 I hear you're loudest, okay, but actually you're gonna say, Man-tae, okay? So, group one, I wanna make sure they got the Man-tae. Come together again, building community. You know, one of the reasons why we have space for ourselves by ourselves, sometimes with allies, sometimes without allies, is to be able to be at the center of that agenda. And so, what we're gonna do now, just so that you all know the process, and we're gonna jump right in it, because we've got so many report outs, is we're gonna hear from those community spaces. And what happens, it happens organically, kind of all on its own, is that we've just become one big community, it's gonna feel, just feels really good. So, the process is going to be two minutes per group, and we really wanna be egalitarian and fair. And we've had situations in the past, I don't think it's gonna happen this time, but we've had situations in the past where, you know, a group's so long, and we really don't wanna do that, because then it models the very thing that we don't wanna do, or, you know. So please, when Gus is gonna, excuse me, Elena's gonna do timekeeping, everyone's gonna get two minutes. When she motions that your time is up, we trust you will respectfully wrap up and sit down so the next group can go. We only have a finite amount of time, and we have actually about 20, potentially 20 report outs. The other thing, just in terms of letting folks know what the process is gonna look like, some groups might not report out, because some people did have to leave early, so there may not be representatives from some groups. We'll just ask if you were in a group and you don't have your reporters here, if you wanna speak to any learnings or anything you'd like to offer to the broader community, we can invite you to do that. The other thing is that it would be great if you're gonna report out if you're sitting here, but that's fine, we'll run the mic too if we need to. Sure, and folks who've been in the tapings with me for the last few days, there are some handshake bills here, because I think it'll be awkward if I say, Manse, just to cut you off, but seriously, we have a little limited amount of time, so we're really gonna stick strict to the two minute frame. So basically, this is gonna mean we really need to stop now to give the next person the time to speak. And if you really don't like see this and get this, I might say, Manse, which means that the next person needs to speak, okay? So it's gonna be light, easy, nothing intense, are we ready to go with the first lovely group? Yes, we are, and that's going to be our Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim American theater artists developing a bill of rights. Can we get Malika Mike? Breakout session with Middle Eastern and Muslim artists, and we discussed a bill of rights. The idea is to create a shared framework of collaboration. We understand it's sometimes scary, very difficult to present stories that are Arab or Muslim, and we want to make that work accessible. We also want to provide a protocol for respect to the artists that the mainstream communities engage with. So one of the districts it takes for the bill of rights, I have a right to tell my stories and my own words without bearing the burden of representing an entire community's experiences. I should not be expected to explain the complete history of my people or justify or apologize for their actions. Yes. So it's a framework that we're working on together still by Jim O'Core of Supervisory, and Toran Jurgis the Arabian of Golden Thread Productions. And when it's prepared and ready, we'll give it to TCG for distribution. Next up is going to be Beyond Orientalism, Standing Together. I see Nelson and me standing together. Everyone who is in are going to please stand and join us for this moment. We are going to be, whoo! We are going to be reading from Amman Festo for Visibility. We ask our theater community to see our talent, even if it comes in a package you didn't expect. Recognize our potential and take greater artistic risks. Hear us and ask questions if you don't know the answer. Provide a space for us to arrive at the answers together. Make us a vital part of the fabric of your world. Believe that we are an integral part of your American story. Stop casting our African American and Latino brotherhood in Asian roles causing them to misappropriate our culture and pitting us against each other. Educate your audiences but don't underestimate them either. Recognize that the playing field is not equal. Privileges are bestowed to some and not to others. Question histories that contain an ethnocentric with worldview. Allow for multiple points of views to coexist. Acknowledge that universality and relatability have nothing to do with race. Don't ignore other people's pain in your rush to defend your position. If you have hurt them, even if you didn't intend to, make it a priority to understand why. Seek to destroy institutional biases where they exist. Apply more rigor and creativity to your dramaturgy, programming, hiring, and outreach practices. Work to create inclusion everywhere you see it. Show us through your actions, not your words. Thank you. Thank you. Our Black Theater Comments Affinity Group, they free them. Mission of the BTC, the Black Theater Comments, which was first launched at the conference of 10 years ago. The mission stated Black Theater Comments is a collective of theater practitioners and advocates who self-identify as members of the Black African American global African diaspora. BTC is a network of national and international leaders advocating, activating our collective resources to enrich, nurture, and support Black Theater. We do so through advocacy, community, and knowledge sharing. We gathered and we talked about a lot of strategies for helping the Black Theater Comments to become stronger, and our Black Theater community to be stronger. We talked about defining and demanding our own work. We talked about mentoring and small theater companies, finding larger theater companies to be mentored by. We talked about building a community of Black Theater critics, writers, scholars, our own people to tell us what in our community is of work and what is great. We have those people and we want to lift them up. We also talked about creating a fund for Black Theater and co-facilators of the X University Institute, including Carmen, shared about a national effort to create a fund for an equitable theater ecology where a predominantly white institution would perhaps take a third charge of their ticket sales and redistribute that for a more equitable theater ecology. So we share that. We also talked about how we should be elevating our own playwrights in our communities. So elevate our and choose our next August Wilson, and then how can we have them perhaps even tour through Black Theater throughout the United States? And we talked about having a future convenient, perhaps just for arts administrators because that is so key. We also talked about... Great. We also discussed talking to educators to make sure that African-American plays are being taught in the schools. And if you are a teacher, do it now. Get it into curriculum. Lastly, we're having a social gathering because evening and another planning meeting tomorrow. So, we see people. Done. Nice. Beautiful. Next is culture change, creating an inclusive production department. We're specifically interested in figuring out how to shift production departments in predominantly white institutions to a more anti-racist way of working and being inclusive. And so, specifically around that, we talked about one of the main barriers. One of the main barriers is if you were in Cleveland, you know this famous line, the keys in the living room. And a bunch of keys go in the living room. This year, we talked about how to keep those keys. Because the biggest problem that most organizations will have in a diverse hiring is that, is inclusion. As I always say, diversity is a tool. Inclusion is the goal. Because if we're not approaching it that way, we're going to be in a kind of societal hiring because no one's going to say it. So, that's kind of where we went with the entire organization. Yeah, and the one last thing I'll say is, is one of the key things we talked about as a challenge is the microaggressions that happen every day, all the time in each of our shops, and how to start breaking that down and being trained and dialogs to help, help with the institutions that start to shift. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. How much is instead of red face? The indigenous people are known to stand up and acknowledge reward. And honoring the people who are the original and have their roots in the country. And that being said, one of the things that we talked about in instead of red face, after a discussion on what is red face, we came up with some things that we'd like to be implemented throughout the theaters in this country. The first is that, establishing a protocol to thank the people, to recognize the people on this day, on whose brand you stand. Thank you for modeling that, Kika. Also, so we talked about so many things, as you know, I'm a very scattered person. So, we also talked, so the name of this was, our session was instead of red face, which is a very handy hashtag, you all need to know. Hashtag, instead of red face. Mary Catherine Nagel, fantastic, indigenous playwrights started that through HowlRound. Ooh, go for everybody. And so that was her response to, we can't find you, we don't know that there's indigenous people out there that are doing theater. Whenever people, except me, because I'm lame, but people in my plays, whatever they're doing, indigenous theater, they hashtag it instead of red face. Go on your Twitter or go on your Facebook and find an incredible amount of indigenous productions, actors, directors, playwrights, theaters supporting indigenous work. You got it. You have no excuse now. You know where it is. Go find it. Thank you. We did actually, it was an allies space, and so I want to say thank you to actually all of those allies who showed up to who wanted to participate and who came up with their own ideas of how we do. And I will just say, as a report, so they came up with all kinds of great things, which when I actually sit down for a second, I'm going to type up and put on the discussion so you can see kind of some of the ideas and strategies and questions and challenges that our allies came up with. It was so great, you guys. Allies, thank you. It's grown so much. We started this little TV, like, small circle, and it's gotten so huge. We don't have to add chairs. It was crazy. We had a Native American dinner. That's never happened. It was nuts. I mean, we had to make a reservation. There's some of it. It has to have more than that, so whatever that means, we're taking it over. So thank you for that. And you guys, we need you. You know, I'm not going to cry. Last year I cried and cried. I'm not going to do that this year. Because this year has been awesome. In a year since Cleveland, the list of stuff that's going on in the American theater involving Indigenous artists and Indigenous stories is crazy huge. It's gotten, it's like triple since Cleveland. So congratulations. Keep up the good work, you guys. We started by having a list of celebrations, things that we're celebrating that have happened in that year since Cleveland, and we ran out of space on the way. Okay. Next up is Latinx Affinity Group session, deeply community leveraging our collective power. If you were at our Latinx section or if you had a conflicting session and wanted to be at the Latinx session, please or work here at the conference, please. We were really excited for our session. We had about 35 to 40 people in attendance, including quite a bit of ally representation. It was just really important for us to have allies in space with us. Our work, as there are so many aspects of movement for us to celebrate, particularly just in this year, a lot of that work has been done in-hand with allies. We just really wanted them in the space to an even deeper dive about strategy. So I was happy you guys have been there. I hope you were too. We did some community building and learning and knowledge sharing around the idea of Latinx. Also, we were a bilingual space and I want to thank those people who supported us in simultaneous translation. That is challenging work and really helpful. Thank you. We really focused on three major questions that were part of our dialogue. How did we hold space within and for Latinx artists? So within the Latino theater community, the Latinx theater community, but also when you're in an institution, how do you hold space? How does acknowledging our own privilege or privilege as deep a community and then ultimately how do we leverage all of this community into collective power? And then we also wanted to invite you to a Latino theater comments event. Oh, yes. December 1st through 4th in New York City. There's a regional convening. Everybody is invited. It's first come, first serve. I think ours can please go out in August. Is that right on that time? So we hope to continue a lot of the conversations that happened here and beyond. There will be, it'll be a regional focus about the issues that Latinx artists are facing, strategy building, and a time for that community to meet and gather, but we're very much open to national attendance there. So you can find more information through how around the Latino theater comment. Thank you. Next up is Miss Grace Affinity Group. If you have been in an interracial relationship and or if you were in the room, please stand if you don't or you just don't care if you are not. We are human beings at the center of it and we're trying to be in our authentic voices. So what we talked about is what happens when you both represent privilege and oppression. One thing we talked about was not letting your privilege silence you. Another thing we talked about is being, living, breathing models of diversity and inclusion and not having to apologize for the parts of us that make us whole beautiful individuals. We talked about the need to self-define your own racial identity, that identity being fluid, and having the ability to sometimes not define because it's confusing for us too. We also talked about how grateful we are that TCG made room for us to have that space where we choose to define or not define it. And the last thing I'll say is we talked a lot about action because we believe in action as TCG models of action every day in these conversations. So we talked about the shame that sometimes comes when you are chosen for something that represents part of your culture and you wonder if that's okay. And along with that we talked about what can you do in those moments. How do you name something that does belong to you but also bring people up who maybe are not being seen because you are holding a privilege. Someone, my love here in the room and other people said name three people every time you go up. You name the thing and take that thing that you deserve but you also bring other people with you. So that's the work that we're trying to do. Thank you. Next up is multiple entry points. A space for white folks working toward racial justice. Carmen just laid out the strategy behind all of these add the intersections sessions and it's really about making that intentional space four voices that have traditionally been marginalized and these spaces have been happening for years that we wanted to legitimize and add voice to. Our space was different. The four of us hosted a space for white people working toward racial justice. White caucuses are also rooted in the civil rights movement when people of color called on white people to go to work with other white people to dismantle white supremacy. We have not done that. To take responsibility for growing our own analysis and pushing other white folks to do the same. So that's what we did. We used a learning tool called from white racist to white anti-racist which lays out a ladder of empowerment with stages that white people go through as they are coming into racial awareness and unlearning racism. It's up on conference 2.0 and we encourage you if you identify as white to go and find it and read it and re-read it and re-read it and re-read it and re-read it. It's also up there since there are folks of color who want to share it with white friends and allies please do that and please know that we would be happy to back you up in those conversations. I have one more sentence. I'm sorry. We all put together a list of other resources that we'll be adding to. We're asking again, get on board. Please. You know, take a risk. You can no longer be in this field being leaders without building your anti-racist anti-racist understanding. It's nothing more important than people are dying. The racial leaders of color meeting is up next. Frankly, I didn't prepare. But I just want to acknowledge just one little moment in that we had no idea who was going to come into this room and some of you have heard about the lunch under the trees and some of us plotting revolution in 19 whatever that was. And now we're in 1996 or so and now we were in a room where we kept having to add chairs and tables and I've been doing this work a long, long time and I have to say just a personal thing that I feel that I don't need to shoulder it by myself anymore. I want you to speak now about this work that you're doing. It's a poem from Jubilee, The Breakfast for the Dine-Around wants to speak to this. Jubilee, committee, the Jubilee movement. This is Kirk Lynn. I'm a dean of appeal. And we're actually kind of looking to throw a party in 2020 of a very particular kind that supports all the work that everyone's been talking about which we find so moving. Kirk's going to tell you a kind of party though. The premise is pretty simple. Just a few ragtime people got together and thought it would be fun if in the year 2020, 2021 there was a nationwide year festival that presented work of people of color, women, LBGTQ, trans, indigenous people and artists with disabilities and that was all the theater that you could see in the U.S. for one year. Party, there really are no rules. If you want to meet in the committee for the Jubilee, all you can reach out to me on Kirk and Rubex or Jamie at HotRound or Dee, I don't know your email. We email all the time. Your passion, your influence, your doubts. All those things can join the committee and can help us make it better. With just these sort of ragtime phone calls we have 55 theaters already committed and I think we're pretty close. We're going to have 100% of all theaters and I also want to say all the theaters that are already doing this work we'd love to have you signed on. We see the theaters that have already been doing this work for years now are kind of the elders of our movement and everyone should be learning from them so you can sign on as individuals, you can sign on as an institution committed to going for your own Jubilee year, however you define that and please do pop on. I think it's with HowlRounds.com slash Jubilee right now is where you can do that and my email is that you can be like HowlRounds.com Thank you. Thank you so much. Next up this is going to be a little bit different. We're going to be talking about practicing art activism. Carol McCord reflects on Lessons Learn from the 426 NEA meeting and we are specifically asking folks who are not Carol or Carmen anyone who wants to stand up and in less than two minutes speak Hi, I'm Sandra Parks. It was really a revelatory for me and a very comforting space to be in. One of the things that was discussed is the cost of silence, the cost of not speaking up and what it costs those who you're not speaking up for. We have a little more time if anybody else wants to speak. But that was a lot to say. Next up we're going to honor some of our ground at 20s. First up of them is the independence and reciprocity the Latino theater company interviewed by Chef Pablo Rodriguez and the Latino theater company. Anybody want to talk about it on that space? We had a really great session. We talked about Latino theater company's history and really tried to reframe and focus back on reflecting on Wilson and what has changed in that speech. We really appreciated everyone attending to that speech and with us. We're different in the sense that we run our own space and we were very privileged to be there and we recognize that. We recognized that 20 years ago a man named Bill Wichnel and a woman named Diane White who opened the Los Angeles Theater Center gave us a space. Now with the operators of that space we find that it is our privilege, our responsibility, our duty to give other space although our mission as Latino theater company has always been to tell our own stories and we do that proudly and well. We know that our mission as operators of that center is to give other underrepresented people the right to be on that stage. We feel that it's absolutely our privilege and our duty and our right to leave the place better than we found it. So that's our role. Thank you. Next up is going to be making room for deaf artists in the hearing industry. A little more specifically talking about issues having to do with trying that integration between hearing and deaf artists when it comes to the theater. And we were talking about creating and designing where we bring in deaf people from the very beginning of that whole process making those production decisions making those artistic decisions so that the rest becomes far easier to implement those changes in that process. We were talking about a variety of accessibility possibilities. So for example, interpreters at every step training the crew hiring deaf crew members teaching crew members sign language using lighting for cues using a visual system and the bottom line was really that we wanted to share the message don't be afraid we're here we're your best resource we're here to help out. Thank you. Next up is queer movement building. So we had an opportunity to create a space where we can start thinking about some actionable items of how we as theater practitioners can use our skills in order to build the movement around the queer community. We had about 70 people in the room we made some amazing maps we doubled the number of self-identifying lesbians from Korea this year from three to six from one sixth of an issue. And I think just providing a framework of how you can do that same kind of mapping and questioning around strategies in your own organizations and own space and I think people walked away with that and hopefully everyone had some great ideas to take and move forward. We saw some serious, serious content development in nine-minute segments using a World Café format about how to end the patriarchal heteronormativity to which we are subjected how to not make trans artists into mascots how to make safe spaces and hold lots of Latinx dance parties to respond to Orlando and how to celebrate all of the diversity of our voices within the queer community. It was great. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next up is going to be another Ground in 20, a forward stance featuring Jorge Ortolma, a theater company interviewed by Snehal Desai players. We had a wonderful interview on the conversation between Jorge Ortolma, the executive director of my theater company and myself who represents these players of the Asian-American theater companies. It's all teams, so you should just watch it. It's much longer. The three things we wanted to highlight is that we need to remember that there's a great world out there and we need to not hide from it but engage and embrace it and engage and embrace those artists. We talked about August Wilson's groundbreaking speech and how it was both inspiring as he talked about his perspective but how also the world is not black or white there is a binary, not a binary world, but that there is so much in between and we need to acknowledge that as we move from becoming a majority minority nation. We've been talked about how our biggest gift is that we are storytellers so we can impact change through the stories we tell and how it's important for us to tell stories that tell the history of people of color of other people of color of other sexual orientations of indigenous populations because that's how we can create the new ground that we stand on. And the last thing we talked about is that none of us sit there well I don't sit there talking about race all day but that's what we see on our stages rather than having plays that are just black plays or Asian American plays how about the other plays that we all are named today? Next up is the theaters of color breakfast. Marshal or Leslie are you here if not anyone else who was there want to represent? We talked about our theaters of color through staff development through pooling resources and through equitable partnerships. Some great ideas that came out of that using senior citizens who might not be in the workforce anymore but still have a lot of knowledge to share in history and experience to de-prioritize results and to prioritize the process so that we can bring people up who might be less experienced and broaden our base of experienced people that way. You address the non-traditional staff a non-traditional staff structure seeds for a national think tank for theaters of color sustainability and potentially a national database for theaters of color patrons. Transgender non-conforming, non-binary, two-spirit solidarity in action. We ended up intentionally deciding to have breakout sessions and affinity groups so specifically for folks who identified under the trans umbrella and folks who identified as cisgender. And in the cisgender space it was a lot about kind of exploring gender identity and kind of the complexity there's a resource called the gender rape person that we use also a lot of give a really big shout out to Abe and to all of them for like holding that down that was like so helpful but yeah, a couple of kind of tangible takeaways of things what are the trans amenities that we talked about. We took space to sort of recognize and be container for ourselves and rearranged our whole plan so we can have moments for we are Orlando too which is really important to us. Yeah, just a resource for folks in this room we talked about this event that Lisa and I organized and co-facilitated and that time was a part of called Breaking the Binary. The live stream is on HowlRound and if you're watching the opening panel we'll give you a really beautiful intersection of points of view around this topic I encourage everyone here to watch it. And then just a couple of tangible things that we took away that were both individual aspect people felt like needed their support as well as institutional strategies was one, making sure that all staff within the organization have had training on gender inclusion a lot of the time you see direct service staff or artistic staff training but not your HR person who has to deal with all of the paperwork that has people who don't use a name and where a lot of microaggressions come out of we talked about the importance of choosing, working a lot of work by trans-playwrights that isn't about telling the trans story and that isn't centered about creating trauma, like the fiction of trauma a lot of people can be whole and complicated and having moments of joy we also talked about intersectionality in a way that still trans-playwrights of color are not highlighted and getting as much visibility as trans-white playwright so that we ask the organizations to really be intentional about that Is that right? Yeah I just want to uplift to the bathroom situation know that it's an intersectional thing so people can be on the gender spectrum if you're say a person that identifies a person with disabilities and you're on the trans-section too so that's something we highlighted. Inter-based violence in our theater community Sarah, Amelia We had a really amazing group of people representing students, university staff, freelancers executive directors it was really nice to have a broad perspective in this space we talked a lot about Chicago which I assume is not a surprise to anyone but also recognizing that we shouldn't assume that that is the end of the conversation and that is such a large conversation that there are so many smaller things that we cannot ignore and forget in our own spaces We also talked about if you see something happening say don't assume that someone else is going to take care of it make sure that you speak up for those people that you think can speak up for themselves that maybe they can't and just to be better allies and also we talked about establishing codes of conduct that every institution should have this is what abuse means to us and this is what you should look at and this is what every single person who steps into this institution needs to see and needs to sign You know I think the resources that we have in our community is beyond the theaters and making sure that we're incorporating social justice organization to do trainings for our staff to do conversations around our content and to if we need mediators for a specific situation and giant whole additional topic looking at the images of gender-based violence that we put on our stages and the images that we have To the exception of the next conference Lean in American theater women We were I think if I asked everyone to stand up who was in a meeting it would be a whole room We had about 140 people this morning at 9am and the focus was very much about talking about external and internal opportunities where we can be disempowered as women and so I think that since two years ago when we had our first session held Lean in American Theater Women there's been a lot of progress on the external side but I think the focus was how much from years of living with patriarchal and dominated institutions are we going to turn a lot of things that keep us from putting ourselves forward so the conversations were focused on many small groups talking about moments when they have advocated for themselves or other women have advocated for them and then we distilled those into action points and it's going to be on the discussion 2.0 but I'm going to say one really powerful statement that came from it was talk like leader and when you go through the door don't just go through the door but be a bring in the door to leave it open for people behind you working for gender justice and mostly what we did was we asked each other for help we asked each other for help in tools in creating safe spaces where we're not taking up a lot of room inflicting microaggressions making our collaborators feel safe and we asked for help with that we asked for help in advocating for language around casting that is inclusive of all gender identities we asked for help with that we asked for help in how not to mansplain and since it was all man in the room we asked each other for help in making the world safer the women in our lives the non cis men in our lives we asked each other for help that is primarily what we did and what I hope that we will keep doing and we talked about how the difference between gender parity or gender equity and gender justice is to acknowledge not only the lack of parity on our stages and in our leadership but the way in which people are not safe and the way in which we are responsible for that and the way in which we need to dismantle that women's leadership project charting a new path forward we were going to do this and so we talked in our group it was a presentation of some research that is being done at ACT and supported by Walton Glee College on the demographics and the distribution of women in leadership and artistic leadership the information is available on ACT's website and so there was the presentation and then we had some breakout groups just to talk about or visioning different models and some of the models that we visioned together were creating a pipeline for leadership right you talked about the automatic structure of the pyramid and movement up to leadership and how we should try to challenge that structure of being willing to hire people we don't know to put the time into getting to know those people and to bring them up if necessary to use interns to mentor interns and early career employees to diversify freelancer opportunities to get them into the leadership pipeline to look into non-judicial leadership models like shared leadership to have 360 degree awareness to have a referral network because I don't know what we were doing this I will encourage you on August 22nd there will be a convening that will present the full research in San Francisco at ACT so check out their website they're doing incredible work the Native Voices at the Art Treaties Randy Reinholds interviewed by John Bruce Scott Gene Bruce Scott we mostly celebrated the amount of work being done by Native Americans in the professional theater we celebrated the professional theater for including Native people in a purposeful way we wonder why it's not done more often and really happy about the conversations that augmented this conversation about how to work with Native people and Native images on your stages in the most respectful, thoughtful ways that empower and start to do away with historical violence and we all realize we stand on the shoulders of giants that is one thing that binds us together in the theater we celebrate great artists there have been a lot of western artists for a long time and here we are 20 years and it's a new set of artists that I realize influenced me and I was a young artist aspiring to August Wilson and Lloyd Richardson style and caliber of work and I'm thrilled to be in that kind of theater Black Lives Matter civil engagement and the responsibility of theater Claudia, Patricia Joe, Tyrone anyone who was there want to speak to what happened we just talked about the importance of the work that we're doing right now and also the national kind of community that we're doing when they were 28 hours and this October will be our national month of putting it all together and so a lot of things are involved talking about being involved with your community having a discussion around the issues and making sure that folks know about it in 28 hours the voice of the voices in your community anyone from that session want to speak one takeaway from our session is how important it is to listen to your participants that work with you and your community partners our students work part of our presentation and they and just the essential nature of the arts in every child's life particularly children who these other company minors who come here and have a lot of social and social issues and that the arts are the way that has allowed them to heal to grow and to strengthen and to ultimately lead as we saw in our students today thank you good, as you know the clock reframing the narrative of sovereignty looking for Ty, Rihanna, Betsy hey everyone, we talked about tribal sovereignty and I'm looking for Rihanna who's here so let me explain our stories of sovereign nations through a sovereignty lens and we sort of compared those to TCG values and looked at global citizenship and we just wanted to reinstate and recognize Turtle Island in which we stand the time to not lecture but to explain about our status not only as people of color but also as citizens of sovereign nations and a lot of people misunderstand that there is no sovereign separate sovereigns inside the United States so we took a look at the values statements that TCG made as a really good jumping off place because for Native people our values are really important to us and what we wanted to do was remap our sovereignty and from our values on to TCG and I'll let you come talk about some of our suggestions so some of our suggestions that Drew came up with was with artistry, inclusion and activism that to be recognized as US citizens to add citizenship and maybe some of the global dialogues to set out consent and guidelines for our intellectual property rights to include us in the work across borders and boundaries for peace and understanding and to really implement renewal and call to action for all people to have protocols when they're making theater with indigenous nations in our countries Refugee Nation activating art from a borderless perspective Raise your hand if you're a refugee think about that, raise your hand if you're an immigrant okay guess what, we're dealing with refugees and immigrants in this country I'm a refugee and I have been empowered through theater to have my voice so that's what Refugee Nation was all about go ahead and name around and tell us we we had talked about the work that we've been doing from the last decade of working with other refugees in the US and how that naturally has progressed to working with the current refugee crisis and how there's so much in common with other refugees arriving now that can be learned after 40 years since the Vietnam War we have seen people in leading roles with refugee resettlement immigration lawyers leadership agents who are now in those positions of power who are now helping the recent refugees and theater can help tell those stories and empower refugees to tell those stories and anything else someone who is in my session wanna throw out their bailout for me are we more prepared here? we offer this prompt we'll offer this prompt in your vaka is a word, a Hawaiian word for canoe in your vaka what do you carry with you if you were forced if you were forced to leave so think about that and I also wanna leave with one thing imua is a Hawaiian word that means forward to progress every time we've worked with our communities at the end of it we close out with imua imua means to go forward to progress we say it three times the first time for yourself imua forward to progress all the people that you work with that you speak with that you work with on that day imua and the third time for the rest of the world so I offer you that I ask you to do that with me so three times imua one, two, three imua stage between anti-immigrant hysteria documenting the stories of undocumented people is Jose Torres Tana in the house Jose Jose want to speak to what they saw and heard and witnessed in Jose's session a privilege of posting him about two or three years ago at LATC he's a wonderful, wonderful artist and he's so smart he is a scholar, he does so much research so sometimes he'll make outlandish statements and damn it, he can back it up you can back it up and we asked him you're kind of preaching to the choir with everything you're saying how is it going to spaces where it's a little confrontational for people and he said humor and the biggest compliment to him was when someone would come up and tell them well I have my impression or idea or opinion about immigration but you made me laugh and he feels very strongly that he can create a space where he has made an awareness and stepped forward in someone's mind and he has moved someone's heart that he has fulfilled his responsibility as an artist and oh man, I hope you get it back I don't know that was the ground in 20 Middle East center stage Fiji Turanje Kizarian Golden Thread Productions interviewed by Jameel Corey of Silk Road Rising this has been recorded in the voices they are not lost from this four square circle last up what do we do about Trump question Martin were any of our speakers I'm looking at Francine, Mike, Maurice, Nelson anyone here want to speak to what happened or anyone who was in the session want to speak to what was said I guess we'll never know what to do about Trump Fiji started highlighting some of the disparity between mainstream and politically active American theater and which is a larger issue that should be resolved was the double consensus of the room and then moving into specific action points that we can enable before November one of the people in the room was a deputized voter registrant you can go onto your secretary of state's state website and find out how to become some of the registered voters and you can do that in your computer's lobby we also talked about how it's an outcome of Brexit and the sort of voters remorse that were seen to be out of the UK can be used to let range complacent voters who might not be registered or might not think that Trump is an actual problem that we need to deal with to sort of inspire and actually show up and vote very little left to say can you stand if you are able we are going to close out this session every year this session gets bigger and bigger and bigger it feels like it's feeding something doesn't it feel good so stand if you are able we are going to close out there is a vision of the beloved community and Ty you brought us into the space Ty can you just come and close this out if you could not to get al kumbaya on you if you could hold the person's hand on your right and on your left side I'd like to do that so we are on continuous change peace