 Intangible aspects of historic preservation are very important for API HIP and that's because historically our people have not been landowners. A lot of times we haven't even been citizens in this country and that causes issues when it comes to site-specific preservation because we don't have any ownership over that site or by the time we have ownership of that site we don't quite reach the 50-year mark of traditional historic preservation. The core issue is that it has been mostly or historically been about architecture preservation. Preservation of architecture and less preservation of heritage or preservation of culture and these things are slightly different. Architecture is tactile and you can touch it, it stays for a long time. It's very ambitious in that sense. Preservation of heritage, it's more complex, it's more diverse, it's more ephemeral. It's through the telling of stories, through oral history, through knowing what the forerunners, the city commissioners, the folks who are in the neighborhood who are known as Uncle This and Aunt That even though they're not really blood-related what they gave for that community to thrive that instills pride and self-esteem in the youth in that community. From the very beginning we've tried to be very inclusive taking into consideration tangible and intangible aspects of historic preservation. We include culture, language, tradition, heritage, stories, people all other things beyond site-specific preservation. When we're talking about the APIA population we can be a little bit quiet with our stories and that is because of a history of shame and exclusion in this country that's prevented us from talking openly about our experiences here. When other organizations take a moment to put all of that in context then they can understand that the historical significance is all there but it's up to them to really be receptive of it. At the national level only 3% of all sites on the national register have anything to do with minorities. So my job is to go out there and to focus on the Latino community since it's such a big community in LA and to excavate these sites that are there to find out the histories and we do that in various ways. A lot of it we have to go out and meet people where they are. Up until very recently there was only one LGBT site listed in the national register the Stonewall Inn which was later designated as an NHL National Historic Landmark. Within the last two or three years I believe two more have been added but at the national level that's still only three landmarks related to LGBT history and I should add that out of those three landmarks they're generally associated with gay men which again presents a sort of inaccurate picture. Another challenge is that people are sometimes afraid because they kind of don't want to rock the boat. If they're living in a neighborhood and people come knocking on their door or they get a phone call or something and it has to do with preservation they may feel a little bit afraid and part of that is that historic preservation is not an everyday term. Latinos have a really long-standing history in the US but a lot of the times that history isn't as well documented so I think it's also being open to the oral tradition to oral history. Sometimes I like to refer to LGBT heritage preservation as a final frontier because we really haven't done much up to this point but it's heartening to see fairly recently that initiatives are coming out of local state and federal governments that look at LGBT history and preservation. It also has to do with the fact that some of these structures that I encounter on a day-to-day basis in the Latino community don't always meet the secretary of the interior standards. So we need to kind of also rethink what preservation is and really dig deep. At the end of the day I like to think I'm just a storyteller and my mission is to just tell the story as they say just the facts and so by raising awareness whether it's social media a dialogue with people they may or may not know I think the beauty of storytelling especially elders, ancestors is they have so much information and knowledge and I think sometimes we don't take them well we take them for granted.