 Good evening everybody. Welcome to our fourth annual Stonewall lecture at Roger Williams University School of Law. My name is Ralph Tavares and I am the Law School's Director of Diversity and Outreach. Before we begin, I want to take a moment to reflect on the lands on which we reside. We are coming from many places physically and remotely and we want to acknowledge the ancestral homelands and traditional territories of indigenous and Native peoples who have been here since time immemorial and to recognize that we must continue to build our solidarity and kinship with Native peoples across the Americas and across the globe. Roger Williams University School of Law is located here in Bristol, Rhode Island and so we acknowledge and honor the Narragansett and Poconoket people and Somes, the original name of the land on our campus where it resides. We also acknowledge that this country would not exist if it wasn't for the free and slave labor of black people. In this time of national reckoning with our history of slavery and the disparate treatment of black people, we honor the legacy of the African diaspora and black life, knowledge and skills stolen due to violence and white supremacy. While the movement for justice and liberation is building and we are witnessing the power of the people, many are still being met with violence and even being killed. As upholders of justice, our hope is to become agents of change for members of our society who have been met with violence, physical, mental, emotional, through our privileged students and soon practitioners of law. Welcome once again. We are so fortunate to have an audience tonight from all over the place. Feel free to utilize the chat function and share with people where you're from, what your current year is at the law school, the firm you represent, community organization or high school. Once we begin with our fireside chat portion of the program, we will give you the opportunity to ask questions through the Q&A feature with the help of Kate Vieira from the office of admissions. I will be reading your questions during the program unless you would like to read your own questions live during the program. All you have to do is write your question in the box and indicate live read in the Q&A and we will put your camera and microphone on. We have registered everybody so we are hoping for no zoom bombs but this is again 2020. To start our program and welcome you all to the virtual community, I would like to introduce the Dean of Roger Williams University School of Law, Gregory Bowman to share some opening remarks. Greg. Thank you Ralph and good evening everyone. My name is Greg Bowman and I have the honor and privilege of serving as the Dean at the Roger Williams University School of Law. And on behalf of our law school community, our office of diversity and outreach and our student organization, the LGBTQ Alliance, I am very pleased to welcome you to our fourth annual Stonewall Lecture Series event. The Stonewall Uprising in New York City in 1969 played an important role in our nation's history and it has been recognized for its role in the LGBT rights movement as well as for playing an essential role in feminist history. As many of you know, Christopher Park is a small community park in Greenwich Village in New York City. It is located just west of Washington Square and right across the street from Christopher Park is the Stonewall Inn for which the Stonewall Uprising is named. The Inn was a popular gathering place for the LGBT community in New York and on June 28, 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn. The raid sparked a community protest that lasted for days. Christopher Park served as a gathering place and a refuge for people who gathered there to demand LGBT civil rights. While some may not have realized it at the time, the Stonewall Uprising was in fact a turning point in our nation's history. It was a key catalyst for the modern LGBT civil rights movement. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. famously stated that, and I quote, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Reverend King did not mean this as a statement of historical determinism, but rather as a statement of faith and perseverance in seeking justice. And so in 2016, nearly five decades after the Stonewall Uprising, a presidential proclamation designated Christopher Park as a national historic monument. And in this proclamation, President Barack Obama stated that, and I quote, the designation of a national monument at the site of the Stonewall Uprising would elevate its message and story to the national stage and ensure that future generations would learn about this turning point that sparked changes in cultural attitudes and national policy towards LGBT people. Now, our law school's annual Stonewall Lecture Series seeks to discourage this goal and to help make our nation more fully inclusive for all. It is important that we do this. It is vital. In this year, the fourth year of this lecture series, we find ourselves stepping both forward and backward, both toward and away from full inclusion and belonging in our country. For example, this year, we witnessed the landmark Supreme Court decision in Bostock versus Clayson Clayton County, in which the court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against discrimination due to their central orientation and gender identity. And yet we are also seeing marriage equality being questioned. This year, we also witnessed public outcries for justice in the vests of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Armand Arbery, only to have members of the trans community seeking similar justice without any media attention or recognition. We can and should be thankful for the progress we have made in our society, but we also must be mindful of the work that lies ahead in LGBTQIA plus rights and Black lives mattering and fighting injustice everywhere. Also, in the legal profession, it becomes better when we celebrate and honor and seek justice for the lived experiences of the people we serve. And yet marginalized communities and identities continue to be grossly underrepresented in the legal profession. And so part of the change that we desperately need is to work with vigilance to ensure that often excluded or silent voices are not just at the table, but also leading us in discussions so that they give voices to stories and perspectives we don't always hear. And this benefits us all. So this evening, we are so fortunate to have Bendita Cynthia-Balakia with us because of all that she embodies within this movement. And to illustrate why, let me share a quote with you from a recent interview she gave at the National LGBT Bar Association, where she is currently a board member. Bendita said this, and I quote, We need to keep each other's lives and lived experiences at the center of our consciousness. We could all progress much farther together if we constantly remind ourselves of our shared humanity. So listen to what she said. Really hear it. She said, each other. She said, progress. She said, shared humanity. These are wise words for all of us who live by inclusion and belonging are about all of us. So now I'm going to turn over the floor to our WU law student, Lindsey Farbent, who will introduce our speaker this evening. Lindsey is a second year student at Roger Williams University School of Law. She is currently a Rhode Island Sea Grant law fellow for the Marine Affairs Institute at Roger Williams University. And as a member of the LGBTQ plus community herself, she became president of our law school's LGBTQ plus alliance student group to further promote diversity and inclusion in RWU law, the university and the greater community. Lindsey, thanks very much for being here tonight. The floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you, Dean Bowman. Hi, everyone. I'm Lindsey. We are very excited to have our fourth Stonewall lecture series this year. These events are very important as they highlight the struggles and progress of the LGBTQ plus community. I hope this lecture can impact you all in the way it has impacted me in the past. I'm very excited. On that note, I would like to formally introduce Vendita Cynthia Malakia. She is the global head of diversity and inclusion at Hogan-Levels, which is a 2,800 lawyer international law firm that operates in 46 countries. She is working to transform the legal profession into an inclusive industry where women, people of color, the LGBTQ plus community, differently abled and other professionals are able to thrive. Prior to Hogan-Levels, she has experienced as a lawyer for a law, large law firm, an in-house council at two global financial institutions, a diversity consultant for large and mid-sized organizations, and a certified professional coach. She is currently the treasurer of the LGBT Bar Association and sits on the Mansfield Rule Advisory Board for both the US and the UK. And finally, she graduated from Barnard College and Harvard Law. Welcome, Vendita. Thank you, Lindsay. Thank you all. I'm Vendita Cynthia Malakia. Blessed Moon Goddess Queen is actually the literal translation of my name. At some point in time, I'll start introducing myself with that first. I'm representing a combination of cultures, and today I'm honored to explore interactions at the intersections with each and every one of you. I am black. I laughed all the way out loud when I completed the census this year. I don't remember exactly what the question was, but I read it as, what kind of black are you? All kinds of responses popped into my head, including Angolan American, regular black, black AF, blackity black, black, black, and the list goes on. And anyway, I digress. I'm black. And it's one of my most salient identities. I'm bisexual. I'm a woman. I have a child. And while I identify as a woman, I identify more as a father than as a mother. So don't ask me about motherhood. I'll look around and wonder who you're talking to. I'm cis. Feminine presenting, which offers me some privilege as a queer woman. Some other privileges. I'm able-bodied. I'm an English native. I'm socioeconomically privileged as a result of a Harvard Law School, law degree, and having had some success career-wise within large institutions that people have heard of. And by the way, that wasn't a privilege that I achieved alone. It was on the back of parents. I made hard choices between culture and access to resources. I'm a terrorist attack survivor. I have anxiety, some mild OCD. Some as a result of that terrorist attack, but some has always just been a part of my special sauce. I'm semi-intellectual. I'm a lover of Cardi B, Dostoyevsky, and career development podcasts. I love pineapple margarita cocktails pretending to be a lay herbalist and the Pittsburgh Steelers. So my intersection is interesting and chaotic. And yours may be too. Matter of fact, I know that at least sociopolitically and macroeconomically, societal interactions are at their peak in 2020. And the dichotomies are wild. COVID-19 and its disproportionate impact on queer and minority communities. The Bostic Decision, which is one of the most significant civil rights rulings in years, giving LGBT plus folks rights that they should have already had in the workplace federally. A racial reckoning emerging from the killing of George Floyd occurring during an administration that refuses to recognize the humanity of anyone that isn't white, straight, cis, and who, and the myths of that reckoning has the gall to ban diversity and inclusion training as on American, including education on intersectionality. All of this, regardless of the fact that my primary takeaway post George Floyd killing was that people of different races, sexualities, gender identities, we may all occupy a similar space, but we truly live in different worlds. And more than ever, we need to encourage more dialogue about difference, not less. Not talking about it is a great way to perpetuate hegemony and the status quo. Those that don't want change don't want to talk about it. This is one of the many reasons why I'm elated to be here at the kind invitation of Ralph Tavarez, Director of Diversity and Outreach, Dean Bowman, Chelsea Horn, Lindsay Farbent, Kate Vieira, and the leadership and students of the Rogers William University School of Law. Others would retreat or be silent and I am heartened that, though we are not in person, the dynamics of our world haven't kept us from being in community. What do we have to hope for? We who live at the intersections of multiple marginalized identities. Those who experience discrimination that is synergistic and not simply summative. Three weeks before an election that will determine whether we devolve into anarchy or authoritarianism or certain death and destruction or alternatively on the blessed road to some semblance of healing that could lend credence to the value of a multicultural society. And yes, the choice feels that clear and stark to me. And I hope it feels that clear and stark to others so that we can all make what I consider to be the right decision for humanity, this election. Our lives are at stake. The challenge is that it's always more complicated than that, but complication is the reason why we, the disaffected, are surviving and in some cases thriving. We are resilient. It's awesome, right? Because we survive. Resilience means that we are tough enough to survive what comes. It means we flex and we bend. It also means that we put the burden on the individual to negotiate with themselves how much they can and will take while still demonstrating achievement and alignment with our expectations. But everybody knows that the person that achieves the least in a negotiation is the one that negotiates with themselves. In some circumstances, we have people negotiating their own humanity, which we shouldn't allow to happen ever. Now, don't mistake me as naive. I've been in the world. Resilience is critical. However, drawing a line in the sand of what is abjectly unacceptable is sometimes the only way to demonstrate what we stand for. And I would suggest that we as a society may have been too flexible with our democracy and our expectations over the last several years. There is a moment to affirmatively declare our beliefs and to act in alignment with them. And if not now, then when? By many identities drive my experience in the world. The loyalties can tear you apart. For those that may not identify as being intersectional, it may be news to you that every marginalized identity group has its own hierarchies. This is our dirty little secret. In the queer community, whiteness and cis manhood are prioritized over other racialized and gender identities. In minority communities, manhood, straight and cis identities are prioritized. In women's spaces, whiteness, straight and cis identities are prioritized. You get the picture. But that means that for people with multiple marginalized identities, life can be a constant battle for recognition. And these fights not only occur with people that are completely different, but with people that you want to align with and with whom you share some experiences with. This means that each and every one of us has a responsibility. Given that this is the Stonewall lecture, it is a moment to reflect. Though sometimes debated, most acknowledged that the Stonewall uprising was started by black and Latina trans women. These are individuals who are powerful even though our society didn't recognize their humanity with any consistency. They would have been isolated in every space they entered. In fact, there is a record of frustration that they had with other allies, folks who said that they were allies, who didn't necessarily want to carry on the fight with them. As an LGBTQ plus community, we have the duty to ensure that we honor, respect and support all members of that community. This means that we too must ensure that whiteness as a system of oppression does not prevail. We popularized allyship writ large. Now we ought to use it for the benefit of those that need it within our community. That means self-education and accepting challenges to our behaviors. That means creating space for others' perspectives and for them to shine. That means recognizing our own privilege and yielding the floor. That means not needing to solve the issues confronting gay men first, and then we can get on to what's happening with differently abled folks by plus folks, black and brown folks, trans folks, women, et cetera. Some of us have spent more time in religious environments than others, but it is definitively practicing what we preach that will make the difference. Asking people outside of community to stand up for us when we have work to do to advocate for and include what another is hubris, unless the solidarity we are trying to maintain is white solidarity. So what can we do? As a coach, a fundamental tenet is that we can only control our own actions. We can't even control the outcome, but we can control what we choose to do or what we choose not to do. And this is critical for individuals that have multiple historically underrepresented identities. You will often end up in spaces where you are the only or most other people of no idea what your experiences have been or how to engage with you appropriately. Their ignorance is not your fault, even though their ignorance may make your life miserable at times. We can spend lifetimes talking about the disadvantages that we experience, the loneliness, the stereotype threat, the lack of role models. We can talk about gender dysphoria, racial anxiety, and the intellectual and physical trauma unleashed by intentional and negligent action that often yields to disproportionately negative outcomes for people living their lives at the intersections. All of that is true and nothing that I'm about to say absolves every single person from using their talent skills and resources to improving the institutions that operate to our disadvantage in influencing the individuals in our spheres. What I'm talking about today is choice. That's where progress can be made. The first choice I want to talk about is choosing joy and creation and self-actualization. This may seem bizarre, right? Why talk about joy when a black woman in Louisville receives less justice in our legal system than a white person's wall? Were the bullets that missed matter more than the bullets that didn't? I want to talk about gender euphoria and racial enlightenment rather than dysphoria and anxiety because there's power in being the architects of our own experience. The inimitable James Baldwin once offered to us that you have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you. One of the best gifts I have found occupying the spaces of blackness, womanhood, and queerness is that I have the opportunity to forge my own identity. When people think finance lawyer, I'm not the image that comes to mind or law firm executive or many of the other roles and spaces I've occupied and I suspect the same is true for many of you. I have the opportunity to create my own professional image and personal image because I am so far outside the bounds of typical identity that there aren't as many known stereotypes for black queer women except for in the black queer community and especially not in educational or professional settings. Instead of choosing obscurity or being designated inexplicable, I affirmatively and intentionally create my identity and alignment with my values and so long as I take on the burden of being excellent at what I do beyond belief, I have that freedom and others accept that. There is often a negotiation between fit and competence. I talked a little bit about some of our Alliance students today about this. The honest truth is that you have more freedom to create an authentic image regardless of its alignment with the hegemonic structure if you are viewed as being competent within that structure and vice versa. Audre Lorde another black queer woman icon offers, if I didn't define myself for myself I will be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive. So define yourself today. It may sound naive to you or basic but each moment is an opportunity to choose euphoria over dysphoria to decide that happiness resides within. There are anxieties and pressures that come from living in this body with these identities and others have additional pressures that come from other inequities. I invite you to choose joy. If I hadn't taken command of my own mental health and well-being I would have succumbed to the many challenges that life has thrown my way from growing up in a very white hetero context to navigating predominantly white institutions academically and otherwise to getting my life back together after a terrorist attack to being divorced. Choose you. The second choice I offer to intersectional folks is to choose to persist. I know you're tired. I'm tired too and I've chosen to advance DEI for a living in a corporate environment. Diversity fatigue haunts those who are in the trenches fighting for their identities, families, communities and lives daily but we must keep moving forward and to do that first and foremost take care of yourself. A fellow diversity executive recently articulated the healer must be healthy but choose not to sit out this fight. Fight for yourself, fight for others. Everyone has some amount of privilege in some space and it may be difficult. Matter of fact it will be difficult. The research demonstrates that queer people take a hit for helping other queer people, women take a hit for helping women, minorities take a hit for helping other minorities and it may be easier to fit in if you don't ruffle any feathers and just go along. You may have fought so hard for a seat at a particular table and you may feel uneasy about risking that seat by raising issues but I would challenge each of us not to feel so grateful for receiving what we are entitled to that we are rendered into silent bystanders. When we get our seat at the table we need to make room for others and ensure that their perspectives take flight. The third choice I offer is for those that do not identify as being part of an underrepresented group. Choose to act. If you do not act you are perpetuating inequity. Silence is collusion with oppression. Do not be an oppressor. You don't want to and every single person has a choice. Ignorance is not an excuse in the law. Ignorance should not be allowed to prevail when people's lives are at stake. To be granular as a professor you can choose to be intentional about ensuring that queer people of color, queer women, queer deaf and hard of hearing folks, queer differently abled folks, etc. have opportunities to shine that they have letters of reference written for them that you can suggest them for scholarships and fellowships. You can be sure that those that have been historically marginalized are chosen for good assignments that are developmental and not merely administrative. As a university administrator you can choose who is in the pipeline for leadership. As a student you can make sure that underrepresented queer folks voices are heard and not tokenized. You can give credit to others for their ideas. You can focus your scholarship on advancing equity. You can make sure underrepresented student groups receive equitable funding and that your leadership reflects the aspirations that we have. Everyone has the power to use their voice. Choose to use your power for the benefit of others. It will be challenging. You will learn things about yourself that you may not have known and you may even discover attributes that aren't flattering. Whatever discomfort you feel will generally be less than that experienced in the lives of intersectional underrepresented people on a daily basis. Choosing not to use your privilege for eradicating inequity is a choice to use your privilege to maintain the status quo. Think about who you are and act in alignment with the person that you want to be. So choose. My final offering is to recognize the power of what happens at intersections including at the intersections of identity. Think about silk road, norms converge, patterns are interrupted, opportunities for creation and generating solutions and imagining a new way to live that better supports every single person become a reality. Experiencing how people with multiple marginalized identities forge those identities amidst the constant assault that the world can offer is a masterclass in how to live artfully and with intention. Others don't always agree with the term but I call this queering life and regardless of how you identify, I suggest that you think about the ways that you can clear your own life. By this I mean that you have elected to honor your authentic self by living on your own terms regardless of the norm society has set up, regardless of who may not like it or who may not agree. How are you intentionally asserting your own humanity and right to determine your future? How are you examining the rules that have been set up by those who may not have had you in mind when they were created and challenging them with conviction? Have you thought about the other parts of your identities that have not been supported? Though sometimes born out of tragedy and dissonance, queering is empowering and with that I welcome you to the intersection. I would invite Ralph and Kate to join me in conversation to talk about all these wonderful topics that happen at the intersection. Oh, Bendita, blessed moon goddess queen. Thank you so much for your words. I want to remind people to use the Q&A feature at the bottom. Again, please share your questions with Bendita and if you want to read them out loud, we will just put live read in there. Gosh, thank you so much for your words. Let me tell you, everybody's blowing up my phone saying she is the truth. We love her so you have already made an incredible impact on this community. I want to start by asking, there's so many questions I have for what you just shared and I'm going back to the theme that you talked about, which was being resilient, being flexible and being able to bend and I think about that, especially as my identity as a black male and I know certainly black women, black females go through this kind of negotiation of how you show up, you know what I mean? And I think you talk a little bit about identity and being able to show up authentically, but not everybody is as bold or maybe they've gone through so much resistance that it's like, how do I show up without being labeled A, B and C? Could you talk a little bit about that and maybe some advice to the students that are here and even the professionals that are here, how do you be resilient, flexible and bend? Part of my remarks were in part kind of challenging whether we ought to be bending as much as we have during these times and so I would just offer that because I do think that there are some contexts where all of us have been way too permissive with what's acceptable and I think especially in the political sphere right now and I didn't want to go to the election but I felt a moral responsibility to do that here a few weeks before this election but I have a challenging relationship with resilience and it comes even further than within the context of our election being resilient challenges the individual to have to change to survive in a system that probably ought to be different right and so we put the onus on the individual rather than the institution to correct itself and while that's a great short-term solution sometimes a not so great short-term solution it's not a recipe for a long-term institutional change. When we talk about labels we can't control what other people call us and I've had lots of people call me lots of things over over you know over time lots and lots of people call me all sorts of things and what I would have to say is that we can only control the image that we choose to put out in the world. What you can choose is how you receive it and how you receive it takes a lot of mental training you need to think about who am I and does the statement actually really matter to me so you know if my parents say something I saw I think my father might have popped up in the chat there which is wonderful you know my parents say something I think about that a lot they may not think that I do but I think about an incredible amount right I'll spend time agonizing over it right because they matter to me and they matter deeply to me they are fundamental to my identity I am because they are but you know if if a person on the street you know calls me a fag or if a person calls me the n-word or person you know any any sort of epithet you know I can choose how I take that it's like someone coming up to me and telling me your hair is purple that's not going to mean anything to me because I you know I hope I have the right hair on today right it looks black to me right and so it doesn't mean anything to me I'm looking at them like oh this person can't tell colors or maybe they've got they're differently abled and they can't they're colorblind or whatever the situation is but it doesn't have an emotional impact on me because I know who I am and that's how I view that's how I view the ways that people come at you and I think resilience is built first and foremost off of individuals really really truly knowing who you are and really understanding that you don't have to really answer to anybody you all you need to do is answer to yourself I hope that was in some way responsive no very very and I continue to use of self-care and you and I were talking about that before we even got on tonight about how you care for yourself and and you know the reality of battle fatigue in the middle of all this again it's hard not to talk about the election in this moment but I especially when we're talking intersections and we're talking about identities I think it's important to bring it up and I think oftentimes we shy away from the discussion because of those labels again of you know if you say the wrong thing it's we're in this cancel culture where it's just like oh we're done with that so to bring up the election a little bit and I think more specifically LGBTQIA plus rights it kind of hangs in the balance right now not so much the election or you know the reelection although that has a lot to do with it too but the Supreme Court and Amy Coney Barrett and thinking about your theme about building allyship and and solidifying community you mentioned three audiences at the end you know our allies are people who identify how do we what do we do right now what are action steps that we can take in this moment with that kind of looming to help strengthen and solidify the LGBTQIA plus community I mean to me the answer is simple you know however you can whatever privilege you have you must donate you must vote and those are those are to me basic fundamental actions that each and every one of us must take you can of course you know write your congress folks write your senator if you've got folks that vote I'm in DC so our status is questionable but if you've got the privilege to spend a few dollars on a candidate if you've got the opportunity if you have a phone and you can call somebody but if the election doesn't turn out in a way that supports LGBT plus folks and our families and you didn't do every single thing that you could do within your power to change that outcome then we can't look at other folks like so many times people say oh President Trump is not my president I've never said that I am in the United States of America I have enough privilege or if I wanted to move somewhere else I probably could have and and I am here yoke together with my fellow Americans many of whom I don't agree with politically and as a collective we voted in in accordance with the rules of our system this president between elections we don't care about the electoral college so we need to stop acting like right around the election we actually truly care about reform because I don't really see anybody do anything meaningful about it you know a month after the election is over or you know until six months before a new election and so we just need to be real about who we are but if we don't get what we want and you didn't pick up the phone you didn't convince somebody else to vote you didn't take people to the polls you didn't drop off ballots you didn't give five dollars you know to the candidate of your choice then the outcome is on our shoulders each and every one of us has a responsibility we can't talk about those people over there and now if you've done every single thing that you can do you may be able you may want to grit your teeth a little bit and that's unfortunate but every one of us has to has to act the election really does hang our our lives in the balance our families are in the balance when marriage equality was passed in 2015 my then wife and I were lucky enough to be the first couple in Texas to legally own same-sex couple in Texas to legally own property together as a married couple and that was a huge monumental moment that took weeks and weeks and weeks of advocacy and forum changes and every bit of bureaucracy that you could imagine but every once in a while every couple of months or so someone will still send me a note that says thank you for being that I know it probably took a lot of work at that point in time but thank you for being that person you want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say thank you self for voting thank you self for having sent the amount of money that I needed to send thank you for supporting ballot initiatives that support our communities each and every one of us needs to do whatever we can the next president will determine the rights of our families for years and years and years to come thank you for that we have a couple of questions in the in the q&a and I'll read one of them and I have a lot of questions but I can't hog all this time queering is such an interesting concept am I correct that your point is that people of privilege can be allies by showing up at work as who they really are and not as who are they are supposed to be or is it all about people being their true selves in order to strengthen our community or is it something else I love this question especially I'm sure somebody else you know nothing's new under the sun so somebody else has probably talked about queering things but I haven't seen it yet and so you know as any good intellectual the concept is still in my mind developing um but I think it's a bit of all of those things um what I mean is is that we choose each and every day um to not allow the constructs of our society to constrain um who we are um at our fundamental core so whenever we feel dissonance right we usually feel dissonance because of one of two or three things it's either one we are not living in accordance with our values um two we are living in accordance with our stated values but maybe we got those values wrong so maybe we're living in accordance with other people's values um or three um somebody is just violating and annihilating our values and so my view is that we ought to be looking at the rules the society is set up and and say why not you know one of the most important moments of my life um however short lived um was when I became a part of my seventh grade football team um and I used to play um football tackle football in the side of our yard um in clay new york all the time and I had a strong desire to play um and my mother supported that desire and she went went you know to battle for me she wrote a letter to the president to get them to require our school district um uh to allow me to play to allow me to try out um and and that was I only played for a season right but it was really an important moment um um for me to see um that so long as you are willing to try and so long as you've got an ally and in that case my ally was my mother um I know plenty of people um still who grew up um where I grew up and they never would have done um such a thing for their child um but to have such great allies um you know like my parents who are willing to say you've got a reasonable dream we know what the rules say there could be some you know there could be some challenge yes she could get hurt but anybody could get hurt right um you know and are willing to um to walk in solidarity I actually like walking in solidarity even though it's a little bit ableist in terms of language construction um better than and kind of being an ally which feels a little bit more passive but being in solidarity with other people can be really really um powerful and so I welcome us questioning um what why the rules are the rules you know not in in the way of children which is but why but why but why you know you know not in that way um but when you feel that dissonance when you feel that tug that fundamental violation of your own humanity um standing back to say what rule is being violated in society as a result of me just trying to live my life you know um and and and think about whether there's an opportunity um to push against that rule or to even just live your life differently so many times the the the barriers that we we come up against are barriers that we've constructed in our own minds um and so just thinking about the ways that we can uh can maybe blur the lines a little bit and challenge others to think a little bit differently and require others to go along with us is incredibly powerful everyone covers Kenji Yoshino out of New York law um has done a lot of research around this um his book aptly named covering um even 45 percent of straight cis white men cover um at some point in time in their day meaning they hide um a piece of their identity because of fear that it won't either help them advance or that it won't be accepted in whatever culture they're in and if straight cis white men are doing it then everybody's doing it you know in a much greater extent I think for black people it's 82 or 83 percent of black people cover on a daily basis um queer people um it's a little bit less than that um but think about that every one of us is pretending every one of us is showing up to work showing up to our academic spaces um we're all showing up in drag we're all pretending all pretending to try to be some uniform thing that no one actually is um and and and it's something to really step back and think about whether there's an opportunity for you not to not to just be harassing people or mess with people but because you really truly want to exercise your identity where you are um thinking about how might the rules how might I need to shift the rules a little bit um to accommodate myself and by extension um you know a mandala quote that I'm going to to butcher um but be a light for others um to be able to uh to execute their own authenticity beautiful and actually the next question is a great piggyback off of that um one of the attendees asked can you speak more to the idea you presented of how we mistake or conflate fit with competence this is an important topic for law students especially those historically excluded from the legal profession as they seek to define their professional identity and the job how do we break the traditionalism that's inherent in the law um that's a great question um and and to clarify um what I meant to say and hopefully I said it properly um is that there's a negotiation between between fit and competence and I think that happens in lots of jurisdictions uh lots of areas so lots of professional spaces um it happens um I think sometimes even at home um what we can get away with in terms of fit so we queer people don't tend to fit right um I'm here in my office at a conservative kind of am law 50 law firm with my harness on it's who I am right um and uh but the reason why I can wear this harness to work or in executive um team meetings um or at our diversity conference um or or with whomever um is because there's a general understanding that I'm excellent at what I do um and and that's validated in the structure um if I wasn't viewed as being excellent at what I do if I wasn't deemed to have that competence then people would be looking for me to fit into the culture a little bit more than I do right um and it's an unfortunate fact um but I often find that for I don't you know this isn't going to be fair your average kind of your average kind of straight cis white man you've got to have a relatively kind of average amount of of fit and competence to do well at an organization I find that for everyone else um you either need to completely fit in you need to you need to be really really great at one of the two and slightly above average at the other um so you either need to be extremely excellent what you do your work needs to be inviolable people need to look at you as the expert x y and z um and in that case you know maybe you can wear your lavender suit um to work or you can have your your your rainbow heels on at work right um maybe you can do that um or alternatively you need to be in your gray suit you know buttoned up you know take off your fashion classes you know keep the hair together you know however does you choose to be um um but maybe in that way maybe you fit a little bit better maybe you're muting some of your characteristics um but in that way um you've got a little bit more flexibility on the competence I maybe you're just you know if you're honest with yourself maybe you're just average at your job or slightly you know but you'll have a little bit more grace um on that metric and is that ideal absolutely not I mean this is and if you really listen to this this is the kind of the compromise of all compromises you mean to tell me um that I Gen Z or iPhone generation person you know young millennial can't just show up to work as my authentic self and have an equitable shot like everyone else I'm telling you the answer is likely not not yet um and that's why each and every one of us needs to constantly work um in the areas where we have privilege and when you've got the energy when you're not beaten down by that fatigue even in in spaces where you don't to constantly push for increasing acceptability of all of us in our identities um in a way that kind that supports all of us showing up just as average as everybody else I want to have an off day to yeah and there's always this pressure like you have to be on on on all the time and that's something that I grew up with my father and my mother both said like you have to do extra you have to do more just to be for half as much right exactly honey he said that and you know between the world and man and it was something that resonated with me because it's something I've heard you know our whole lives and it's a given um but to to accept that as a given is a it's a really complicated thing emotionally right what you're suggesting is is that I is this is the world that I ought to accept and what I'm telling you is that it's good to understand the reality of the situation that you're in it's it's you need to know what you're negotiating with in order to properly negotiate but you should constantly be thinking about um while understanding the reality how you can work to try to to blur the boundaries such that more people can be included in the fold this really is as dean bowman said about about all of us well it was what you said but you know he said it and I said and we're all I know you said it beautifully inserted hey uh brandon colton has a question i'm not sure if he wanted to go on camera but i'm i'm happy to brandon you're there or maybe he doesn't want to go on camera i'm happy to ask the question for brandon i don't see him popping up in the chat i'll ask it because we're running short on time if you can even believe it when you are trying to highlight a person or persons in class or other place as an effort to change the dynamic of who is being heard is it necessary important or required to ask those people first i have observed in the black lives matter protests that white people have taken steps to help without and and then completely derail or distract from the goal can we talk about intention versus impact brandon wants to talk about everything and all these questions are really important so i appreciate them um let's start with how you act as an ally in spaces because that's really incredibly important and there are two ally-ship models that i like a lot the first one is pretty ableist and i'll recognize that i'll create some kind of you know kind of snippy your language um uh at some point in time but it's the upstanders model um it's you know it's you know listen up show up talk up speak up and this really talks about kind of what are the basic fundamental tenets that you should um abide by to be at least minimally acceptable as an ally to any community racial ethnic intersectional folks uh queer folks women whoever and and it's really about you know listening up is about learning and educating yourself um uh show up is about being in spaces um that center other identities other than your own talk up is about profile raising and amplifying the voices um and experiences um of underrepresented folks um and speak up is the most challenging and arguably the most important but it's intervening and challenging um when the outcomes that we we experience um aren't the outcomes that we seek um and and so that's kind of generally like these are the basic baseline activities if you're doing these activities then you can reasonably call yourself an ally some people will say that you are not permitted to call yourself an ally um that you have to be somebody somebody also call you an ally i'm perfectly fine if you're undertaking those activities calling it yourself um you know name it and claim it um there's another model that really talks about once you're in a space how do you act and i think this goes more to to brandon's question um and and really i think um one of the black lives matter founders got it right um and using an acronym called ally um always um center the impacted um listen and learn from those um with lived experience um leverage your privilege and yield the floor um and i think some of the co-optation that's happened um by um white people and and black lives matter spaces happened because they're not doing um those things they're not centering the underrepresented folks are taking it on um in an effort um to uh extend their own white savior hood um and they're not necessarily listening and learning from what um people in community um actually want and so i do think we need to be reflective and we need to be responsible and as an ally um we we should accept as a as a privilege um feedback and challenge related to our not necessarily always getting it right right um what it means is you know kudos to you you tried um you know i get things wrong all the time like i'm consistently learning more and more about other you know gender minorities for instance about the experiences of other queer folks the experiences of non-binary folks um the experience of of the folks who are at the farther end of kind of the lgbt alphabet soup um i'm consistently learning and i learn new things every day i learn new things about disability differently abled folks deaf of hard of hearing folks um and there are times where i have to show up and i have to i'm there i'm trying to engage i apologize when i get it wrong or when my impact isn't what i um what i intended and impact is incredibly important there are two sides of the story if we're ever going to meet in the middle if we're ever going to be in community with one another and really understanding one another we have to pay attention to both of those dynamics we have to have the right intentions um my intention is to make sure that this community is centered and has all of the equity and privilege um that i get to have in my daily life wherever wherever that is um but we also have to recognize that you can have all the good intentions in the world but if you did a really horrible thing to somebody and they're feeling really horribly there's no reason why you shouldn't want to apologize i mean we're human right i mean nobody wants to feel bad every single one of us knows when somebody has hurt our feelings and if that wasn't your intention um then you ought to um be in a position where you have enough humility to be able to mature mistakes and apologize if if if we can't let each other in right if we can't um give grace for mistakes and if we also can't um recognize what we do that impacts others then we will never come we'll never meet each other at the intersection we what we won't wow so we're running out of time i can't even believe how quickly the time went um and i'm debating whether i want to ask a hard question or i want to end on on someone of a lighter no i think i i want to go back to one of the things that you shared and you talked about active choices and forging your identity and choosing joy and choosing hope what gives you joy and what gives you hope my euphoria my joy um you know comes from uh i've got i've got a nearly nine month old um a little foster kid he's great we got him about six months ago during the pandemic um he brings me joy the little videos um that um my partner and he create um together one look like a bloody massacre today of blueberries um looking at um looking at those pictures and seeing just being able to witness the learning and development of someone so quickly in real time and like feeling the gift of being responsible for someone that that gives me joy um my joy comes from the ability to show up um to a job every day where it's not the most progressive job i'm not you know feeding the homeless um i'm not you know i'm not necessarily um changing the entire world but i had the opportunity to use my talents and skills every day in a way that i find to be meaningful um for others and the ability a gift at this point in time during this pandemic during this economic crisis during these tumultuous times leading up to this election where so many people feel powerless against um against this a pandemic um i feel really joyful and honored to be able to have a role where it's my job to be able to help and give other people comfort and help people try to navigate a little bit more joy and agency and profitability and expansiveness and identity support you know each and every day and so those are the things that give me joy um what gives me hope honestly is talking to people who um you know some are in my generation some are older many are younger who um really aren't about to take no for an answer um who will come back regardless of what i even or anybody else might say and they keep saying they keep saying you know but but why not like why do we have to do it that way um why do we have to wear this suit jacket um to work i can think in my hoodie um why do i need to work in the office when the office is reopened um why do i need like really kind of fundamentally questioning the way the society was set up and that gives me hope because our world was not set up for people that look like me um and so every day um i you um ralph others um are working um to try to create space for ourselves and the questions um that we can ask the questions that the students in the in the session earlier today were asking give me hope um that we may be coming to a world at some point in time where we don't necessarily have to forge a way um but that a way will be there and then we can worry about more mundane things like our spa appointment or pedicure that's my admission to the to everybody here nobody heard that we're not recording so we're not recording bendita you said it all i it's been just such a joy to to be in community with you before this event oh my gosh and and i'm gonna still haunt your castle because i'm on linkedin and i share everything that she has everybody follow her on linkedin by the way she's got all the i appreciate that i want to thank you for this very memorable stonewall lecture your words will reverberate through the law school i am sure for a long time after we log off tonight and i mean that sincerely and what i want to share with everybody else out there is to just talk a little bit about bendita's generosity and just how much she will be reverberating through the law school community and i'm not going to take my words i'm just going to read the words that are in this um well you'll hear on the occasion of the 2020 stonewall lecture with the generous contribution of bendita synthia malachia roger williams university school's law is pleased to offer a one-time scholarship the 2020 stonewall award in law this award will support a current roger williams law school student with a demonstrated commitment to an involvement in the lgbtq plus community and the lgbtq plus equity and inclusion special consideration will be given to applicants whose commitment focuses on areas of intersectionality bendita we talked a lot about representation and barriers into the legal profession for historically marginalized community your gift not just in your words but in in what you have given to us is gonna give a student the opportunity to focus more on their practice and being representative in the field and less on the barriers um you're going to open the door to a future lawyer in this profession whose voice is desperately needed so from the bottom of my heart and i i'm not one to fluff because i will still be in community with you beyond tonight please thank you so so so much for the current law students that are here and are interested in applying for this opportunity it's going to be posted on simplicity in the next few days so please check your email for the announcement um that's all we have i want to just give you a couple of things of events that are coming up and a final thank you to bendita um next week well actually tomorrow our black law student association is hosting she talks and they're going to be hosting a conversation led by black women at the law school on briana taylor that is happening at 7 30 tomorrow evening um i believe you all should have gotten any email about it but continue to check your email there'll be more information there and next week we're going to have our next installment of the equity round table series it's voter suppression and the intersections with the legal field that's on october 21st at noon and more information will be coming shortly uh bendita i wish i could hug you but here we are one day not in 2020 but everybody thank you all again for your phenomenal questions your involvement and please stay safe please wear your masks and we will see you soon on work bye bye everybody absolutely take care thank you so much