 My name is Todd Roberts, I'm the Chancellor at North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics and I want to welcome you to today's event, Building Coalitions for Positive Change. I'm so excited that we have been able to convene an amazing group of leaders for today's talk and panel discussion on how communities can come together to achieve positive change. When we think of impacting a community, this could mean our most immediate community like our school or our neighborhood, or it could be larger like a city or state or even larger and more expensive like a country or an entire continent. As is the case when we think about our keynote speaker, former president of Liberia and Nobel Laureate, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. In any of these cases, large or small, positive change begins with the actions of individuals and I am so thrilled that President Sirleaf is here with us today. As you will hear about in her introduction, President Sirleaf has led an amazing life that has brought about positive change in her championing of women's rights, country and beyond and leading her country as president, where she helped establish democracy after decades of civil war and facilitated a peaceful democratic transfer of power. President Sirleaf's visionary, principled, entire leadership is an example of how an individual who builds bridges and forms coalitions can bring people together to affect systemic and lasting positive change, even in the most challenging situations. I would like to thank the Bernard family for making today's event possible by inviting President Sirleaf to join us. NCSSM senior Daria Bernard is President Sirleaf's grand niece and Daria's parents Heidi and Pearl Bernard are niece and nephew. Also Jenny Bernard who is President Sirleaf's sister is with us today and will be asking one of the questions. Thank you all so much for making today possible. I want to thank our panelists and all the speakers joining us today. We greatly appreciate your being a part of today's event and sharing your insights with us. I want to say a huge thank you to all the folks in our humanities department at NCSSM who've worked so hard to make today's event possible. Tanya Smith, Liz Peoples, Adam Sampieri and Elizabeth Moose and thanks to Lee Welper and Donald McIntyre for setting up and running today's webinar. At this time I'd like to introduce Dr. Pamela Scully who will introduce our keynote speaker. Dr. Scully is a professor of women's gender and sexuality studies, professor of African studies and provost for undergraduate affairs at Emory University. She has her PhD in history from the University of Michigan and her research focuses on comparative women's and gender history and biography. Her latest book is writing history which is co-authored with Professor Fiona Paisley. Her other books include Ellen Johnson's Searleaf and Sarah Bartman and The Hot and Tothed Venus, A Ghost Story and a Biography co-authored with Clifton Grace. Professor Scully's teaching focuses on the history of sexual violence and wartime and gender violence and gender justice in the context of the truth commissions in Africa. She's the co-convener of the Coursera MOOC, Understanding Violence. Among her other professional appointments, Professor Scully has served as the Deputy Editor of the Women's History Review and as Treasurer and Secretary of the International Federation for Research in Women's History. She currently is chair of the Committee on Gender Equity at the American Historical Association. Dr. Scully, thank you again so much for being with us today and thank you for joining us for today's amazing program. Thank you so much Chancellor Roberts. I am thrilled and honored to be introducing President Ellen Johnson Searleaf, who I've long admired, indeed had the opportunity to write about in a variety of ways, but not to meet personally, although we have actually been at the same sort of functions, but it is indeed an honor. I also want to say thank you very much to the National School of Science and Mathematics for inviting me and particularly to Miss Tonya Smith, who's been a wonderful liaison for me. So really it is truly an honor and I am delighted. I do just want to say that I've experimented over this COVID Zoom era in how best to work with Zoom. So I'm actually going to use old fashioned notes in front of me. I'll be looking up and down, but that seemed the best way for me to communicate. So there are many things one can say about President Searleaf and there are volumes of information written about her that you can find on the web. There are at least two books written about her and so I thought today what I would do is just highlight some of her achievements that I think are particularly noticeable and particularly notable and really demonstrate the kind of leader that she is. So President Searleaf was elected president in Liberia in 2005. Her first term started in 2006 and she did become president after a really terrible civil war in Liberia in West Africa in which armies used child soldiers. Sexual violence was used as a weapon of war. There was incredible internal displacement of people and also many, many Liberians fled to other countries in West Africa to Europe and indeed to the United States and I know that we have many Liberian communities including in North Carolina. So she took office at a really, really critical time and the reason that President Searleaf was in fact elected president was precisely because she had already been a leader. She had served in various Liberian governments. She had also worked for the United Nations in senior capacities also with the World Bank as well as many other organizations. She had and has expertise in finance and in administration and does have an MA in public administration from Harvard. So President Searleaf was already a formidable leader when she became president of Liberia in 2006 but it is really her presidency of the country that has I think will be her one of her most lasting legacies and indeed there are many. She in becoming president of Liberia President Searleaf became the first democratically elected woman leader on the continent of Africa and I'm not sure that we are always appreciative how huge the continent is. You can fit China, India, the United States and other countries into the whole continent of Africa. So to be a leader of a country in that continent is already impressive and to be the first democratically elected woman leader even more so. And so President Searleaf's accomplishments as president are many and legion. She is known for having promoted women's rights. She is known for having brought indeed decade and really actually heading to two decades of stability to Liberia which really had not enjoyed very much before. She helped reform the legal process. She helped reform the police. She brought foreign investment back into the country and I think one of her most notable achievements was also encouraging Liberians who had fled Liberia over the many years both before and during the civil war to return home. So when I was there in you know 2007, 8 and 11 it was very clear that there were a lot of investment going on and by both Liberians who'd fled and Liberians who'd stayed. And so those are no mean achievements for any leader. And because of these achievements Searleaf was elected president again in 2011. You know often we want to sanctify leaders so I do just want to lift up that to be a leader you have to make really difficult decisions and to be a leader you have to be prepared for criticism and for making mistakes. And I think one of the elements of leadership that perhaps we don't make enough of is a willingness of a leader to admit they're wrong and to pivot. And that I think is rare and I do want to hold up President Searleaf for having done that. So for example I want to hear just quickly talk about Ebola and Liberia's experience of Ebola. Ebola is a hemorrhagic disease that came to about to West Africa in about 2014. It had never really been seen in West Africa before previously been seen primarily in the center of Africa, Central Africa. And so people were unfamiliar with it. It's an incredibly scary disease if you touch the body of someone who's died of Ebola always dying you are likely to get it and the death rate is very high. So early on in the the outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea the world really stood by and watched. The World Health Organization was not as fast as it should have been in coming to help or recognizing the severity of this outbreak. And so Liberia and its neighboring countries were pretty much left on their own. And in the early days there were some missteps. But what I want to say is that President Searleaf soon recognized that a different approach had to be taken and she worked with traditional elders with women's groups with spiritual leaders to really produce locally based sort of collaborative public health responses. And so by the time the World Health Organization and indeed the United States kind of woke up and got the act together frankly and brought supplies and tents and doctors to West Africa certainly in Liberia. I would say that Liberians had really helped end Ebola themselves. And so I really just want to commend President Searleaf for realizing that the approach had to change and helping people do that. So finally, you know, in recognition of her wonderful leadership present, Ellen Johnson Searleaf was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 with her compatriot, Lea Mubowee and Tamakal Karman from Yemen. And the Nobel Committee gave the Peace Prize to these three wonderful leaders quote, for their nonviolent struggles for safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peacebuilding work. And certainly President Searleaf really realized that commitment in much of her leadership as president also. And then finally, you know, there are so many awards that President Johnson Searleaf has received. I think I counted 1.23 and I'm sure there are many, many more that I don't know. But in 2007, the US did award her, you know, highest honor, the Presidential Award of Freedom. And in 2017, just as President Searleaf was stepping down, she received the Ebrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. And as in many cases in her life, she was the first female recipient. And this is a really wonderful prize of start in 2007 to encourage and recognize good governance and is awarded to a leader who in the previous three years, you know, was democratically elected. And then in the last three years, democratically transitioned in a peaceful transfer of power. And in their recognition of President Searleaf as the recipient, they said, since 2006, Liberia is the only country out of 54 to improve in every category and subcategory of the Ebrahim index of African governance. So it is my great honor to introduce this wonderful leader of African International and indeed historical stature, President Searleaf. Dr. Todd Roberts, Chancellor. Dr. Scully, and let me say thank you so much for the introduction. Officials, professors, students, and community of NCSSM invited participants. I'm pleased for the opportunity to join you in this exchange on building coalition for positive change. There is no better way I could share my thoughts on the topic than to start with the experience of my own country, Liberia. When I sealed the presidency of Liberia in January of 2006, I found a country decimated and dispirited after two decades of conflict. A collapsed economy, destroyed infrastructure, dysfunctional, and in some cases, nonexisting institutions greeted me. Although I had known our society to be entrapped by deep internal divisions in societal fractions, because of the lack of a single national identity, it was difficult to understand the deep impact of the war on the past efforts at nation building. Founded as a state in the 1840s, by former enslaved persons brought back from the United States, tensions between a small urban elite and a large indigenous majority saw the seeds of tension, mistrust, and conflict still present today. The protracted war and its tribal undertones inflamed the divisions and pronounced tribal identities over national. Not to be ignored was the occurrence of a bloody coup d'etat of 1980 which witnessed the murder of a sitting president. And so, not only had the unfortunate divisions become even more rife, the security of the state was threatened by the possibility of a return to conflict, either by traveling aggrieved elements with the experience to do so, or a copy of 1980. Admittedly also, resentment lingered in the class of the so-called haves and powerful. Many of whom had dominated a political culture rooted in corruption, bribery, rent-seeking, and a willingness to hold the national interests hostage to personal gains. And for many who have become hopeless and without jobs or the necessities to care for themselves and their families, my historic election represented a chance not just to fix the problems, but to do so quickly. The environment was anything but organized. Setting a new national agenda means cutting across lines that included victors and victims, tribal and religious sects that have become mutually suspicious of each other, finding common ground with combatants and warlords who were elected as representatives and senators and building accountability systems where public accountability had never been demanded. Children recruited into the war as soldiers and with our life skills, as well as thousands of uneducated and unemployed young people joined the lists of those demanding from the government what it did not immediately have to give. The workforce was largely comprised of an unskilled and poorly compensated silver service. Indeed, many of the nation's problems have multiplied exponentially, but I was not a total stranger to the challenges we faced. I had been part of the body politic since my speech in 1969 when I challenged the policies of President William V. S. Tubman and I had remained engaged with and an activist for change through every successive administration, except those times in exile when I was engaged in professional international service. As you can expect, the euphoria of my election passed very quickly. With colleagues, we formulated a development agenda. I knew that there was no manual for being the first woman post-conflict president in Liberia, but I was confident that if anyone could do it, I could. I was also convinced by an important aspect of my victory, the overwhelming support of the women of Liberia. I had been elected on the shoulders, sweat, and tears of women. Combined with the elderly and young progressive, they inspired a victory with the message of being tired with visionless male domination. Our people yearn for change. Their yearnings demonstrated in my historic election further energize and embolden me to work for change. I also had the approval of Africa and the international community, or the purified conflict, the boomerang effects were felt across the region, continent, and the world. Liberia's peace and democratic governance meant almost as much to Liberia as it did to the region, the African continent, and the world. And as leader, I was determined to ensure that Liberia could be a good neighbor and helpful to the maintenance of international peace and security. I knew I could never do this alone. And so I put together a team of young professionals and a small group of trusted advisors to supplement my personal experience in years of professional service in international executive positions. I laid down broad principles and agreed with a team that rather than using existing standards or the lack thereof, we would lift ourselves and hold on to higher standards with me setting the example and leading from the front. The small team proved useful for a while, but change required much more. I needed a broader coalition of all those who represented the various divides if I would succeed in rebuilding the nation. I needed this for security and peace and knew that I had to make compromises and build relationships to break down the lingering suspicions and build the trust required. This coalition would include Liberians in the diaspora who had been exposed to professional work and accountable standards of service from which others at home would learn and adapt. And as a piece of a broken nation, I needed to rebuild the civil service from scratch and set new standards for payments that would make a demand for improved performance and accountability reasonable. A broader coalition, especially through appointed executive positions that included representatives of all parties, religions and tribes of the divide from home and the diaspora was also a means of building an even stronger collaboration for the positive change required for reconciliation and the rebuilding of our devastated country. In this regard, preference was given to women and youth, the former restricted by the unavailability of some of the women to whom I reached out in my effort to achieve an all-women covenant. However, I ensured that their impact and authority was felt in the portfolios they held. In further action, we established a program patterned after that of the World Bank, the President's Young Professional Program, PYPP, a fellowship program held by generous support from foreign aid initiatives, charities and substantial spending from the national budget for personnel to recruit and train civil servants. We also set up a promotion system based on merit, created whistleblower protections, and ensured that new civil servants were well supervised, proactively mentored, and part of a peer network which helped them accountable for their actions. Notably, PYPP included graduates from local universities who were tamed with monitor and supported by repatriated national professionals in a coalition that reduced the potential tension between the two groups. Today, 86% of the program fellows are in the Silver Service after a transition to the new administration, thereby providing continued crucial public service with efficiency and integrity. Throughout the 12-year period of my administration, we had small pockets of skirmishes due to public land and benefit issues among citizens themselves and with private concession, but we also experienced violence from young people suffering from post-war trauma. But we ended our two-year two-term presidency with Liberia, at peace with itself and its neighbors, was widely considered a post-conflict success story and a safer and secured country than we inherited. In 2014, Ebola, a deadly virus disease, unknown to the country, struck. Given our lack of knowledge of the disease, collapsed health infrastructure and the lack of resources, the educated projection by credible international organizations was that Ebola would kill at least 20,000 Liberians monthly. The projections were correct about what we crucially lacked and did not have, but they were wrong, in my view, about what I knew we had. I knew Liberia and Liberians to possess resolve and resilience, and I knew that as the leader, if I could encourage the nation to mobilize that resolve and resilience with the help and support of the international community, we could eradicate the disease and beat the projections. To mobilize the national resolve and resilience, I knew I needed to build a broad coalition where I could not suspend certain religious practices and rights, the respected cleric that the sect could. We've reached out to and involved political, civil society, religious, traditional, and community leaders. We build a coalition from bottom up, providing the space for everyone to get involved in the ownership of the problem and the solution. I appeal to the international community for the resources we lacked, led by the United States. The response was favorable. Although reported as the hardest hit of the three worst affected countries, Liberia was first to be declared Ebola free. I cannot end this discussion without talking about the need to build global coalitions to eradicate our world of the devastated COVID-19, a pandemic that has left untold costs in human lives, economic growth, and exposure of the global inequities and injustices, particularly for the marginalized populations such as women and youth. COVID-19 hit the world at a time when global leadership had lost its pilot, paving the way for slides into nationalism, populism, isolationism, and presenting a major threat to democracy that had been largely institutionalized, in a greater part of the world. At the same time, the pandemic has continued to highlight the deeply interconnected and interdependent nature of our world in trade, finance, travel, and communication technology, from climate change to nuclear proliferation, from social injustices and exclusions to gender inequalities and inequities, from ending poverty to ending the many senseless wars. The truth is that if the presenting unfortunate global reality of this pandemic is not a clarion call to come together, to work together to overcome our common challenges, I don't know what is. The truth also is that what affects all of us must involve all of us in its solution for all of us. This is common sense. Even as it seeks to rob us of our lives and livelihoods, we cannot permit the virus to rob us of our common sense. Sometimes, when all seems impossible, we just have to fall back on common sense. I know this because it formed the basis of mine experiences as the leader of a fractured and devastated nation. Building border coalitions, including across perceived differences, can also be meaningfully applied to the global fight against COVID-19, because the virus has not just affected all peoples and nations of the world. Without regard to our perceived differences, it has also exposed our mutual vulnerabilities, exacerbated the deep inequalities that continue to exist, both within and between nations. And despite our claim to differences continues to threaten all humanity with our exceptions. The depth of cooperation that is required to tackle this pandemic would be challenging to achieve even in the best of times. It cannot therefore be expected as the economic conditions are worsened. Nations will be stronger and capable of fighting alone. Added to this is the troubling consideration that the virus has struck at a time when the multilateral systems have been under sustained threats. The only way to effectively contain COVID-19 is therefore through global multilateral coordination. Indeed, there is no issue on which the case for multilateral cooperation is clearer or in more urgent need of global collaboration than in the tackling of the pandemic, the outcome of which will rise to become the preeminent example of a global public good. The virus will not be overcome unless all states work together pooling resources and expertise to strengthen health systems, develop and distribute an effective vaccine, protect health workers, protect vulnerable communities, and provide the necessary care to all who need it in society. Nobody is truly safe until everybody is safe. All must therefore be involved in the solution whose problem is collective and borderless. I want to close by speaking about some of the most important coalitions in which I'm involved post-presidency. These are coalitions with women and men, convinced of the urgent need for gender equality. As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, it became clear that women's leadership in countries with gender equal national structures were the keys to halting the crushing impact. Through the African Women Leaders Network, ALWIN, and more recently the African European Union Women Leaders Network, I have joined other women leaders to give voice to women working at the community and national levels as well as to impact global policies. In addition, the AMUJ leaders initiative of my own center is building coalitions among talented and influential African women who are ready to help steer their countries away from the calamitous rocks of exclusion and inequality. The recent election in the United States with the first woman and woman of color as Vice President and President Biden's statements on the need for global cooperation and the return of multilateralism have generated interest and accolades across the world, not only in the United States. This augurs well for meaningful collaboration and increased solidarity with the people of the United States, particularly women and women of color. I hope that this discussion with you today can give us, all of us, some impetus and ideas toward that, particularly working with African American women and their communities. The inequalities in the profession of vaccines for COVID-19 are not only in poor countries, we see them in many disadvantaged communities in the United States, unfortunately. I'm grateful this invitation today and excited about the ties that can be created as well as the solidarity for some solutions to problems which affect our common communities on both sides of the ocean. Hopefully, a new world order is on the horizon. They've grown into one that builds coalitions for positive change. May it inspire the common truth of our humanity that we owe a duty to each other to make our communities, countries, and world a better place for ourselves and for our children and to do this by seeking to find common grounds to always seek to work together. I thank you. Thank you very much, President Johnson-Surly, for your powerful and wonderfully inspiring address, as well as your call to work together at all levels to solve our mutual challenges collaboratively. It is my sincere honor and privilege to have this opportunity to learn from you today. At this time, representatives from the various constituents present will pose a few questions that have been generated by each of the groups represented here. NCSSM Senior and President of the African Cultures Club, Essie Aqua, will represent the NCSSM Student Body, Dominique Bojary, a social studies teacher at Jordan High School here in Durham, North Carolina, and the NCSSM graduate will represent Durham Public Schools, and Mrs. Jenny Bernard, Madam President's very own sister and grandmother of our very own NCSSM senior, Daria Bernard, and the student in my African Studies class will represent our guests from the community. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, and thank you so much for spending your time with us today. It's truly an honor to hear from you and learn from you. My question comes from Durham Public Schools, and it's from a student asking, how are you able to remain optimistic and hopeful throughout such challenging times? Well, first, I rely on my trust in God, one that's been instilled in me and my siblings from my mother. I also rely on a strong and caring family and friends, and I rely on the co-workers, the assistants I have that continue to motivate me, but I think most of all, I rely on my own self-confidence, the confidence to continue to work toward the achievement of my goals and the success of which I dream. Thank you so much. You once said to girls and women everywhere, I issue a simple invitation to my sisters, my daughters, my friends. Find your voice. How do you define a person's voice? Additionally, how can someone begin on a path to discovering her voice? Listen to the voice of those who have courage. To stand up for the principles they believe in. Just listen to those who are able to rise above fears, to care not about the popularity that others seek, that are able to take positions and to stand firm in their beliefs. I don't think it's so difficult to define those voices. They're all around us in our home, in our school, in our churches, in our communities, in the markets, in rural communities. When someone is just able to take a position, to stand firm, to be caring, to be empathetic about the things they love and the things they believe in, that voice isn't hard to find. It's there and it's loud and clear and it can influence the others to join that rapture of voices that make a difference in the world. Thank you. People tend to relax a little when a small improvement occurs, but how do you keep people, including yourself, focused on the bigger picture of social equity and greater representation? Keep talking. Keep working. Keep moving. Keep doing things that are unexpected. Keep trying to push the needle. Just one little bit further. Push back the frontiers of possibilities showing courage. The mindset, building coalitions, motivating others for collective change, ensuring that you can turn that narrative around. You can make a difference by reaching out, by joining others, by supporting others, but not only elevating yourself or reaching back to elevate others. I think we see that all around us in everything we do by so many of those who perhaps we don't pay enough attention to. That small voice that's there, that little bit of action that's there, the one thing that makes a little bit of difference in somebody's life that causes somebody to change around and say, I can be different. I can do it differently. I can change my lifestyle and the life of others around us. Sometimes it doesn't take much. Just take that extra effort of commitment, of passion, in what you believe in and what you want to do. Thank you. President Johnson Sirleaf, on behalf of the NCSSM community, thank you so much for joining us today, for your work, and for inspiring us to build a better world together. We really appreciate you taking the time to join us today. Would you like to say any closing words? Oh, to all of you there in the MC, am I getting it right? MCMNS, am I getting it right? NCSSM. MCSNM. Do something. Say something. Be something. Most particularly, be yourself and be what you want to be. Claim it. It's always there when you seek it with determination and courage and steadfastness. To all of you, your future in your hands, utterly yourself and your family and your community, but your nation now needs each of you to think differently, to see the changes that are happening in our world and to be a part of that change. Do it. Thank you. Thank you so much. We are now going to open the chat during our brief intermission and we encourage attendees to share what they found inspiring about today's speech. We will rejoin here in five minutes for a panel of community leaders who are working together in their fields and communities to build these coalitions for a positive change. Thank you so much. Hello, everyone. Welcome. Thank you again for joining us and for staying with us. We'll continue our discussion of building coalitions for positive change with a panel discussion of local community leaders, sharing how they are working for positive, enduring change in Durham and across North Carolina and the world. My name is Adam Sampieri and I am one of two chairs of humanities here on the Durham campus of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics and is my panelist. I am so very excited to introduce to you now. Bernetta Alston is a graduate of NC State UNC School of Law and is a lifelong resident of the triangle. In her work as a criminal law attorney, she fought for the constitutional rights of death row inmates and has advocated for the abolition of the death penalty. She was a member of the Durham City Council and is currently a representative for District 29 in the North Carolina House of Representatives and we are so fortunate to have her with us today. Welcome Representative Alston. Thank you for having me. Mandy Carter is a Southern African-American lesbian activist with a 54-year movement history of social, racial, and LGBT. Ms. Carter helped co-found two groundbreaking organizations, Southerners on New Ground and the National Black Justice Coalition and is a member of the National Council of Elders. In 2011 Ms. Carter was chosen as the American Civil Liberty Union in North Carolina. Lucky for us she moved to Durham to work for the War Resisters League when she did and has stayed with us ever since. Welcome Mandy. So glad to be here. Follow the Executive Director for Wiser International, a non-profit organization focused on supporting holistic approaches to girls' education and health in rural Kenya. A non-profit professional with a focus on localized partnerships, Zaka's experience in health and education initiatives in Africa, Asia, and North Duke scholar and a previous winner of the Paul Farmer Award for Justice and Social Responsibility. He currently sits on the Board of Directors for the NC School of Science and Mathematics Foundation, the North Carolina Chapter of the New Leaders Council, and the Amplified Girls Collective. And I even had the joy of having him in class, right where I am right now. Hi Zach. Hey Adam, it's good to see you. Thank you for having me. Barbara Lau connects her commitment to justice with her belief in the power of community practice through her work as the lead developer of the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice. Barbara's 20 years experience as a folklorist, curator, professor, media producer, and author include curating the exhibition Murray, Imp Crusader Dude Priest, producing To Buy the Sun, an original play about Pauli Murray, and co-directing the face-up telling stories of community life, community mural project. She is a recipient of the 2014 Faculty Award from the Samuel Du Bois Cook Society at Duke University and the 2012 Carly B. Sessons Award for the Durham Human Relations Commission for Leadership. And she is our guest this afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us, Barbara. Thank you. And I have to say I'm proud to be one of the people who had Zach Fowler in my classroom as well. Oh, the two of us have been fortunate. And finally, Dr. Pamela Scully is professor of women's gender and sexuality studies, professor of African studies, and vice provost for undergraduate affairs at Emory University. Her research focuses on comparative women's and gender history and biography. Professor Scully's teaching focuses on the history of rape and wartime and gender violence and gender justice in the context of truth commissions in Africa. Among her professional appointments, professor Scully has served as the deputy editor of the women's history review and as treasurer and secretary of the International Federation for Research in Women's History. She currently is chair of the Committee on Gender Equity of the AHA and has graciously agreed to join us today. Welcome back, Dr. Scully. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. So my sincere hope is that as much as you hear from me in one large chunk this afternoon, I'm much worse as we all are in what you all have to share and say. So I hope we can just have a discussion back and forth. And as everyone has themselves unmuted, so we can easily go back and forth. So I'll toss something out to get us started. And then we'll just kind of proceed from there and we have the next hour together. So thank you again. I feel so fortunate to have, to be with all of you today and together to have had a chance to hear Madam President Ellen Johnson Scully's remarks. That work is obviously of course inspiring to all of us. I think we all felt that there. And so too is all of your work. And I think that might be a good place for us to start from inspiration. So I would open up to think first off, what from the remarks we just heard resonate with you, inspire you, what parallels can you see between that and the work that you all do? And I'm wondering if Mandy would be willing to get us started. Can I? Well, thank you. And I want to also shout out to Bernetta Alston as my representative over in the North Carolina General Assembly. So shout out to you, Bernetta. And I'm lucky to have Bernetta. You know, the timing of this could not be more fortuitous. I'm sitting here so thankful for President Sirleaf. An organization that I belong to is called the War Resisters League was founded in 1923. But War Resisters International was founded in 1921. This is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the War Resisters International. So to be having this conversation with her, with the backdrop of what happened, I'm in Liberia. I'm just trying to figure how we talk about this. And one of the ones I would say to you, I remember going to high school and barely ever do we talk about anything but the United States. You know, the United States initials are us, meaning all we focus on are. But I was thinking that with the War Resisters International, I did a little backdrop real quick, because the timing of this is good. It was founded in the Netherlands in 1912. And it was a global network of sort of like grassroots, a lot of different countries trying to figure out how do we end war as a way to resolve conflict. And so to hear her story against a backdrop of what happened back in the day with Africa, but bringing a current to me is really relevant. I think it's called a World Without War would be part of that. And I'm trying to think. But also with the School of Math and Science, when you think about the fact that you now have, literally you have classes on it, thinking about the state of North Carolina. And can I just be kind of honest for a minute? We came here as property slaves. And you think about where we are now in 2021. And when she mentioned the election of Kamala Harris or Joseph Biden and filling out what had to transform in our country, which is not that old. So I'm kind of like, my mind is reeling in kind of an exciting kind of way. But now what do we do with it now? We have this amazing opportunity. And I think the other thing was interesting in 2005, there was a 1000 women for the Nobel Peace Prize. And what I liked about that, and back in the day would always be one person, and no shade, a lot of mostly men. But to have the dynamic when he said, no, you have to talk about all women. And it's a book this thick, but it had country after country and after country. And I'll end with this one that was really kind of like an eye opener. The hundredth woman was named anonymous because these are the women, had they been known, had they been found out, they would have been murdered, they would have been jailed. And so to have that happen in 2005, we're now in 2021. And listening to what we just heard now, what do we do with that moving forward? I think that's the challenge. I think that's also the amazing opportunity. But I'll end there. And as a member of the Warrior Sisters League, I joined when I was 18 in 1967. And so I'm sitting here thinking, and why do we keep staying in this for the long haul? Because we really do believe change can happen. So I'll pass it on to Bernetta. All right, Paul. Thank you, Mandy. And thank you all for having me join the conversation. I really, really appreciated the keynote. And to your question, Adam, I think there's so many, and to Mandy's comments, there's so many important takeaways and so many things that resonate. A couple that kind of come to mind is first just kind of the theme of this and thinking about coalition building. But just thinking, hearing President Surlee's remarks about confronting different types of crises and obvious parallels between her experience and her work and where we find ourselves in the pandemic. And now, especially having enough, enough a year's worth of experience in the pandemic to be a little reflective on how, what the responses look like. I couldn't help but think of a couple things. Practically, for myself, when the pandemic started, I was on the Durham City Council, as you mentioned. And so I had a few weeks, the first few intense weeks of pandemic response and shutdown of seeing kind of locally what coalition building really looked like to try to help people, at least in effort towards it amongst kind of government stakeholders and folks in the community and just saw a really humbling and powerful effort on everyone's part to communicate and to work together. And then I got thrust into the state legislature where there was some of that, but the dynamics, the political dynamics that we found ourselves in last year and still do today are so much more complex and are less geared towards political compromise and coalition work. And so to kind of stack those two things up and see that kind of an unfortunate reality of opportunities that were missed and that were hard to cultivate because of years of lack of investment and lack of kind of good work and relationships among different agencies and amongst folks in the political realm, seeing those things really have real-world costs to folks in our communities. And so when she was during the keynote, I just couldn't help but think of what valuable experience she has to offer to us and how sobering it is to think of the fact that we consider ourselves in so many ways to be so exceptional as a country and as a nation and to recognize that there are folks like President Sirleaf who have so much to offer by way of experience who have succeeded in so many ways in thinking about how to build coalition that we have not mastered and that have clearly had a real toll on the lives of the people that we serve and that we care about. And so it was sobering to hear and so important and I feel like I have so much more to learn. So those are a few thoughts. I won't ramble any farther. Wonderful. Thank you. Dr. Scully, Miraps you'd like to share a bit of perspective there given I know obviously you've written a book about Alexander Sirleaf and this is your area of study. Sure and you know one thing it obviously didn't come out of my bio was that I did a lot of work well quite a lot of work with the Carter Center in Liberia and also you can hear my accent is not American so I grew up you know white privilege in South Africa American American here I am but so two things I would say I I want to just say what was I you know what stood stayed with me from President Sirleaf's talk and I just want to say sort of everything but if I have to choose I do think it's the importance of collaboration and democratic engagement in a meaningful way because what I keep trying to lift up is that you know when Ebola was happening in West Africa the media the US media coverage actually you know the international media coverage was so racist frankly it was you know people you know I mean it was just you can imagine what they were saying and so I got engaged in that then just was saying you don't understand people are there's a reason people aren't going to hospitals and clinics because because of the as President Sirleaf was saying the and this is a whole legacy of a whole bunch of history in Liberia but the clinics and the hospitals were starting to resourced and understaffed etc etc that you were likely to die if you went and so people it's not the people were quote-unquote well you can imagine what was being said it was the people were making a judicious evaluation of where they would best be and that is why I think if you know to the point I made just now is that I think Liberia and other places offer so much insight and experience that that the US could benefit from if only we understood that we should listen and not just wander around the world telling people what to do and I have I've written about that too in part from having been in Liberia and seeing some of the really egregious things that were done there in terms of just talking about quote-unquote lack of capacity all the time of Liberians and it's really a question of what counts as capacity but then the the last thing I'll say just with regard to what Ms. Carter was saying well actually what you were saying was a representative Alson was you know I come from South Africa and I'm a historian of comparative women's history and race I guess and you know what I think black lives matter and this moment we find ourselves and now in the United States is we aren't exceptional we are a history with a we are what we call in historical terms a settler colonial society with histories of colonialism genocide enslavement all the things that you see in other colonized societies and that's what we have to grapple with and we can't do it without the insights that prison certainly for saying which is it's all about it's about acknowledgement collaboration and and actually telling it like it is and that is a very very hard thing for societies to do but you can't move you you really can't move you end up in endless cycles if you don't actually acknowledge so inspired so Barbara allow I guess it's your turn thank you no it's been really interesting it's always interesting to see what people pick up from a very you know various talk the first thing I wrote down on my page which is sort of how I remember and take notes was a phrase the calamitous rocks of inequality um and what this brought up for me and what I think uh President Sirleaf said so eloquently is why we need to think differently so if the normal way to think is that that inequality is calamitous rocks not places we want to go not places where our footing is solid not places where we feel balanced then that changes the equation right that changes the way we see everything else and so I really appreciated the fact that she came back to that several times is how we need to think differently and then when the last question which I thought was really fantastic the sort of how do I you know hold hope how do I keep moving forward this is something that resonated with me and I think also with Pauli Murray's story this idea of be yourself right so if we combine those of you know thinking differently and being yourself trusting your experience or the experience that you gain by listening from other people um it just potentially takes us in different directions and opens the door for what she called pushing back the frontiers of possibility because I think that that uh right her description of what it was like to come into the situation that she came into in Liberia and to say no I really I do want everyone at the table I do want there to be collaboration and sometimes that's going to work sometimes that's not going to work very well but to hold on to that as what that's sort of new normal establishing what is the way that we want to be and continuing to try to work to to make that more and more the reality of every day for everyone um you know I really appreciated the fact that in her talk she talked about very specific things that she did that people that uh folks in in her communities did to address particular issues but she also saw this from the balcony she saw this big picture of how we shift uh and the fact that she's that she could rely on her own confidence to establish no that's right maybe you haven't seen a woman in a role like this before but here I am and I can do this right I think that kind of message and the idea that you can in fact trust your own experience or the ideas that you have that may not be what the dominant society is telling you or what um you know we're learning all the time in our textbooks and uh on the television and all that kind of thing I felt like that was just an incredibly powerful message too that invites us to think about how we shift to what we want the new normal or as we talk about now what we want the the ways that we are expected to behave in relationship to one another the ways that we can and should work together so that there is more equality and there is more uh engaged democracy um you know I think in in today's uh culture this is so obvious because of what's happening in the political realm of you know commentators explaining which I think is so true that had we all gotten some agreement around the story in the at the end of the civil war we wouldn't be where we are now people are really fighting over the story right the reality is the reality if they're fighting over the way that that that um we share that and so when we think about what's happening now uh trying to um bring forth those voices of truth uh I think is even more important and listening to people who whose experience is gonna help us all be more collaborative be more participatory believe in ourselves and hold on to hope is you know was a very powerful message for me in that regard on you Zach well thank you all so much for the thoughts you've shared already I think there's a really interesting through line here for these takeaways that has to do with American exceptionalism has to do with trying to find relatable and translatable contexts with President Johnson Sirleaf and I think that that's that's really powerful you know Ms Carter you said it with we we tend to be very us focused this us acronym uh represented all representative Alston you talk about um you know considering ourselves to be particularly exceptional and how hollow that feels when you lay that side by side with some of the narratives coming out of Liberia and the rest of the world as well uh you know I'm I'm here today representing really my my colleagues in Kenya the work that I focus on is focused on holistic health and education in Kenya but you know there's 45 of my team they're all Kenyan leaders set legally and and and organizationally separate from the work that I do here my job is to redirect resources and attention to their work and um they you know have many of the contexts uh applying to their day-to-day lives that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf just articulated to us you know one of the things that she said was talking about this tension in trying to resolve Liberia's problems between the urban elite and the rural majority and having that be in parallel with this mounting tribalism that felt like it was difficult to to get any kind of unity or any kind of consistency throughout the nation that's also true in Kenya but it's also true here in the United States the contexts are different the implications are different and what it's derived from different and we have to acknowledge that but there is a large set of translatable lessons here to pull away so I say that for anyone that's watching that's kind of thinking to themselves well I'm really passionate about what's happening in Durham what do I take from someone who's made such an impact in Liberia what do I do there is plenty of things you could take away from from that kind of a lesson I think the other thing I will say though is that despite that through line of translatable context there's a lot to be said here about localized expertise and localized value I mean I was so moved by the the quote that Dr. Scully actually had in the introduction to President Johnson Sirleaf's talk the by the time supplies had really reached rural Liberia confronting the Ebola crisis Liberians had handled Ebola themselves that's essential that's that's absolutely vital to think about in terms of having local expertise responding to local problems because when you have local expertise addressing local problems what you get is is nuance and little pieces of lived experience that address localized variance in the problem as well so Ebola doesn't look the same in one rural community in Liberia versus another rural community in Liberia let alone Liberia versus Kenya let alone the country the whole entire continent of Africa versus another continent whatever it may be so there's a lot to be said there for valuing that that local expertise and I'll tell you from my context one quick anecdote I'll share is you know with COVID there's been a major concern worldwide about how COVID is related to girls education you know the the Malala fund ran a study a few months ago where they estimated that by the time COVID is resolved globally there may be 120 million adolescent girls out of school because with schools shut down with resources shut down with jobs being scarce there aren't people to pay scholarship fees aren't people to buy uniforms and so how do you keep that generation of young women in an educational setting what do you do and one of the other concerns was was related to early pregnancy you've got girls who are out of school for an extended period of time if adolescent pregnancy is already a crisis in your context how do you prevent that while girls are away from institutions and so the principle that we work with most directly is a woman named madame dorkas or yugi who's based in Kenya and she had a solution right off the bat the second COVID came she brought forward a solution and she said the best way to go about this is knocking literally door to door once a week reminding the girls that they are not out of school they are temporarily out of school you are still a student you are still pursuing your education we have not forgotten you you are not by the road you have not been left behind we're just waiting and you will come back just that that kind of mantra over and over again that's the kind of approach you're not going to see in a multilateral collaboration it's the kind of thing you're not going to see in a policy recommendation but by God it works you know we the school that dork is heads with almost 250 students in it had 2% of their population come back pregnant after the COVID shutdowns and the surrounding school's average 18% drastically different and if you ask dork is what was the difference it was knocking doors so I think I think there's something really powerful there about that localized approach and I imagine that President Johnson Sirleaf is full of that kind of expertise I appreciate her sharing that with us I think sort of on that it makes me maybe want to toss out a question here based on that too when we think about how to how do we actually do the work of this in some way and so I want to tie these two questions together and then just whoever wants to kind of jump in can we hear the term sort of systemic often right so I wonder for folks at home if you could talk a little bit about or at least from your perspective you know what does it mean for a problem to be systemic and how do we go about sort of creating more just systems or maybe what experience have you had in working at Zach you're talking about some things there but I wonder if folks could talk a little bit about that or maybe even just what's a day in the life like when we're trying to do those things well I had a question to follow up on Zach and this is a question I think for anyone on here I had the opportunity to go to Zimbabwe with the rural council of churches to have these what are these every seven year things it was in the time when Mugabe that was the AIDS crisis and I'm sitting here thinking about if you had to look back and that regimen it's like it didn't exist it's very anti and we're at the university of Zimbabwe for like a week or so and I was so struck by this denial the bible and so on and so forth but but I'm also then also thinking now when you think about covid so Zach I just appreciate what you just shared so I have two practical questions and I'll open it up one is how many people actually migrate and get to the United States and where we're the majority of the librarians living as she I think she mentioned that there are communities in large places like where would they be coming and where they are and how do they keep that connect but the thing that I was most struck about is that's a black lesbian for me to go down to Zimbabwe I was like that's the motherland and I was stunned at the poverty I was stunned at the inequity I was stunned at the kind of major backlash now within the within the world council of churches where we were at the university of Zimbabwe we could have these really there must have been several thousand I think maybe a couple of thousand but we could have within that confine we could have very open conversations and one of the ones that came up being being black and a lesbian there where they could actually talk about it there's a there's an organization an international organization for LGBTQ and maybe I maybe I just had this this is weird to say maybe I had this romantic vision of going back to the motherland right and I understand that and where does that come from so that gets a little bit about what do we talk in school what we don't know why do we romanticize it but I was really struck about how these big boulevards were there and all the money coming out of the of the natural resources you know so you got a real grounding and I must tell you I was really perplexed about what could I do as an American spending time in Zimbabwe Mabsegris was down there she I think she went on to another country but coming back home and actually feeling absolutely can I use the term not powerlessness but how does this keep on happening and where are we now and what what would have to happen so dramatically to change that in the year 2021 but but the but the parallels of that AIDS crisis and how they dealt with it then and where we are with COVID I'm just going to open it up but I must tell you I came back and has anyone else ever been to any other parts of Africa I'm just wondering literally literally there or you can do virtually I'll just stop there I'm rambling but I have it was one of the most powerful moments of my life to this day and now what do we do with it now so I'll stop and pass it on to ever like to pick that up I'll pick up on the homophobic I guess Trings in African one thing we do one thing I think is historically accurate is and there's a few historians working on this is that and it's not to say once upon a time everything was perfect in Africa because that has its own challenges but certainly historians I think quite strongly argue that the kind of particular sort of anti-gay homophobia that we see currently in places like Uganda and you know maybe Zimbabwe and parts of South Africa you can't separate from colonialism that they that they are they are also a colonial story and in Uganda in particular which is in Central Africa borders on Kenya there's actually quite a lot of evidence that it's also tied to particular kind of evangelical proselytizing much more recently out of Texas in places that that have really been whipping up really like promoting homophobia and it's quite interesting so I'm literally when I'm watching this over the weekend I'm preparing for this event I was reading a manuscript of a of a South African woman African woman who lived I think she's born in 1904 and died I haven't got to the end of the manuscript so died sometime you know let's say the 1970s and she was a she came from a rural area Zulu rural area in Kozuli Natal and was a journalist and wrote books under the radar because she wasn't allowed to etc etc etc but she was she ended up marrying a man also from Zulu land who was it turned out was having a sexual relationship with another man at the same time as he was going out with her and it's complicated because the other man was white and seemed to have some power over this man but what was really interesting in the manuscript was the degree to which that wasn't an issue it didn't surface as at least an issue around sexuality it's like that the Eden needed to be a debate about well you know is he bisexual what's going on here it just it just was sort of noticed and her fiance said yes when we get married I'm gonna have to you know stop but there was it wasn't given the freighting weight of you know how we talk about sexuality so all just to say is these things are so complicated and some of them are very recent history as a Uganda I think some are a longer colonial story and anyway I'll just stop there thank you so you know just coming back to something that Dr. Scully you talked about is about the story when we think about these systems so I want to give a shout out to the folks that are fighting the battle over the new North Carolina state humanities and history of standards and how until we have textbooks in every state in every high school in this country that include people like Paulie Marie and Byrd Rustin that really begin to shift the way that we teach about who we are the way we tell our own story I think that's one of the big systemic changes that I'm seeing because that system of indoctrination into our exceptionalism and that system of white supremacy and patriarchy that is so prevalent in how we teach our story that it becomes almost invisible I think problematizing that and troubling that way before we get to college because of course college professors that's a lot of you know they have to help students unlearn what they thought they knew but not everybody goes to college and not everybody reads history and so I think that those the strategies that begin to really create the the a more accurate story and a more accurate reckoning with our settler colonial past and that just the recognition that that's who we are or that's who we are as a country you know obviously all of us have have different genealogies in that in that story I think that's really you know that's one of the areas I have to say though I'm not usually a huge sort of policy person I believe in policy but I but policy is only as good as the people who put it in place and as a folklorist one of the things we also think about is how traditions you know cultural traditions whether those be food or ceremony ritual you know how do those also reinforce the ways that we think about ourselves and how do those change over time and adapt and become you know so for example just we're just talking about the lgbtq world the notion of wedding has changed as a tradition in this country relatively quickly and so even people who might look like traditional participants in that brides and grooms as it were completely think about that ritual in a different way and so I think that that's also an important thing for us to be paying attention to and again be thinking differently and thinking about other ways that we might model for the people around us I thought that was another really powerful piece of her talk models that courage that she's talking about for the people around us and how much we speak openly about those kinds of things that we're doing that are different so that other folks can feel more comfortable in that as I always talk about it expanding the rubber band right so there's more room in the middle for more people to fit so some of us play the role at pushing at the edges some of us are wholly in the middle you know we operate differently in those systems but beginning to to really think about that as a systemic change to how we think about ourselves so that we can confront some of these systems of oppression I want to go off of what Dr. La was just saying about that allusion to the ongoing conversation about North Carolina curriculum and for those of you who are watching at home a little background on that there's a debate currently about whether or not North Carolina can formally in its humanities and history curriculum teach the phrase systemic racism whether or not systemic can be named out loud in the textbooks and the thing that has always since we're talking about you know how do you understand the word systemic in this context I when I found this debate the first time I thought it was hysterical to me because I remember being in middle school and high school in this state in public school in North Carolina learning about de jure and de facto discrimination which if you can understand the difference between de jure and de facto discrimination you're very close to talking about systemic violence anyway so this is I think largely a debate over terminology but you know de jure discrimination being that it's been codified de facto being it exists but it's not formally codified or in law both of those things exist and I think that's the crux of what systemic issues are it's that you could spend your entire lifetime advocating for pushing for the removal of de facto discrimination in all of its forms and at the end of the day at the end of your lifetime if you had eradicated de facto issues from the world you would not be done there would still be so much left to do and the same thing vice versa if you could get rid of every horrible policy every violating law and you still wouldn't be done and that's that's the piece of this that I think is important to understand it's um you know maybe a metaphor that I like to use sometimes is it's as if you have a table think of kind of a mosaic tile laden table and you've you've spilled some kind of a fruit juice on it something that's dark and red and difficult to get out you can scrub that table to death and at the end of the day you're going to have some kind of stickiness between the tiles you just didn't get to and it's not going anywhere and that's that's part of that systemic construct that we have to understand and I think the best way you can tackle it frankly is to look for opportunities to subvert anytime someone is trying to subvert either through a new form of innovation a new form of radical gathering I mean I think president johnson surly out alluded to this a little bit when she was talking about rather than trying to meet existing standards I think was the way she phrased it decide what those standards should be on your own and hit those targets instead that's that kind of fresh perspective is going to help tremendously if you're going to address something that is systemic I'll say Zach is making my job seem bleaker bleaker but you know I don't know that I could disagree with his assessment and the definition so you know I just to piggyback off that a little bit from you know someone who does work in policy and or in you know state legislative policy and to your question Adam about kind of what's our what's this work look like and from my perspective in my context you know I especially coming from Durham you know this is a constituency and a place that you know cares deeply about you know tackling things like systemic racism and I'm really proud to represent folks in district 29 and in this county and so for me you know big picture I think every single day especially during this session where we're going to be filing a lot of bills and thinking very seriously about how we can you know reform our institutions think very seriously about you know what what are the assumptions you know kind of embedded in our in our policy decisions and the practices of our agency where are their places where you know where are their decision-making points that have historically and are currently being infected by racism by gender bias by classism and lack of consideration of wealth disparities and the fact and a lack of compassion around just what feels like a basic responsibility about providing people's basic needs so I think about that every single day um and uh I think maybe in part to Zach's point we're so we're working in an environment that for my perspective is very challenging and so you know I think we think about how can we be creative how can we be subversive in a way that will actually work um because you know coming through the front door again for the policy positions that I support and the dynamics of the general assembly going through the front door and kind of creating change feels very difficult right now so you know I think we think about how to how to how to come at things in different and innovative and perhaps sometimes subversive ways and we think about these these big picture picture questions and it comes down to things like coalition building quite frankly and the work every single day to engage with stakeholders to engage to listen to folks who are being impacted by the crises that we find ourselves in build relationships with people across the aisle to try to find some common ground and and make progress even if it's subtle at times that can hopefully in the long run have a big impact on our institutions um so I'll just wanted to add that can I just follow up real quick um we've represented for Renetta Alston we're sitting in the state of North Carolina we're no salacious for coming up or along the Atlantic coast there's a place called Somerset Plantation the second largest land slave plantation in the state of North Carolina so when you think about what that was and all that and you know we have the old background of slavery and where they were Virginia North Carolina going up into before us tobacco going up into up into Boston and again I'd like to ask that question um when people are moving here however they get here or what you just said Zach as well just gets to what you're doing Renetta what happens at the General Assembly is this something that the entire General Assembly gets to decide is this something that some individuals depending on what county and who they represent gets to decide and I think the bigger question is we're about ready to get a 14 congressional district here people are moving in droves to the state of North Carolina what would they need to know and how would this be some information especially going into elementary school going into high school someone and so forth so there's a bigger picture of why this this conversation today is so timely and to hear what she had to share about what happened in Liberia but then you think now what do we do with going forward so Renetta when you're over there you know this just stuff come around come up around the school or who has control of the school board who doesn't and why it matters if you might want to go to your individual school board meeting to figure out what they're teaching in those high schools and elementary schools I'll just leave it there but I just think it's a grateful thank you to you and other people who run for public office because I think there's a wonderful connection for those of us do a lot of grassroots on the ground organizing so it's kind of changing hearts and minds changing the public policy and where do the twain come together or how do you make sure that you keep on doing this and not only in English by the way you know thinking about all the other kind of cultural parts of that but but what I'm inspired about today is just saying these are opportunities these are the questions these are the wonderful challenges that we all have and now what do we want to do with it so Renetta I'm just can I just throw it back to you the question about what gets teaching in these schools is that coming up with y'all or is that something independently by county or city comes up with a lot of people I think definitely comes up in Raleigh you know I think all things education including curriculum you know are huge well our hot button issues you know for better and worse you know the fact the fact that for the fact that there's so much politically charged debate around our children and education you know is can it has so often been has made it's also often just been depressing because we aren't in my mind there's still so much work to be done to serve our children adequately and fairly and equitably so it comes up obviously in Raleigh and but it's something that you said you know I think in terms of engagement it's just as important for folks who care about these issues for folks who have perspectives around curriculum that they want to share to absolutely engage with their county officials with their local school boards with their parents groups in their schools and certainly with folks in department of public instruction or the folks in the general assembly I think it has to be a full court press kind of always because these issues are fraught they are very politically charged they are very powerful stakeholders on all sides and so you know it requires you know I think advocates with a lot of agency and a lot of capacity and a lot of kind of persistence around these issues so I hope that answers some of your questions. I also want to put a word in for historic sites and other ways that people learn about the history right so I know there's been a lot of changes my colleague Michelle Lanier a fellow folklorist is very influential now in the Department of Cultural Resources and really pushing all the state historic sites to tell a bigger story and to really go back and think about like what is the impact of what they're telling our site the Pauli Murray Center is a national historic landmark there are only 39 of them in the state of North Carolina and we're the first one focused on primarily on the story of a woman and the first one in the country focused on an African-American woman who was LGBTQ so I only say that to say that as we shift the landscape what do people come across how do people engage with all the ways folks learn about a place or the past places like historic sites places you know that are outside the K-12 schools and and then are also resources for K-12 schools also become this important way for people who are moving to North Carolina to learn more about the places that they're living so if you move to Wilmington you're not you know you're learning about the the race massacre in 1898 if you're moving to Asheville you're learning about the vibrant African-American community that was part of downtown you know these are highly under-resourced efforts mostly done by people who see it as a vocation for an application versus a vocation and I think that those are all all those ways are ways that we shift that narrative we shift that way that we think about who we are and hopefully our responsibility to one another because acknowledging what's happened is only the first step in in the that longer process of repair and reckoning and hopefully at some point healing but you know I think there's a lot of arenas I know you even do this in your own work Mandy because you remind us through your work about how Durham was the home of song how Durham was you know that there's a lot of things that don't have it made it into quote-unquote the textbooks and I just have to say I hope that one of the things that we've learned through COVID is all resources are not books that are actual paper books that as we try to build online resources that are accessible to families and young people and teachers that it can open up and make that transition more quickly I have a friend who wrote a North Carolina history book and it's a great book but it doesn't mean it's been adopted by local school boards and is being taught and I think this is where Zach you know I have a little it's like a kind of a pushback in the sense that sometimes local decision making is decision making that maintains the status quo and that that trying to disrupt that you know sometimes it takes outside intervention to disrupt some of the ways that local school boards I think this is attention in our country for a long time the sort of local versus state versus national but school boards in particular have tremendous amount of power on the local level and they're the ones in the past who have adopted what book you know and so it is you know it happens on all levels and I think we all have a role to play in pushing in pushing new stories and someone in the yes there's we have champions in our schools in Durham public schools who do an excellent job of teaching Durham history engaging students in that you know I think that the more resources and the more latitude we can give them the better job that they'll do and maybe Durham can be a model for other places in the state and the country just from the chat but just to give a shout out to Brian Stevenson you know who's known for his work and the book and the film just mercy but he has done so much to put lynching on the national leader with his you know with the the museum in Montgomery and then he's launched this lynching in America site as to your point about this is such as books and but I think the more we can do that but the issue of power is so so significant because you know a feminist theorist Yartri Spivak wrote this very sort of landmark piece many years ago called you know Candice of Alton Speak and increasingly I just and it's excellent work it's really can people listen to the working class and to the poor it's not that they're not speaking always but that do people in power listen and what are the ways that get to how do you get to have authority in the world and one thing I'll just end here but I I'm really interested increasingly from my pervious vice-president for undergraduate affairs I'm thinking about student success and equity in in the college experience you know Dr. Anthony Jack who's written this really excellent book called The Privileged Poor which is about the experience of basically working class poor students from lower income backgrounds who go to private high schools go to private colleges go to private universities you know elite private universities like Emory and the experience they have through that and we had him last week I think it was at Emory giving a virtual talk and we were in conversation with him and he was so excellent and in without using the word class he did he he's pointed to the significance of incredible inequality back to systemic around class and of course you know it's so aligned with race because it's also you know it's a racist country but sometimes I think we really also need to lift up the issue of poverty and class and people's and how that determines what school you go to and our tax laws and anyway yeah yeah yeah there's a there's a very interesting interaction there between sort of um because I'm so glad you all brought this up because I had a question about education in this sense of sort of there's the the formal and the informal as well we see this interaction between those things or policy versus grassroots right and the interaction between those two that is probably in in many ways sort of essential to it I want to go back to something that um that Barbara said a minute ago too about um the historic site um and that Polymery being the only one North Carolina focused on a woman and I wanted to sort of talk a little bit about and maybe in that sort of informal way too you know the the women of Liberia mass action for peace movement was a movement of mothers right um who who drew the line essentially um and of course Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was the first democratically elected uh when president uh in Africa and she also pointed you know women to positions of of uh important power in her cabinet um could could folks talk a little bit about the unique role I think that we see emerging here that that women can play in this that and must play in this kind of work um and and maybe what we can draw from that. Well speaking as a woman and I'll own it um we find ourselves in an interesting also an interesting conversation because we're now looking at last year was the at the hundredth anniversary of when women had the right to vote and getting the right the issue what was it uh Barbie were part of that and others on this call and I find it interesting and I'm not going to be um shy about this when these lands were first settled and you think about who was already here indigenous to these lands it was white men called the founding fathers really and they decided that the first set of people told but not you were women half the population and then after that got done with that little list they also decided that like I said I'll repeat what I said we came here literally as property but yet we saw the pushback and we also them saw the mobilization and the organizing that had to have happened when we were so disempowered and I have to ask the question and I it's a rhetorical one but how did that happen and I'm sitting here thinking in two years from now no wait is this is 20 and three years for now we're going to be celebrating and or acknowledging I don't want to use the word celebrating commemorating freedom summer when you had a thousand white students come from across this country to go down to real rural Mississippi and get them to write the vote and understanding that what had to have happened you had people like Byrd Rustin and the Lawson's you know black folk um teaching and they all came into a school where Coretta Scott King went and did a training around non-violence and the history and the history of this of the state of Mississippi and then looking at the horror and this is on the back of what happened in 60 uh I'm sorry right after the march on Washington in 63 when you had the brutal murders of those four young girls in Birmingham Alabama what is it about a society that is so and when I say the society at the time that you can't have it you'll never get it the Klan would just wear white robes they come and kill you then all of a sudden it not became white rose became the uniform of blue with the middle but police and green with the military and look what just happened on january six so what is it about when you understand that you have to have full equality and justice for all but some people are saying but not you and what we have to do to try to stop you so I'm going to give a little shout out for a wonderful program um that is called social justice story time social justice story time pre-covid you might have heard about this frenetta it was like taking kids to the Durham county library from the age of zero to like eight years old and they would have these little things with the children saying how do you tell a three-year-old or a four-year-old about language justice how do you tell a three-year-old or a four-year-old about food justice in an interesting kind of way I don't unless you think we're born racist or homophobic I gotta think any of us we are we're born this wonderful bundle of joy but what in this society just kind of kind of gets us on this track about us and them and you and me and whatever but then how do we collectively once again with the public policy and grassroots organizing change this but if people want to hold on to power so much that they'll kill you in or figure out how they can do it um through the legislature or through like you know I'm looking at use act just common everyday practice what do you hear around you so I'm optimistic but I'm also thinking what has to happen and generationally generationally I'm now 72 but I remember when I was you know born in 1948 there's a whole bunch of us baby boomers that are probably on this call but there's a lot of 16 to 35 year olds also maybe on the zoom and think about those before us and those coming into it so moving forward what is what is some of the wonderful amazing ways that we get to do that whether it's in public institution or not in grassroots but so I'm optimistic but I'm also furious about why this continues to be the pattern we haven't you get it and it's just a question of time and when it will happen so I'll stop there that's my rant but that's my optimism as well pass it to you Zach okay so I I should say so my work with wiser is fundamentally on every level about the empowerment of women and girls um literally the the acronym for wiser originally was women's institute for secondary education and research and when it comes to putting women in charge of movements and investing in women as the future of politics and society there there's there's an efficiency argument that's usually made or an effectiveness argument that's usually made a very utilitarian argument especially the development space because we we know things that for instance countries where women receive higher education on average have a higher gdp over the span of 10 years we know that when women finish high school in sub-saharan Africa their daughters have a 50 reduced chance of hiv we know that for every dollar that a woman in sub-saharan Africa reinvests back into her communities her male counterparts reinvest between a third and a half of that somewhere somewhere in that realm so there's there's a lot of reasons from a utilitarian aspect that it is wise and prudent to invest in women worldwide period however that I think is a tendency for people in the very data-driven development driven space um and I think we're letting a little bit of our American capitalism show when we lean on that utilitarian argument because there's also the human rights argument which is you should put women in charge because why not like I mean really why not there's that the fundamental argument that people deserve opportunities to lead movements and lead opportunities that they are familiar with that they would perform well in I think there's a ton to be said also about lived experience and if for example you know wiser's work in Kenya all of our decision makers in Kenya are women they're all Kenyan women there's a lot of value in that in that lived experience that's translatable to action you want experts right to be a part of these movements and who better to act as an expert than the people that know it best as we're I'm happy to hear more on that as well if folks wish you but we are drawing near the end of our time together at least for all of us here so we have about five more minutes or so and I just also want to open the floor in these last five minutes for folks we have a lot of people on this call but specifically we have a lot of students and young people we heard Madam Johnson certainly talk about you know the need to do something say something be something and so the two questions I have that I would love to hear any quick response to that you have is essentially how does someone we all want to to be able to do something what can a young person right now in North Carolina do what should they be thinking about ways that they can impact the world around them how can they help and the other thing I'd also ask is how does what is wellness play in that this is hard work you all do very difficult challenging work and we all know it is challenging how do we take care of ourselves as well while taking care of others and being in service of others thanks yeah I'm really small questions here for us in five minutes sorry okay I'm just going to say really quickly one of the things that I also appreciated about the question to President Johnson certainly was about how you hold on to hope and I think that as a student of of the past one of the things that of course we see is that so many people who fought so hard for justice didn't see the justice in their lifetime that they were fighting for and so you know I think that I've always believed that learning from people from their strategies from their stories from their inspiration helps us hold on to that knowing that we're just the next person in the relay race right Paulie Marie talked about that who's handing the baton to you how much you have to be connected to them to actually get a firm hold of that and who are you handing it off to while also holding on to the potential and in Paulie's case the potential of democracy the potential the potential for justice for everyone so I think I would think about ways I can invest in myself so that I can hold on to the hope and I think that's what I hope that young people who come to our site but who also come into my milieu you know my arena that's that's something that I can also pass on to them as as people have passed it on to me I'll say hopefully just a couple things quickly I think a few things I think young people should you know the kind of things that we're talking about and the issues that this conversation is sitting around are big get kind of to Barbara's point you know about the pace of change and just recognize that you know you can do something you know as president office early said every single day by supporting the people you care about just standing up for people that you care about and around issues that matter to you in the little ways in your own household every single day at school whatever the case may be those things matter because you know you empower you know individuals and that has a ripple effect that can be really really important in your own communities and I had another thought that just left me but but also just just you know I'm a big believer in you know giving young people you know an equal amount of agency in the work that we do you know if a young person calls me you know I care as much about their kids as much about much about what matters to them as a constituent as if you know one of the folks on this panel calls so just recognize that the power you have in your voice and if there's something that you're concerned about a question that you have you know for someone like me for instance you don't have to ask you know someone who's over a team to call or go through some organization you have that power yourself so hold your leaders accountable with a phone call you know I tell people you can text me and rather you didn't but you can text me if you need to send me an email attend you know local board meetings join a board you know there are so many wonderful places that are now you know again kind of recognize the the capacity and the the need for youth voices so join the board you know just take up space like take grab power and and and hold it because your voices matter so those are a few things that come to mind I I'm so glad there are a lot of students on this call I love talking to students working with students I was one not long ago so this is a young young person giving advice to young people but I want you all to know that I joke often with my friends and my fiance that Gen Z is going to save us all I love their their chaotic and persistent energy and I'm a huge fan of it I think there is something to look at and the questions we got today though there's something important there about that wellness question right because two of the questions we heard from students were how do you maintain hope and I see a lot of people give up when they make a little bit of progress there's this exhaustion in those questions and to be burnt out at 16 is rough but I understand why you would feel that there's a lot going on and you've kind of entered this space where you're being challenged to learn new things and grow in a particularly tumultuous time but that being said I think that one of the best things you can do is give yourself a ton of grace a ton of grace give yourself time give yourself space be fiercely kind being fiercely kind means sometimes doing things that aren't nice but are fiercely kind and defensive of not just people that deserve to be defended but of yourself as well defend your time defend your stance protect yourself and then also on top of that get exposure just exactly like representative Austin was talking about go to meetings go to talks come to things like this but also diversify your media streams please please please please please what are the best things you can possibly do if you're on and tiktok if you're on instagram if you follow influencers if you follow people who are starting their own small businesses if you follow storytellers go home today look at or you're probably home already go go home look at your your following list and ask yourself about who's represented in your media you know how of all the people that you follow how many of them are people of color how many of them are refugees how many of them are non-native english speakers how many of them are from outside the us how many of them are trans people how many just go through and see if you can find influencers artists activists politicians students anyone that gives you a better picture of what the world is is like it will do nothing but benefit and challenge you i promise can i just say something quickly i can't that one's accident was flawless but it just it just reminded me that you know i'm just old enough to say this for young people that for all of us but the pace of information that you all are accustomed to is just it's it's out it's it's it's outrageous um and you know the pace that i know i i feel and i'm sure other folks do as well the pace at which you feel like you need to respond to things and to be present on social media is it's just it's backbreaking and and stressful so you know i won't try to repeat what Zach said it was flawless but just want to emphasize and underline his comments because it's really really important particularly in this day and age thank you so much um we'll we'll have to end our our discussion there unfortunately but um i do want to take the time to make sure i have time to be able to thank all of you so much for joining us you know for your your time your grace and your your tireless work that you're you're all doing so um Ellen Johnson certainly uh said in her uh in her speech there in the question answer that we should listen to those who have courage to stand up for principles they believe in i couldn't think of a better example um than the folks we've had with us here today so thank you very much um i also want to make sure i take a moment to uh thank the broighill family foundation uh whose support uh without uh whose support this event would not have been possible i want to take a moment to thank donal mackentire and lee welper for their technical support and their leadership in broadcasting this event to all of you today and finally of course i want to thank all of you on the call for joining us uh in these important discussions internaval prize speech madame president ellen johnson sirleaf invited girls and women everywhere to find their voices right saying quote each of us has our own voice and the differences among us are to be celebrated but our goals are in harmony they are the pursuit of peace the pursuit of justice they are the defense of rights to which all people are entitled may all of your voices continue these dialogues going forward thank you thank you