people need to be aware of and they need to kind of speak to it in a really kind of forceful way. So there's a way of kind of using it in a powerful way. But yes, I definitely think it's something that we can evolve past at this point. If it's, I think that that's where we're heading in. Yeah, great. The other thing, besides numbers and demographics, in terms of creating urban equity, we need to think in terms of power. So for example, if we take a city like Detroit, which is majority black, minority white, but white people in Detroit shape Detroit, right? So even it can be misleading. So you can have a large number of people who cannot access systemic and social power to shape the cities where they live. And so I feel like we should be more focused on power than sort of demographic counts. And I think that demographic counts can again reinforce divisions across race. If we're living in a city, we are a city of diverse human beings occupying a city and then we can look at power imbalances so that we can address those. It's not about addressing or identifying the demographic as much as it is, addressing points of power where people have power or lack power and working with those people, regardless of the package they cover. Regardless of their racial identities to be able to create cities for everyone. Yeah, now definitely what's coming across from both of you is that the power question really is almost obfuscated by this notion of numbers, right? And the way that we tend to think about it demographically. So I'll bring Lillian, we are at half past the hour to wrap us up. But I think the last thing maybe I'll just leave you with we had a couple of comments that really were and more comments, less questions really around how you made sort of that immigrant experience. So maybe Anna, I don't know if in the closing remarks you wanna speak to this, but how coming into this country, I think there's a question there around sort of like the assimilation aspects of being an immigrant and coming into this country and sort of quote unquote imposing your own way and or assimilating to the way that things are. How do we address those kinds of issues as well? And then for me, the question is, how do we do it in a way that we're not perpetuating the kinds of racism and bias that's already built in here as immigrants? So I'll leave you all to wrap that up, but great discussion. Thank you, Lillian. And so Anna and Jay, I would like to invite you to have just any closing comments with this discussion. Anna, can I call on you first? I'm sure. I think that's a great comment. And I do think that's something that, like the minority question, I think we can evolve past. I think there's a very difficult choice that we're asking minorities to, minorities are immigrants to make when they come to this country. And now that everything's being challenged, we can, as people who have that immigrant experience, we can do the work to make our system more equitable so that when immigrants are coming into it, it's a, they're coming into a system that has, you know, it's a more honest system. It's something that they're not being asked to be lesser than, or to be, to make a choice to somehow, to, you know, feel, make a choice between being, you know, black and white, or trying to kind of check one box or the other in order to advance. It's a society where there is equity. It's a system that is allowing everyone to advance together. So immigrants are not being given this false, this false choice to make, that then they then, you know, exacerbate or they propagate it and they push it forward. Powerful. I think this is an incredible moment for every single human being to think about their personal accountability and not to hide behind, maybe not being up a particular race or having a particular type of privilege. All of us have implicit biases. All of us have inherited a terrible history and all of us are responsible for showing up fully and unpacking that history together. Black people, white people and other racialized groups as well. Thank you. And the opportunity is now. So thank you so much. Thank you, Anna. Thank you, Jay, for joining us on this important conversation. Lillian, do you want to talk about our next episode? Yeah. So we're going to be off next week, but, you know, for our audience expect to hear from us the following week on July 7th. But we'll start to look a little bit more at how do we build this future city? And some of the questions I think we'll be exploring in the month of July is just to give folks a sense of things like we talk about these smart cities and so how do we really balance, quote, having more information about our city, but also being really conscious of the things that are happening in communities like surveillance and then how that surveillance could be targeted against certain groups versus others. So kind of balancing that tension and then also things around issues of movement and mobility and how our mobility systems are being transformed a lot by technology. But in this moment how we're also seeing it really not rise to the challenge and relester everybody well. So stay tuned for those episodes and enjoy the July 4th weekend, which we'll be around for. See you July 7th at 1 p.m. Thanks. Take care. Bye.