 This will be breakout groups led by leaders from IGRO, Sinon Hallstead, and Victory Gardens Theater to discuss ways in which we can make change through our schools, communities, and through our hearts. So why are we here? As we've seen in the past few months, the call to action to end gun violence led by young Americans across the country has never been louder. And we want to amplify those voices this evening. I'm going to share an excerpt from a speech given by Parkland shooting survivor and activist Emma Gonzalez, which should really encapsulate why we felt the need to gather you all. Emma says, companies are trying to make caricatures of teenagers these days, saying that we are all self-involved, and trend obsessed, and they hush us into submission when our message doesn't reach the ears of the nation. And we're prepared to call V.S. Politicians who sit in their Gilden House in Sinon Seats, funded by the NRA, telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call V.S. They say tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call V.S. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call V.S. They say guns are just tools, like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call V.S. They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call V.S. Let us kids don't know what we're talking about, and that we're too young to understand how the government works. We call V.S. With that, I'm proud to welcome Emily Hoover-Lanzna from the Logan Center at the University of Chicago. She'll be joined by teachers Joel Ewing and Jessica Dean Turner and students Eldridge Brown, Cleo Shine, and Damianty Wallace. Please join me in welcoming them to the stage. On a Sunday evening, I want to start with a quote from Lebovoe. You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they can really make a difference, nothing can quench the fire. We are in a moment where we see fires starting all across the country and indeed all across the world. And in many cases, as has been true throughout history, the fires are being started by young people. The fires are being started by creative people. The fires are being started by artists. And so I'm thrilled to be here this evening with a group of teachers and young artists. And I just want to ask everyone, starting at the end, if you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your work and your perspective on these issues. All right, my name is Jessica Dean Turner. I am a lifelong Chicagoan, born and raised on the West Side. I currently teach at Shires. And I also facilitate discussions about how we can make this world a little less racist and a little less sexist because I think that the way to deconstruct the violent society that we live in is through dismantling these larger, oppressive constructs that we have going on. Did I answer all of the snippets? All right. Hello, I'm Joel Ewing. I am the lead theater teacher at St. Art's Magnet High School and the artistic director of The Yard, which is a youth driven theater company here in Chicago. Similar to Jessica, I try and make the world a little better place. I do some art along the way while having some conversations with the young people that are making it. And shortly after Parkland had occurred, I was talking with my freshman ensemble and one of my freshman theater artists kind of innocently, but quite frankly, asked me when I was kind of explaining my response to Columbine, my student said, well, what did you do when that happened? And I didn't have a really good answer. So I think I've just been trying to find a better answer in that sense. Hi, my name is Damian T. Wallace. I'm a junior at Chi Arts and I'm a creative writing maker then with a focus in poetry. The work I do kind of looks like combining art and activism mostly and trying to find the balance between what my poems and what my plays look like and how that can be put out into the world and do the work that it needs to do to be able to kind of like, yeah, take down these bigger things that are oppressing us in a way. So over the last few, about four years, I've just been trying to dig deeper and find that work and that's like being able to have conversations like this or performing or I choose myself to do a different teaching. So yeah. Hi, my name is Cleo Shine. I'm currently a senior at Santa Art High School. I'm in the theater department. I am about to be a freshman at MICA for filmmaking. So I kind of coined myself a filmmaker, also an actor, also a writer sometimes and I do poetry also. And so I'm also a member of The Yard and part of the cast with the upcoming show Acceptable with The Yard of Colin Binus and recently with this movement and just with social justice work in general, I've never really led protests or led walkouts or anything like that. But recently I've been trying to step up at my school and kind of get the word out to those smaller communities and those people like kids at my school that just don't know how to take the action and kind of lead those causes and getting the action taken by people that wouldn't know where to start. That makes any sense at all. I'm Ayesha Brown and I'm an editor at Sherwood Elementary. Also the youngest TT trainer at Ziyo Garage. I've actually scheduled a walkout. I'm honestly crazy because at my principal she was like, no, you'd be suspended. Talking to my teachers, she was like, yeah, I'm down, I've got her colleagues. And she was like, no, please be with us. She was like, I'll be there. And you look up, we saw the assistant principal and the principal out there with us. I was like, I'll take what's a word and it's not gonna happen. This could be history. Thank you. Thank you. In this moment, I'm thinking about the excerpt from the play and this question of what it takes to motivate us to make a change and how we can be living in a situation where we see violence all around us and we can normalize it and that we have reached a moment in this country where we have normalized an incredible level of violence. And so I'd like to ask the panel to just speak on specifically the question of gun violence in this country and the role that you see art and activism playing collectively to address the issue. Anyone? I'm only 14 and I've seen about five of my friends die due to gun violence. One, I've literally watched his brains actually explode from his head. And to this day, I sit and look at food, like noodles, oatmeal and stuff and I had to take a bite of it. And ever since then, I've always thought like something has to change. Something has to give because it was my friend that passed through to this and I don't want those to fill my brain because it's not good at all. For me, it's mostly just the people around me and the stories that I hear from them and sometimes all it takes is a word, like sometimes that's what inspires you because often like what our brains do, you hear something and then you start tracing back a memory or then you start thinking deeper into it or overanalyze like I've overanalyzed everything and mostly just like if somebody says something sexist for me, women can't do this, they can't because of this or women of color, then for me it just traces back so much and I start thinking of everything that my ancestors have gone through, everything my parents, my grandparents have gone through and that sparks something and that's where my inspiration comes from because we shouldn't have to go through that. It's something that's been, it's systematic so for me it's just about breaking that down. It isn't, it's yeah, it's just about breaking it down, it doesn't have anything to do with like me, it's like it looks like other people and seeing all of you, like you told me a story, that's what sparks me, that's where my inspiration comes from. We've been talking a lot about kind of the pattern of societal behavior after an event like Parkland and yet another shooting to your point of normalizing and media cycles, things like that before kind of our collective apathy or just life in general takes over and we try and find a way to move forward and I think what's interesting about for us fully grown folks that when Columbine happened it was so hard for us to imagine a world where something like that could happen. I think what's interesting about discussing this issue or making art about this issue alongside young people today is they can't imagine a world without it and it's such a stark difference in that regard. So I think that has been interesting to examine and I think like for me personally as a parent and as an educator I quite frankly lost all hope on this issue after Sandy Hook. Once Sandy Hook happened and it led to essentially nothing legislatively decidedly with the issue, I was like I can't imagine something worse that would incite some change and that's kind of a dark place to be in on it but I think what was different about February about the students apartment, about the students in Chicago about the students that are sitting on this panel today is that they kind of refused to let it be normalized in a really inspiring way. Kind of for the first time it was these young people and these people that were direct victims kind of like the play spoke to a little bit about the issue that refused to let it go in a really exciting way and as an adult mentor or teacher that was just so inspiring for me to kind of like examine my role in the fight again. I think that as an artist when I'm in a creative space I feel the privileges that I don't necessarily feel as a six foot black woman walking through the streets. I know that when I have the floor on a stage that people will listen to me in a different way than if I'm just crazy just out of jewel or whatever that is. I think that the arts and activism will always align and they always have to because anything that you produce you've already made decisions about what bodies get to tell this story, why we need to tell this story and it's contextualized in whatever historical moment that we happen to be in. So what is so inspiring in this very dark timeline that we're in is that these young people who are often, we don't value their voices as much as we should but they have so much to teach us and since they have, like Joel said, have lived in a world where violence is normative, their stories and their narratives are how we're gonna find our way out. So I think that yes, the aesthetic space is what we need to present these ideas because in a creative arena we can let our guard down a bit and so we can slip in those ideas that don't necessarily feel like oh, this is a TED talk about violence but we can activate those parts of the brain that will trigger our empathy in our critical thinking skills. Years ago I heard August Wilson speak and he was asked why he decided to become a playwright and he said essentially as a playwright, as a black man in America, I suddenly have people held captive to listen to my ideas for three hours and I find that to be very powerful and I think that for us as artists that the ability to tell our stories and to have people listen to them is very powerful. Historically we know that there have been many moments in history where it is young people's voices that have brought the tide for change when you think about the Birmingham Children's Crusade and young people in the March for Selma and the Freedom Rides and the Siddins and today in the Black Lives Matter movement and other movements across the country, there have been young people who've stood up and said we believe that change must happen. I'd like to ask you all what both creatively and politically helps you to feel encouraged. So we recognize that this is a challenging time but when you're feeling like I need to feel motivated, I need to feel, continue to feel committed to the struggle, what makes you feel encouraged, what makes you feel I cannot give up? To be honest, I'm a junior chancellor at Iowa Chicago and every time I step into the peace house, there might be something in my mind, I might be like, oh man, I'm not very sure about this but when I actually get into the peace house, even if it's just looking around the peace house, I get carried to it. It's like, it's like a beautiful place, it might be a small area, a small block but it's like a beautiful place and it's just like, it's like something I could just take from myself, my self-esteem and everything just can feel done. I think that one thing I struggle with all aspects of my human life is getting motivated, whether it be school work or making or anything, motivation is always something that I have to really design. I have to kind of captivate my own motivation and build it in order for it to be a productive space for me. And so one thing, especially with this movement and political movements in general that's been really motivating is finding a person that I can bounce off of. And so I've been working at my school with the student by-president, Rory Hayes and my friend, Maitav and just working with those two people and having that like-mindedness has always been really helpful because we can just back off each other really quickly. We know how to communicate with each other. I think that's super important is finding someone you can communicate with. Finding someone that has the same passions as you. And it's like you yourself are an artist. I think finding someone who is artistic as well can help because then you think in that creative way and you can find solutions to political and social justice issues through innovation even though you think that those things don't play together. A lot of people see political movements as one track, I guess, as power, as aggression and you can still be soft in a political movement. Not soft like weak, but soft like soft-hearted and you can still show your empathy in political movement. I think that finding people to connect with on that level who aren't just like, or aggression is just a way to get your voice out is really, really helpful because there are other ways to find outlets. For me, it's also people, like I get really nervous before doing anything and recently I've been involved in a lot of demonstrations and so before I like leave the house or I like leading up to the minute before there's like butterflies in my stomach and I'm like, oh my God, it wasn't gonna happen, anything could happen. And I have this like small, it's like five of us group of people who do a lot of organizing together and we're involved in a lot of groups and they're my like safe haven and they're kind of like my sanctuary where like if I'm freaking out, they're like, calm down, we're all here together, anything happens, it'll all happen together. And so that for me is my motivation. Also, just the other people involved. An example, we did a die-in at City Hall a few weeks ago, it was like the week of spring break for CPS and I was so nervous. We were sitting listening and Ron was about to talk. We were sitting in City Hall, Ron was about to talk and we started to do a mic check and the police came up to us starting like escort us out of the room and my legs were shaking. I was like, I cannot do this. They're gonna arrest me and take me away and I've never come back. Like there were so many things running through my head and then like my friend just kind of like grabbed my hand and like we moved together and then it just from there, it was like bliss. It was just like, we can do anything. Like we can do anything in the world. So for me, it's those people and it's just the other people who were there too. Like everybody is always so supportive when it comes to things like that because we know that anything could happen. Like once we got to the first floor and started doing this and then they weren't letting us go to the back and they weren't letting us eat. They weren't letting us have water. Like they were threatening to lock us on the elevators. And it was just everybody standing in solidarity saying like, we're gonna stand in this ground for as long as we have to for you to understand what we need to happen. We were protesting a $95 million cop academy and that problem was planning to build a car for the park. We were just standing there all together and that was the epitome and motivations for me. So I was like, I feel like I can go back to moments like that when I'm feeling very down and I'm feeling like I can't do this anymore because there are people who support me and support the people that do this work no matter what. And you could meet them five minutes ago or you could have known them for five years and still the same level of support. I'm so inspired by the intersection of art and activism with so many young artists that I see today as well as those individual efforts being supported by larger institutions to give them space and both a kind of literal and metaphoric stage with which to do their work. So they're countless youth organizations that have been in the game for a long time but every year young Chicago authors and latter than a bomb continues to be one of Chicago's greatest cultural assets. Victory Gardens does tremendous work in CPS schools with the August Wilson monologue competition that you mentioned. And this year at the finals which these two people were kind of right were it was as if those words were as applicable today as they were when August wrote them decades ago a Free Street Theater, Albany Park Theater Project. I mean the yard is new to the game relatively to those organizations. But it's not only those organizations it's then those organizations partnering with larger kind of capital I institutions to like literally unlock the door and give them space. We've been fortunate to align with Victory Gardens and perform here on this campus. Steppenwolf co-producing column buying us with us. The Goodman's work with Albany Park Theater Project because we I think as educators and young people know right but you don't know until you know and it's usually not through though it's not until those institutions give them that larger platform that I think a broader audience can start to be inspired by their work because sometimes that can be the danger of art and activism because your art is not activating anyone new per se. It can fortify the resolve of people that are already on your side and that's important too. But I think giving a larger stage, a bigger microphone, a bigger platform for these young people to continue to lead the charge and us kind of like step back a little bit provide some insight or support or organization along the way if we can for the most part, that's why I continue to be inspired by every day here in Chicago. I'm gonna go on like all of you. Yes, come on Jordan. But yeah, there's so many, to your point, there's so many organizations that have been doing this work and I think that what is very inspiring about this moment is that the light is being shown on them. What happened with the Parkland students and how we are seeing them take the stage and step out into the forefront. Casting a light in its wake for all these other organizations like Asada's Daughters and who have been doing actionable work in their community. So whenever I feel depleted, I look at all these people who are much younger than me, all the work that they continue to do. I look to my elders who are still out here swinging so there is no excuse. Even because you have to take yourself care, you have to call your people and drink your water and do all those things because we can't give from an empty vessel, you have to put your mask on before you hand it to someone, you know, the airplane. But yeah, there's so much work that is constantly happening here in the city that there is no shortage of inspiration if you're open to it. So many of us who are involved, both as artists and activists, are fighting for a different kind of world that we're experiencing right now. We imagine a place where we will feel safer. We imagine a place where we will feel that there are more platforms for broader voices where people will feel more empowered. And I just want us to take a moment to say if the fight that we're fighting right now, if we were to win, how would the world look different? How would Chicago look different? How would our communities look different? You don't have to pick all of them, you can pick one. I think that the ways in which schools and the neighborhood that I grew up in they would look a lot less similar to prisons. I think that black and brown students would be less criminalized from the moment that they walk out the door. If we won this fight, I think that we would be able to have better conversations about consent and rape culture and anti-racism and that opportunity and access to arts and education because not everybody gets that, has access to that. I think that that would be plenty. I think that the conversation about if we should spend $95 million on a cop academy would begin again with that's foolish. There's some other places that need that money. I think that if we won mental health and how that impacts communities and how that impacts intra-communal violence that would be addressed instead of just assuming the worst in poor communities of color. Ooh, I'm gonna go face to face again. Everything just said. I know if we won, I don't know, I could put both my bullhorns back in the prop department and not have to actively use them for another teacher strike seemingly every other year. That'd be exciting, not that I would look good in red, but like that gets tiresome after a while. So I think a little bit more support for teachers in a more just educational system with large for CPS, but that would be another town hall. I don't know, in terms of art, I think Chicago has really been at the forefront of this idea of representation and inclusion on stage and that's so inspiring and so exciting. I think there's obviously still work to be done on that front, but if we were to win, I think our audiences in those theaters would look a little bit more like what we see on stage. So I think that's kind of our next step. Obviously, Victory Gardens is kind of at the forefront of that too, with the artists' work that are being produced on these stages and what the audiences look like in these houses night after night. I would say from an artistic standpoint that would be an exciting next step to continue that discussion about inclusion and representation, but I don't think that should just end at that down stage. I think that should continue on into our houses as well. If we won, that's, first, it's wild because I can't imagine it. So I just, for years and years of imagine fighting, so the wind is kind of like down, down, down the road. If we won, I think it would look like people wanting to listen to me and other people who look like me without needing the stage part of it and without the art behind it because I think mostly the problem is children of color don't get listened to a lot unless they're performing or unless they're on a stage or have a mic or unless they're yelling angry in the street and then there's just a bunch of people retweeting on Twitter. And also the gun conversation, wild, being erased, but it would get listened to in inner cities rather than it just being a school shooting. Kids in Chicago, kids in Baltimore would be heard rather than they're having to be in a school or whether they're having to be a certain number of victims. Their daily trauma would get listened to. Like Ms. Turner said, mental health would be so much better because now we're closing mental health centers. And yeah, I think youth being at the forefront wouldn't be such a shock anymore because I think even if we won, like there would still be a fight and there would still be something that we're doing and something that we have to demonstrate and it probably wouldn't be as big as this would be something we could change quicker if we won but I think youth being at the forefront it wouldn't be so revolutionary and it wouldn't be so different and people wouldn't be asking like, how do you feel that youth are now at the forefront of people are finally listening to you and it's like, maybe should I listen all the time? I don't know. So yeah, it just, it looked better. I don't know, more purple. Not necessarily. Like everyone else said, I think that if we won, we wouldn't have to be asking if we won. If we won, I would feel like safe at school without people too. I wouldn't like jump at the sound of a textbook falling in the hallway either. I think if we won, we wouldn't have to say you're so woke anymore because that would just be called being a human being and we wouldn't have to draw that line and we wouldn't have to use social justice as a social status because I found that that's happening a lot when people are like, oh well, you're fake woke and it's like, all of a sudden you need to get woke because you need to be popular you need to feel like that's a validation for you when you should just be a good person. Yeah, I think that, like everyone else said, if we won, we wouldn't have to have this conversation. We wouldn't be able to have this conversation on the daily by just sitting and being with people and talking with people. We wouldn't have to organize how to talk about these things and we wouldn't have to dance around them either. It wouldn't have to be like, oh well, I'm going to my grandparents house in Pennsylvania. I should keep it on the low. It would be like, oh, here's the thing I think. What do you think about the thing I think? That paradoxical sentence would be in any sense, but yeah. If we won, everyone else said I wouldn't think it would be safe, but we also do have to think about it'll be a change because I've got to think about it because they disagree with what we agree with. So they still have their own opinion or other things. So even though we won in their minds, they think it's not over. So we still have to think ahead on certain things. I hope you'll love me. Think it's the thing that everyone wants. Like my lovely friend right here said, I wouldn't have to jump at something when it makes a big boom or something. I wouldn't be able to. I wouldn't have to duck my head every time I walk in a well-known bad neighborhood. Or every time somebody drives over a pothole, I would flinch. So being able to say we won, actually would, give me more safe, make me feel more safe and more secure. I think it's critically important for us to be able to imagine a world in which we could win. Despite the fact that these same realities that we're fighting for, people have been fighting for, for years and years and years, for equality, for safety, for empowerment. But I think in order for us to continue the fight, we have to be able to imagine that that question of allowing our imagination to create a new space, even if it is a new space that we are not able to experience, I think that that is the work of artists, that we allow our creative space to make a thing possible and that there is something empowering and healing in being able to do that work. I think that for those of us who are serious about activism, it is critical that we not allow that creative space to become so far away from reality that there is a place that a bridge cannot cross. And if we are living in a moment where our children are afraid, because of the sounds they hear, they're afraid when they go to school, fear is killing us in many ways. And so I wanted to take a moment to actually imagine what it would be like if we won because I think that that's critically important. We're gonna just do one last round of questions and then we're gonna open it up to the audience. And I just wanted to say, if you weren't gonna talk to someone who hasn't been involved in being active and fighting for change, for peace, against gun violence, for empowerment, if you were going to speak to someone and try to say to them, you know, you should be involved, what do you think is the, what is one way, one really important way that you would say to them, this is a thing that I think you can do. This is a thing that I think, because I think sometimes people feel like it feels too big, I don't even know where to start. What is the thing that you would say, this is a thing you can do? You say I'm one thing, right? What do you want to do? I will just go with one, I have a lot of them. I don't have enough time. I will say, I have my community. If you would like to try this, go with your community. There's enough time for me to think. I was looking for a paragraph there. I kind of faced this already with a lot of the kids at my school who were like, I'm not gonna walk out, I don't think it's gonna work. And I'm like, here's the thing. I would say, no matter how small your action is, whether it be, you know, or reaching, or whether it be attending something like this, or no matter how big it is, whether it be planning a walkout, or attending a protest, or going to DC, or calling a senator, it still matters. And even the smallest steps can create bigger change because they all accumulate in the long run. I actually have a friend who says this all the time. We are very opposite. And I say to her a lot, and I'm like, look at yourself in the mirror and know that there are people who look like you on a regular basis and talk to your mother, talk to your aunt, talk to the people around you. And that's what other people are feeling. When someone dies, or when someone's going through something with mental health, imagine yourself. Put yourself in their shoes and feel what they're feeling and fight for you, essentially fight for yourself and you're fighting for all these other people too. I would make a play about it. I'd make a play about it. I'd be conscious of who I invited to come see that play about it. I would find a way to surround myself with smart, creative people, to make any form of art about it, to give us that distance, to give us the chance to reflect, to give us the opportunity to express that reflection back out to an audience and our peers, of our family members, of strangers. I would tell people to register to vote, which I know that can be a very disheartening thing too, and also feel like you're not making any sort of impact whatsoever. But shortly after so many Chicago students were organizing walkouts and protests and marches and not that all of them can vote yet or can register, which many of them cannot, but then the results of the primary election came out and the percentage of people 18 to 26 that voted in the primary was abysmally low. So I would tell people that like, while also organizing your protests and walkouts, make sure you are signing up for the civic duty that can also form an expression protest. So you vote. I make a really good status. I'm not very good into person, but I can make a really good status on basic terms. And like, I got paid recently, someone sent me a little money on the PayPal. They're like, I've shared what you said with my family so that you can do that. Also for the folks who think that their actions are minuscule or they feel like any type of activism has to be huge and they have text message services where I can text my representative a full email. You can download an app called countable where you can find out who these folks are that are empowered and how you can lean on them without ever having to speak to a human because that can be a little calling someone, but we can send things out. So you can take like tiny steps until you're ready to take a bigger step or if you wanna make a million tiny steps that's still a greater distance than no tiny steps at all. Thank you. I would say that I think that we all need to recognize that we have a lot to learn from each other and that we can keep learning and that it's important to cross the divide. So I am 52 and this young man is 14 and I learned an awful lot from him today. And I think that we tend to organize ourselves in groups and create boundaries that say this section has the knowledge and this section does not. I think it's critically important for us to recognize that knowledge can cross boundaries in important ways. So we'd like to open up to the audience and take a few questions for the first person. I was going to make a comment. I think that it's very important that people understand that it's not the NRA money that is so crucial as the fact that they get out to vote and that's why it is so important for people to get out to vote. It seems to me that the younger students who cannot vote, they can drive a car and they can go out and organize and drive people to the polling place who need to drive there and that can be very participate. All right, thank you. Yes. We hear a lot about the people who have, who armed themselves who are living in homes in fear of home invasions or in fear of some sort of crazy government crap. I don't know if some government's gonna come in and take everything away but we rarely hear the perspectives from the people who live in a hood who live in their cities. And you hear, many times, people are facing direct threats of being shot in the only way and their eyes to combat those threats is with their own guns. And this is not some fear, moderate thing. This is something that happens often. So what do you say to those people? I spent a significant part of the time that I've lived in Chicago, living near the corner of 79 Picardish Grove, which is one of the most violent corners in the city of Chicago. And I have seen a gun shot. I have experienced intense violence in my neighborhood. But what I consistently also experienced is that I watched someone shoot a gun, not intending to use it as a tool of fear. And every time I think, are you thinking about where that bullet is going to land? Because even when we are holding guns, as we said to protect ourselves, so much of the time, the bullet does not land where it was intended to land. And so I believe that we need to be much more conscious of the fact that when people live in fear, that fear is like an illness and it spreads. And that we all need to feel that if I'm living in a space where I feel safe, but 10 miles away from me, people don't feel safe, that those people still matter to me. And that I need to be engaged in creating and a spreading of safe rather than a spreading of fear. That's my response. Other question, Tom, right here. Hey, I was just really direct that anybody can answer it. You have said that you try to influence people who are like-minded, enjoying whatever you're doing. Go walk out. What do you do or how do you talk to people who are not like-minded, who you want to try and influence? Yeah, so I've encountered this recently and especially with people at my school, not in many of Facebook conversation, I'm not gonna call it an argument because it was a conversation, regarding posts that they've made. There are some people at my school that right after the Parkland shooting, decided it would be a jolly old time to post memes about it. And so me and some of my friends approached them on the net about this and some of my friends were a little bit more aggressive and it was hard, it's hard to not be aggressive in that situation, right? Because you're like, this is coming from my heart and your passion just kind of explodes. And so approaching people with facts, I think is one of the best things because yes, people have opinions but people are more likely to believe you if you have evidence to back up some opinions. And so approaching, also I think a lot of people when you approach someone with a very different idea than you, people get defensive and the only way to respond to defense and anger is with defense and anger. And so you're never, you're just talking to brick walls there, right? You're just, you know, like there's nothing, there's no communication occurring at that point. And so it's about approaching people and taking that shield down of like, forgetting the opinion, this opinion, this opinion, this opinion, what they said, what they said, and kind of removing that and just seeing this human being and seeing how their brain works and using your ethos and your pathos and your logos and kind of, and being able to connect with them and reach them on a personal level in order to change their mind. Yeah. It's full of people yelling at each other a lot. And, you know, it starts at a certain place too, so it's hard. But I don't think that works. And I think especially at this time, it's really, really important for when you disagree with someone, my sister voted for Trump. I did not. And I have, but I love my sister. I love her dearly. And I believe she's a good person. She does good in her life. And it's really, I find it really important to reach for us to try and reach each other's hearts and recognize our hearts and say no mistake if you want, you know? And start from that, because argument, I mean, you can say facts, but there's lots of facts out there. And I don't even want to get into it. And I hate people. You know, I mean, it just isn't helpful. I think that one of the challenges is that many of us are experiencing a kind of pain that makes us angry. And that there isn't a lot of space to address that. And so I think that it's important to recognize that anger isn't always a bad thing, that we have to have space for it. But this space right here is a space where we are all having a conversation. And I think that we can all take responsibility for creating more spaces to have collective conversation where different kinds of people with different perspectives, different journeys in their life can sit down together and have a conversation. But when we come to that table, we have to recognize that the journey that I have followed, the journey that he has followed, the journey that she has followed, every journey inside this room is different. And the steps that we have taken on that journey may make some of us enter into it at different places than others. That would be my response. Yes. I can't hear all the questions, so maybe it's been asked already, but I wanted to mention that it appeared that conflict resolution has not thought out very well. And I'm a younger generation. And to me, that could be part of the problem, being able to solve a conflict, being able to rationalize and read and not with some logic. And whatever that, you don't have to go to that extreme, go and purchase a gun, pull the gun out, and then you, that's three different steps. So, when I'm confused, and I think about this a lot, is what would proper persons need to get a gun, pull it out, and then pull the trigger. But if there's something that's going on in society that maybe is not taught at home, that I used to have a problem, or maybe the peer group pressure, I don't know, that I'm very confused about this whole thing, and whether it's in a park or in a school, or whether anybody's shooting here in Chicago, to me, it's the national problem. You said you're confused, maybe that person that takes those three huge steps on one of the little type of things, they probably have the guidance that they needed, or someone to actually sit there and be like, have you thought this out? Are you sure this is what you're gonna do? Is this the right thing? Is this the wrong thing? Might actually have someone to make them sit there and think about their actions before they do it. Cause like, in the anger that they're in, most of the time, when people get angry, they let their anger take over their thoughts. So, if someone else sits there here, calm them down, so the anger's not taking over their thoughts, and their thoughts are actually flowing. They won't actually take those three huge steps. And I don't know if that helped. Also, we live in a very violent country. Like, we are inundated with images that tell us that when violence will get you your answer. And I don't think, I mean, as artists, we get to live in a space of ambiguity and process and figuring it out. But most folks, like one of my things that I try to drive home with my students, that there is not necessarily, like, this is the one right way. So, I think that when there's a conflict, oftentimes it's like, well, if I solve this, if it's not right, it's wrong. I need a direct answer and, you know, amplify that to the end of the degree, and then that might trigger someone to go, well, this is the only response I have right now. So, the combination of the violence that we see perpetrated by our country onto the rest of the world, and then given access to a gun, those things, you know, then you have your answer there as to how you're gonna solve your conflict. I think that we should do more in figuring out how we can cultivate a space that, okay, well, let's try to work through this murky ambiguity. These feelings I'm feeling, have a language about our emotions and about things that we come across when, you know, your brains are young and mushy and like you don't mess or groan, you know, so how we can continue to be more emotionally intelligent so that we don't think that, okay, no violence is the only option that I have. Also, people are traumatized a lot of the time, especially living in Chicago, like we see a lot of things that, it's not normal to like see somebody die or to like see a gun fire, to even know what a gun looks like before you're grown, before you can process the information and we normalize it here and we normalize it in Chicago and it's like it's not a big deal and sometimes if you haven't, it's kind of weird, but everywhere else, that's not what people see. So I think a lot of times we kind of push back the idea that children are traumatized that like 17 year olds, that 14 year old traumatized about a lot of the things that they see and we don't have trauma-informed schools, we're closing mental health centers, we just don't have the spaces to have the conversation. So a lot of the times children feel shut out or we definitely feel shut out, like we can't have those conversations that there's nobody to go and talk to. So a lot of the times when they're taking that first step or I'm gonna go get this gun, it's like in their mind that's all that they know. So then even having the conversation with people around them, that also might be that first person solution even if it's an adult. It could be somebody who's 35, they've known their whole life and they're also like, oh yeah, you definitely need to go get the gun. So even having those conversations, if you're traumatized from a young age and also misinformed as you're getting older, then a lot of decisions you make aren't necessarily what we wanna say is right or what we wanna say is the most informed decision you could possibly make. So I think what it might look like is being able to open up spaces to have those conversations for people who are traumatized or for people who may be misinformed about the right things to do. And cause a lot of times we have conversations like this and it looks like a bunch of people who already know what they need to do or those people who already have those spaces to have the conversations and it's not the people who don't. So opening up spaces like this to people who don't know that there are spaces to have the conversation, then we start to like just take that tiny step to be able to say you have people to talk to and you have a place to go. Sorry, really quick. I think on top of all of that in schools called counselors, right? And everyone assumes that counselors are like, let's talk about your feelings. They're not therapists. They're there to get you in classes and get you into college. And so people use school counselors as an excuse. You know, and like the counselors are doing their job. That is literally their job is to get you into classes and get you into college because they have 1500 other kids to get into classes in college, right? But that uses an excuse a lot of times. Like, oh, well they could have talked to their counselor. The people that are saying these things have never been in a room with a counselor. They've never been a student sitting in front of a counselor because you don't, yeah, they're not therapists and that's all I can say really. So there's not that resource in schools to resolve those conflicts or to kind of find an emotional outlet that a lot of people don't have at home. A lot of kids that don't have many friends don't have in general. And so when you don't have that outlet in school or at home or just in your other life, you find other outlets that you see on TV that you see in your video games. And I'm not blaming the video games or TV because I've done with that excuse too. But you see your glorious revenge plot, right? And it looks like the best plan because you have no other, nothing else that you can do but you do have a gun, right? Hi, we are going to be closing out this section. And in closing I just want to say thank you to all the panelists. And my closing thought is that on this question of what it looks like if we win, so today on that same corner of 79th and cottage there is a healing salon that has opened and the healing salon has healers of all different types who are investing in the community and opening their doors to make rinky and massage and all sorts of spiritual and emotional healing opportunities easily accessible to people. And I think that it's important that we recognize that we can abandon the places that are difficult or we can recognize the complexity of this city and we can throw our creativity and our energy and our voices and our talents in to go into the difficult space, whether that difficult space is a space of conversation, whether that difficult space is a school, whether that difficult space is a street corner to be willing to have the courage and wherewithal to go in and to confront it. So thank you to all the panelists and thank you all for being here. We're going to transition. So now we're going to break you all into three groups. We're going to do breakout groups. And what we're going to do is create action plans, five-step action plans of things we can do in our communities, through our arts and through our schools. So Becca and Ben are going to sort of shepherd you to a group. We'll do this for about 15 minutes and then we'll share our findings. Thanks. We call this on the far end. Head over to that big video over there that's the school. And then move over here. Head over to that big video over here. So we'll move this over here and head over to the arts. Oh, it's the arts. This is the, I'm left over here on the left side of the, I'll leave it on the left side of the arts. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So oh... So. So. So. So. So. So. Now. We're done. Oh, yeah. Let me use the phone. Okay, then maybe people can just talk about this. Okay.