 take your seats. Not to do this morning, but as always we're going to start with some art. So we're gonna actually start with a manverse this morning and to tell you a little bit about it I want to bring up the original project manager for man. Some of you may know, some of you newer to the network may not know, but give a big round of applause for Anne Tothman. Good morning. I'm really excited to be back here after like five years and I'm here representing the Adeline Edwards Foundation which is based in New Orleans and it is a foundation that supports the alumni of Yahya, it's a youth arts organization that's been thriving in New Orleans for the past three years. And I'm introducing one of the artists that we support through the Adeline Edwards Foundation, Ron Theron-Rapha, who is going to be giving the circus. And I am so excited to introduce him because I have the privilege of working with Ron Theron for the past 25 years off and on throughout his career. We first met in New Orleans, I was fresh out of college, I got my first job at Yahya as a junior staff member, and Ron Theron was a high school student who was a freshman. We had a commission to do a mural on the wall of his high school with his run art organization. And there was this really tall wall, this three stories high, and we were painting the entire height of this wall. And so I rented an elevator lift, a crow's nest, and all of the other artists were terror. It would not get in that crow's nest. And he was the only one who had stepped into this and he went all the way up to the top and spent days there painting. And it was just magical and amazing to see his fearlessness. And he painted this beautiful face of every child. It was the face of a young person that was ebony on one side and faded into alabaster, holding the world above his or her. And it was just a lovely sight, the process of the name of itself, and that image of him painting that is forever in my mind. And that was how we met. And last year, through the Out of My Nones Foundation, which is a new foundation, I was excited that I was able to program my past relationships with Dan and introduce Ron there into Rosie Gordon Wallace, from Diaspora 5, Cultural Arts Incubation in Miami, where she is right now for our vessel. And she invited Ron down to Miami and he had a residency there, which was his entree into really focusing solely on his own practice. For years, he'd been working at Gallia. He returned in a leadership position as a mentor. And Rosie took him and given a studio space and he was able to work practically 24 hours a day through the night. And he's been creating amazing works and it's really created this fabulous domino effect of opportunity to exhibit it on Governor's Island this past summer. And he's here to tell you about what he's been up to. So, from there, please come to the stage. Don't judge by just Ron, but I'll try to sort of just explain, like, I don't know who I am. And I guess the way I figured to do it was to just go through the list of questions, you know, and kind of going through the who, what, me, why, where. That's it. My name is Ron Theron. I'm raised in New Orleans and I'm based in New Orleans now. The work that I do is mixed media sandwiches, sculptures. The goal is working, for me, working with found objects. I sort of love the history of the existing found objects and using my association and the Cruz Association with these objects. To sort of create narratives. And the wind for me would be, I guess, created with something that my mom was always a maker. My dad was a builder. And so that was just kind of second nature. But like Ann said, that talent was fostered through the in-house program. Yeah, yeah. And during my experience, I had an opportunity to meet an artist by the name of John Scott Passaway. But that visit to his studio and the talk with him as a teenager, it showed me who I was to be. It was like, his passion for art making and his commitment to young artists and artists in general was just like, I admired that and aspired to do stuff. And so that was the sort of kind of me to, I mean, I still didn't have a clear direction or something. I wanted to be there, you know. And so that was, yeah, it was all of the beginning. And in 2005, I entered into a more contemporary practice. And it was a response to the flooding involved. And so for me that was an opportunity to sort of, well, I'll go back. I just came out from a, you know, a contemporary, not a consumer, but a commercial art practice. And so in 2005, I began to work in a contemporary, a lot of times I worked from a place of sharing. And so my first piece was about sharing my experience with that natural disaster. And so that process of sharing is what leads me through all the other work that I do, you know, with functions as therapy, you know, questioning and curiosity. I don't know the human condition and why we do what we do. And my work stops with the right. And maybe if I am satisfied with the answer, I'll consider it complete. And Christine can answer, come to an answer. The work exists as a question that maybe the audience can help me answer. And so that's been my approach to the work. I'll tell you a little bit about what you just saw. I started a series about Can't Call Home. And when I was in Miami, I was just kind of looking at those sort of, I don't know, the displacement that exists in New Orleans and my association with what home means. And so being in Miami and thinking about home, I started this value work. And it was sort of a, I don't know, it was a weird thing. It was in Miami, so I hadn't traveled in a long time. And I'd traveled a lot with the youth program. And every time I would travel, I'd arrive at a young teenager that was like, oh, what do I mean to call you? Like, if something happened, someone would call you, you know? And so that was this thing we had. And like, if I don't call you, it means that everything's all right. And so I hadn't traveled for a while. And going to Miami was the first time. And I was in Miami. And so now I'm contemplating like, oh, should I call her? But during this time after the storm, delusion of this all hurts. And so the person's kind of losing their sense of identity and their association with the world around them. And so, so this idea of like, calling home. I don't know, that person isn't there anymore. I don't know. I don't know much about her, like, you know, a face to face, or it's just like, no, that series came from. Conversation that looks at displacement. We're going to have a session today entitled, Displacement, Imagining New. I'm Kara Roptinas. I'm the director of Community Engagement at the Guthrie Theater. And Minneapolis is now my home base. And like, spent a lot of years there in school and working in theaters, like the number theater. But my hometown is Austin, Texas. And for many years as an artist, but for two years in particular, I worked with Ron Berry and Greg Carlin at Fusebots Festival. And we worked on a project called Think East. And Think East imagined how art might shape, intervene, shift, discussion around displacing. So what we're going to offer for you today is a kind of series of our strategies, methods for engaging this conversation in a way that surfaces the history of neighborhoods, that acknowledges complexity, and that allows us to both think logically and also think creatively about displacement. When we were creating this conversation, we had kind of a series of three agreements in terms of how we would go about it. First, in this conversation, we're going to focus on lived experience as a site of knowledge production. Second, we are going to honor, we're going to focus on Austin, so in large part we're going to honor local contexts and local languages. Rather than ask folks to shape their stories and shape their languages with ideological frameworks and languages that might recenter their lived experience on western-centric ideas, we're going to let people speak from their point of view. And so you'll hear the word displacement, but you'll also hear the word gentrification because in East Austin, you use the word gentrification. These activities that you're going to participate in, in part, are designed to decentralize power structures. So you'll hear us like doing the thing where we're talking, but also we're going to get up and do some stuff. So our first activity is called a social networking activity, then you'll hear a little panel discussion, and then we're going to do crowd sourcing bold ideas. So you're going to have to get up a little, then you can sit back and listen, and then you'll get up again. Social networking. This is an activity designed to prompt immediate engagement around the idea of displacement. It surfaces the very lived experiences in the room, and it emphasizes the possibilities in new conversation. So we are going to see where Brad is on this. We are going to ask you to think about two questions. And we'll get started. I'll just read these to you. We'll put them up in just a moment. The questions are, what is a challenge that your community faces related to displacement? And the second question is, how have you seen displacement addressed in an interesting and meaningful way? Those are really big questions. So if you want to just focus in on one, that's fine. There's no right or wrong. Interpret those questions as they make sense in terms of your lived experience. So one of the things we learn when doing these activities is that time is a really interesting thing in working with people. If you're like me, I like to think long and slow. Then I might want to write about it. Then I want to have an existential crisis about what I wrote. These activities are like, you get up and you go and time matters. And it gets you out of your ruts of thinking. So I'm going to give you a minute, and I'm going to time it, to ponder one of those two questions. So you have one minute to come up with a little beginning of thought about what is the challenge that your community faces related to displacement? Or how have you seen displacement addressed in an interesting and meaningful way? So one minute, I'm going to time it. Go. Everyone stand up. It comes from this activity, and it's very simple. You are going to, in each round, repeat the same pattern. You're going to walk around and find someone that you don't know. And for two minutes, you are going to speak your thoughts however they come out. Don't worry about it, just share. And then we're going to switch, and your partner shares their thoughts for two minutes. Now I saw this activity where we were up and moving yesterday, and time is not our strength. You have to go along. So I'm going to ask you, as you move, that you stay aware of my voice on the mic, and time. Because we really do want this to go quickly. The quickness, the moving changes the way they think and talk. Alright, so, find a partner. Find a new person. And say, what do you remember here, this art installation? And then, in conjunction with that, have events at those sites of those, to say, this is a former site of where you grew up. And so it's this ongoing process of feeling for the arts that try to rebuild some of those things. And they're saying, why not follow them to the point that they become incapacitating? Yeah, it's just, when I hear about this, what do you think about this role, this placement, this experience? Where you've had an interesting part, some things that you were like, yes, that's it. Or perhaps you've heard something that made your shoulders go up, and you were like, if we're always comfortable in this conversation, then we're not having an honest discussion. So, part of activities like this is they disorient people a little bit, and that's great, because it gets you out of your habits of thought. Hold on to the things that you've heard. We're going to return to some of those ideas with our final activity. But now we have some panelists joining us on stage to sort of talk with us about their lived, artistic, personal experience with ideas like displacement and gentrification. What's going to work is we're going to start talking about Austin, and then we're going to broaden it to discuss national and international ideas. Before I introduce the panelists, I want to kind of situate you really quickly in Austin's history. Because this is a hill called town, it was the tacos. But there's a deeper history beyond that. One name that Austin was established by the Republic of Texas to do three days, to create a center from which to stage the genocide of Native Americans, to stop the Northward expansion of the Mexican government, and to create a new space in which to spread slave-based agriculture. And that's the foundation of the history of this city. When you talk about displacement in this current moment, you should know that that's the whole history of Austin, different kinds of displacement. After the Civil War, when there were a number of freedmen communities around town, and those were in areas that are now like our hippest, coolest neighborhoods, eventually as realistic crisis rose, all of those freedmen communities were displaced in the freeway in a neighborhood that we roughly call East Austin. That process was given city policy structure, stamp of approval in 1930 with the city plan. Initially, the Latino or what you would say in Austin, the Mexican neighborhood in Austin, was really small, and it was south where city hall sits now, and the neighborhood called Mexico. And eventually that also over time as the Mexican population grows in Austin, it also gets through sort of de facto and overgenical policies, it also gets displaced into East Austin. In East Austin, in the early 1980s you see the way that the government worked, the policy that the government had, there were no paved roads in large parts of East Austin. There are no roads at least, no in the 80s, in the 80s. No sewage service to large parts of East Austin, and the school systems, like the radical difference in West to East in school services wasn't as pretty profound. As the neighborhood kind of begins to get resources in the late 80s and 90s, a lot of artists, and you know this pattern, right, a lot of artists moved in to East Austin, and now it's one of the fastest gentrifying neighborhoods in America. The whole city is being displaced, don't let me... As economic power comes into the city center, everybody is being pushed out, and it feels like a real crisis moment, but I just want to point to that it's always been a crisis moment for a lot of people in the city, especially people of color. So I just wanted to frame that for you. Let's start our conversation with these folks, and we'll get out to them. Some introductions. Lulu, raise your hand. This is Lulu Flores. She's a long-time political activist and attorney and a partner at Hemler, Lyons, Flores, and Austin, Texas, and is the past president of the National Women's Political Caucus. She is currently commissioner on the Austin Arts Commission. Welcome, Lulu, please. Thank you for raising your hand. One of the most important artists living and working in both Austin and Rio, Megan McConaughey is a conceptual artist whose research deals with a pretty old question of existence. She currently works primarily in photography, video, and installations, but has no loyalty to any medium. Her loyalty was due process. She's the artistic director of Views Box Festival. Using principles of grassroots organizing and equitable development processes, for the past three years, Views Box Festival has led the planning and positioning process to create East, a new multi-use development on the site of a former environmental brownfield in East Austin. Welcome, Ron. Gail, raise your hand. She's the director of Asian Arts Initiative, a multidisciplinary community art center in Philadelphia that engages people of all ages and backgrounds to create and present art that addresses Asian-American experience. Welcome, Gail. And then, Sousa, raise your hand. You're a cultural administrator, journalist, agent, and cultural advisor based in Brazil. Currently, he's the former president of La Red, a network created in order to generate and provide space for joint work between producers in the areas of contemporary dance, theater and music, and Latin America and the Caribbean. So again, this is our panel, but we're going to start with local context and we're focusing on everyday lived experiences, the day to day. So my first question is for the three Austinites. And you can take it in any order you want, and also if you want to stop me and change the question or ask each other questions, that's fine. It has been a lived experience in Austin navigating displacement and gentrification. Is this on? Can you hear me? I guess I'll start since I'm the senior person living in Austin. I actually lived in Austin over 40 years, and I've seen a lot of changes in that time. I grew up in a radio in Texas on the border, and it was a pretty homogenous city with a Latino scene, obviously 95%. When I got to Austin, it was a very different experience. First, I was in undergraduate school and law school. While I was in law school, I worked for the first a Mexican-American elected to the Texas Legislature ever. And that was 1976 when that happened. So I basically learned the experience of seeing when I first got to Austin, going over and getting lost in East Austin because I didn't know where I was going. And actually seeing the barricade of IH 35 and seeing the community as it existed and seeing the disparity. Really, it was like you get one Austin, West of I-35, and a completely different Austin East of I-35 or East Avenue, as it was known. And you heard a reference to the history of Republic Square, which used to be by the little bit park in that area called Mexico, and the East Austin quarter, I mean, the Fifth Street quarter where we had Mexican activity, but they were actually displaced purposefully, as was mentioned. And I had that experience because I got involved early on in the politics of East Austin, mostly with the Latino community, of course, and seeing those differences and disparities and some funding in just the infrastructure. It was just a very frustrating experience to look at. Now, more recently, as an arts commissioner, and still as a Latino living in Austin, I see communities of color being displaced, East of I-35. And of course, it's part of economics, right? The land and its proximity to downtown and great areas. But nevertheless, these are homes, these are communities, these were centers, although they were forced to, you know, or involuntarily relocated East of I-35, they made it their home. And their communities and our power bases for our communities were in those neighborhoods and in those communities. So it's very sad to really feel a sense of loss. I work with a Hispanic bar, we have kids writing essays, whether it's the most poor legal issue in their community and some chose gentrification. And it's just seeing the despair and not understanding why they are not able, their parents aren't able to keep their homes after having lived there so long and after having suffered the injustices of not ever having any attention paid to that community. So it's a real, there's a sense of loss for me, for that community. I don't live in that neighborhood, but you know, I grew up there basically through my political ties and building, you know, trying to build a power structure for my females here in Austin. I was just saying how I was so shocked when I was reading a research paper about how it happened, all, you know, the systematic and the mechanics of how it actually took place legally and with the intent. And that's just shocking to me. Even though I lived it and understood it, you know, seeing how systematic it was is even shocking to me at this time. And it's a real education lesson for me as to thinking about things that we need to do in the future, maybe to make restitution and reparation for those things and work together to maybe figure out ways that these communities can work. And I think artists and visionaries of our communities and creative thinkers can help forge alliances and work through the political process to maybe come up with solutions that can help ease the pain and move forward together. That was a long answer. Thank you. Good, thank you. My name is Vaitanahe McClendon. I'm going to be speaking more as an artist and as you said, more about arts, possible relationship to coming up with solutions for displacements or having responses to displacement. I am an Ethiopian-American. I am not a native Austinite. That is a very important distinction we need to make. I came to Austin in the 90s to go to school at UT and had the same experience that we were talking about. The divide of I-35 and just how drastic that was. For me, it was almost, there was a time change because it just seemed rural on East of I-35. At school, I had many different diverse group of friends and one thing was how rare it was for us to have a black friend that was from Austin and at UT there just seemed to be a wall that separated that experience. So I wanted to actually share three thoughts with you. I think when we talk about gentrification and displacement we have to see it connected to the larger context it has to do with distribution of power and resources. I think about it after being here in the 90s I left, I lived in different cities other countries and I recently moved back to Austin after living 15 years in Brazil. My experience being in other countries and seeing the process of displacement is interesting because both in Rio and in Atlis which is my native city displacement or development tends to happen to the government so construction is slower and really it gives you a different sense and understanding of the impact of this economic phenomenon we can talk about it on the macro level as an economic phenomenon that's always going on but we're here in a place like Rio or Atlis and you see how neighborhoods are renewed slowly meaning that memory is not erased from one day to the next. It takes time so you see buildings that have homes where a benefit is just standing and grasses growing in it so it has a feeling of a war zone and you tend to connect the impact of displacement and gentrification with work and for the people who are experiencing it that is how it feels and time is slowed down in a way or in Rio during the preparations for the Olympics the way that the neighborhoods were moved again happens in a slow way because development is different there and you experience it in that sense it puts trauma on your body you see it where here every time I'm driving to my studio on East Cesar Chavez the landscape changes like within a week and I go, was that place there? I don't remember but for somebody who's experiencing it of course they remember, they know their memories are being erased the other thing I wanted to say was my daughter was telling me she goes, but don't we talk about these things, she said will you stop with displacement when the revolution happened and you moved here I mean you lost everything as well I said, well there's something different there I mean that happened to my whole country everybody went through that experience together collectively and there's something different when the experience is happening to one part of the population and around everything else is going differently except in that space for those people so the experience is felt in a different way and your relationship to it is different third thing just in the complexity of the layers I was reading something I don't know if it was online or in a periodical and I was talking about a residency they were doing in Marfa and something about what they said struck me, which is they were saying they were talking about what they were doing but they said they were not being in the middle of nowhere and they're creating their way to the middle of nowhere I think that's significant it's not over, it's a place it has a history and there's people there and sometimes when people enter a new space through gentrification you think probably almost like this of an instance that there's nothing there to whatever it is that you are doing in a building there's a place there as an artist for me if I'm going to install a shadow and what looks like an empty gallery I know it's not a guarantee it has all kinds of history and it has a context that's been there so those are the three things that I think about when I think about the complexities of what we're discussing if we don't acknowledge its complexities then we won't have any kind of response that's worth the effort thank you, promise thank you so much so there's like so much to say oh my god first of all I would say I think there are as many reasons for making art as there are people in this room for me I don't view art making as something separate from life it feels very much at the center of it it is in some ways indistinguishable for me and so and I feel that as someone is running an arts organization I feel the same way and so to me it was what's happening in our community every day would not be dealing with that in some way and so it felt very essential in fact it's a heart of room we needed to be as an arts organization to be dealing with this we are not experts in real estate in urban planning any of these things but I do think we have an ability to hold multiple vantage points simultaneously and to think about things in different ways and those things actually in this moment in this circumstance seem actually like great tools that can be really useful Kara alluded to that we've been working on helping to imagine the future of this 24-acre site which was one of our darkest environmental chapters it was also one of our great examples of community organizing a handful of maybe women from the neighborhood organized they took on the biggest oil companies in the world they got this site shut down it took 20 years to get it cleaned up the oil company put it on the market these two guys bought it and they had a lot of the arts but they also wanted to do something for the neighborhood and I know one of these guys he was in the community and he was like yes this sounds really amazing but we also wanted to I mean for me it's also from the get-go I think really important to also recognize that I'm a white middle-class guy now partnering with two developers in the city of Auschwitz we've heard not have a shining growing record when it comes to these things and so that's been one I mean we have to like talk about that we've been working Kara's been really indispensable in this work but I think what we want to do was create a space for the neighborhood and the arts community to imagine the future of this site together that we wanted them to drive the priorities of this site and ultimately create something that serves them in a way and it's done in a way that is meaningful to them so the process was almost just as important as the thing that we're coming up with and we thought it was meaningful we do a festival every year and Austin like has a gazillion friggin festivals there's a moment in the spring where you literally cannot open your pantry without a festival spontaneously and so this is a great opportunity to use a festival to look at this thing that is like really profoundly impacting our city and has been forever so we wanted to use our festival as an opportunity to model all the ideas that had emerged from the neighborhood and the arts community about the future of this site we built this kind of pop-up village on site and invited the neighborhood arts community city out to respond to these ideas what are you not like what have we not even thought about it was also important that there were lots of different ways that people could provide additional input it wasn't there was the opportunities to write, to build things tell stories there were lots of different, it was multi-mobile I thought that was really important because people react and think and want to interact in different ways I think it's really important before we even got involved we went and talked to some of the women who led the fight against the oil company we talked to the neighborhood leaders and is this something that you all even want because we didn't even want to start this process if there wasn't an interest for this to happen and they were like yes but they believed us we would tell you we are not bashful but we really believed in this project and they become big advocates for it anyway we together we kind of made this master plan for the site and now we are starting to implement it there's going to be two significant affordable housing developments there's a weightiness of about 450 people who have ties to that neighborhood who want to live there but can no longer live there and they will be given priority for this housing we also wanted the neighborhood to define what affordability meant because that word gets thrown around a lot and it means a lot of different things and so we wanted them to kind of define what that was one of the things the biggest thing that I learned is really that in many ways this whole project is a community health project I think the neighborhood literally it was a toxic site that was like poisoning the neighborhood so this project has been about transforming this toxic site into a place that's healthy but also the neighborhood has tried for decades to have health services there and so there's a real need for real health services there and as we began to work with leaders in the health industry the way that they're thinking about community health is actually quite broad and it's about participation it's about culture it's about access to open spaces it's about food so we've been working with the new med school to imagine new kind of community clinic there's not about just turning people through but actually about understanding the particulars of people's lives helping them navigate the system this is something that I desperately need having access to healthy food and so that's just been that framework has been really helpful and in some ways kind of gets to to me what is sort of a wicked one of the wicked questions which is like Karen was saying about the disparity and so in this neighborhood they didn't have paid roads they never wanted health services they're still relatively speaking there's kind of a food desert there's not a lot of access to healthy affordable food there is healthy food around affordable and so how do we get these services and these things into the community and so that's these needs that they have identified without displacing the very people that need these things and also without eradicating the culture that is so rich and vital there to me that is like right at this and they would also say that earlier their home places were also depressed and they were like that was also not the ideal situation so to me this kind of wicked question at the heart of this group let's open this up a little more to sort of pull back the lens with Gail and so let me ask you whoever would like to go first it's great as you listen to this conversation in terms of your own experience where do you hear familiar echoes and what silences have you heard what other ideas and experiences might be considered well I think we're going to speak in Portuguese so for me it's very complicated to explain Brazil is very Brazil is a very different from the rest of the world and mainly in the city of São Paulo where I came and especially the city of São Paulo one of the largest cities where I come from where displacement happens where displacement does happen every day and that today is for example the morning of the church so for example today there's a big old history of the church where for example a neighborhood like Paul Retiro in the last 50 years I've been working in a neighborhood called Paul Retiro I've been working in the city an Italian neighborhood a Portuguese neighborhood a Jewish neighborhood a Colombian neighborhood and today a Korean neighborhood so initially it was an Italian neighborhood then making a Portuguese neighborhood then it was the Jewish neighborhood and now it's a Korean neighborhood so these changes happen these changes are very rapid that's only 50 years it's very different from the it's very different from the it's very different from the where there's a big slice of the city that's the slums and then on the fringe on the beaches where all the elite people live and that hasn't changed Sao Paulo in the last years has pushed out to the periphery the people that have the most economic challenges in Sao Paulo so this is so the inside of the city kind of remains as it is but the outside the periphery is where a lot of people get pushed to Sao Paulo so now I'm not satisfied with being able to develop in the urban center the urban developers government and private are going out to the periphery creating nicer gated communities in those areas and pushing poor people back into the urban centers so there's a there have been a tendency for developers to purchase properties and leave them abandoned and that's why in the urban center in Sao Paulo there is a there is a there is a there is a there is a there is a there is a there are these properties and leave them abandoned until that real estate could have greater value and so what's happened is that they sit abandoned in these poor communities that get pushed back into the urban centers they organize they occupy those buildings and a lot of them are old historically buildings and that they become occupied with people who are using them for living spaces but are interested in preserving the historical value of them and so in this way it's through speculation, investment speculation, and then leaving it to be occupied by people who can't possibly restore it. So you have neighborhoods that are wealthier people, but then around there are these little pockets of these occupied buildings, much poorer, less resourced people who are really living on the margins. I wanted to talk a little bit about how this displacement has affected arts. So for example, visual arts and dance has been really essential to helping us understand what this kind of displacement means that you may. So the more experimental groups of artists, especially in Brazil, I'm speaking specifically about Sao Paulo, are using the whole, this whole phenomenon of displacement as an actual language to talk about the city they live in. Well, my name is Gail. I'm the MRA in the Basin, Philadelphia, in the Chinatown and Chinatown North neighborhood. I wanted to thank Kara and also Lily for referencing the fact that I think the struggle around displacement is current and urgent, but it's something that has been almost constantly ongoing. And then I also want to also thank me or your daughter, Ruby, for invoking also the ways that displacement is broader than just what is happening in our immediate neighborhoods, but also that it is tied in with much larger world dynamics and ways that people are not allowed to stay in their countries around the land. And so even though the focus for today, I think, is around neighborhood, you know, just for us to be mindful of that context, you know, as we're talking. And so I guess for a transnation that has an organization, I'll just give a quick background and context of who we are and some of our work. I have some slides, too, that may be helpful for people who want to be visual to look at. But we're a multi-disciplining community based arts center that was started as a program with the Painted Bride Arts Center in Florida back in 1993, originally in response to racial tensions and concerns after the riot came verdict, and racial tensions, especially between Black and Asian communities. And so for us, like our mission has always been to find a solution for Asian-Americans and also to be able to build bridges and go along with the even more diverse communities that we're a part of. Many more organizations we were displaced ourselves by the expansion of the Pennsylvania Convention Center in the probably more like 2005-ish. And so we were possibly 10 years, $6 million, and an excruciating, even more like tax credits process there. We now have the owner of a 24,000-square-foot building in the Chinatown, New York. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for having me over here. It's been a huge part of us having this building. But now we operate as a multi-disciplining and we have a number of other sort of non-term arts organizations and community groups that rent offices and studio space for us and other folks who use the art space for various kinds of rehearsals and events as well. And I think that for me, none of the strategies that I'm offering is not one that's always achievable, but it's for those of us who can to find ways to actually own the properties in Carla. This is amazing. This is one of the companies that we are in. And, you know, and like I just said, that's what I'm referring to. I've been hearing from folks in Austin as well about sort of the challenges of being displaced. And so really for us, I'll think about the ways that we came through those strategies. And it's kind of the world is like, you know, we're actually very envious of folks who, you know, who are in that kind of situation of being able to do that. For us, our neighborhood is a neighborhood that's very diverse. It's in Chinatown. There's a commercial core that was divided from the portion of Chinatown north where we're located. By a cross-time expressway that was built in an effort in the late 70s and early 80s, and so this more industrial part, light industrial part of the neighborhood is an area that is even more diverse than the commercial core and where Asian-Americans have actually never been sort of the majority population. Currently there's about 20% of the residential population. That's Asian-American. And a total of like 60 or more persons that's either African-American or white-American. And then there's even more, I think, diversity in terms of disparity, really in the economic standard, in the earlier exercise that I talked with some folks about the example that I give of there being a homeless shelter on one side of our block and then luxury valve departments and properties on the other side. And so I think for us, part of our role as an arts organization has also been to host and facilitate, or maybe this is a strategy as well as a role, but to be able to create an Artistic Residence series where we have invited artists in to help us to investigate and then also develop relationships and also develop interventions to try, in particular to try to find ways to connect folks from these really diverse parts of our neighborhood and put them into contact and direct dialogue with each other. So again, having folks who might otherwise either never speak to a homeless person or who might only consider the homeless as a nuisance issue. But being able to work side by side, one of the projects that there are some images of is a farm that was actually created by one of our Artistic Residents, on an unused strip of parking lot on the side of the dining hall of the shelter. And it was created a year and a half ago and is now in second growing season. And producing food that can be used to supplement, it's not enough volume to actually feed everyone that the shelter feeds, but to supplement each of the meals that are offered there. I think that is the last project or strategy that I'll mention. Or actually, before that I'll just say a couple more things with the neighborhood. One of the other things I think that's important is actually the naming of the neighborhood. And so right now, you hear me talking about our part of the neighborhood is trying to tell North. It's also called the Cowell Hill neighborhood by our city planning commission. And it's dubbed the Lough District by a number of for-profit developers. And Trussetown for the above-ground viaduct that actually many other community advocates have been working to transform into something that is called the rail park similar to New York's High Line in terms of some of this scope. And so even though I am also Asian Arts Initiative, definitely acknowledge the diversity of constituents who are part of the neighborhood and acknowledge the diversity of names that are used to describe the neighborhood. I think it's an important choice for us to use the term Chinatown North to ensure that going forward there will always continue to be a place for Asian Americans to feel like we can exist and continue to exist in this part of the neighborhood. And so the last piece that I was just going to mention is some of the work that we're just starting to do now where we are taking a lead role in trying to create a neighborhood cultural plan and to facilitate that process with local neighborhood stakeholders as well as a group of advisors from other parts of public policy advisors from different parts of the city and to really hopefully be able to create a framework so that when private developers are considering projects in the neighborhood there is kind of something that we can reflect on and use to try to either force or facilitate a dialogue and to try to shape how the neighborhood changes going forward into the future. So you've heard this sort of broad range of experiences personal experience, artistic experiences talk about micro-level systems, micro-epiceries, ghosts, ghosts of people and communities and cultures. We're going to actually shift away from this talk and I know that it's been the rest of our time here talking but one of the things we learned in the East was that actually the best way and some ways to start creating grass movement grass movement around the city is thinking and building communities actually in a small conversation that large groups like this tend to reinstate the dynamics that are already in place in the community. So we're going to shift a little bit. The community plays a big role in this. We're going to come down to this. So we're going to do now one of these process of mind favorite activities and if you teach students are really, really good at this. On the table you will see blank no-carts. Grab a no-car and you go right into the tensor. Think on that no-car, don't put your name on it. It's not your no-car, it's the universal no-car. Think about this question. It's up on the screen. If you were ten times bolder if money and resources and logic were not a play in your thinking your private relationships you were ten times bolder thinker. What one idea would you propose to begin to address displacement in your community? What one idea, one, not nobody's right on this rotation for your own health insurance. But what one idea would you propose to address displacement in your community? In one or two impossible sentences to write you know this is hard. Write a answer. Not your name, just your case. Write it up and read it to get it down. In 20 more seconds. This is really easy to do. You are going to stand and walk about and say hello to someone. You're thinking about the room. You're feeling the space. And as you say hello to a person I should demonstrate this now. I would say hello Natalie and I will hand her my beloved card and let it go and she will hand it to hers. But I won't read it. I will just go to another person and say hello again and exchange cards and I will read it. If you read it it will slow you down. So you just keep moving and moving and moving. Everybody stand. This is really simple. You are going to stand. You are going to move about the room saying hello and when you say hello you exchange no cards. And in just a quick moment I will stop you and give you another instruction. As you move though, go, go, go. Get excited. Take your pen with you. You're going to make your pen or pencil. Say hello and exchange your cards. I appreciate that you're here. One to five. Do it now. Don't think too hard. Just score the idea. Five is the highest number. One is the life. I love you. You're here with us today. Move again. You're moving. You're moving. You're round to distance. You're the third. You're ranking this card. We're moving. This is great. We're moving. You're moving again. This is the final ranking. And you're ranking it one to five. What you are going to do is there should be five numbers on that card. We'll problem solve them just a moment about it. You are going to add those numbers up and put the total number on the card. So the max number could potentially be 25. The low number could be five. If you have extra numbers just let's think positive. Get rid of the low numbers. And never think of kids with extra numbers. If you have give them that highest number a second time you're going to think positive today. So we're giving five numbers. Add it up. This is the hard part. It really is. This is where I'm a little nervous. It's not my strength. If you're trying with the highest numbers you start building a pyramid of ideas. And in a few spots and in other places where I've done this we actually programmed the festival using this activity with artists, with community folks, with activists. It is amazing what can be generated with no cards. We're going to gather these anything over the 20 total will gather. But I just want to hear. Raise your hand if anybody's got a 25. And we're going to add to you. I'm going to bring in Karen. She's got a real crisis right now. Can we share that idea with us? As communities of color in East Austin develop jobs and businesses with the community that would make itself sustainable. Awesome. We have another 25 with you over here. Okay I'm coming. I'm coming. Make way. Make way. Make way. Make way. Make way. Make way. Make way. Make way. Go. You got it. Right now you're dziecihing yellow. Build up the stop owes. Increase inclusive community process around city development, rent control and vacancy control and surveying what community needs are and what's our mistake. 24, Raise your hand if you've got 24. All right myissance. Public and private partnership that required to all central development. Yes. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Uh huh. Another 24 right here, 28. Okay. I'm coming. I'm just throwing. Make incredible schools in all neighborhoods. Yeah. We have the 24s. 23s. Who's got a 23? I got one. I got a hot one. I got a hot 23. We have to give land back to Native Americans and present Indigenous Artist Performance Series. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming, I'm coming Ms. Mekka, I'm coming Ms. Mekka, I got 23 over here. I'm together with the whole town to transfer on abandoned buildings and to save the warm homes of gardens and community projects. I'm 23 right now, I'm 23. Over there, all the way back over there, I'm weaving, I'm bobbing, I'm weaving. I'm chucking, I'm chucking. Creative community in Austin worked with minority communities to preserve the cultural heritage and sacred spaces by joining politically passed bond elections to build or finish buildings or institutions to preserve and honor cultures. I'm stealing that one, that one has everything all spelled out. Okay, come, here we are, 23, make it happen. Long, if you are buying a building where you do not intend to live yourself for at least six months of each year, you must meet with all local residents within three block radius and consent around size use of property. We have one over here, three, this is the 23 song. I would host dinners where the previous occupants of building and space in the neighborhood would join the current occupants to meet, talk and share experiences and realities to combat the invisibilizing of histories. And then we have one right here. Yeah, okay, okay, okay, 23, stand by. Stand by, stand by. 23, go. Organize guerrilla-style interventional and potentially gentrifying neighborhoods, build the street with crack heads, home with brown people and scare the shit out of all the guys out there. So this gives you an idea of how this activity works. Again, you want to go back and frame that when we're doing this kind of work, we're talking about the long game, not the short game. What we gave to you today was a kind of short game overview of some of the thoughts that different people in the conference have been having. But I want to point to, as you go about this process, it's really important to think through these conversations. How are you decentralizing power structures? How are you honoring the long history of the neighborhood and not just the current moment? So thank you for being with us in this conversation today. On Sunday, we're going to return to this, maybe, I guess it depends on the room. I got a quick, just a quick logistical thing. The ones that I gathered will hang out in the lobby, I guess where the photo booth stuff was, maybe if there's space. If there's a badass idea in your hand right now that we didn't get to share and that you think you'd like to share with folks, you can put it up there too. Just put the card in your hand if you think there's something you'd like to share or just for out of time if you're all the great ideas. But thank you so much, thank you so much. Have a good rest of your day.