 Welcome to our interview show in which we interview LGBTQ guests who are important contributors to our community. We want to acknowledge that All Things LGBTQ is produced at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unceded Indigenous land. Enjoy the show. Hello, and for this special episode of All Things LGBTQ, I first want to acknowledge that we are taping this interview on Friday, November 6th at one o'clock in the afternoon so that while we may have an idea about how national races are going to end up, they haven't been finalized as yet. So with that disclaimer in mind, we're going to talk about the elections and probably a bit more about the nuts and bolts pulling back the curtain and looking at how to put together a campaign and how to do messaging for an issue. And joining me for this, I can't think of a better individual than Arshad Hassan. Welcome, Arshad. Thank you, Keith. It's lovely to be here. And it took, because Arshad is in so demand, this took a bit of negotiating have it happen, because Arshad, who people may remember from the Solidarity March after the last presidential election, Arshad has a degree in political science and worked for Green Corps move on, fund for popular public interest research, clear the air and actually ended up being executive director for both Progress Now and Democracy for America. And currently, write this down, Arshad is a co-founder and a principal in convey communications, lifting up emerging leaders of the progressive movement, especially women, people of color, queer folks on their public communication skills. You've got a vision. We help you convey it to a world that needs to hear it. That's right. So starting off, Arshad, I understand that you had some involvement in Taylor Small's initial bringing together of her campaign, which was successful. Could you talk a little bit about if I'm an LGBTQ plus candidate here in Vermont, what are the things that you might advise me to look at or do to put together a successful campaign? It's a good question. And it's a question that I think everyone needs to ponder, but as LGBTQ plus individuals, I think one of the things that we need to do more and really pay attention to more is understanding like what is a community that we're bringing with us, right? So any elected official wants to become elected, they have a constituency, it's all the people that they represent. But before you're elected, you have to have a cadre of voters, of community members who will back you and who will support you. And I'm not just talking about, oh, they'll cast their ballot for you on the final election day, or even they'll write you a check. I'm talking about the people who will show up to your events, who will volunteer for you, who will support you because being a candidate is exhausting. It's the attention of the world. It seems like constantly focused on you, good or bad. So you need a community of support. So think about the people very close to you, think about the people that you've built relationships with, think about all the parts of the various communities you belong to, how you serve them, and maybe how they'll stand up for you. Because again, being a candidate, not only is it focused and the attention on you, you're asking people to make a choice between you and somebody else. So in doing that and constantly asking people to choose you, you've got to have a group of people behind you will back you up. So I think first off, for any person who is in any traditionally marginalized community, this is important just for our own survival. But if you want to really place yourself in the public eye and ask for people's support, you have to come with a community to begin with. And I think that's what Taylor in particular did a really good job of. She'd worked at the Pride Center and she'd done a lot of work within her community. So you had a lot of people show up for her. I mean, one of the things that truly impressed me about Taylor's campaign and then looking at the other LGBTQ plus candidates who were running for the Vermont legislature, they were 1513 got elected. That's like 86%. That's incredibly impressive. They put issues out. You know, this is what I stand for. If you elect me, these are the things that I will do. So is that effective messaging? And is that how we need to be approaching campaigns? Yeah, it is. So but not just sort of like, here's my 10 point plan. Here's 14 issues. Here's my laundry list. But something that is even bigger than that overarching, what is my vision for the future? What are the aspirations that we all have in common? And how will I deliver for you on those things? So it is more than having here like the checkbox, I support this, I don't support that. There's something deeper than that. And I think what the voters are generally looking for is they're not going into the ballot box with like a list of issues and saying, Oh, check, check, check, check. Okay, well, that's how we'll vote now. Instead of looking for a feel is this person, the person who will fight for me and my family, is this person, somebody who will understand what my aspirations are in this crazy world, and will fight to make sure that those are the things that I can do. And maybe sometimes I need, you know, maybe sometimes we need the larger society as a whole government to support that or to facilitate that or to just not make it difficult for us. So when a voter is thinking about who to vote for, they're really thinking like, is this person going to deliver? Does this person have a vision? Do my values align with this person? So issues are a small part of that. The number one thing and all of that is just being able to very clearly state what you are for. What is the vision? What is it you represent? And so when you come out and you say, I'm going to do these things, I have done these things, I am capable of delivering on this promise. Those are things that voters think about. We're also looking at this most recent election and being one of those people who have an interest in public politics. It took a bit of work to be able to identify those 15 candidates to know who they were and to reach out to them. What is it that we can do as members of the LGBTQ plus community to support, encourage, and help to develop somebody's candidacy? That's such a good question, Keith. So a lot of people who haven't run for office before, you know, there's no, you never took a class on this at school. There's no manual that people give you to be like, okay, well, there are actually manuals, but people don't give them to you. So you don't really know what to do. That's true for every first time candidate. For a first time candidate who comes from a traditionally marginalized community, it's even greater. You already probably don't see yourself represented. You already are part of a community that doesn't have all of the same resources, access and connections. You probably don't come from a background where things are just handed to you. So the obstacles are greater. The headwinds are stronger. So the reason I think this is such a good question is that we, as a community, then have to come together and provide a lot of these things and basically sort of give permission for our own community members to say, yes, you can see yourself running. So whenever we have, you know, one of our own candidates, think about it, let's help them think through it. Yeah, I will support you. I will find 10, 15, 20, 100 people to come support you too. You know, and it could be something so simple. It could be, hey, listen, I've heard that when candidates start out there on the trail knocking on doors and asking people for their vote, it's hard out there. So you know what, on Thursday, I'm just going to deliver some food to your house. You don't have to worry about it. I'll do the things for you. Some simple things that you can do. I'll drive you around. And in Vermont, that is such a big deal. These campaigns are not multi-million dollar campaigns with hundreds of staffers. And, you know, you don't see everybody on TV all at once. It's literally the candidate themselves doing a lot of the work. The campaign managers are usually just like the partner, spouse, whatever, and some volunteers, maybe some kids. So the little things that we can do are actually huge in the eyes of a local candidate, especially here in Vermont, where campaigns are just not super professional. So as a community, we can do these little small things that are big. But also, as a community, I think we can assert ourselves onto the larger institutions in Vermont. So the people who do have the power to decide, not so much decide, but to really influence. So these are the political parties, the Democratic Party, Republican Party, Progressive Party. We can demand creative representation. One of the things that I do every year, I tend to do it this year because it was a little bit harder, but also for a couple of the reasons. I do a fundraiser for every house member as who's a part of the Democratic Caucus. And also we throw in some progressives as well to come in and gather all of the people that I can. And we raise thousands of dollars to say, you know what, Vermont Democratic Party and the House Caucus in particular, we support our own. And that, you know, bring me all of the LGBTQ identify people in the house and I will raise the money. I'll do that. I can do that. I can't rate you the huge max-out check, but I can bring in dozens and dozens and dozens of people that's actually worth more than that, more than one person. And again, that's the strength of community. When we all come together and throw in our little bit, we're stronger than any one person. And when we do that, we can say to these institutions, the political parties, that you must listen to us. You must reflect our presence in the state house and you have the ability to do that. So we are asking and demanding that you do. And I think that leads into why it's so important that we have allies who are standing with us and issue-based campaigns. Because there is always that sort of dilemma of I really need to identify as being an LGBTQ plus candidate. Because if I don't say it, we don't get included. But I also don't want it to be the only issue that you see coming out of my campaign. I want people to appreciate what I bring from my personal life experience that is ultimately going to be a benefit to the larger community as an elected official. So polling, polls have gotten a lot of talk recently, mainly because on a national level, they were so far off on some of their projections. Are polls an essential part of putting together a campaign or what role do they truly have? And could you talk just a little bit about how some of those polls are brought together so that we have an understanding of the results that are being shared with us? Sure. So polls are one of many tools in a toolbox. And they're also quite expensive. The way that the polls that candidates will use are quite expensive. But the polls that the media put out are different than the polls that candidates and campaigns use to help them understand their electorate. When the media puts out a poll and says, oh, this candidate is leading by this much that much. These are really simple polls. They're really cheap. And they're like a dime a dozen, at least if you have a media budget. Because all they're doing is they're looking for a horse race question. All right, so who's ahead, who's not? Maybe they're digging a little deeper. They're asking, okay, well, what groups do people support which candidate, right? They don't really go that deep. So you know, sort of let you in under the like, you know, in the in the guts of a campaign, when a candidate, and these are generally statewide and federal candidates, it doesn't make sense for a local candidate to put out a poll. But when a candidate does like issue like pays for a poll, these are tens of thousands of dollars of spending for a poll, maybe a couple polls. And they're digging deep. They're asking a bunch of questions. They can ask 20 questions over the course of 20 minutes. And they're getting people to actually answer these questions. And the reason why there's so many questions are really trying to dig in deep and understand the electorate, not because they're figuring out where to go, but just kind of figuring out like, okay, well, this is the most important issue. I may believe in all these things. But because the voters want to hear about these top three things, I need to make sure people I emphasize this, this piece of my platform the most polls for a candidate. It doesn't really matter to see who's ahead or who's behind for a candidate. The candidates just got to keep working, making sure that they do the best they can. If a candidate is ahead or behind her poll, they don't just quit, right? So they try to figure out, okay, you know, the voters are clearly really concerned about healthcare or the pandemic. So I need to make sure that I talk on the campaign trail about my plan for the pandemic or about healthcare or about education. I might be running on clean water because that's the most passionate issue for me. And I'll talk about it. But if I only talk about clean water, I'm not really addressing what the people are really needing to hear what's really sort of on top of mind, right? And this is just one tool, right? When the candidate goes around and knocks on doors and does everything else, they're also hearing it from people. But a poll should be a statistically representative sample of the entire district, rather than, well, these are the people who showed up when I knocked on their door and I'm doing a million other things. One person can't just create a statistically representative sample. That's how candidates use polling. The media use polling because it's a cheap and easy story. They don't have the same incentive to have a rigorously thorough and representative sample, right? The media are not penalized at all for being wrong in the polls. They will continue making all the money that they need to from ad revenue, right? A candidate will lose, it's a zero-sum game for a candidate. They will lose if they're working on the wrong data. Now, again, this doesn't matter for local candidates and for most Vermont candidates in particular. The only people who polled I think of this last cycle I'm pretty sure was just the governor. And again, he didn't spend a whole lot of money on it. In fact, if anything, it was outside organizations in D.C., the Republican Governors Association that spent the most money on polling. So, and again, for them, it was to figure out, like, oh, how much support do we really need to give this governor? So in Vermont, it doesn't matter a great deal at all. There's very little polling done that is outside of media organizations. So it's not a big deal for us locally. So in our last five minutes... Oh my gosh. I know. It's always a delight spending time reviewing a go so quickly. I want, you know, if you could talk a little bit about negative messaging and be... It does not seem to be an effective tool here in Vermont, but it seems to be used quite frequently on a national basis. Do you have some thoughts? Sure. So firstly, just want to break it down. What is negative messaging? There's sort of three broad categories of campaign messages that a voter might hear, right? There's biographical or sort of self-messaging. Like, who am I? Sometimes it might include what I stand for. There's comparative where you talk about both candidates. Sometimes that's mistaken as negative advertising or negative messaging. It's not true. It's basically saying this is the choice that's laid out for the two of you. It might not always be fair to be clear or entirely truthful. And there's flat out negative messaging. That's where you just talk about the other person. And it can be effective for how you're using it, if you're using it correctly. If you just go out and insult the other person, I don't know what you're getting out of it. If you are addressing a candidate's... Sorry, a voter's concerns and maybe their fears, that can be effective. And again, it also matters where you are. If you're in the lead, there's not a lot of reason for you to be using negative messaging. If you're an incumbent, you probably are in the lead. And again, there shouldn't be a lot of use for it. Generally, you'll find a lot of negative messaging from a challenger who's reasonably close, but maybe not ahead. And they'll talk about it, right? In the final sort of closing arguments for this national election with Joe Biden, he really talked about the aspirations of what America could be ought to be. He talked about a better future is possible. That's not negative. I mean, there is a little contrast in message, right? Like the message is like, are you stressed out? Are things kind of awful for you right now? Yeah, they don't have to be. Let's choose something different. So that is a powerful aspirational message that I don't consider to be negative, even though it's kind of a shady call out. Like, do you love what's happening? Yeah, I bet you don't. Let's try something different. So that is a really good example of something that's aspirational, a little bit about yourself, a little bit low-key comparative, not all that negative. But if you're talking about Donald Trump's ad about like, there's riots in police and 911 doesn't work anymore. That is anxiety-ridden and it is negative. It's saying that Joe Biden's America is in America with riots on the street and no police, right? It's true. Also, weirdly, this is the America we live in right now with people in streets, right? Like, come on. But again, you know, for what it's worth. And in Vermont in particular, it's hard to go negative. It is important to have a contrasting message. If you're asking somebody to change their mind in particular, you have to give them a good reason to do so. You can't, as a challenger, running against an incumbent say, I'm awesome because you also have to say to people, hey, you elected somebody else last time. Why are you going to change your mind? You do have to have a contrasting message. It doesn't necessarily have to be negative messaging, but you have to give people a reason to change their mind. And with that, thank you. When I decide to run for public office again, I will be calling you. And I want to wish you an early happy birthday. Oh, thank you. I understand you share with two notable figures. So Jernar truth. Yes. And Mickey Mouse. That's correct. So thank you so much. And I look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you, Keith. I look forward to it as well. Hi, everybody. I'm here with Ray Mariah McCarthy, who is joining us from LA. Welcome. Hi, thank you for having me. Let's start with a little bio, if we could. Ray is an award-winning writer, performer, birth parent, and queer though. They are communications manager of the Outwards Archive, which collects, archives, and shares the experience and wisdom of LGBTQ plus pioneers to serve as a model for enduring social change in the United States and beyond. Very worthy work. They are critically acclaimed novel squad was published in 2019 by FSG. Ray's plays have been performed and developed all over the world, from stages in Paris to New York City subway stations and the New York Times called their work a lot of fun. They live in Los Angeles with our cat Sophie. I hope Sophie appears during this interview, but we can't count on it probably. Yeah, she's in her box. She has a box she loves, so we'll see if she feels like thinking outside the box today. We won't just come over then. I do think someone heard her to appear. Let's start talking about Outwards. You and I met a couple of weeks ago when you did the pre-interview for Outwards and tell us how long you've, how you became involved with it. You said what it is in your bio and how long you've been doing it. Yeah, so I got involved with Outwards right before the pandemic hit, so I went in. Oh, here's Sophie. Hold on, let me, Sophie. This is Sophie. I, Sophie, she hates this, but maybe she'll sit on my lap for the interview. So I interviewed with them for their archival assistant position, and at first they were going to have someone else do that position and have me just do social media, which wasn't even a position they were advertising for, and then they decided to have me do a little of everything. So I'm their communications manager. I run the social media. I do writing for the newsletters, and I also am doing things like prep interviews with interview subjects like you and Linda, and we, these interviews are like film interviews, like high quality video interviews that live in our archive online, and the transcript is searchable, so we really want people to use it as a research tool and to be able to find, like, all kinds of stories, because we try to interview a really diverse range of people, and we have had to really shift the interview process with COVID, because we used to take road trips and go into people's homes, and LGBTQ elders are, like, the most at risk of COVID. So as you experienced, we've had to change that to an online process with shipping a webcam and a microphone to subjects and recording remotely through subjects computers, and it's taken a little bit of trial and error to figure out, but we feel like under the circumstances this is the best we can do at the moment, short of being able to actually be in person with people. So it's been, I've been, since I joined right before COVID, I've been part of the learning process and the development of that new process, and it also, there's an advantage to it because we had never interviewed anyone in Vermont, and this allowed us to, like, go to Vermont and meet you and Linda, and today at our team meeting there was a ceremonial placing of a blue dot on the, oh, hey, kitten is, ceremonial placing of the blue dot in Vermont to show that we had an interview there. Wonderful. You have a staff of four, is that true? Wait, sorry? Do you have a staff of four? So we have a main staff of four, and then there are, you know, other contractors we work with, but the main team that meets every week is four people. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Well, now that Sophie's back, we should maybe switch to you. She does love the spot. She, you know, she hugs the spotlight. And she won't be able to give personal testimony, so you'll have to do it. Tell us, let me ask some outwards questions. Where did you grow up? What was your childhood and young adulthood like? Yeah, I grew up in San Diego, which is, you know, I went to the East Coast for college, I went to Skidmore and then moved to New York City for 12 years from there, and I always felt more at home on the East Coast than I ever did growing up in San Diego. I mean, obviously everyone loves the weather, everyone loves the beach, but San Diego is a bit conservative. And to be fair, like growing up, so was I, because I just didn't know any different. And, you know, I grew up with a, I grew up Catholic. Technically, I'm the youngest of seven, but most of my siblings are much older than me, so I only grew up with one or two siblings, other siblings in the house at a time. So, Irish and Italian on my dad's side, many other places in Europe on my mom's side. I look ethnically confusing because of the Sicilian, and I have to clarify to people that I am white. And we, I don't know, we, I went to a performing arts school as a kid, and I grew up writing and singing and dancing and acting. And I just never, the bud just never left me. So you spent 12 years in New York, and then Sophie will agree, she's probably a company doing some of these journeys. Well, I only, Sophie's only four years old, so I haven't had her very long. Oh, she's an LA cat. Well, I got, I got her in New York, and then we went on a plane to LA a year ago. I've only been in LA for a year. That was my next question. And yeah, tell us a little about the circumstances of moving. Yeah. Well, as a playwright, I just noticed starting many years ago that my colleagues were all jumping ship and going into TV writing and moving to LA, because theater, like, no matter how successful you are, you're not going to have a lifelong career as a playwright and only a playwright. You're, you know, even the most successful playwrights eventually, like, have to teach at NYU or have to write for TV. And I had in the back of my mind that I might move to LA at some point, but I wasn't in any rush. And in 2012, I became a birth parent. So I became pregnant. I placed my kid in an open adoption with a gay couple. And they used to live quite close to me. They used to also live in Queens. And so I would see him really regularly because it's an open adoption. And then they, he's eight. He just turned eight. Like a few weeks ago, he turned eight. I'm like, what? How are you old enough to be eight? Leo, his name is Leo. And I, they moved to LA three years ago, three years ago. And so then that expedited me coming here. I, I also like, I had a theater company in New York and write and produce my own work. And my co-artistic director, who would often direct my work, she started working full time for the Anti-Defamation League and had just like less availability. And my artistic community, like people were moving out of New York to go to grad school and to get married and have babies. There's this like early thirties thing that happens where, you know, people are becoming, everyone's suddenly like, I need to become a social worker or a lawyer or move to LA and write for TV. And so my, my community looked different and it felt like it made sense to move. I miss New York all the time because I love walking. I don't miss the winters. But I do miss complaining about the winters because that was such a great bonding experience. And interestingly, six months after I got here is when COVID hit. So I'm, I'm not really like, I think as many people are feeling life feels a little bit on pause, but I am finding ways to like continue to make connections in LA and find community in LA even with the pandemic. You have a memoir. Is that correct about giving birth to your son? So I have a solo show that is published in script form. I see. Yeah. So it's basically a very short memoir. Yeah. Good. Let's turn to your work. And if I may, may I read an excerpt excerpt from a Lambda interview. Sure. There's this interview that my friend Leah did with me a couple of years ago where the headline was in Mariah McCarthy's world, weirdos take the lead. I loved that and it felt accurate. I consistently write about folks who are kind of left of normative, kinky people, queer people, disabled people. I write about my own experiences as a birth mother, which is a highly unusual thing in my world. And as a playwright, I also love writing lead roles for character actors. Can you tell us a little, can you expand on that quotation a little bit if you would? Absolutely. I think that my work, you know, focuses on like sex, gender power and love and the intersection of the four. And it may not cover all four explicitly, but they're often there. And I'm really interested in how that plays out for marginalized people. I'm really interested in how that plays out for women. I'm really interested in how that plays out for trans people and for queer people. Because it looks a lot different than for cis white people. And I think that something I've also, which isn't explicit in this interview, but which I've become even more interested in in the last few years, is how trauma shows up across those intersections and how people who are trying to navigate their own trauma show up in relationship. So I like I have this play honor students, which is about two teenage girls who are like extremely messed up. They are violent with each other. They are like blackmailing the men in their suburb because they're saving up money to fake their deaths and run away. They end their honor students. They have great grades. They look very presentable to the outside world. So no one has any idea, none of the adults have any idea what's going on. And one of them is experiencing trauma because her father just completely ignores her. He's just not present. He doesn't care. She comes in with a report card and says, I got straight A's again, and he doesn't even look at her. The other one is has trauma from her best friend. Like has experienced violence at the hands of her best friend who is struggling with the trauma of like her mother being gone and her father ignoring her. And so and then I'm not going to like describe the whole thing, but there's a way in which everyone's like working through something and they don't have all the language for it. And people are just looking for what will give them the most connection or relief. But they don't necessarily have the tools to do that in a kind or constructive way. And so I'm, I'm really, really interested in that. I just think people are fascinating. And I think that the most normative stories about humans leave out so much of what is fascinating. You are still right. Tell us in the minute we have left, minute or two we have left about your current projects. This leads right into it. Yeah. So I've written some pilots since quarantine started, trying to really like do what I came here to LA to do. So I've actually turned that play honor students into a pilot. And I've written another one that's loosely based on my experiences as a birth parent called chosen families. And then another one about roommates and quarantine and the relationship that turns a little frightening there. So it's like a horror dramedy. So that's what I've been focusing on a lot lately. And also doing this work for Outwards. We're a really small organization. Like, you know, the staff of four, we're all extremely part time. And we would, we all just love the organization so much, we would love to work there full time, we would all love to be full time. So it's kind of a team effort looking at like, how can we expand this? How can we take this organization to the next level? So that we can all put in the work that like, in our hearts, we're longing to do. So that's kind of, it's kind of what's going on right now. That's great. Well, Ray, Mariah McCarthy, thank you for joining us. You'll have to come back again and tell us what you're up to. Thank you. I would love that. Thank you so much for having me. Take care. You too. And I'd like to introduce Ivan Hayes. Welcome to the show. Welcome. Thanks for having me. This is very exciting. And I'm going to read your bio so people get some kind of sense about who you are. And Ivan is an artist, among other things, and a sort of an entrepreneurial person who started a group in Rochester called Team Friendly New York. We'll talk about that a little later. But let me tell you about him. He's been heavily involved in art since the movement. I could hold a pen, since the moment I could hold a pencil. From doodling as a child to going into art school and now working part-time as a freelance illustrator. In high school, I took part. He took part in a curating program at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. From there, he volunteered in a curating group, created art shows at the Out Alliance in Rochester, New York. He's hosted his own shows at bars like the Bachelor Forum in Rochester, New York, and the Wolf's Den in Syracuse, New York. His main medium is pen and ink or acrylic paint. He always has been versatile artist and dabbled in all different subject matters. He's mainly inspired by graphic novels and horror. I like horror a lot. And Gothic novels has been some really good ones. So tell us a little bit about, you know, I know you said here that you've been drawing since you were a little kid, but did you know that you always wanted to be an artist? I mean, was that like a, like, hit you really young at a young age and you thought, wow, this is really what I want to do? Yeah, I think, yeah, the moment I could, I was, I just like drawing, it was always kind of my escape. And when I realized, thankfully, I think the one thing my parents always valued was education. So they sent me to private schools. St. Joseph's here in Buffalo, St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute is the full name. But yeah, ever since then, like that school kind of opened a lot of doors, because we had a lot of alumni talk about career options as art. So the moment I realized that there were opportunities out there, I'm like, this is what I want to pursue. But it's been kind of an interesting journey figuring out what specifically I wanted to do. I went from going to initially to school for medical illustration, getting a degree in illustration. And then from there doing things from just commissions for people, paintings, drawings, and then also local designs, poster designs. So I really just tried to dabble a lot into graphics. And now I'm even trying to transition to doing tattooing as a media. Tattooing. That's really interesting. Do you have tattoos? I see one. Yeah, I've got one of my arm here with a Rochester City logo. And I just got a new one. And you can find those yourselves. That's great. Yeah, yeah. I try to do a decent drawing for the initial sketch and I'll be a tattoo artist, be a little creative and take their spin on it just so I can have a piece of their art in a way. Oh, great. So I have a few of your art pieces here. And do you know if they're from, are they from graphic novels that you actually, that you used in graphic novels that you illustrated for? Or are they sort of freelance pictures? Like we have one of, I can't breathe. Now, that's something you did. So that was part of a political series, initially in Rochester. Well, it was, there was a friend of mine who was an artist who moved to Pennsylvania. She, initially with the Floyd and then we had Daniel Prude in Rochester. All those instances coming up of police brutality. She was doing like a Black Lives Matter art move, not movement, but an art charity where she reached out to a lot of artists. And so that's actually the one thing that I sent you was the main one of three, a three part series that was all about Black Lives Matter. And basically, all the money that was sold from those pieces, other pieces that artists were creating for this charity was going to all different Black owned and Black Lives Matter kind of organizations, both in her city in Pennsylvania and Rochester. And I think she even got a buffalo. She got a few cities involved from where different artists were living. So is this pen and ink? Yeah, that's pen and ink and a little bit of marker for some of the bolder lines. And one of the things for the kind of going up the buildings, I actually do a technique I like to do is actually dip a brush in acrylic ink and treat it like I'm painting, but just solid black. So you kind of get this like wavy lines and very different textural markings. It's very nice. And you have on the the mass say their names, which is part of, of course, the Black Lives Matter movement also. So it's a very, very interesting piece. And then we have one and I can't quite exactly make out it is somebody standing like this. Is this for a graphic novel? Oh, that's a Cthulhu piece that I was doing just for fun. It was practicing. There was this little online challenge where people made their own fan art of six different characters, fictional characters. So I thought it would be fun. And I kind of on Facebook just reached out to some friends and said, Hey, give me your six favorite, you know, characters from whatever, you know, comic books, movie, any media really. And when I was doing it, the one I just was thinking of at the time was just how to be fun to do Cthulhu. It's such an iconic image. So yeah, so it's kind of him reaching out just to show the scale and there's supposed to be like hard to see, but there's a little like guy at the bottom reaching to him. That's kind of hidden. But yeah, it was just it was a fun experiment just seeing I was kind of going back, I was playing with gray paper again. So I was kind of going back to playing when you work on a mid tone, putting highlights in shadows. So yeah, it was just it was a fun to experiment and try something a little different. Because sometimes you get creative, you know, you get artist block and you got to find an outlet to do some fun work. And the other the other one here has a little touch of color. It's the Stonewall Inn. And it's a really, really interesting piece, I think. I really enjoyed looking at all the different aspects. And there's so much in here, really. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? I can sort of see the shadow of police. And you know, you really have to pay attention to get all of the detail here, which is really a wonderful piece. So do you want what inspired you to to do this particular piece? So I was doing a show in the Wolf's Den and I was so lucky to have it be open during the month of Pride. So I wanted to pick a lot of I was doing a lot of paintings that were related to Pride themes, different forms of Pride. And obviously, this was during the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. So I knew I had to do a piece on Stonewall. But I wanted to indicate just how that it wasn't a peaceful thing, but it was a fight for rights. But using minimal color, I think that's like it's the idea of like in a lot of dark imagery. When you put that glimmer of light, it's also that sense of hope. And that's why you kind of do the same thing with the color. I tried to do a figure that didn't necessarily read as man or woman, you could see both pretty androgynous. So that way, it's not about gender, it's not about it's about our community. And then very big on symbolism and abstraction. So that's why there's hidden police and the smoke to indicate that it's in a way up in flames, it's smoky. And then the pink triangle being the element, a huge symbol of that the, you know, the LGBTQ AI plus community has taken on as a positive symbol, even though it used to be hateful. So I just wanted to incorporate all of that into just a piece about, you know, really what our rights boil down to. I mean, even still, it's a fight in some regard. So. And it may be again in the with the Supreme Court we have, as you know. Of course, yeah. But I love this sort of the dark, it looks like clouds until you really look at it. And, you know, you can see, I don't know, it gives you just the feeling of dark, of darkness and hope, which is what I think what you were trying to do. And it really worked for me. Just the, you know, this kind of senator sinister backdrop, the police, the smoke, you know, so. And then you have a picture of it looks like a man and part of their muscular features are showing and face and arm. Could you tell us what that was about? Yes, that was, I was looking back through old pieces and I found a piece in high school because so it was kind of like, I was curious to see how much I've changed and grew as an artist. So I did this self portrait in high school that was really flat. Everything was, I mean, you look back like, oh my gosh, did I not understand anatomy? But I thought it would be fun to let me do the same idea I had back then. But it being 12 years later, you know, or I think it was 12 years when I, but yeah, just so so many years later. And so it was just funny just to go back. So it was more of an experiment. I was using the same medium. I didn't want to change it so that it really showed that it was pencil. But yeah, it was like a modern day self portrait with the same idea. Because that one, I literally just cut it in half and did muscles and skin. And I'm like, I know better nowadays, if you're going to be interesting, make patches, make it interesting flow around the body. So it was, yeah, it was just fun to just see how I've changed as an artist from way back when I was a kid in high school to where I'm at now. So yeah, it was just fun to try something different. And then it still fits my love for horror and all that. People thought it's like that weird, oddly enough, this is before COVID. So weird virus taken over like a zombie thing, but good job. I know you've moved from Rochester to Buffalo, which is your hometown. But you did start a group called Team Friendly New York. And what was that about? Was it social educational? Yeah, it's so Team Friendly is a organization as a whole. It stemmed out of the leather community where it was fighting the stigma of HIV. A lot of people tend to be misinformed when they actually know a little bit more about it, especially nowadays, how much things have changed. So it's both, it depends. There's different chapters in different cities and states. Each chapter is kind of focused on different, some are more charity driven, some are social. Right now, I just wanted to start off on the social end of it. I was at the time when I started that I was already involved in three other different leather organizations. And I said, why not? I'm already connecting these people together. And they already encompassed Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester people from Toronto, even some people from New York City. So I just figured I reached out to David Watt, who started the original Team Friendly organization. And I asked him, how do you start a chapter? And what's like, how intense do you have to start with it? Or how big does it have to be? And I mean, really, he said it can be up, it could just be one person or it can be a group of people and it can blow up, or it can be a small thing. So at least right now, I'm keeping it online. And it's been kind of quiet with COVID. It's hard to try and plan any kind of meetings in that. And so because of that, I haven't been pretty active lately with it, but thankfully with a lot of other groups I'm involved in, like I'm part of the Buffalo Bulldogs here, which is our leather organization, leather organization here. We're starting to at least meet up more. So I think it's a good opportunity now to finally be able to go back and give more energy into that group as well. The Team Friendly, Western New York, to just reach out and then be like, let's not forget this, especially now that people are kind of lightening up with COVID too, meaning people in small groups and they add. And the community still can be playful, but promoting positivity and a healthy conversation. Are there any leather bars in Buffalo? Not specifically. I think that specific type of bar is harder to find unless you're in like a New York City or like in California, San Francisco, but most of the bars at least are friendly. No one in the community really bats an eye or it's not too odd. I mean, we host a night at a bar and right now we just do a small social meetup. We can't let groups of more than 10 meet up or come together. So usually I don't get any like five to seven people, but right now I'm working on digitally meeting up. But yeah, the scene's kind of quiet around these areas in terms of that, but the bars are still pretty active around here. The ones that are just general, you know, queer friendly bars and just supportive of the community. Yeah, I know from my visits to Buffalo that they had some great bars. And I've enjoyed going to them. Well, I think we're nearly at the end of the interview. And I want to thank you for coming on and telling us all about your work and your successes. And please enjoy Buffalo. I really miss Buffalo. We, you know, I used to go there quite a bit. But so thank you again. Yeah, no, thank you. We'll talk to you again soon. All right, you're great. I love to. Yeah. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you in two weeks. But in the meantime, resist.