 Well good morning everyone. Welcome to Oblade School of Theology and the Whitley Theological Center. I'm Scott Woodward. I'm president here at OST. We're so glad to have you all here early this morning. All you brave souls. I'm so very happy to be here with a good friend and colleague. I'll allow her to introduce herself. So, Addie Lorraine. Good morning everyone. I'm Sister Addie Lorraine Walker. I'm a school sister of Notre Dame S. S. N. D. and I'm here this morning by the grace of God. I'm on sabbatical and I do not get up this early. Well, I'm up, but not clothed and not talking to other humans. So, this is a wonderful opportunity for me to realize that there's some getting up early in the future coming. So, I'm very happy to be with you other brave souls here at this event. Just a couple of business items. Just so folks know. Restrooms out this door to the right. Take a left and you're there. There's water, coffee, breakfast. It's legit to have cookies for breakfast if you're at a church function, okay? So, you can have cookies for breakfast. That works. I'd like to ask all of the panel members to come forward now and join us up here. We are here at Oblate School of Theology. We're also here at the San Copa Institute for African American Pastoral Leadership. And we're glad to be part of hosting this event. And part of is really what it really is. Because this is a collaborative effort sponsored by many people. And I would like to recognize those people at this time or those groups at this time. So, if you are associated with any of the partners, I'm going to call your name and ask you to stand. And just, that's probably most of us in the room. Community of churches for social action. Thank you. Compassionate San Antonio, City of San Antonio Faith-Based Initiative. There's a hand back there. Compassionate San Antonio, Grass Roots. Remainstanding, if you would, when I call it. Yes. But somebody sat down that I called her name and I wanted her to just remain standing. Feed San Antonio City Church and San Antonio Food Bank. HSS. ICANN, Interfaith Community Action Network. Remainstanding, if you don't mind, please. The list is not that lengthy, but a little bit longer. I say Interfaith San Antonio Alliance. Jewish Community Relations Council. Jewish Federation of San Antonio. Ablaid School of Theology. Okay, great. The Impact Guild. Sankofa Institute for African American Pastoral Leadership. We want to thank all of you. Thank you for hosting this. Thank you for bringing this conversation to life. Our time together will include some moments of conversation along with insights and storytelling from some of the men in Lionel's portraits. And we're going to begin with a short table conversation to just allow you to get to know one another a bit. So, Sister Addie. I'm known for table conversations, so I guess that's why they put my name against that topic. But I would like for us to begin this conversation by asking ourselves a serious question. What started this event, which started about a year, more than a year ago, was Lionel Sosa walking in his neighborhood and he saw a poster that said, you can't be anti-racist unless you are actively anti-racist that caught his attention. Something caught his attention, like a burning bush. So, what is the burning bush for you with anti-racism? What is that? What does it mean for you? What causes you to stop and pause and even show up here at 7 o'clock in the morning? So, take a minute. Just pause a minute. What is anti-racism for you? Perhaps you have to ask yourself what actually is racism? What is it to live in someone else's skin? What is it to live in my skin? Just pause. What is anti-racism? And I would invite you to begin your conversation at your table. Just a quick brief introduction of yourselves and kind of weigh in on the question. But if you would start with the person who thinks their age is closest to mine. Good morning, San Antonio. It's good to have you with us today for this hybrid event. We're talking right now about what does anti-racism mean to us. So, I invite you, you might be alone but there also might be somebody else in your office with you or your home that you can discuss with them. What does anti-racism mean to you? Thanks for joining us in this hybrid event. My name is Anne Honke. I'm the Faith Liaison with the City of San Antonio. So, I wish you could be here with us but so glad you are with us this morning. Thank you. Racism has become such a big focus of everything that happens or everything that's happened in the last couple of years. It's totally controlled. And for me, to be anti-racist requires me to connect personally with people. Once you start to connect personally, the other things fall away. All the things of what I think about somebody then gets used to it. I would say always is redirected about what their intentions are. It doesn't mean that everybody's intentions are great but I generally, once I connect with somebody, sometimes they are great and I recognize those people. So I'm glad to be here and want to continue with our meeting. I'm from Turkey and I live in Russia. I'm an engineer, but you might see me in the events as well, which is my passion. You can be a racist intentionally or unintentionally, but if you know other people, it's going to be easy to not be a racist unintentionally. This is why gatherings are really important. You sit around the table to just get to know each other, but you can be a racist unintentionally. My name is Shekhar Mahadevassan. I'm living in San Antonio almost like 18 years old. I'm representing, coming from the Hindustan city. Here in the Hindustan city, we are keeping the values to the next generation like a family of ours. And we are thankful to link with other people and the people of our country. How we all can come together and be at the one place. The whole world is like a one place. How do you manage to be one another and work towards an answer to our initial question there for discussion? We're so very fortunate this morning to have many of the subjects from Lionel's paintings as you see and those that were interviewed for the documentary that were a part of this process. We're very happy to have them here with us and we have others as well on our panel here. And I want to give them the chance to say a bit about their experience in this project, what it says, what it offers. Now, it says on the sheet here that each panelist is supposed to have two minutes. Now, I have been working here at Oblade School of Theology for 30 years. I know that if you tell a preacher he has two minutes or a teacher that she has two minutes, that you are in fantasy land. But we're going to try to stick to two minutes. So think two minutes and then if you take three or four then that's okay. And I was not looking at Bishop Copeland when I said this. I promise. Oh, I'll introduce each one and I want to start with someone on the panel that I only met this morning. And very glad to have her here. Her name is Janine Cornelius and the only description they offer to me on the sheet is that she is a mother, which sounds like a pretty important job. So, Miss Cornelius, would you please come forward and offer us a few thoughts? I actually didn't expect to go first. I'm kind of... But Sister Addie, this question you asked, what does anti-racism mean to you? It's really a significant question because the root word of it, racism, you're absolutely right. You have to concentrate on that word. And I struggled with the question because it's easy to say I am anti-racist. That flows off anybody's tongue. It's harder to say I am racist. It's harder to say am I a racist and to think about maybe some of the things that we do that could be racist. Racism is the oppressive acts against people of color, whether it's blatant or whether it's indirect. And because racism exists, it has affected African Americans, especially in unimaginable ways. You know, there's this cloud that we have. As we leave our homes and it exists, you don't know if you're going to encounter it. Sometimes it's nebulous, other times it's dark and cloudy. But to be quick, because I can be a talker, to be anti-racist, you have to care about the subject of racism. And you have to start there. One man that I know who African American young man, he has, he grew up with white students. He went to a Christian school. And when the incident with Amad Arbery happened, another African American man who was gunned down, he tried to talk to his friends about it. And this is exactly what they did. They played the violin. They didn't want to hear what he had to say. And he's, you know, in his early 20s. And it was very upsetting to him. He went home. He didn't want to have them as friends anymore. And it was shocking because these are his, you know, his friends, you know, he hangs out with them, his bosom buddies. But that is how they felt. And it just goes to show how we really have to constantly