 that change all right all right my name is Carlton Turner I'm the executive director of alternate routes but those of you that don't know alternate routes alternate routes is a would you please be quiet while I'm speaking thank you thank you thank you Marie Adrian so my name is Carlton Turner I'm the executive director of alternate routes alternate routes but those of you who don't know is a 39 year old art service organization for artists in the south that are doing work at the intersection of arts and activism really happy to be here alternate routes is one of 14 core partners in the arts change us project and we're really excited the other core partners are please core partners please acknowledge yourself hand raised or yes so we have a lot of core partners so please see some of these people if you're interested in understanding more about what their work is but I think the importance of the core partners is that we're helping to inform the development of this project and this trajectory because much of the the thesis surrounding why this work is is important these organizations have been doing that work for the history of their their time so really understanding that these organizations are at the the foundation and center of this work around understanding diversity inclusion equity inequality all these pieces are part of our everyday trajectory and our missions of organizations thank you Carlton I love Carlton and I'm so excited to be here with you and I'm so excited genuinely from the heart to be here with all of you I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the work that you all do and I say that very genuinely and I was saying to Roberta on the phone last week about the kind of personal learning that I've gone through that I've been able to apply professionally because I get to come to a convening like this and when I say convening like this I mean people who are really doing the hard work who are asking the tough questions who are really engaging in the important conversations around equity and cultural competencies and you know diversity and all those words that we keep using as we try to find even better words and and meaning in our lives so I want to on behalf of the entire team thank all of you for being here for leaning into these conversations and I always say that the work is really hard I could be the poster child for making the mistakes right Roberta yeah kind of and in fact in my previous session I did and so for those of you who may have misunderstood or you know my imagery and why I was showing I apologize on the poster child for not being the most articulate person but the point is is that we have to come together and to learn from one another and and be patient with one another and a forum like this is so valuable and so I want to say that Roberta wherever you go around the country I'm gonna try to follow as much as possible and to listen in whenever I'm invited into the conversations and that the Brooklyn Museum will be a home for all of us and I'm happy to organize events and convenings if it would be useful for folks and the more that we're together and discussing the better our field will be and the better we will be as individuals so thank you to team art change us and I or us and I like to say change us put change me please okay so thank you so art change us at is a series of events that will be happening we'll start launching in 2016 and there'll be all of the country starting with the 14 core partners we also would invite you to contact Roberta or Kristen if you're interested in hosting an art change us at event at something that you already have gotten the works we're not trying to create new infrastructure or create new events but to tag on and engage and bring more value to work that is already happening and bring more visibility to the work we have also actually to go to the arts and the changing America website and stay in tune what's happening sign up for our newsletter and the information that will be coming forth and we're on to the next piece who gets the mic Bobbiana hi everyone so I'm gonna try to be a bit creative because I I know that you all really want to talk to each other and I also know it's been a long day of listening so why don't we just take a few breaths together and then just we're gonna go into a really great session so if everyone can just close your eyes and just put your feet on the floor and when you breathe in remember to breathe in with your stomach and we're gonna take three breaths together and really kind of get all our power here together in the room so ready one two three breathe in into the sky just release it into the earth thank you so this next panel is about shifting paradigms on race and you know one of the things as we were working with with Roberta and Jeff Chang when part of the core team went to Alaska and as we've been thinking about this work we've been thinking and realizing how much we don't know right and really thinking about how do we break away from these binaries from all binaries right including the binary that races a black and white thing and how do we highlight the complicated right the the unseen how do we understand what we don't know a lot of and what we even with our some of our unconscious bias tend to ignore for example when we were in Alaska many of us realized just how much unconsciously we leave out native peoples from the discussion around race and that we oversimplify race I have a stat to share here which is out of the lead roles in Hollywood 82% go to white actors less than 2% to Asian actors and less than 1% to Native American actor so we in talking about race it's also so much about what we don't see and the the complexity you know when we in every in our world around us whiteness is portrayed as the ultimate complicated thing right white men can be discovering a planet or flying in outer space or fighting a dragon or falling in love with a computer doing anything that humans do and yet the tropes around people of color so limiting that we even it affects our imagination so today's conversation we're going to start with live medicine crow who is the president of first Alaskans Institute and we're going to talk for about keep it at about 8 minutes and then Jose Antonio Vargas is going to be joining us then followed by Eleanor Savage from the Jerome Foundation and then closed by Keith Joseph Atkins just have a conversation and inviting all of you to participate so with that Liz do you want to come up and join us the other thing is we want to we thought it would be really interesting to start this com to women to be starting this conversation so Liz if you could start by telling us providing a bit of the context I think that maybe not everyone here understands what is the landscape in Alaska what are some things we should understand about the history of the indigenous people of Alaska and then share with us what are some of the models that you all explored and have developed around healing well good afternoon everyone my name is Liz medicine crow I'm Haida and click it from southeast Alaska so I'm from here and on my clink it side I'm a Ravencutch adi fresh watermark sockeye salmon is my crest on my Haida side I'm an eagle hummingbird and I come from the Cheech-Gitney people of Haida guai in British Columbia and I want to acknowledge my sister Allison Warden who's here I want to acknowledge my fellow indigenous men and women who are in the room I know I saw some folks really good to see all of you and also to thank my hosts and Fabiana and Roberta it's just been incredible I felt like from the get-go it was as if someone had designed a program just for me everything everyone is talking about has been just like water to a man in a desert you know it's been really wonderful so Alaska just show of hands how many people have been to Alaska oh nice okay so a lot of you have actually been to my homelands our homelands and our our state is very diverse in terms of its indigenous peoples we have over at least 11 major cultural groups and there are some distinctions even in there we have over 21 different Alaska native languages which through some community organizing and grassroots efforts are Alaska native languages we're just finally recognized by the state government of Alaska last year which was pretty pretty important work Alaska was colonized by the United States a lot of people think it was colonized by the Russians it was not the Russians came in and they fought hard against some of the native people to claim only certain areas and when they stayed there they had the permission or they had won that area from that specific indigenous group they were not colonizers in Alaska they did not come with their established structures and infrastructures to stay for the long term they were there for the furs for the resources and then they were jamming back home to Russia so the colonizing force in the United of Alaska was the United States and we still live in a very colonial system very centralized government in Juneau and in Anchorage there's a huge split between the urban and rural communities kind of like the race issue though it's a little bit of a social construct and it works to just empower the people who don't live in the urban areas our our binary in Alaska is really one of white and Alaska native Alaska native people make up almost 20 percent of the total population of the state which is around just over 700,000 people so we're very small in population and we have the largest city of Anchorage has the largest population of indigenous peoples in the country in a city with a population over 100,000 so the the enormity of that um also helps to disempower our native peoples within the structure of the city of Anchorage but we're working on that too again through a community event through community organizing and through cross-cultural intercultural relationships and collaborations we were able to have the municipality of Anchorage recognize indigenous peoples day on the second Monday of October in perpetuity just this last Monday and the state governor um governor walker followed um on the state level to create a proclamation to recognize indigenous peoples day one of the things that a lot of people don't understand about indigenous people um in this country let alone those of us um in Alaska there's a net there's another sister from Alaska um is that as native people we have two different identities when it comes to other governments so we have the relationship as a political entity with the United States that is not a racial identity that is one of obligation treaty contract and constitutional law in the United States the other is the racial identity the minority status that one um in Alaska is usually conflated and most of the people in Alaska don't know that there is a political identity so we get a lot of resentment um and a lot of anger about the so-called entitlements that we get as indigenous people um a simplified way of looking at it for us really is it's called rent and you have obligations in your lease um to live up to and um and really trying to get to a place of having a more educated population around native peoples in Alaska has been a real important goal of so many of our organizations and our leadership um so that people can see the contribution that we make the contribution that we have made for over 10 000 years and we will make for another 10 000 uh right now Alaska is going through a fiscal crisis uh when there was a poll done by the I can't remember the entity that did it but they did a poll to find out how many people would leave Alaska when um this fiscal cliff was hit and about 20 percent of the respondents said they'd leave when that number was reported at the governor's transition conference in November I was sitting at a table with a lot of other Alaska native folks and everyone kind of looked at each other and who's leaving we're not leaving these are our homelands and no matter what government sits on top of it we have a responsibility to steward it on behalf of our ancestors and on behalf of our future ancestors um so the race discourse in Alaska um is one that's convoluted and complex because of the political status um also because of the racial status but we also have a huge population of immigrants um starting with the Russians followed by all the other explorers and then all the other communities that have come in um and I think that that's really interesting as an indigenous person this might be something that we share in common is that if you're not indigenous you're all immigrants and and that is that's a great thing in this country um one of our leaders uh at the Alaska Federation of Natives said as she coined the term I'm a first American for new Americans and I think that that's something that people could really learn a lot from um one of the things that we've been trying to do in the in the in the conversation around racial equity in Alaska has been applying our our cultural ways of being and knowing as a tool for changing how people approach the conversation uh in Alaska when uh incident occurred a racial incident occurred what would happen is there'd be an escalation there would be the people who were harmed usually people of color Alaska native black maybe Pacific Islander we have a huge population of Pacific Islanders and then there'd be this kind of backlash from the non-native community or the white community and um and it would just get really angry um and heated and something would occur maybe they decided to take a vacation for two weeks or something and then um and then they'd come back and it would just kind of die down well we did a 50th anniversary discussion series around the state of Alaska um asking Alaska Natives what their perspectives were on statehood obviously we didn't use the term celebration in that because that would um maybe not reflect everyone's perspective and what we heard on when we traveled around the state was that people were still really um fighting discrimination and um and we're really concerned about it so we created a project based on our native values um that created a space for healing and using kind of the principle don't teach me about my culture use my culture to teach me and um using that as a framework for building a place a safe space for people to come and actually have real conversations about their experiences with race and racism um and also making sure to say if you haven't had a experience with racism that's also an experience um and that project that evolved out of that is called Alaska Native Dialogues on Racial Equity now and or um and we have trained hosts um young people usually between the ages of 20 and 40 who host conversations about racism within their communities whatever community they define it whether it's a geographic location a cultural community religious community an interest area or a lifestyle community like photographers um or um hunters for instance so that they can start advancing those conversations from a place of um humanity and relationships rather than transactions thank you and I wanted to um also just make comment this because you were you mentioned that um uh that anyone who uh was not indigenous to this land was an immigrant and I just wanted to add there was forced people forced also here against their will and I want to acknowledge that because that is not that wasn't a form of migration that was a form of terrorism against people of the African continent so I want to just um honor that uh next is gonna uh Jose Antonio Vargas is gonna join us and he is the creator of the um show uh the piece on MTV whiteness white people white people my very my my great friend Jose and Jose is going to be showing us a clip the trailer the trailer because people are getting antsy so it's only a minute yes and then we're gonna the clip was like seven minutes we're gonna talk about uh white people so we're doing a film for MTV on what it means to be young and white okay okay you say the wrong thing then suddenly you are a racist trying to be careful here I don't want to offend people I feel like you guys are attacking me now if I bring up any sort of race issue with my parents they immediately assume that I'm demonizing them how might your life be different if you weren't white when you say white what does that mean to you we've never had to internalize what white people have done in America but here you can't escape that feels like I'm being discriminated against you kind of get this feeling that things belong to you I'm getting uncomfortable it's uncomfortable hey this is great let's get all uncomfortable together oh should I get to know this yes I remember when this when the trailer when the trailer came out a lot of people were saying I don't want to you know I don't want to see white people cry who cares they call it like mayonnaise like there's all these memes on Twitter about like white crying is like mayonnaise white tears so why do you think tell us a little bit about why why why why did you think why is it important to talk about whiteness and what's yeah what was something that really was kind of some learning moments when you were making this piece um first of all hi um second I just went I am so this is probably like one of the best days of my life to be in a room like this um and to have Roberta Uno's vision like just manifest so can we just like give her a round of applause so I'm um I'm a journalist and filmmaker before I outed myself as undocumented I was a journalist and filmmaker it says they haven't deported me I'm still a journalist and filmmaker here um that this film was a partnership between MTV and Define American uh MTV funded the whole thing thankfully because if I had waited for a foundation grant it would have taken a decade um just kidding uh so MTV funded the film um because what happened was I had made another film for CNN called documented what it means to be an undocumented immigrant in America and then the MTV president saw it and said hey like did you want to do make a film about white privilege I'm like absolutely um but at Define American you know we use all forms of media to change the culture about immigration so at Define American we've done 470 events in 48 states in two or ten college campuses in the past four and a half years so I'm really tired but it's okay but what we really realize is until until we can get white Americans to understand that you know white is not a country like where did you come from how did you get here who paid if you can't answer I know every immigrant can answer that question every black American can answer that question Native Americans can be like wait what are you all doing here you know like how do we create a space for white especially young white people to have a conversation about this so MTV commissioned a study that inspired this and I think I showed it with Fabiana once so check out these really interesting statistics four out of five millennials you know apparently we're supposed to be the inclusive generation four out of five of us are uncomfortable talking about race nearly 50% of white millennials feel that there is much a victim of racism as people of color let that sink in so one of the scenes is actually a woman in Arizona a young white woman who feels that she couldn't get a college scholarship because it's all going to the Mexicans and the Chinese which by the way was a very prevalent opinion among many young white people Republican whatever whether we were in South Dakota or we were in Brooklyn right and the last thing I thought was really really interesting given the demographic change 90% of white people only have white friends and three fourths of them live in predominantly white towns so the desegregation that we're talking about is very real so as an immigrant we always get asked where we're from so I think now is the time especially the you know this is when we made this documentary which aired in July by the way it's free on YouTube it's been really wonderful that MTV made it for free and then Define American worked with MTV to create a curriculum so many high school teachers and uh culture writers are using it right as a way to talk about not only race but immigration because we can't separate the two I think that is we have an opportunity right now with Black Lives Matter you know with immigrant rights with LGBT rights and women's rights to really look at intersectionality beyond an abstract theoretical thesis statement like how do we put that into practice without banging people's head with it and I have to tell you this and Fabiana knows this because when we announced what we were working on this you know thank god you know you have a friend like Fabiana for me because as an artist like you really have to stand your ground right because people were like what are you doing like why don't you I had so many interesting emails from other people who call her filmmakers who were like why don't you make another film on immigration like you know you should do a film on incarceration rates or the detention centers like white people don't need any more films about them and I'm like well that's not really what I'm doing like you know white is a construction right I mean didn't everybody read Tony Morrison and James Baldwin like didn't we like you know like how are we and until one of the I'm really proud the film is only 43 minutes long it's not that long right we stop at um Pine Ridge um a high school at Pine Ridge I could not have made this film without including the Native American story in there um we have a white gay young man who uh chose to attend historically black college and then we ended this the film with Bensonhurst with you know used to be a predominantly Italian town that is now becoming more Asian specifically Chinese so it's a way to kind of again intersectionality without like banging peoples in the head with it right um but yeah so that's why we made the film thank you and I just want to say also thank you for your courage in like actually as a man of color queer undocumented man being the one to say yes I'm going to be the one to dismantle whiteness because white people do it for us all they tell our narratives all the time and that you actually feel that this is an important thing to take on despite all the the criticism that came at you and and and the larger conversation is I was just in Iowa last week and I said something that I usually don't say in front of too many people I got asked this question a few months ago in DC at a small little panel you know when they have those race panels in DC um sorry I'm not gonna name which one so they asked me what was the stake in the election and I said you know what's a stake in the election is you know like the country is only gonna get gayer black or brown or more Asian women will break every possible barrier they must and should break so what's really at stake is the soul of heterosexual white men and how do we have this conversation in the most inclusive way possible you know I don't you know I'm not here to make you feel guilty I'm not here to shame you I'm just asking you questions that you're asking me what was your papers right how did you get here what law did you have to get you know all I'm trying to do is ask the questions and institutions that you've created for us turn it around and say wait a second have you actually thought about this yeah and but I said that statement in Iowa at Iowa State University in Ames in front of like 700 students and I've gotten so many interesting emails from straight white male students I might make a fill out of it it's really interesting because the internalized kind of guilt and like you know I'm not here for that I'm just trying to tell you that until you can see me I can't see you right and you know I thought Darren's statement about we have to create economies of empathy so how do now we really are in this unprecedented moment in this country in which people feel like they're the other you know I can't talk about white privilege to like white people in a trailer park in Little Rock Arkansas they're looking at me they're going like you know you're taking away what was ours and then you have Barack Obama you have Michelle you have JC and Beyonce and Jaila and all these Asian people at colleges like they feel like the future got taken away from them so how do we create a space to have that conversation you know besides Bernie Sanders and Donald and Donald Trump who's talking to the white working class in this country so that's why we made white people and we'll be making yes great thank you Jose next up we're going to keep it moving we're going to keep it moving next up we have Eleanor Savage program officer at the Jerome Foundation and Eleanor is working um in the grant makers for the arts on the racial equity the racial justice I forgot the name of the racial equity forum racial equity forum and you can share your thoughts with us sure hi everyone I'm the white person um no pressure um congratulations so I feel really um all joking aside I feel really honored to be invited to be on the stage with you and be part of this thank you Roberta um so when I was asked how do we shift the paradigm from diversity and inclusion to equity and desegregation and transformation what my true what's what's that sits with me is my truth is that we're not even in the paradigm of diversity much less you know able to shift it to equity what I experience on a daily basis is the paradigm of racism and segregation and exclusion of people of color and so I I thought I would do a deep dive into some of the comments my list won't be as funny as Harry's but I'm going to share with you now some examples of things that I hear and uh cohorts in the funding world here on a daily basis um that come from uh direct racism okay we can just run through these what am I supposed to tell the white artist who won't get funding because you're imposing a quota requiring that we fund artists of color we sent the grant event job announcement to all of our mailing lists if they don't apply how are we supposed to get more people of color yeah you can respond to this this needs I don't know how I don't have time to give individualized help to grantees that don't know how to prepare applications can't work with our online grant system and can't get it together we are open to everyone there just aren't any qualified black native latino Arab or Asian artist staff board members in this community what do I know I'll catch you up yeah thanks um our priority is not diversity it's artistic merit we don't believe we should sacrifice quality we don't have a problem with racism we are colorblind bringing up racial issues is divisive and unnecessary telling people their behaviorist racist is mean we're an arts organization not an activist organization we don't have enough time to do everything we're already doing I'm editing out your references to race and diversity in this board memo because it will upset the directors how do we even know that people of color aren't being supported where's the research to prove it I've got a lot to learn before dealing with racism I don't know how to do this if we do something wrong we'll be worse off than if we don't do anything at all so let's look at the messaging in these comments in order to have diversity or equity something has to be sacrificed space for white people artistic quality organizational focus there's no proof that inequity exists for people of color it's too hard to find people of color including a people of color equals excluding white people the effort to include people of color cost extra time and money and racism doesn't exist so we don't need to work on it so the notion that we're in a post racial society is a fallacy we need to stop acting from places of fear passivity apathy complacence discomfort and resistance to and denial of the reality of racism I'm going to say that again we need to stop acting from places of fear passivity apathy complacence discomfort and resistance to and denial of the reality of racism these behaviors are as much a part of the paradigm of racism as overt violence we need to acknowledge that racism exists and we need to take a stand against it we have to face the fact that denial and resistance are that I'm repeating myself now as much a part of racism as avert violence we have to learn how to interpret interrupt it challenge it be in conversation about it act against it and change the systems that perpetuate it and for white people who define as anti-racist we can't position ourselves as separate from covertly and overtly racist people we have to be responsible and accountable for shifting the paradigm of racism we have to create space for anti-racist learning that is not punitive and for the last couple of years I've been asking people where do you see racial equity happening and there's usually a long silence and there are a few answers in response to this we have we need to have a vision for what we're moving toward not just what we're working against and artists have much to offer in helping create this vision so to the question of and I have one more slide of how do we move from the this racist paradigm we have to admit that this that systemic racism racism is a reality we have to stop perpetuating racism and do things differently learn the early warning signs of whatever your avoidant behavior is and and start taking action against maintaining the status quo learn how to interrupt racism how to practice anti-racism and practice anti-racism with the same reckless abandon that we practice and participate in racism envision and imagine what racial equity is and adopt racial equity as a value and implement clear goals for living it I want to challenge my fellow white people to take immediate action on racial equity and by racial equity I mean an end to systemic racism and by systemic racism I mean an end to the daily dehumanizing humanizing and destructive attacks against people of color thank you thank you um our our next and final guests and then we're going to open it up to questions in a conversation is Keith Joseph Atkins playwright screenwriter and co-founder of the new black fest welcome thank you we're tweeting earlier great um so tell us about on your website you talk about this you know the the the urgency and and the moment of why the new black fest is important tell us about your work definitely um well about five years ago I was living in Los Angeles I was working in tv and I decided to come back to New York City because I felt like New York was probably better to keep my brain hard um and I was feeling a little softened in LA I love LA but I just felt like my brain was going to I had so much more things to think about um so I came back to New York City and got right back into the theater community which I was a part of and for me many of my peers were complaining about the same issues around the type of complex roles that there would be auditioning for the type of plays that were being produced particularly August Wilson who I absolutely love August Wilson brilliant brilliant craftsman but that type of play was continually to be produced and there wasn't a lot of variety um and I decided to do something on my own which is to start my own theater organization to at least begin having small groups get together and just sort of read each other's work and even more importantly sort of qualify each other because I felt like what was happening within the black and brown communities within New York City theater communities that many of us and were waiting for the white institutions to qualify our careers and to qualify whether or not we were good whether or not we were urgent or whether or not we were important and so I felt like let me try to do something to sort of help us qualify each other and um so the interesting thing um uh at around that time um arena stage was housing I think it was a new american theater institute um david down down was running that yes thank you um and so they had this uh black playwrights convening they invited 40 playwrights I was not one who was invited um but another playwright Robert O'Hara was invited and sort of stuck me in the back door he said I really think you need to be down here to have this conversation about what's happening in the black theater community um so I got there and everyone was just talking about all the sort of inequities um the lack of complexity lack the lack of authenticity um white sort of storytelling with black content um all these sort of things have been going on for years and years and years and so um the final sort of question that was posed to the audience was other participants was um what's next now that you know these issues are here what are you going to do now and I sort of raised my hand no one else did I was the one not invited um I was like and um and David was like yes and I said I think I want to start my own theater company our organization I don't know what that's going to look like I don't know who's going to be involved but I want to do that and immediately two other people Jason Hotham and Jocelyn Prince who are two other three theater practitioners came up to me and said I will do anything we can to help make this happen Lynn Naughton she was also there came up to me and said hey maybe I can help you do a fundraiser in my backyard in Brooklyn which is what happened um so maybe three or four months later we kicked off our our first event um the new black festival at um brick before they got that 30 million dollar restoration um so it was like the black box space it was awesome it was awesome I basically collected six or seven playwrights um most of them from New York a couple of them from Chicago one from um London and one from um Kampala Uganda and um and my my mission was to bring all these voices together and all these storytellers together not just to sort of represent blackness but to represent the diversity and the complexity within the black experience and not just for white audiences to consume but even for black practitioners and audiences to learn about the complexity that exists amongst each other because I feel often we subscribe to this one narrative that the white institution is sort of creating and sort of stirring and does and we don't even challenge ourselves about whether or not that's real for us or even if it is our story um so now I'm in my fifth year of the organization um a couple years ago right after the Trayvon Martin Zimmerman verdict um I commissioned five playwrights um actually six playwrights to write from diverse demographics of Palestinian um Lebanese Filipino white American to black Americans to write about Trayvon and privilege and or race and that's been done throughout the country the following year when Ferguson happened I then commissioned six black male playwrights to write plays in response to Ferguson and all that was happening in the country around black male policing and um institutional um horror terrorism um and that's been done throughout the country um and also let me just go back facing our truth which is the first piece that I commissioned is now be now published by Samuel French which I'm so happy about took all the administrative work out of my hands um and uh and more recently so after the Ferguson event which I called hands up six playwrights six testaments um we we kicked off at CUNY graduate center uh martin sequel theater there and a black actress walked up to me and said this is really amazing you're speaking and having these black men talk about themselves but uh what about us you know what are you doing about giving voice to black women in this capacity so I then commissioned five black women playwrights um with the collaboration of Dominique Marisa who's a playwright as well and we called it untamed hair body attitude sharp plays by black women which we just kicked off this past Monday at the CUNY graduate center um so yeah so I'm about theater I'm about complexity authenticity and for us to learn about each other's complexity and I have a follow-up question for you because I I know that you know today we've been even even hearing the idea of pop culture and I I I don't necessarily believe that there's a binary where there's pop culture and then there's the arts but I think something to think about and you just stated this is that in the in most of the institutions that control and disseminate pop culture white power is ingrained it's solidified and often we have to play by their rules whereas in much of what you all are doing you are building infrastructure and institutions and really having power and although it may be considered the margins nevertheless the approach is very much on your terms on our terms um so talk about that about what what is this thing that you negotiate when you make the choice of really investing in creating something um that precisely because there is not space in these places where power is so solidified and and and um where and and and how is that uh effective and other folks can answer as well okay I'll just start and say I mean for me like I'm from southern Ohio um my family was historically an African Methodist Episcopal so they have been social justice advocates since the late 1700s as free people of color um my mom's family was also Catholic my dad's family's from Georgia and they were Baptist um both of my grandparents were part of civil rights movement my grandmother one grandmother was a domestic the other grandmother was a school teacher so I grew up in a very unpowered community and home that was complex so when I came into the world of theater and storytelling my expectation was the complexity would be embraced it would be the national of just the institutional conversation and I was surprised to see that it was not and it was very disheartened by it so for me just because I come from this place of empowerment and complexity I wanted to continue on that legacy and challenge anyone I was working with to also invest and support that so for me like um I'm sorry um but I'm just I have I just it's it's sort of I'm hardwired that way I just feel like it's important so let me just add about so I just moved to LA I think my brain cells are still okay because the fine American is opening kind of a Hollywood entertainment section and like kind of an office to in the same way that the LGBT community really use television you know in movies to have representation right immigrants need to do the same thing so the fine Americans opening a sector just for that but it's been interesting I'm about hopefully to become a member of the screenwriter's guild they don't let them document people in so we're trying to figure out how to make that happen but it's been really interesting because you know they only let a couple of us in meaning it is a crisis if you look at the you look at the studios even you just look at the documentary units who gets to tell the story who gets to produce it who gets to direct like like for white people I was just really lucky that the president MTV loved my film and gave me you know last edit right like I was like this is my film I'm gonna get the last edit I have creative control for the most part that doesn't happen they give you the money then you know they allow you to do your thing and then it gets back and then you know they do it right like I mean I hate to say this but like until we get to really own you know our own media institutions in our own structure it's gonna be really hard I don't have any I don't I don't think you know not that I don't want to spend too much time explaining you know trying to like oh you know so that gets really tough and I don't know what support is out there um you know especially by the way what I find as a journalist and filmmaker like the the the blurring of the lines between you know journalism and podcasting and video all of that is kind of ending up into this digital space right like we're creating an entire new media infrastructure you know it's really really tragic it mirrors the infrastructure that it's trying to replace newsrooms when I started when I was 17 I'm almost 35 newsrooms are less diverse now than when I started in journalism you know that is journalistically criminal yeah so how do we invest on that right and not just to perpetuate I love the New York Times it's always going to be there all news fits the print but I'm sorry Black Lives Matter did not start in the New York Times right so I just have to really push us in terms of thinking about how to fund these things yeah I'm going to go ahead and open it up to questions um just throw your hands up we could do a little popcorn style we'll pass the mic around looks like we have a question yes here in the back oh here you go hello um hello again um Liz you mentioned that in your new program um you're doing racial reconciliation and I'm wondering with using native values and I'm wondering what some of those are and how you've applied them in this way so um one of the things that um I grew up with and I think a lot of our native people in Alaska grew up with is going to fish camp working on our food preparing harvesting gathering hunting and fishing and it's um it's hard work it's all hands on deck everyone has a role it's intergenerational and and it's about an outcome and you're preparing for it all year long significant to that process is a smokehouse a fire and one of the best memories that I have growing up is sitting around a fire and it was around the fire or around the table at my grandparents house where really hard conversations happened um and using kind of this idea um of how our elders interact with each other um there's a way of disagreeing that looks like agreeing um and it's a supportive process uh it's a you're saying something and I hear you and I may not just and I may not agree with you but instead of saying an it having to be adversarial it's rather an acceptance that this is your this is your truth and so my grandparents sitting around the table with other elders talking about really hard issues in our community trying to make a decision as the leadership how to deal with it um they had different opinions about how that should happen and they would listen to each other and they would say uh huh uh huh uh huh I hear you I hear you and and this is how I feel about it and it wasn't adversarial it wasn't like you had to prove a point um it created a space for people to actually really connect and so we built a series of agreements in our dialogue process as a healing dialogue process that also has a component of amplification of power of self-determination and self-governance by giving people the um the opportunity to recognize they don't need anyone's permission to do what's right they don't need to be told or asked to do what they know they have an inherent ancestral duty to do and so these agreements are structured to really elevate what are shared native values and here's the big secret they're human values so the first one is in every chair a leader we also say speak to be understood listen to understand so you're not in a position of just waiting for your turn to talk um that the greatest learning is when your mouth is shut um and if um the way that we phrase it is it's an and conversation not a or conversation so it's additive and like I said earlier it's about relationships and how you treat one another that you could be the biggest flaming racist ever but I will still sit across from you and try to listen and it in the process of bringing that humanity into the room you have an opportunity to change a heart and when you change the heart the mind will the mind will follow these are things that our grandparents have taught us for thousands of years so that's how we've tried to construct the dialogue process other questions yes hi um so as we said throughout this process that people of color will or they already make up majority of the population of the United States and as we see a lot of times you may have this device is sometimes we have Latinos uh people that from diaspora natives and a lot of times we don't discuss how we can help each other as people of color how we can be allies for one another uh um and I and I wanted to know if you could offer that to us of how can we as people of color be helpful to all of your movements I could share a little bit about what culture strike is doing right now and we're working on um a project around working within the immigrant rights movement around the anti-blackness that exists and so for example the immigrant rights movement would say things like we're not criminals we're here to work which is this whole productivity lens that actually has been exploiting people for hundreds and hundreds of centuries has seen people just by how good they work so um I think that that's a great example of how even within our peers we're saying hey you know what like when you say things like mejorar la raza you know there's a saying in Spanish that says you got to improve the race that's anti-black and we have to uh we have to stand uh with the black liberation movement because we are connected you know what you said is that actually shaming doesn't change people shaming like isolates and excludes people whereas compassion and actually saying okay let's create spaces to talk about this and how anti-blackness is actually woven into a lot of strategies without us even you know Eleanor you said it it's so it's so deep that you have to undo it that's one way is within our communities too I have to say by the way like that's for me has been one of the most optimistic things about the dreamer movement um is how incredibly inclusive and intersectional it is right um I hope somebody's doing like a big study on this because I'd want to know how it happened like it's not an accident right like it's not it's not an accident it happened this way and you know people don't even know that most of the leaders of the undocumented youth women are LGBTQ right um somewhere up there Harvey Mill you know is like smiling um and so many of the LGBT dreamers who are leaders are women right so that's really really interesting um I have to say one thing to add to this Fabiana and we talked about this in a little breakout session I think the need now let's not assume that all Latinos and all Asian Asians in this country um you know share like you know are advocating for Black liberation right like what kind of work needs to happen within our own communities you know I mean I love my family but some of the most racist people I know are my cousins yes you know who are like that's real and you know what you know what's getting really dangerous in California right now is a whole affirmative action conversation and how the Asian as the model minority myth and Nick Kristoff blesses heart you know writing columns about Asians is an exception as if we're like that is so dangerous and pernicious you know like I am not your model minority like I declare independence from that and I don't want to be used as a wedge so that you can say oh I don't understand why the Mexicans can't be as studious as the Asians right like so what kind of work needs to happen within the Asian community so we don't fall into that trap and we don't get used in that way I don't know what kind of work is happening in that way do you know from you well I I mean earlier today Bethany's was talking about complexity I think somebody was going to mention something here yeah I think we're already doing it in our own little way so great um Carlton Turner from Alternate Roots first people spawned Lori Poirier Maria Dalyan from Nalak and myself from Pai Foundation the little Hawaiian organization that gets to hang out with these three fabulous wonderful people have started an intercultural leadership institute because where's Roberta she's convened us numerous times and we've naturally gravitated to each other because of the work we're doing I've learned so much I think I'm the youngest organization I'm the oldest I'm the elder I'm the kupuna in the group but I'm all the our organization is the youngest in this collective and I've learned so much from them and we were looking talking many times over the past five six years where's the next Carlton Turner where's the next Maria Dalyan where's the next Lori Poirier where's the next Vicky Holtakumini and we need to build that leadership among our community so starting to convene we had our first pilot and we'll be doing this over the next three years convening artists of color people the intersection of social justice art and activism so it's called Ili look for us into cultural leadership institute awesome if I could respond really quickly as well and then yeah and then Beth Thrice will close it out okay the the advancing native dialogues on racial equity project that we have is intercultural so it's not just for Alaska natives it's actually the Alaska native part is actually the insertion of indigenous values framework to have a conversation about race in a healing way and so we actually have trained our hosts from all kinds of different backgrounds and and allowing it to spread out into the communities as opposed to it just being you know one section at a time thank you oh there you go there it is okay um thank you you know this this panel has really been inspiring and I think that you know I was as I was listening for example to what you were saying Eleanor about you know giving us all these quotes I was thinking also about all the different spaces in which I interact and how there are different issues that are always excluded or that are difficult to include and how we need to be breaking ground and having those difficult conversations because also I come from a Central American community where a lot of people who who migrated to the United States especially from El Salvador and Guatemala were organized around the revolution in El Salvador and we're escaping a militaristic government that was killing us but at the same time I mean I came and I was so young that I didn't belong to any organization and also I was an artist which was my shortcoming because for them being an artist is being bourgeois so you know so there's that too that you have to convince people sometimes that the art the arts are also a way of thinking visually and thinking in other ways with other languages and that it's really important for us as human beings to be able to produce arts and to have that as a legacy for future generations etc and then you have other other issues like diversity for example I work with indigenous communities and so when I when I work with other groups in the Central America community then indigenous people in Central America become invisible and then so how do you move from being the excluded one in front of our white racist community to being the race part of the racist community that's excluding indigenous people and what kind of schizophrenic reality is that you know and so I think that there's something really important that is to to do that what you're doing in all the spaces where we are because we can continue to learn so much from just being careful about how we're not accepting things that sound natural just because they are what people have said before yeah great well we we're actually we're we're out of time because we have to wrap up at five o'clock thank you to our wonderful panel and thank you everyone and I'm going to invite Roberta to close this out so we're going to be passing out some evaluations and if you could please fill out the evaluation and I think for those who had to leave early we'll follow it up also online but ever the cultural impresario you fill out this evaluation you're entered into a drawing to win two tickets to Bone Hill at under the radar festival in January one of the hottest tickets that will be in town so if you don't live here feel free to gift them because the holidays are coming if you win it's going to be an incredible gift um and while we're in the mode of appreciation I very much want to thank the Ford Foundation staff particularly from the office of communications and the building operations and technical people our colleagues have done a tremendous job of being so supportive and I also realized this morning that when I was naming our funders that I failed I mean you know you it's like after you sit down like two seconds it was like oh my god I didn't mention Mellon and Susan fader and it's probably because I'm still blocked from having to write that theory of change and you know that was like so hard and our entire core partner team worked on it and I never made anyone write one of those when I worked here but I did have to write for our president but honestly Susan it was an experience that really helped us to articulate our work and think through our work and to oper an operationalize our work and now we have it if anybody else asks we already did it um but we want to thank um our funders because when you think about what we were doing it was something that was extraordinary and it did not fit in the categories of funding of most people's programs anywhere and so you know for us to get funding from the Mellon Foundation because of their incredible imprimatur in the arts you know this is like legitimate arts funder recognizes this work and then to have Rasmussen join in and realize that on a regional level in Alaska that this was important in different states and then to have Silicon Valley Community Foundation to have a community foundation but that was also dealing with really smart people in the technology um kind of capital was very very meaningful and then finally to have unbound philanthropy come on a very leading social justice foundation working on immigration to us that was the mix that really represented what this project is about so I want to thank you um so you know I'm supposed to do a wrap-up and I just honestly think you know I I don't want to wrap up I think we unwrapped right so much learning and you know that I'm still absorbing and people have been commenting about not only the unexpected conversations and the new people that they've met but you know also the unexpected modalities we tried to create different types of situations of people coming together so your evaluations are really important to us and what's most important to us are your suggestions who should be in this conversation who do we not know about um you know what kinds of ideas should we still be exploring um you know this is five years and this is just the beginning um so one thing I want to say I wrote down courage and joy I guess I come you know I felt like a few times I was very almost moved to tears tie um other people who presented but the courage that it takes for us to do this work um you know there are so many courageous people Eleanor and others in this room and then I think the joy I mean this has been a very joyous day and a very renewing day and I think that's what it needs to be about because just the like the you know complaining or whatever I'm not into that I'm very much into the building of our spirit um so I think the the other thing I wanted to say is that we actually had an announcement that we held off on making till today which is that we have um it's like the Beatles or whatever but we have a 15th partner officially and I want to welcome Jose Antonio Vargas and Define American one quick thing and I've already said it's Roberto on the phone last week but I'm just gonna say it now so having done some tea party events and going to a lot of republican conservative areas um given where the mainstream media is given where our politics are given where the conversation is I cannot think of a more important time and a more critical time for this to happen and in many ways I think artists I think it's we're the only people who are going to get a chance to create the narrative and to change it and to build these economic you know economies of empathy um one last thing since Roberto you know was the um the last director to work with James Baldwin what is that blues from Mr Charlie right what is that great quote from Baldwin artists are here to disrupt the peace so let us do that and we cannot be proud or Define American to be in partnership with you Roberto I'm gonna learn so much from you it's gonna be awesome thank you thank you so I think part of the work we need to do is always to look at who's not in the room and you know as we thought about this gathering and this launch we were so appreciate appreciative of Darren Walker and the Ford Foundation for offering to give us this platform it's a very prestigious platform you know I think speaking from here will reach a lot of people but we were also very aware that who's not in the room is that generation that we are talking about the future of America and that you know again due to the limitations of space etc that young people wouldn't be here we also thought that it's important that it not just be a fixed meeting like and yeah I'll see you next year at art change us you know that we would have to be responsive and think about where should we go and why so as I said before we plan to do a series of five of these kinds of gatherings they will all be different um and they will all be in different places so the next one we thought if we did New York we would go to California and then given the two coasts we would be able to entice people perhaps to go other places to the border to Detroit to rural America perhaps to Pine Ridge Laurie um you know we have many dreams um so again knowing that youth would not be able to participate at the at any type of level that was what we had envisioned the decision was made that we should partner with our core partner you speaks and our core partners at Yerba Buona Center for the Arts Culture Strike and the Stanford Institute with Jeff Chang so I'm going to turn it over to them to talk about what's next hi hi so I'm James hi I'm Chinaka I'm Jeff and I'm Fabiana and we're not the Beatles all right so hi welcome so um we would like to invite everybody and everyone you know to join us in San Francisco we're going to have a series of activities between April 13th to April 16th starting with some work down on Stanford's campus that Jeff will talk about in a second to some collaborative programming with Culture Strike Yerba Buona and Youth Speaks one of the things that we think is really important is the celebrating the celebration of the next generation of leadership I would I founded the organization I run youth speaks when I was in my mid 20s and it was really generational and I remember meeting first Jeff Chang and what he was talking about I think that I represented at that time my generation which was defined in many ways as sort of a hip hop generation or hip hop aesthetics but I think even more so for the pertinence of the conversation that's just happening many of us reflected coming from large public diverse integrated school systems back then when school systems were still integrated as we know they've become resegregated in many ways I mean that informed a lot of our practice but what also formed a lot of our practice was the economy so even though it was post 80s post Ronald Reagan etc etc I was living in the city of San Francisco which is an anomaly I admit but I was living in the studio apartment paying $500 a month when I started the nonprofit organization that I now run that same apartment now honestly goes for $2,300 so when we recently gathered young artists and young arts leaders they've made very clear to us that they can't do what we did much less earlier generations who were able to sort of live much less expensively in urban and other environments they quite literally can't afford to do what we did as part of the cultural movement and they're not going to stop making art they just might start stop making art in the nonprofit climate and whether or not we want to allow that to happen it's indicative on us to give them the space to define for us what kind of world they need to be most effective most impactful and what does it really mean their generational time and space and what does that really mean so we're going to explore that it happens to be and I'm going to turn it over in one second to Chenaka Hodge who is not only the associate director of pedagogy and programming at your Rowena but is also an alumni of U Speaks and we met when she was 14 years old we're going to be celebrating the 20th anniversary of U Speaks by doing the 20th U Speaks Teen Poetry Slam at Davy Symphony Hall in San Francisco and Chenaka and I are working to bring together alumni from all across the country including Davy Diggs who's starting right now on Broadway and Hamilton to really start not only highlight the future artists and leaders but also talk through what are the different stages of that young people who were artists and found the power of art when they were teenagers how they've been able to live in the arts or not moving forward thanks James. Hi I'm Chenaka I'm the new associate director for program in pedagogy at your Rowena Center for the arts it's a full mouthful and um Roberta asked us to talk about a couple takeaways we have from today and the thing that I heard overwhelmingly um throughout the course of the day is that we as a group are interested in shifting public perception and then changing policy which I think is perfect because that's what I'm charged to do in my new role at your Rowena Center for the arts is create programs and pathways for our communities to be involved in questioning and introspection and investigation and then um changing and shifting policy so I invite you to come out to California see how we do it on the west coast and watch how art changes us. So one of the things that we're really inspired by the Stanford Institute for diversity in the arts is the work that both you speaks in your Rowena Center have been doing around developing this idea this notion of creative ecosystems and so what we've tried to do at Stanford is to somewhat in in in some ways kind of model that and also to build out a place for people people to have discussions and to talk some of these ideas through to incubate to make mistakes and to to kind of come together around ideas that do work and so on April 13th excuse me we'll be having one of those discussions as part of a bunch of different events that will be happening that week around art change us in which we'll be exploring some ideas how to think about how we move into the futures that we've been talking about and how we build how we begin to build these creative ecosystems so please join us for that and I'll keep it short is in in at culture strike we're really trying to look at how to build narratives of joy and resilience given mass incarceration and mass deportation so we're going to continue that we're kicking it off here at the national immigrant integration conference the caucus on the intersection of mass incarceration and family detention and then extending that so join us and let's really break the walls that are dividing so many of our people okay so April 13th is we're going to start kicking off activities we'll have them all the through Roberto wanted us to name one specific day so April 16th during the day Yerba Buena will host a series of forum that will all cure it together and then that night at Davies symphony hall you can experience the best spoken word that you'll ever seen you'll leave tearful and joyful all at the same time it'll be really incredible and I actually I fought the poetry I fought the poetry snap for like 20 years and I lost so I've given up on that but I also want to just say first of all we really you know April is beautiful in San Francisco hopefully we'll be post drought then so you guys come please please spend some time with us in the Bay Area and the richness of it but I just want to say to Roberta very specifically because I think we're the last ones talking today I was part of the future aesthetic cohort as was all of us as were some other people in the room and many of us have gotten to know each other really well over the years and Roberta did something that I know has impacted all of us in the work that we do Jeff reference that this morning we talked about the spirit of generosity but also challenge and I remember and some of you've heard me tell this story before but I remember very specifically one of the first meetings after Roberta had opened the door for us and we all thought great about ourselves wow we get national funding from the Ford Foundation whoo right we were high with a hip-hop theater festival we were this we were that and Roberta called us all together and it was us and Jeff and Fabiana and Renny Harris and hip-hop theater festival and etc etc and one by one challenged us and told us what we'd been doing wrong since she'd opened the door for us and her basic message was you are nothing special without the people that you're opening the door for and if you guys mess up right now I Roberta can't do what I'm trying to do now that I'm here at the Ford Foundation so your responsibility is beyond yourself your responsibilities for all the doors you're either opening or shutting for everybody else and that work has really translated I think into all of our work and as we look at the future and as we all of us all four of us work with younger people than we are and try and really open up doors and space for them we carry with the message that Roberta gave us and the challenge for us to be who we could possibly be if we thought beyond just ourselves in this moment so Roberta thank you for all that