 All right, welcome friends. We see you trickling in. Thank you for being here tonight and, you know, experimenting with a Saturday night program. We haven't done these yet. So I have been wanting to do this even pre pandemic after hours at the library. So I guess it will be after hours virtual at the library. So grab your after hour drink minus Earl Gray. Good as I am still on city time, but welcome. And we'll just give it a few more seconds for more folks to filter in. And we are so happy to have you here. I'm going to spiel off a couple of library announcements while we get settled in, including that tonight you are here for the celebration of Miguel algorithm, and we are so happy you joined us and this is a partnership with our friends at the before Columbus Foundation. The first library would like to acknowledge that we are in the unseated land of the aloney tribal people and acknowledge the many raw mutish aloney tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards in the lands in which we work reside where our servers live where all of us are. Well, not all of us but where a few of us are here in the room today standing and sleeping our heads. I want to encourage everyone to learn more about land rights, first person culture, and you can put in the chat box what territory you're coming to us from. And they put a link in the chat box that has all sorts of information about first person first person culture. It will also have information about tonight's event. Anything that comes up any books any anything that comes up tonight I will also add that to the document and continually share that to you in the chat box. We also want to acknowledge the painful situation this country remains in politically and the uprising of white supremacy again the consistent police brutality and know that the library is not a neutral action and we stand in solidarity with the black lives matter movement and support collective action to end structural structural systemic and institutional racism. We are doing this by working on our own racial equity work in the library. I can share with you to is put it in this doc, all sorts of great reading lists about being an anti racist and all sorts of great things about being better humans and getting our, getting it together. So announcements from the library we have our 16th one city one book where we try to get all of the city to read the same book, excited to announce Chanel Miller. Know my name, and this is her story of sexual assault on the Stanford campus, and how she had to deal with the court systems. It's a wonderful book. I encourage you all to check it out from your library. We have library services to go or you can get it from your favorite bookstore. This month's January February by monthly read is the old drift by Namwally Surpell. Again, pick that up at your local bookstore or library to go. Our two picks for this month are borderland books and Marcus books in Oakland. We love bookstores hashtag if you haven't seen it, all about supporting barrier books. We have kicked off our more than a month black heritage cultural and heritage celebration which started January second for us, and we'll run all the way through February, and all year round. I really want to encourage lots of people to come out to this. This is the first time we've done a storytelling for adults, and Diane is a Grammy award winning storyteller, and she'll be accompanied by Mr Eric Pearson. So please come out and support this one and I had a pleasure of having a meeting with her in person, and it is going to be so worth it so please come around for that. Lots of art, lots of authors, Miss Melissa Valentine a Oakland native has written a book so come check her out. And I am going to now turn it over to my friend, Justin DeMung from the before Columbus Foundation and happy to work with you again Justin. The before Columbus Foundation was founded in 1976 by Ishmael Reed, and they are behind the American Book Awards, which has been hosted at SFPL for quite a long time and I hope we continue to do that. So, I will now turn it over to Justin. Thank you so much, Anissa. And again, my name is Justin DeMung. I'm the chairman of the board of directors of the before Columbus Foundation, and would like to welcome all of you this evening to our celebration of the poet, Miguel Algarine. Good evening. We are joined by playwright, writer, and president of the before Columbus Foundation, Wahaja Ali, poet Nancy Mercado, also a member of the before Columbus Foundation's board of directors, the theater director and impresario of the New York Recon Poets Cafe as well, Rome Neal. The before Columbus Foundation founder along with Victor Hernandez Cruz Ishmael Reed, and the visual artist, Nica Tofino. Before we get started, I will mention that you can visit us on the internet at beforecolumbusfoundation.com. Well, I encourage all of you to support the before Columbus Foundation and our many programs, including the American Book Award, where you can find the donation button on our website. And include yourself in our ongoing efforts to revive, resuscitate, and excavate images of our nation and its many peoples that are in harmony and in sustenance with the true lives of those who live here. Miguel Algarine was certainly one of those people who helped organize and bring about that vision. He won the American Book Award three times once in 1981 for his collection on call. Again in 1986 for times now, and more recently in 2009 for lifetime achievement. The truth that Miguel Algarine moved on to the ancestors. There were 4467 children crossing the southern border alone, who were arrested, detained and imprisoned by the United States in a set of camps that are correctly described by historians in the United States and elsewhere as other nation camps. The year pre for the month previous rather, that number was 4661. In the first five days of this year, that number is 288. Because the role of poetry and theater, particularly in the last three days has been amplified in terms of the part that it can play in our civic culture. In our expression of consciousness and understanding each other. The extraordinary ordinary fact of these thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of children in fact, being held in these camps remains something that has been sequestered or suppressed in the international and American news media. It goes up to the artist, the artist as cultural activist as cultural organizer of which again Miguel was an exemplar to bring this knowledge to the people to implement some kind of constructive change to end this extraordinary level of violence. Al Goreen's work spoke with an extraordinary power of emotional authority that never left behind his sense of reality. And he was such an artist to bring about the understanding of what can be done and what is possible in the future to alleviate this extraordinary situation of violence that we find ourselves in as a nation. When one looks back into the history of this country even as recently as the 20th century. One doesn't discover Chicago in the 1940s and 50s through the Bureau of Labor Statistics. One looks to the work of Gwendolyn Brooks of Nelson Albin of Richard Wright. When one looks to understand the meaning of what it meant to be New York and to live in New York at all. The decades preceding this one. One looks to understand the work of Miguel Al Goreen. So, again, I want to thank everyone for joining us this evening. We have some of Miguel's closest collaborators, lifetime friends, and those who worked with him throughout his efforts as a poet, as a man, as an artist, and as someone who brought a tremendous sense of joy and becoming to our world. So with that in mind, I welcome again the president of the Before Columbus Foundation, Wahajad Ali. Thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you, Justin, for that wonderful introduction. Thank you to San Francisco Public Library and everyone from the Before Columbus Foundation for co hosting and co sponsoring the celebration of the Titan known as Miguel Al Goreen. I will always miss him and his solicited and unsolicited commentary given to anyone who entered the stage in his house I do not want to bore anyone instead I just want to share some stories. Thank you, who might not have known Miguel or do know Miguel maybe this will put a smile on our face as you remember the type of man he was first and foremost, let us not kid ourselves Miguel Al Goreen was a three time winner of the American Book Awards, given out by the Before Columbus Foundation and he rightfully earned his lifetime achievement award, given by the Before Columbus Foundation and we're no slouches. Ladies and gentlemen we have MacArthur genius winners we got Pulitzer winners we got the poet laureate of America as part of our board we have the Booker Prize winner. We have scholars journalists poets and so we decided every year we decide to go out the American Book Awards and we said all right who should receive this prestigious award and I remember one year. When Miguel's name was up. No contest, the man earned it. He deserved it, and like someone mentioned Miguel like it's his. And you know they say that you know a house oftentimes represents the spirit of the owner. Oftentimes it is the extension of the person oftentimes a representative of the individual itself. And for those of you are lucky enough to have ever entered the New York and poets cafe in the lower east side of Manhattan you would have embraced and the spirit of Miguel Al Goreen open hearted generous vibrant loud messy and I say that as a compliment resourceful, because you'll find spaces where people are rehearsing you're like I didn't even know there was an attic. And you'll go down in the back and you'll see an actor performing I'm like their space, their space that I think it's not where you keep like the rice like yeah but right now we're going to keep an actor there instead of the rice. I say all this because some of my fondest memories are at the new reek and poets cafe. And oftentimes people, you know we sit there and ask ourselves, what's this, this word multiculturalism and poetry and art, you know, maybe just study coding. Maybe you should just go and become a doctor, maybe just go into stem. Do we really need this stuff doesn't really matter there's 7 billion people there's climate change there's income inequalities there's a wide rise of white nationalism. Why do we need these, these these kids these brown and black kids who didn't become doctors and engineers. Why should we invest in them. And I want to give you a short quick story about the importance of having a champion of multiculturalism of having a champion of young voices who are often unheard of having a champion of a mentor of a teacher who can guide and elevate those voices and give them a home where they can live and breathe. And this is a personal story. Many years ago, when I was a young man and had more hair on my head. This play the domestic crusaders I was a 21 year old senior at UC Berkeley and my teacher happened to me. Ishmael read who is on the thumbnail right here. Ishmael is not Muslim or Pakistani like myself. And it was actually a short story class and he said you shouldn't waste your time being a short story writer you're actually a playwright you don't know you're good with dialogue and characters. And this was three weeks after the 911 terror attack which has unleashed the unending war on terror, which was unleashed against a brown black people around the world but now has revisited revisited the United States of America if you don't believe me. You should pay attention to what happened in the summer, during the black lives matter protests as unmarked vehicles grabbed white suburban moms in Portland. All right, so that war on terror came home. At that time, I was a young kid, you know, trying to figure out what to do the rest of my life just turn 21 911 just happened I'm Muslim everyone's freaking out the country's going crazy and Ishmael said, I'm a black man. They've been coming after my people for 400 years. The way we fight back is through art and culture and storytelling. That's one thing that haven't been able to take away from us. I think you guys are going to get hazed for the next 10 years. They've been hazing us for 400 years. I haven't read a story about Muslims and Pakistani is I just see you guys being depicted as terrorists. You should write me a story about a, what are you again Muslim Pakistani. Yeah, write me a you ever read fences or death of a salesman. I said yeah, write me a play like that. I'm like this is what are you talking about this is a short story writing class I'm, I'm 20. Please, let me just write some short stories he goes no no no. Just don't waste your time. Give me 20 pages of a play. You'll be fine. All right, come back in two months or I'll fail you okay bye. That ended up being the beginning of the domestic crusaders. The play that we wrote about a family of Muslim Pakistani American family and Ishmael after I graduate kept asking me for five more pages. Sorry for my 21st birthday finishing for my 23rd birthday. The play became the domestic crusaders. This was 2003 2004. All right, the country was so insane at that time that if you remember the Dixie chicks who have now renamed themselves the chicks. Natalie Mainz, the lead singer, said one comment against George W Bush. She goes, I'm offended that George W Bush is from Texas by all that's all she said. America lost its mind. They cancelled the Dixie chicks. They took tractors over her CDs if you guys are millennial we those old timers used to listen to something called CDs. They took tractors over their CDs they burned their CDs. This is the Dixie chicks, the whitest women on earth, blonde, harmless. They're singing songs. And meanwhile we're writing a play called the domestic crusaders. The rest of us are like man if this is what America does to the Dixie chicks what are they going to do the rest of us. And I remember that play. We produced it on our own. We did it locally. We did it at the Berkeley Rep. We did the San Jose University Theater. We proved ourselves. We did grassroots. We made a profit. Nobody would touch the play. They said, no one wants to see a brown family. How is this relatable to the mainstream? None of these people are terrorists. We want something sexy like honor killing or terrorists. We got rejected across the board. You fast forward to 2008. America lost its mind temporarily and and I thought they actually didn't elect a black man Barack Hussein Obama, which majority this country at that time for a brief moment thought was Muslim. I'm like this is insane. Maybe this is the time to bring back the domestic crusaders and Ishmael at this time and Carla blank his partner and collaborator who became the director and dramaturg of the play said yeah maybe should try it this time. Let's try in New York and Ishmael said there's one spot that I think might give you a shot. It's the New York and poets cafe. I'm a California kid. So I never been a I never been in New York before then. So I said, if anyone will give us a house. I will go meet them. It's 2008. We were both in New York. Me, Carla and Ishmael at the same time. Ishmael does a meeting with Rome Neal. And he says go watch and pitch it to Rome who at that time was the artistic director. Rome says, All right, well, it seems like a good play but I don't know if there's an audience for Pakistanis or Muslims if they if they show up fantastic. If you're going to have to get this amount of money and this amount of insurance money and if you get like $25,000 will give you the space for five weeks. So I said, I'm going to get you the money had no idea how I was going to get the money. All right, I'm sitting in California I'm broke. I'm like how am I going to raise $25,000. We raise the money, we decide to premiere it, the play the domestic crusaders on 9 11 2009. I remember we get there in August to rehearse. Carla's there I'm there. We're, you know, we're just trying to like map out the scene and then there's a guy sitting at the bar, drinking during the rehearsals, just like talking to my actors as they're trying to concentrate. And you know, I'm new at the New York and so I'm like, who's this guy kind of quasi yelling at my actors and like unsolicited giving them direction. I was about to say something in Carlos like, that's Miguel. He's the founder and owner. And then Rome's like, Hey, hey, hey, Miguel does this all the time so this is going to be a problem. You know, the next two months are going to be rough. But if he likes the play. This is going to be really good for you. If he doesn't like the play, he will let you know, during the actual performances. No, no, I'm like, I gotta put, I gotta friggin put this play on. I got to find money. I have to do publicity and I got to worry about this guy. I've never met Miguel algorithm. Drinking, praying to God if he doesn't like my play, I'm literally going to have my own troll. I'm going to have my own troll at every performance. And so that's where we met Miguel. And I remember the first time Miguel actually saw the play and this is Ishmael Reed will remember this Rome will remember this. He decided to do a soft premiere at the New York in a day before the premiere on 910 to celebrate Miguel's birthday. You remember that Rome. And we're going to do a big potluck. And Miguel brought all of his friends and some of these friends are Ishmael Reed Amiri Baraka right so these are the friends. And they're like you're going to premiere this play in front of these luminaries of New York or Miguel's friends. And there's going to be a big potluck. And after the potluck, it's going to be your play. And it's Miguel's birthday. So you better be good. And I remember my mom came and my mom, I'm like, I'm me, you know, maybe we can win them over. You make really good goat briyani. Maybe you can find a way to make goat briyani because I'm here from California where am I going to make goat briyani. And I remember Pope used to be the stage manager. And Pope took my mom to a small, just small kitchen in Queens, where she ended up making briyani for like 100 people. She goes I've never made briyani for 100 people in three hours in someone else's kitchen let's just pray it works out. And so my mom's goat briyani ended up being the most popular dish she got cleaned out. If you remember Roman ishwara they're like what's this dish this dish is amazing Miguel loved it I'm like already a win. And I'm like, okay, we got enough premiere this play in front of Miguel and his friends for his birthday, I told the cast. And I'm like, by the way, not to get you freaked out Amiri Barak is in there and so is Miguel Algern and so is Ishmael now they're freaking out right. So I'm like you better put on the play of your life. So they do it. They do the play and throughout the entire play. And every time that I had intended someone to laugh, Miguel left. And every time I intended someone to say, stay quiet Miguel stay quiet. And Miguel, for those who've been in your weekend, just kept lobbing out encouragement. And once I heard Miguel's voice. I'm like we got this. And throughout the entire run, Miguel ended up always being like he was proud of the play like he's like I've never had these many Pakistanis and in my house before who knew that Pakistanis like plays. I tell my mom to make more good Briani. And he gave these wonderful recommendations and he in he one time said said something with it always stayed with me. He goes for your next play. Remember, silence is also powerful silence, because it was a careless play and he goes next time try to play with silence you might be really good with that as well. And I remember he ended up becoming becoming a supporter and I remember that that house, the New York and Poets Cafe became the only place that would give my play a shot. Miguel said after five weeks we broke the box office records of the New York and at that time. He said my only regret was we didn't add it for another five weeks. We got a New York Times review we got Wall Street Journal we got NBC we got, we got pretty much fantastic coverage. We were sustained on just this good spirited camaraderie and Rome meals, famous banana pudding that made us all gain seven pounds after two months. And I remember that spirit of the New York and the fact that they conco discovered talent gave talent a home, you know, people forget that the New York and was where slam poetry that which was once mocked and ridiculed. It was the home of slam poetry the New York and Poets Cafe. People also think oh, so all the brown and black people go who rejected by Broadway. Nope, a lot of people go there because Broadway didn't care to cast us or read our stories. And from the New York and Poets Cafe from Miguel's home screenplays have been produced movies have been made poets have been launched. Alright careers have been launched because he had the ear and the eye to see the talent that was often ignored. And he said, you too belong in the mainstream. And one thing I'll say I'll end on this. I just want to keep it 10 minutes. Is that play domestic crusaders that opened proudly on 911 2009 off Broadway and the New York and Poets Cafe got published the next year in 2010 by McSweeney's, and I was just informed by McSweeney's proactively that they are republishing that play in 2021. And the plays that were competing with us on Broadway. Everybody has forgotten. And so that's the spirit of Miguel algorithm that's the spirit of the New York and Poets Cafe and when I heard he had passed away. There was a, you know, I'm at that age right now 40 where both the death and birth come at waves. And it's an interesting period in your life and you see a lot of your mentors get older and past and there were just a sadness that I had, but it was replaced with a memory. And I think when you think of someone that instinctual emotional response you have captures the feeling right and I had warmth. I had like it was sadness but also warmth. Enjoy and I was just very grateful. I'm like man Miguel and Eureka and took a shot and gave this at that that time broke 28 year old California boy and his play a chance. And if it wasn't for these guys who gave my play a home. Maybe I wouldn't be here speaking to you right now so it gives me an opportunity to also remember that we're in the footsteps of our ancestors are elders. No one does it by themselves. And Miguel what he created with Rome and others at the New York and is an extension of that generous spirit. And let's not forget that this man was no slouch he was also a scholar of Shakespeare. And anyone who says and Miguel oh he didn't know Western literature the man was a scholar of Shakespeare, who taught Shakespeare at Rutgers University, and then entertained the rest of us in his home, literally, which then became the new So with that I I honor Miguel, and I think everyone who has kept that legacy alive and is keeping that legacy alive. And if you do support that legacy please also support the New York and poets cafe which is nonprofit, and also the before Columbus Foundation which is a nonprofit organization, you get a tax deductible refund at the end of the year. So if you're into this support us please and it is my honor to introduce the man who's banana pudding I really miss. And I hope inshallah as we say after the pandemic ends, and we all survive it that we can all go back to the New York and have this banana pudding. It's a Rome Neil. When I knew him he was the artistic director but now he's moved on up and as a chair of the board. And he's also the weekly banana pudding jazz fest now it's the virtual jazz fest he's an actor. The man has channeled monk, more than anyone else perhaps better even then monk himself, and he's also the proud father of Leo Neil and Olympic swimmer for the United States of America, Romeo. Thank you all job. Thank you so very much my brother. This is right about the play and the New Year we can pose cafe and all that wonderful energy that Miguel brings to the space and still brings to the space even though he's not with us. In the physical form his spirit will never leave the New Year we can pose cafe because you know, it's an energy that has been with us for 40 years now I came to the New Year we can pose cafe as a young budding actor for play that Miguel was directing and title New Year we can nights which was written by Miguel Pinero. And when I came into the space I came from Brooklyn. To the low East side and all I knew about, you know, my Puerto Rican brothers was the bodego that was on the block on the corner and I walked on into the New Year we can pose cafe and I was enlightened by all these elitists, literal giants Miguel, Algarim Miguel Pinero and and but they were still on the edge, it was, it was no energy of being, you know, I'm, I'm a professor at Rutgers and I, and, and I'm the leaders know they were down to earth on the edge and like you say they have the battle beer on the side drinking and talking much trash to the audience who came out to see what was going on at the New Year we can pose cafe. So I was, you know, dumbfounded taken into the oldest energy and as a young actor, I would come to the New Year we can pose cafe on my roller skates and, and just became a part of the family that play really just turned me into the cafe some 3040 years ago. And I got the opportunity to actually do something that was I didn't even I was doing Miguel cast me as the lead actor to play the character of Miguel Pinero, which I had no idea what I was doing. And, but he, you know, talk about multi culturalism. He had the, the options to say hey, I'm going to put this brother, and make him my Miguel Pinero character in this play. And, and he did. He played that character for long because I didn't know what I was doing, but he thought he thought I did. And Ronaldo provoked took on the character and took it to another level. When Joe Pat came into the house and actually came into the house and saw Ronaldo and, and, and mentored him at the public theater to do a play that he had written called Cuban is teddy bear that eventually went to Broadway with Ralph Marchio karate kid and this well known actor Robert De Niro. So, so that was the beginnings of my relationship with the cafe. Five years later, the cafe closed down and when it closed down I felt this energy that it shouldn't end and Miguel, who was such a great man great artist, his words should always go on and on and on. So I use it. We used to do poetry open mic at the cafe and, and Miguel had all these wonderful poems and we wrote a play for the play around his poems and he gave me five of the poems of you in the play. And I did the performances, and I've always kept that energy of Miguel words with me for forever. And one of the play of the poems is called Dante's Park. I'd like to recite that for you. that we're gonna go do this. La la la le le le. Le le le. Choo coo coo coo coo. Choo coo coo coo coo. Choo coo coo coo coo. Choo coo coo coo coo. Choo coo coo coo coo. Beautiful, clear, July light. Late afternoon clarity sitting in the center of the biggest neon layout the world has ever seen. July light in Manhattan. July heat gently self-tempered. July get down. Boogie oogie oogie get down. Boogie oogie oogie get down. Boogie oogie oogie till you just can't boogie no more. Number one hit of the day. Number one hit of the day. This day this clear and balanced day. This clear and balanced moment. Sitting at Dante's feet and feeling my way through purgatory approaching a terrestrial paradise this mellow yellowing light. This get down. Boogie oogie oogie get down. Boogie oogie oogie get down. Boogie oogie oogie till you just can't boogie no more. Miguel Algarine's Dante's Park. And this poem was written by Miguel when he used to go to Lincoln Center and he used to sit right outside of Lincoln Center before going in to check out the ballet. And the park that he used to sit in was Dante's Park and you see this wonderful statue of Dante and that was the impetus for the poem. Again, this is one of our great poets and I just recently looked at a videotape of a that I created around Miguel's birthday again celebrating the man and his words. It was a play, an evening at the New England Post Cafe we did nothing but Miguel Algarine's words. And we had all these wonderful people that came up and from his different books of poetry they were reading his words. We had one guy came up to the backstage and he came over to me and said, I'm a rapper, I want to do a rap. Is it Miguel's rap? No, it's not Miguel's rap, it's my own rap. I said, we're only doing Miguel's poetry tonight. He said, but I want to do this rap. I said, we can't do it. And then I realized after the brother left his name was Pat Joe. But again, we were doing Miguel's words and with Miguel's words only. It was a wonderful night of celebrating. I will always continue to celebrate the words of Miguel Algarine, it's very important to me because as he founded me and many other people at the New York and Poets Cafe we need not let his legacy die out. There's so many poets and people that have come along that they don't talk about them anymore. They just float away. And it's not going to happen for Miguel as long as I live because I really love the man very much and I admire him for what he did for myself and for so many others in poetry and theater. And speaking of theater, Miguel was the producer of the Andromeda of the New York and Poets Cafe for some of the greatest theaters back in the 90s when we were winning Black Theater's most prestigious awards like the Delco Awards. For the production of the year, for Pepe Carrillo's and Samuel Hart's Don't Explain and Wesley Brown's Life During Wartime with the earlier two, Shingo Deima and Don't Explain rolling the dice for the lucky 7-Eleven Shingo was nominated for 11 of Delco Awards and won all 11 awards. And then comes along Don't Explain by Samuel Hart that was nominated for 7 of Delco Awards and won all 7 of Delco Awards Springboarding the earlier career for the two-time Emmy Award-winning actor from the hit TV show This Is Us, Mr. Ron Seifers-Jones. And one year together, Miguel and myself we were at the Obey Awards and we received the Obey Grant for Excellence in Theater at a magnificent 1990 theater season. Miguel was also the recipient of the Larry Leon Hamlin Producer of the Year Award at the National Black Theater Festival of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. An award for winning some and critically acclaimed theater productions that he put together. You know, there was one play that we did, Shingo Deima, one of the most celebrated drama critics in New York Clyde Barnes came to. And he gave us a great review after dancing in the Isles at the New York and Poets Cafe. It was magnificent to see this Clyde, one of the staunch critics of theater dancing, you know, to the Latin beat at the New York and Poets Cafe. Miguel also was the producer and had these friends, these very special friends. They were just, you know, just regular playwrights. They were poets who wrote plays and they were great people and one of the best in my book is Ishmael Reed. Ishmael Reed, I'm so glad he introduced me to Ishmael Reed because it's been a love fest ever since and I've produced, I've directed so many plays by Ishmael Reed. I think it's about eight plays by Ishmael over the years and then there's plays by Amiri Baraka directed six plays by Amiri Baraka, Pedro Pietre, Seiku Sunianta, Wesley Brown, Miguel Pinero, of course, Lois Elaine Griffith, Carl Hancock-Rufs and Renato Pervold. Miguel brought all this energy of all these great writers to his house and he was so well received. Some people don't realize that this, it didn't start in the 70s for Miguel, the early late 70s or 80s for Miguel with theater. It goes back to 1969, in 6073 with L. Puerto Rican playwrights. Him and his buddy Ray Barry put together that group and they did plays like Side Show and Apartment 6D. Now it would be wonderful just to do these plays but when they write a film about someone like Miguel Pinero and they have Miguel Algarine in the play, in the film also and Jean-Carlo Esposito played a part of Miguel Algarine, the great Jean-Carlo Esposito played a part of Miguel Algarine. It really meant so much and we're so very blessed to have Miguel as a producer of theater and one of the ones that made theater happen after me. He was the director of the American Post Cafe, not only at the cafe but throughout the country because we toured our place all over the place and yours truly was his director. And I call, we always, and when I introduce him I always say this is my producer and we're partners in this passion of crime that we call theater and love them so very dearly but we'll celebrate them forever and I'm so glad you guys before Columbus Foundation are the second group that came aboard and have done this and I thank you so very much. So with that said, it's time for the man. The man that's, you know, that's my partner now too. We have a passion for, he brings the plays and no matter what play he brings I know it's going to be a winner. We just did the haunting of name and well Miranda and it received numerous reviews throughout the world. And if anybody is in charge of telling the truth about what's happening in this country and in this world, it's it's nearly the great history. Let's have it for him. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, you can hear me. Okay. First of all, thank you for the great introduction. And I got to leave early. I got a deadline. I'm doing a huge piece on the continental army. 1776. Okay. On the continental army. 1776, which is made up of blacks. Freeman. Immigrants. Jews. Slaves. And Native Americans. So without a multicultural army. These clowns couldn't play white nationalists on the weekends. And that went away goes where they do their mischief. We just want to make that point. That is a multicultural army. That allowed these clowns to raid the capital. With their cell phones. And their texts messages. And they're holiday in rooms where they went back and. Sample. Chocolate mints under the pillow. And I'm going to go out and hang out in a bar and celebrate their triumph. A pursuing. Two on our women. So. The title of this work is called. January 6. Ain't got nothing to do with 1776. Now. Also want to talk about my book. Just mention it. It's called. Got to get the title. Black hole sings the blues. Okay. And I don't know if you've read the latest. News from. Astrophysics. But they found another universe. Okay. Why the black hole sings blues. And it's got me on the cover. In the Swiss Alps. Where I stayed at Nietzsche's house for a week. And found out that the Superman was a mama's boy. Who had gastrointestinal issues. So he's a Superman too but I guess he didn't live long enough to raid the capital. Okay now. If we're not for Miguel and Rome. I would never get a plate done in this country. It's easier for me to get a plate done in China. In Hunan a few years ago. I was directed by color blank. All Chinese cast speaking long. English monologues in perfect English. Bottom bottom. And places like that. In the United States. I don't have a patron like. Jill Biden. Okay. So. A lot of my plays have been done at. The New York and pause cafe and they were. Green lighted by Miguel. And we had a great director like Rome. Who reminds me of all these are the Bob musicians in the forties. Who played on pawn shop instruments you can hear them all they're all shrilly. He could take anything. And make an art form out of it. And he did a whole gospel. We call it a gospel opera. On that stage there at the New York. And the first play of course. Is the haunting of Lynn manual Miranda. Which was universally condemned by these people from Harvard and Yale, who are educated to be Europeans. I call them amateur Europeans. You know very little about. American history. And so they must be shocked. When the Schuyler historic site say yeah, he was a slave trader. And they produce the receipts where he sold slaves. And the young poet in our report. She said. That she loved Hamilton and listen to Hamilton. While she was writing her poem. So maybe I'll send her copy of the book. It's got Ron's picture in there. And it's got our cast. And there again, we did something on a dime. Thanks to her on Neil. Now. When I arrived in New York. In 1962 almost 60 years ago. There was only room for one Puerto Rican and one black for it. The low 40 street, I think was Frank Lima. They worked in the debt. They had their one token there. He's a good writer. But when I left in New York in 1967. Because if I had remained in New York, I would have been murdered by an overdose of affection. So I had to get out of New York. And the New York Rican poetry scene was emerging. And the armor magazine workshop. Was planning the seeds for the black arts explosion, which after being dismissed as an annoyance has become the establishment. Matter of fact, I just got the FBI reporter of black arts. You got to read it. It's, it's, it has more details about black arts than any scholar or book. From the beginning to the end. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I guess they've abandoned the place. I don't see anybody. From the beginning to the end, the FBI report. So black arts. Now. Black arts is the cannon. Just like New York and post cafe is a cannon. And, and I know black arts. Is a cannon because Henry Lewis Gates. Who's been denouncing it for decades is back in it. So let's be some money in it. Let's be some money in it. Independent self-reliant. Writers black and Puerto Rican and among them, the New York rickens among them, Nancy Mercado, who's a pioneer. And that's amazing because we really misogynist. I've been educated. I've tried to change. So it's amazing that women were part. Of black arts in the New York. And I've never been educated. With black arts. And so I've gone, in the end to a kind of colonial, literary regime. Which has been entrenched for 100 years. And one of their assignments was to select. Which hand, pull up natives would be six. Would succeed. And which were trouble makers. To be shun. We sided with the problem makers. Miguel Ogrening was a leader. of others defining them and decided to define themselves. And Nancy's got many honors, but I think her essay in our new book that Carl and I put together called Bigotry on Broadway, I think that's gonna win a prize cause she's take four out of children. Leonard Bernstein is crying wherever he went. I think I know where he went cause she takes down the West Side story. And she says at the end, when do we get to write our West Side story? That's the challenge. When do we get to assert ourselves? You know, George Bernard Shaw said, if you do not write your own stories, others will write them for you and they will vulgarize and degrade you. So you look at Hollywood and Broadway, the way we're presented, we're really being degraded. So the Neo-Rican Post Cafe is known as a center for slam poetry. A number of playwrights, including Wesley Brown, Emery Baraka, Milla, Panero, Pedro Pietra and others have had their plays produced at the Neo-Rican Post Cafe. They didn't have to be modified to please investors. You know how that works? You know, they'll take a play and you wouldn't recognize it by the time they finished with it. They even did this to the great August Wilson, change his endings. He used to call me up in the plane. You know, because they wanted to appease or they wanna cater to what Lord Richards, his director called the plastic crowd, the plastic car crowd. So they have to be modified in order to please uptown audiences cater to the bottom line. We didn't have to do that. I mean, some of the plays, I remember some of the performances we did, maybe two people show up. You never knew who would fill the seats at the Neo-Rican because the bottom line was not the objective. Okay. I've got to mention Roman Neal's Banana Putting Jazz series. One of the few places that's keeping jazz alive. Jazz is a dying art form. You know, somebody like Sonny Rollins sells more records and albums in Japan than he does here. When you go to Europe, jazz musicians who can't get gigs here are like household names, middle-class people, no jazz at other places. So Roman was keeping jazz alive, he even allowed me to make a fool of myself playing the piano. Now, with this COVID thing, I mean, he's getting worse. I know that wrong, but COVID, the gigs are really drying up and people are hurting. And the same thing is having the blues out here where the Oakland blues is becoming extinct. If you read my article about it, in Ultramagazine, I wrote a piece about it. So Miguel provided us with a space where we could do our thing. No matter how the box office looked. In fact, some nights, as I said, only a few people would show up. Miguel will be missed. He was one of a kind and he also knew the location of some of New York's best restaurants. And I enjoyed myself with him in those restaurants. We had a great time. Now, I wanna introduce Nancy Mercado, who's a legend in the New York scene and the national scene. And I might say the international scene. She was named one of 200 living individuals who best embody the work and spirit of Frederick Douglass on the bicentennial of his birthday by the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and Anti-Racist Research and Policy Center at American University. She is the recipient of the 2017 American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, although she's still a young person. That's quite an accomplishment. She's the editor of the first New Yorkan Women's Writers Anthology Publishing Voices Magazine of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College. She has guests curated for the Museum of American Poetics and she has been featured on national public radios to talk of the nation and on PBS's News Hour Special. America remembers 9-11 and is the author of It Concerns the Madness and is the editor of the World Remind, a young adult anthology. She holds a doctoral degree in English literature and her website is Nancy-mercado.com. And here's another story that we like. A lot of the people that we grew up with were as talented as we were. I'm one of the few tokens who have missed these are token. We found it before Columbus Foundation, they wrote in the New York Times that here I was, I'd gotten all these establishment honors and stuff. What was wrong with that? I said, well, there are other people who could write as well as I write. I've always known that. I'm married, Barack didn't allow himself to be no token. He's supposed to be the next baller. He's supposed to be the next token. And he wrote, there are others before me. Okay, so before Columbus Foundation, if they'd done anything under the direction of Justin and Wajah who worked tirelessly to keep this organization going, they would still be imposing tokens on us. And we have caused a revolution because we're the ones who call the shots. We're the ones who call the shots. So I wanted to do Nancy Mercado who will make her witness about Miguel Aguirre. Thank you very much. Hi, hi everyone. I hope everyone can hear me. I just unmuted myself. So thank you for that wonderful introduction, Ishmael, and what can I say? Well, it's wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me and for thinking of me for this. This is a wonderful program and so well deserved. I met Miguel when I was about maybe 19 and that was in 1979. I was a student at Rutgers and that's where he was teaching. And just as I was beginning my second year there, he was taking on the reins of being the chairperson for the Puerto Rican Studies Department. And I had the privilege and the fortune to be able to take classes with him there. And that's where I met him and he introduced me to everybody because when he, his class he would have, obviously he would have speakers come in and that's where when I met everyone, Miguel Piñero, Sandra Maria Esteves, Pedro Pietri, Dato La Vieira, you named them all of the figures from the New Rican Poets Cafe and the surrounding areas. And also as I kept my relationship with him because I knew, I saw the importance of who he was and wanted to learn as much as I could from him. As the years passed, I got to meet others like Ishmael Reed and Victor Hernandez Cruz and Amir Baraka and they all became good friends, thank goodness. And of course, Alan Ginsberg, I did also meet and before he passed and so Miguel was a great, a really great influence in my artistic life and in my life, my personal life. He was a great friend, a lifelong friend. And he was brilliant, he was a brilliant person. He was great because he was able to straddle, he was able to straddle both worlds, the academic world and the street, the street world because at the cafe, you had a lot of writers and artists that were hanging out in the street and like Miguel Piñero, who became a great playwright and writer in his own right. And he honestly was a drug addict and he was in the streets and Miguel provided a place for those luminaries who other people would have discarded immediately. He provided a place and also provided a place for the academic crowd and for the brilliant, for the people who already had all the accolades and who were accepted by society. So he was brilliant in doing that because that gave, like I say, gave a home for those different factions to also to come together and to mix together. And that created its own world, its own unique world and its own, as it pertains to, to the use of language. It's like how we were able to mix English and Spanish when we first came to the United States or when we were born here, like I'm first generation Puerto Rican born here. So we were able to, instead of letting a lot of us or most of us, I would say, instead of letting, allowing the place to kill us, we were able to take it and use it and create something new. Create something new, create a new language, create new artistic movements. And it was, Miguel did that. And so I was there for a long, I was there for since, I never left since 78. I mean, I wasn't, I didn't go, I wasn't every night at the cafe, but I was hanging out with him when he was at home or when he was at his sister's house. When the cafe closed, I spent most of that time with him in conversations and we would go to the ballet and I went to with him many times to that statue, that Dante statue that Rome talked about. And he introduced me to a whole world of artists and a classical world also. He was very adept in terms of the classics. His mother and his father loved opera. So he was very adept at opera and his favorite ballet group was the New York City Ballet. He would always tell me that the American Ballet was no good, that the good group was the New York City Ballet. If you're gonna go see ballet, go see them, don't go see the American Ballet when they come, don't do that, you know. And so he had his preferences and he was just, he was a dynamo. What can I say? I mean, he taught me a great amount of life, things about life too. Those restaurants that H. Mel talked about, he took me to probably all of them in the 40 years or whatever that we knew each other. We got during the early time, 80s, we went to the discos to dance. We did as much as we could get done, we did. And Miguel, he was amazing because he could communicate and fight with whoever. It could be the Puerto Rican community on the island or it could be the Puerto Rican community in New York or it could be the Caucasian elite of New York or it could be the black nationalists. It didn't matter like Miguel could get into any world and make something of it and survive and thrive there. I mean, Amiri Baraka and him, I remember when they got into a vicious argument and I think it was on a panel that they were on at the St. Mark's Poetry Project and they got into a vicious fight and I actually got scared. I said, oh my God, what's gonna happen? Well, nothing, they were great friends. So they got into a terrible fight. It had to do with politics. And then afterwards everybody went out for drinks. So Miguel was, he was incredibly taught me all of this stuff. And when he was at Carnal Cook, this was towards the end of his last years. I always went to see him. There were people who wanted to go see him and they would contact me and I would take them there to see him. And he was always very, really happy to see everybody. Miguel was always, he was still writing, he was reading. He had a bunch of books that he was reading. When he was there, he never lost his intelligence or his memory or anything like that. Miguel was there to really the end of it. And sorry to say that because of COVID, we were not able to be with him unfortunately when he passed and we were not able to see him off afterwards either. So that was heartbreaking. But we are gonna keep his memory alive. That's gonna happen. You know, that's really something that's one of my goals now in life. So, you know, I look forward to questions. If anybody has questions to ask me and I'm writing a piece now that I'm praying that I finish it on time that is for the Poetry Foundation about Miguel. So, you know, look for that in the coming, I guess in the coming months, they'll publish it online. So, that's what I could say. And then we're also working, there's a committee and we're also working, we did a huge tribute to Miguel. That's actually like six and a half or seven hours long. And it's online. And you could access and you could see it if you go to the New York and Poets Cafe website, they should be up on their site. And what other, the gathering of the tribes also has it up on their site. And there's several other organizations that have it up. But, and also Facebook, if you go to Facebook, you'll find that if you look for those organizations, they all streamed it simultaneously and recorded it. So, we're working on other programs that we're gonna be doing. That's just the first one of many that we're, you know, that we hope to organize and you'll hear about those coming up. So, I wanted to now, I guess, introduce a wonderful visual artist, let me see what happened to her. I have to get her, Nick Satufino, who knew Miguel and knew about, you know, was familiar with Miguel. Miguel's also artistic visual art, artistic preferences. And cause Miguel was also, he was huge on visual art. He knew his stuff. He knew about, you know, Miguel knew about Latin American literature. Miguel knew about literature from Spain. He spoke about, I think, five languages, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and I believe German, if I'm not mistaken. So, Miguel was really brilliant. So, he loved visual art and of course knew about music and about cuisine. When I first met him and went to visit him right after I graduated in 82 to went to visit him in New York. And the first thing that I saw was a magazine of one of these French cuisine magazines he used to read. So, he was up on everything, man. He was amazing. But Nick Satufino knew him really well and I'm so happy that she's here and it's an honor to really have her. She has a BFA and an MA degrees and I'll read you a little bit of her biography here. Her career as a muralist and public artist flourished and was commissioned by educational institutions and governmental agencies that include the two subway train stations within the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Nick Satufino was the designer of two subway stations in New York City, which is no small feat. And I believe she's working on her third commission for the city of New York. Those are huge projects and there's really an amazing thing to have a Puerto Rican women artist create those subway stations. It's amazing, you know. She, let me see. Also, she also had, aside from the Metropolitan Transit Authority who funded and commissioned her, The Health and Hospitals Corporation, both from New York, La Guardia Community College in New York, Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, the hospital for special care in New Britain, Connecticut and also sponsored some of her great works. And as a resident artist teaching art and design at the Central Connecticut State University, she developed and created the first muralist, murals public art prod program. She has been the recipient of many awards throughout her four decades as an artist that include the Donald G. Sullivan Award from the Department of Urban Planning, Hunter College, the Mid-Atlantic Endowment for the Arts Regional Award and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship, the Puerto Rican League Defense and Education Fund for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts Award in conjunction with Mayor David Dinkins of New York City's Council's Excellence in Arts Award given by Council President Andrew Stein at that time and the Manhattan Borough President's Excellence and Outstanding Achievement Award given by Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messenger at that time, among others. Nisa's done a great deal of work. She was also the, I believe the co-founder of, one of the founders of El Museo del Barrio, the first Latino Puerto Rican museum here in the United States and also co-founder of El Tayel Boriqua that's a print shop and an artist center in its own right. So without further ado, next up, Tufino. Unmute yourself. Okay. Nancy, thank you so much for that introduction. I love you. Thank you for having me in this panel talking about the great person and humane, his humanity. Miguel had as a person and I was a fan of his word, yours and all these people that are here, the poets and he loved also the arts. He was a very big fan of my work and of my father's work also, Rafael Tufino. I met Miguel in the sixth, 1969. I was coming back from Mexico from school and that was the time of the young lords in El Barrio. I lived there with my mother and later on I moved to the Lower East Side and we found the El Tayel Boriqua and all that and I met Pedro Pietri and then when I moved to the Lower East Side I met Miguel when he was on 6th Street in his apartment and he was with all the poets that the era used to be in his house. Miguel, Piñero, Loquici and Fuego, all the old goya, quito goya. So it was great, it was fantastic. The creation of the New York Rican cafe is a fantastic pivotal, titanic thing that really Miguel did for all the poets and to advance literature with the minorities, people of color. And what is amazing also that I wanna tell you this little story that he was invited with Miguel many times during the 70s to go to Puerto Rico to share with literature over there in the university and talk about the movement and his poetry and also Miguel and they spoke, they need to speak in Spanish. Most of his stuff was in English but they had that sense of the culture because you have Miguel Piñero talking about cuchifrito love affairs and you know Miguel stuff. And they were not very welcome, you know what I'm saying? Because well, they're not doing it in Spanish so that's not really part of the culture and although it has a sense of the heart and all of that. And I remember that they were at the airport and it's a custom when you're in the airport and you see somebody from Puerto Rico or you know somewhere you hear them talking it's funny how from where are you? And they go, I'm Puerto Rican, no, but I'm from Caguas or Rio Piedras or San Juan and all of that. And Miguel looked at them and he said, no, I am New York Rican. So there you have the word New York Rican where he come from. And then later on after that happened that people caught on to it because even Jaime Carrero who was a, he wrote in Spanish and in English and he was very big in Puerto Rico. He came, he was sent here to study to the United States. Then later on he was a bike hit coinator I'm saying New York Rican. Then other things started getting into the mix about our culture and our language, all those wonderful things. And the plays and bringing young people in to create that chain from us to the next ones that are gonna come and what they're doing and mentoring them and bringing them in and all of that, which was wonderful. Another wonderful thing that Miguel because we lived in the Lower East Side and also Bimbo also lived in the Lower East Side. So we used to see each other all the time. When Bimbo did the poem of Loicida we were tying that it was always alpha. Oh, I'm going to Alphabet City. I'm going to Alphabet City. And that title of that and Bimbo had written a great poem about Loicida. It's not Loicida, it plays in Puerto Rico. He just namely uncoined it, Loicida. And we decided through the community planning boards through Loicida Economic Development who was directed by Dorak Oyazo. We said, okay, let's name Loicida, the Lower East Side Loicida. And we fought for that and we did it. Avenue C became Loicida. So it goes to show you that not only in his literature and his humanity he was for the people and he wanted to gather and name things like the naming of the street for Pedro Pietri on Avenue B and Third Street. I think we need to name a street for Miguel, maybe Avenue C in the Lower East Side. So all these different things, you know to unite our people and the artist community. And it doesn't matter where you come from, whatever. It depends on what you're creative or what you wanna do. And he embracing people. And the cafe, you know, bringing in the, not only the word and the literature, the music. Ray Barreto used to be there all the time. Most of the people that played with Tito Puente, a lot of jazz players used to go to the cafe. I used to be in the cafe every Thursday night. And I used to go see most of the poetry and stuff like that when it happened. I'm listening to the young people. And people wanted to know what was happening at the cafe. So a lot of people that were very, very well known, they wanted to come in, but they didn't know how to get to the Lower East Side because they were scared. You know what I mean? I know Jennifer Lopez and Anthony Marc Anthony also went to the New York Kings Point Cafe. Kennedy's, John Kennedy, he was all at the cafe. You know what I'm saying? I mean, in New York, and they felt comfortable. These people will come in, you know what I'm saying? So the cafe had that to bring everybody together. It doesn't matter what class or what situation you were in. You know what I mean? Miguel had that greatness about himself. And he transpired that to other people to do the same thing. He was a great mentor in that sense. And I loved him because he loved what I did as an artist and I love his poetry and all of that. I love Pedro also and Miguel, you know, Miguel Piñero. And all the wonders for even good man, you know, we came from there when they did Miami Vice and all of that, only different actors. Also that made it out there into Hollywood. That all came from Loicida, from the Lower East Side, from the cafe. And that was because of Miguel's spirit. His spirit brought this about because he opened, then he said, and he found a venue. Okay, you can't be in my house all the time because I gotta also go teach tomorrow. I gotta get up early. So we'll find a place and we will do this, you know? But it's the sign of the times also. So what is gonna be the design time? We can't forget him. We have to use him as a template for other people to do new things and to continue what he was doing and change it, you know, and come up with young people to come up with new stuff, new things. You know what I mean? In terms of the culture. And to remember, you know, Black Lives Matter, the Me Too movement, you know, the woman in color, you know, color woman, you know, opening the doors, you know, uniting also with the men, the children, the situation in the border, you know, this country was made by immigrants. They're the workers that go from the morning to the afternoon to work to make this country. You know what I mean? In the pandemic, that's what we have seen. If it wasn't for him, them, that, you know, they ride the trucks, they go to the supermarkets and all of those things, the medical, you know, the doctors, the nurses, all these people, I don't know where we would have been. You know what I mean? Like we have to, this pandemic has taught us that we should love each other. We should spread more loss instead of down hate. Even though we know as a people that the other side doesn't love us, but it doesn't matter, we love them, you know? We love them and we are going to do whatever we have to do to continue in our plight, to make our history stick for our young people to know our history and to make it better and better and to create housing, health and all of those things and to create more place that talk about those things. It doesn't matter what country you come from. The pandemic has showed us that we are part of the universe where a globe is the Earth. It's no longer where I'm from America. I'm from France, Italy. No, we're human beings and we're in the globe. So I wanna thank you all very much for inviting me and saying these few words for Miguel. Thank you. You're muted, Justin. Oh, thank you so much, Nita, for participating in this evening in our celebration of Miguel Algarine. Nancy Mercado, again, thank you for being so generous with your time. I wanna extend also my thanks to Ishmael Reed and Rome Neal, Wahajad Ali. And again, encourage all of you as Nita so eloquently encouraged us to revive and resuscitate and bring further herds of life in the vision of Miguel Algarine, the New York Recon Poets Cafe, the Before Columbus Foundation. I wanna thank my friends at the San Francisco Public Library for their assistance in helping to get this program onto the internet and YouTube live and thank all of you for joining us this evening. I would encourage everyone to support the Before Columbus Foundation. Again, you can find us on the internet at BeforeColumbusFoundation.com and I'll close this evening's program with a poem from Miguel. My proposal is that. My proposal is that I want to live with you. Enjoy first, then procreate. Children for the new century, leaving clues and roots, a netdling that repels and receives what was, converting it into what is. I want to unite bodies, sowing space for two, tying a knot. Miguel Algarine, today and forever. Thank you all so much. Nica, I'll return that to you. Okay, I'll take it. Thank you everybody for coming tonight. Thank you. Saturday night. And yes, everybody can unmute if they want and. Well, I just like to say thank you for having this. Thank you. And it's always good to connect with the folks. Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Nancy. Thank you. And again, Ishmael and Wajah and you also, you know Miguel, like we said, his legacy is intact and we just got to keep the word out and thank you so very much. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Justin. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Nica. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. It's good to see you, Rashida. It's good to see you. It's good to see you, Ron. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you, Nica. Oh, I gotta see you sometime, Rashida. You do. I had my, I had my vaccination today. Oh, good. That's great. But anything that I can do to help with the New Eureka and with, you know, before Columbus, because I think that those two, you now are probably the last lingering groups that connect our generation, Miguel, my, you know, all of us, you're probably the last two places that connect Umbra and the Black Arts movement, you know. I just wanted to say this one funny story about Miguel. Nancy, you were talking about how he straddled these two worlds of the academic quote elite and the street quote, not so elite. One time we were, I don't know, there was some, there was something, some conference or something. And Miguel and I were walking along with somebody else and somebody was making a comment about all of these Reacons and not enough Black folks. And Miguel just turned in one beloved movement, hand on his hip as camp as you want and snaps him and says, you're sorry you're not. I mean, and he just, and the man was standing with his mouth open. I can't remember if, even if I did, I wouldn't want to identify him. But he had no, his identity was very embracing and flu and he didn't let people play one off the other. I really, really appreciate that. And I think now that young people in their quest for searching for identities, this whole multiracial, multivis, multivis, by this, by that, just be a plain, ordinary human being, doing the best you can. When you cut, the blood doesn't say, okay, four drops that just went out. That was my great grandmother who was half Indian, half this, half that. And then the eight drops over there, that's my father and his Italian grandfather and his French great, great grandpa. It's your blood that's going out. I mean, I'm not saying that you should not be proud and celebrate some sense of an identity. But I'm saying that the way in which people like Miguel were so integrated, that's a really good word for it. He was totally integrated. Otherwise you get deluded, you get deluded and you become nothing and you can't do that. And you get diluted because you're so busy, acknowledging every iota. What if you didn't have an Italian father but somebody said you did? So then what? Uh-oh. Well, maybe I'll have to find something. No, no, no, just as legs. As legs and use the just be simple. Yeah. Because there's profundity in that. There's profundity in that. So I really want to encourage you Nancy and all of you. I mean, I felt, but I mean, you're younger than me. I really want to encourage you to keep doing this work because it's important to have a place where you can just breathe and not have to think about whether you started every single eye. Yeah. Every T, but that people understand the spirit of Andy and the, and the, and the, the integrity of, of, of, of, of your work. So what, you know, keep on going. Thank you. Thank you. I will see you soon. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.