 All right friends welcome welcome we see you there and welcome to our youtube friends we have an exciting day for you and i'm so happy that you joined us despite all this beautiful san francisco sunshine we have going on and do want to let you know that this event will be available on youtube for future viewing thank you rodessa for allowing that to happen and please do share it widely because this is going to be such a great program um we want to thank you again for being here and being part of san francisco public library community this is part of our summer stride and we're rounding out summer stride but it is not too late for you to sign up to do your 20 hours reading and to collect your beautiful iconic san francisco public library tote bag with that wonderful art from artist calani wanita and summer stride cannot happen without our friends at the san francisco public library all right and we want to welcome you to the unceded land of the ancestral home of the ramya tushaloni peoples who are the original inhabitants of san francisco peninsula we recognize that the ramya tushaloni understand the interconnectedness of all things and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia we honor the ramya tushaloni peoples for their enduring commitment to war rep mother earth as the indigenous protectors of this land and in accordance with their traditions the ramya tushaloni have never ceded lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place as well as for all people who reside in the traditional territory we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland as uninvited guests we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors elders and relatives of ramya tushaloni community we recognize to respectfully honor the ramya tushaloni people we must embrace and collaborate meaningfully to record indigenous knowledge and how we care for san francisco and all its people and that link that i shared in the chat box leads back to really great reading list and resource list of first person resources including native lands and sagorate trust and they're out of oakland and doing amazing work so check them out our reading campaign for july and august on the same page we're celebrating the work of jacklyn woodson and her book read at the bone and our book club is tomorrow at seven p.m join us it's a fun group all right and that is all the announcements for today for the library but again thank you all for being here and yeah sign up for so much time and we are so excited today to have radessa jones and lisa l bigs dr lisa l bigs and dr jones for teaching art for personal and social transformation these are amazing humans amazing women and doing amazing work so without further ado dr bigs take it away thank you so much can can you guys hear me all right yeah okay um i'm lisa bigs i'm um here on the unceded land of the americans back in the wampanoag and province rhoda island and it is really my honor uh today to introduce uh radessa jones who i know for many of you in san francisco is a well-known figure um in the arts community but for those of you who do not know radessa jones is co-artistic director of the critically acclaimed performance company cultural odyssey she is an actress a professor senior playwright and the founder and director of the award-winning medea project theater for incarcerated women in the hiv circle radessa has been working at the forefront of human rights for incarcerated women nationally and internationally for over 30 years she's the author of several publications and plays including big butt girls hard-headed women and for those of you who may not have seen her on stage you may recognize her as the voice of the animated character lulu from the double double oscar winning Pixar film soul radessa's pathbreaking work has been widely recognized as i said she's currently a pew fellow she's also the recipient of a su generous foundation award the goldie lifetime achievement award and the san francisco foundation's community leadership award for developing an intersection of art politics and social rehabilitation through theater her latest documentary project this ain't your mother's theater company profiles how her method informs trauma-based health care today including uh we're conducted at the uc san francisco medical school which conducted research relating the correlating radessa's work to improve health outcomes for women living with hiv and to learn more about her work of course you can visit her website at the medea project dot org and now dr jose is going to introduce me and then we're going to get this baby started oh unmute unmute yourself okay can you hear me now yes good afternoon i repeat again thank you so much lisa for that illustrious uh offering i love you a lot i will talk about dr biggs but she's a dear dear friend of mine and associate that i i am just so blessed to have her in my circle in my life dr lisa l biggs is an actress playwright and performance studies scholar whose artistic work teaches and scholarship investigates the role of the arts and the performance and movements for social justice she currently serves as the john atwater and diana nelson assistant professor of the arts in the department of africana studies rights and reasons theater at brown university she's also a very very prolific writer uh her she has been the author of several seven plays including vigilant vigilante artists black birds and afterlife and a detroit 67 project her current scholarship researchers the impact of theater and dance programs for women incarcerated in the u.s and south africa and has been published in solo black woman which she interviews me and writes about me in that book black acting methods theater survey and applied theater women and the criminal justice system her creative work and scholarship has been supported by grants and fellowships from the night foundation dc arts council national endowment for the arts and the ellen stone bellic foundation among others her forthcoming book beyond incarceration is under contract with ohio state university press hi lisa i'm glad we're spending this sunday afternoon together thank you for the opportunity and the invitation and thank you to the san francisco public library and all the sponsors who made this event possible it's it's um um we're going to spend about what the next hour and a half give or take um really just talking about redessa's work and inviting people to learn more from her this is um just a taste of her um work her approach to um working with not only incarcerated women but folks living with hiv and um as i think was mentioned early on in the program or if it hasn't been i'll say it now she is initiating a new project an opportunity for teaching artists to learn from her directly so um welcome welcome welcome um welcome welcome wait i thought maybe that we could begin just really quickly um tight saying a little bit about about south africa yes how we've met right i know often you're asked to talk about your work in the us and it is really important that people understand what that is and we will get deep into it in a second but um part of the reason that um oh i i i mean i'm been a long time admirer of your your work i as an undergrad i learned about your work and then um uh found an opportunity to take a workshop with you out on the east coast of the omega institute but um from that that brief kind of interaction um yeah i wound up following you to south africa to study your work there and um was just wondering i mean the the first clip that we're going to show is about some of that work but as kind of as a preview can you talk a little bit about why south africa was important as a place for you to work like um what what does south africa mean to you well at first i you know i really believe in gifts from the goddess i had not planned anything i was performing uh my piece deep in the night at nyu in new york and deep in the night was an exploration of um hiv with women in lockdown and uh during that performance in the audience was rajni moonsami who has an organization in uh johannesburg um urban arts and she approached me after my performance and she said if i could arrange it would you come to south africa and do this work because the work just spoke to so many issues that they are still and we're having in south africa you know hiv amongst amongst women amongst families and also incarceration and uh i had said to rajni i'd love to come but if i'm gonna come i want to be uh able to work in the prisons in at least johannesburg and she said well we we will arrange that and once i once i uh said yes i thought it was gonna be a year or so before she would raise the money and it was like four or five months later she called and says i got the money uh can you come now and uh of course uh yes you know i i had never been to africa and then to go in this way on this path of of my work this teaching art for personal and social transformation and to be uh performing my work on this we we were on the stage at the market theater and uh which people if people don't know that is one of the preeminent theaters in south africa period it's also historically a space in which during the apartheid room that regime that period of um of white supremacist rule dating from the early 1900s until the fall of apartheid with the election of nelson indella in 1993 1994 um that the market what the theater um was a side the site the preeminent site for radical revolutionary theater making people who refuse to be limited by the apartheid regime's demand of racial segregation so um but you're so you're there at the market theater doing it was it was it was stunning the audiences were stunning uh just you know sometimes touring in america you only can hope that the pre-press gets out and that there'll be people that will know you or social justice social activism will be uh prevalent in a neighborhood or community but it was like the audience is just spilling over uh and i uh myself and my partner iji sakamore we got to present i think three different performances and uh i did deep in the night the one that rajni had seen and then i also did big but girls hearted of women which was which was my solo uh piece into the world of um a political theater it was my way of of saying hey look at me look at me uh this is i have something to say because i started to work in san francisco in the jails and then we did uh uh another piece about black history about um it was really interesting it was about uh billy it was about desi smith and john coltrane and i can't even remember the name of it now but the audiences were lovely and they were just so engaged and i remember when i did uh deep in the night which was a really uh look at uh myth and medicine and um interview i interviewed women in jail in san francisco about um menopause it started out about menopause and it ended up being so many women confessed that they were menopausal and hiv positive and uh and and they were saying how uh i was asking about um you know some insomnia and they were like can you imagine having insomnia you're in lockdown and you are um you're up and you are ill with hiv and but they gave up so much beautiful material and i was having dreams about lord getty uh a mythical creature i think out of Haitian mythology lord lord getty was visiting me a co figure during this whole time and my hairdresser was from Haiti and i said to her i said you know i described uh this this person that would appear in my mirror in my dream and she said oh that's lord getty attempting to get a hold of you lord getty is the keeper of the cemetery and all of a sudden this gave me um a form a way to begin to um investigate insomnia so i'm up at night and also going into the dream state and then turning into this uh Haitian deity and then of course becoming all of these characters that's i love doing that i put on these women that i actually met real women and i spoke to the audience about how they arrived at this place in hiv and in south Africa i came through the no i came out on the audience with uh with i had a i had the a sig a cigar and rum to clear the space they they rushed the stage they wanted to be blessed with this smoke and with this rum and i was like i'm home and this is all making sense and from there Rajni started to arrange for us to go for Egypt and i had to go out to natural arena prison for women and i went out and i started to um do this i wanted to uh interview women but they they they had so much you know south african sing and so they did a whole presentation a choral presentation they had won some awards for their choral work and uh and then we were out on the yard uh doing um you know um girl here games i was just starting to figure out how could i get in and they they they embraced everything that i brought to them well that's so open let's um i want to show a little bit of the video of your work in south africa so people get a sense of it and i hope that as people watch you um you'll um flag a few things that redessa has already kind of mentioned one that she goes to incarcerated women for their knowledge and expertise i mean we often we dismiss women who are incarcerated as disposable useless uh incompetent just you know uh crack holes thieves and i'm gonna put a whole bunch of trigger warnings out there for people because this is about to be some real grown-up talk about um about how we mistreat mistreat people um on both sides of the prison door so but she turns to incarcerated women for their wisdom and their knowledge and they have a lot they have a lot as well as drawing upon dreams upon mythology and upon um what i will call black expressive cultural practices so the storytelling the girlhood games the songs the cultural dances ones that are steep not only in african-american culture from which in which you emerge which you grew up in right but also the influences of the people around you so if your hairdresser says that that's always though popping up then you incorporate that into the story and and you'll see also audience um that in this uh clip there'll be excerpts of uh traditional uh mini customary um south african dance song and dance you'll also hear contemporary clips so contemporary song get danced quite too as a form of like south african hip-hop you'll hear a little bit of that and and on and on and on and as you're watching folks if you have any questions please use the que the q and a or the chat functions depending on what kind of platform you want hello people on zoom hello people on youtube um to send us some questions i'll do my best to feed them into rodessa um as our conversation allows but um can we see this first clip the culture where as girls we're very soon separated from who we really are and we start to play the game you start to dress a certain way you start to speak a certain way you start hanging out with a certain people or you start hoping to be different than what you are and it separates us from ourselves and it plays a large part in getting us in trouble we get confused uh we look for love in all the wrong places you know you grow up with somebody saying oh baby oh baby you so fine you know oh baby you so fine carry this bag for me oh baby you so fine cash this check for me oh baby you so fine you do the time you do the time i'm gonna be waiting for you and we do we do it we blindly do it we we sacrifice our children the station is where is my parents where is my family where is my child the station woman before i was a woman before you came and took my virginity and drove me away i was a woman before you came drank and beating up on me before my children could say we have a father i was a woman before before the choosing happened me before i could spend the woman's bras in her pockets before i could find the woman's bras in her pockets i was a woman before that's why have you done this on me why have you left my life why are you so abusive like this why out of all people choose to rape my own children i'm an old friend that's we engaged before i was a woman why did i stay you with them took me to a dinner none of the best hotels drove our kids to the national park who went wrong so i find it hard to live without you yet i'm heartbroken but i do love you i do love you unconditionally i do help the unbreakable love to send it love just for you honey my sweet heart my darling but why have you escaped from me because i was a woman before i was a driven lady they don't depend on a man's income but heart breaking and a loving mother that's why today i stand in front of you just to seek your power and please inspire dignity just inspire me because i was a woman before yes standing cloudy i was a woman before but not anymore because simply africa i am the woman of this nation thank you yes um thank you for sharing that clip we're going to pause right there thank you that's a great image to land on um so that clip included not only uh moments from many scenes from the work in south africa over several years right i think you started going in what 2008 and then yes well okay so it's been it's been a while since you were there but it also includes some some clips from other work Trinidad and Tobago or a couple names that i saw out there and this image that thank you for freezing on this one this is another important part of the story the one of the things that distinguishes redessa's work is that she has been able to convince corrections officers and wardens um in the us and around the the globe um to allow her to not only develop work within correctional facilities and the clips that you saw there are primarily performances at on the grounds of the johannes berg women's correctional facility known as noturena or sun city but she's also been been able to convince them to allow her to take women out and to perform on the public sphere and this is a picture taken by a local photographer named royal mudal of this group of women performing a zulu customary dance at the state theater in frittoria which in south africa is basically the equivalent of performing at the kennedy center or the linked center in new york so it's one of the most prominent right state theaters that you could could be at so um and i was just wondering redessa if you could talk a little bit about why it was so important for women who um you'd work with to be able to perform on this kind of a setting why not just leave them in the jail talking to each other um what's the big deal well first of all can you can you hear me because i'm having some trouble with my computer um they the the heart that they brought to their truth telling was astounding to me what i'm talking about is the writing exercises the prompts even the one that we were just listening to what is it that i know now and how have you broken your own heart african women were just amazing as far as like ready to tell the truth and to share their journey with their families and so i called this public communion i wasn't interested in the negro auxiliary ball i didn't want a church basement event i wanted it to be as big as it could be and i have to give a shout out to mike hennessey here in california who was the sheriff at the uh the uh the san francisco city jail it was county sheriff actually but he got it he got it when i went to him and asked permission to bring the women outside he understood what it was i was talking about and he would say well you know art does change lives boom and then uh i started to use this term public communion because i thought it was i wanted the the public audiences to see these women not as inmates not as degenerates not as a throwaway women but they were mothers daughters sisters cousins and when we started to be allowed to go into public theaters here in america and in africa the families would come the children would come and we all understood that it was very important that our children hear the story from their mothers where have you been what are you what are you doing and it was so cleansing and purifying that it became a way and i have to give a big shout out to the natural arena um officials the warrants as they were called once they understood what i was talking about they were just all in there wasn't this old question of oh are they going to run away or they were breaking rules they said fine we will put the women on buses and we will take them to petoria for the international women's festival they will they will move into the women's prison there and that was it that was all it was stunning to be supported in in that way with with less red tape to um to have to wander through or wade through to say to say the least yeah can we see the next slide please while they're working on that you mentioned a little bit about your process so this is folks this is um this is the inside of natural arena right yes this is the courtyard yeah this is the courtyard so the and they're the white and the orange are their their travel uniforms they are the performers yes the performers on the my right and uh yeah and so and behind what people are seeing is um well behind that brick structure are there is the cell yes the dorms yes yeah and the dorms right right so and we used to rehearse in that space yeah it was so wonderful it was strange but at the same time I needed a studio and this is what they could afford that and it was wonderful because the women who did not come down they still got to watch the process and every it was everything from uh literally handstands and cartwheels because i'm a very physical performer to like storytelling to uh carrying each other which in america was a problem at first because the women were not allowed to touch each other really and uh in africa with the help of my partner eji sakamor we just we created all these interesting scenarios women being up and down uh creating physical structures with their bodies and it was all rooted in uh physical theater but there was but the other side was that we would write we would write uh we'd write uh if we had to be inside we'd be in the kitchen if the weather was not good but even outside we would we would take time out and write down the prompt they would respond to the prompts that i gave them and they were so ready i mean they were just so ready to uh to write to speak i remember the first time i went into natural arena and i was in a classroom and i said to the students i said to the student population of the prisoners i said we're gonna write we're gonna write letters home to our children we're gonna write letters to our communities we're gonna write letters of forgiveness to our parents we're gonna write about what we're thinking and one young lady said like papa mandela and they all got it it's like they all looked each other oh okay and then they start to school me about uh nelson mandela and his journey his whole take on being in in prison they started to tell me how he had to write with the same letter four or five times and i was just moved that they were that engaged because in america you know uh the minute you you be you're labeled a bad girl or you break the law that even the even the food a lot of times in the prisons is terrible it's just like the women are like they're like just designated to hell actually and they get fat they get they get depressed and uh and i came in with the ability to actually um say we're gonna write about all of this and there were deputies that came that were more interested in who i was and they watched the process of getting these women to flower making people understand we live in a very sexist world but our country uh we we can hold the we call the king's share of this kind of sexist um uh denying uh personhood and black women who are largely incarcerated black and brown women really get the brunt of it we get the brunt of it and until i think i came along and i wanted to engage women in conversations inside meeting them where they were at that it uh i i can i can probably say just to some degree i've changed the game now we're all on the outside because of covid so you know we can't be inside right no no right can we see the next slide please who is just uh so this is also yeah part of the uh performance um there's joys doing a traditional piece about being a big but big but girl a big but woman you know big but so big big but surprised in africa you want to have a big bud you know you want to have a big bud and she was fat she was a fabulous i'm still in touch with her you know she she she is one of my facebook friends yeah that's joys yeah i was going to ask you i mean about um well i think there's a question you know always in terms of this kind of work is but how do you um how do you develop um kind of an approach to doing this work where where the kind of resources do you draw from um you know why why do theater with them would you get a sense like what other other options were available in johannesburg or you've been working in the san francisco system for is it about 30 years now since the late 80s everything right right what are the other options available um and what do you think that theater might do that those don't don't allow i would begin by saying what interested me was sharing what i had already experienced with theater theater saved my life see i was a mother before i was a woman uh luckily enough i came of age during the the cultural revolution in america i was a hippie you know uh and i was a reader you know i mean i i was reading everything from actually movement wise fell in christ to um uh henry miller to anise nin to um uh maya angelo and but reading in my own time because the life was so laid back and at the same time i was in i was encouraged to discuss this with other people you know we were all talking about changing the world herman hessa uh you know um which which might sound like a parade of white writers but it was really interesting to be hanging out with white kids and they were all dealing with these books and i mean i i went to the university of rochester for a while the school was like uh you know school wasn't as interesting as my community was but um i felt like if i tell my story they will tell their story and i went in not with a lot of um not a lot with a lot of of decrement first it was just like i wanted them to tell me what happened to you you know and especially uh i might have said earlier i had i had eight brothers so i knew something about black men being incarcerated but i had never until i got this call from the california arts council asked me to go in and teach aerobics here in california i had no idea that there were so many women in jail you know one of your brothers was at attica except yes my brother richard was at attica when it failed right my brother richard was was blown away at how um dangerous this culture is because he had no idea what he was really up against in a culture that would just shoot you down he saw that the the national guard came in and shot shot the leaders of this disruption down and he was trying to tell me and it was blowing his mind that these people were cold-bloodedly killed and he was this young guy who thought he could do his time and all of a sudden this is dangerous it's dangerous to have a voice and i was with a group called inside outside which was which was how i got involved in those early days with just prisons and and black women again who were leading these organizations and we would go out we were outside at that wall when the when these men were being when the prison was quote being taken back you know from from the from these uh these right or rostabouts and my my brother who was inside told me later and he was stunned it was like he had looked into the eyes of the devil and he said you know they just killed people sis they just killed people and i think even for somebody in lockdown it was he had a wake-up call about where he was and then then back to africa in a lot of ways they were so uh the authorities were so open to me coming you know they once i explained and with rajni's help when they saw what we were doing they were so open to doing it to to experimenting with me being this american you know and i don't know you probably got this too lisa us meeting in africa and working in the jail but it was like the women would say oh i love her accent and i didn't even know i have an accent i didn't know they'd say listen the professor has an accent you know and uh but they would all lean in they leaned in to to hear whatever i had to say and they were very respectful and i think this is back to madiba of um education you know they were very respectful of my role inside of that place here in our country women are so angry and so sullen that it takes them a minute and you have to design um a way for for them to have fun or to feel i guess safe with you but in africa they just love the idea that i was this black american who was going to teach them so it meant that i was a professor and they wanted to learn and they listen and even i tell you i had a moment with apartheid in the jails where there was about four or five african girls women who were they'd sit away from the rest of the prisoners in this in this classroom and i say why are y'all sitting up there and they they were like huh and i say why are you sitting up there away from everybody else i said honey it's a new day y'all come on now and they were like they were looking at each other like i guess she's inviting us to come down and be with the blacks you know what's up and then but then they wanted to and you realize that people had relationships with each other and i just loved being a part of some social movement inside of the prisons and and uh in africa was such an eye opener because they did everything you probably remember this too the peer you could get certification as a as an aids counselor you know in in the prisons because they figured who better would know what this is about than the people who were living with it joice was a actually a counselor for um the aids uh aid support inside of the prisons people don't don't would perhaps you know looking at this picture um looking at what people are rearing in the context you might think oh my god prison there can guess gotta be like the worst pit pit hole in the world and and no prison is good like period we gotta get rid of all of them but that's another story but and definitely this building you know it it was decrepit in many ways it was a building that was built what was the 40s 50s 30s and got very little upkeep from there you know and it was definitely like prisons everywhere overcrowded underfunded um but what i remember being different was um along with the sense of like failure and shame that i think incarceration just prompts in people period there was however a sense that of like we're gonna get through this together um i didn't meet so many people who were drug and alcohol addicts who were international drug traffickers kind of like the the low person on the totem pool who got that caught at the airport um trying to find something that they hadn't been forced to ingest um in a very yes thinking about ellen's story um the woman who um who was a mule you know she was technically a mule yeah she was a mule and she she could not refuse to take um in as much of the cocaine that that she was being forced to ingest and so they they blew the whistle on her at the airport and also her her doing her participating in it had to do with uh trying to pay her children's school fees right after the father had gone back to i think it was nigeria and she had to take on the job and it was so interesting there was so much versus like what you just said about drugs it was more about trying to um build a better future for their children through uh hopefully getting this work and being able to children to keep going to school and we take all this for granted even when i traveled to jamaica and i talked to people who had to drop out of school because their families could not afford the continual school fees and here in america you know it's it's it's getting it's getting with with uh you know the um you know the the schools that sort of come up with uh the the last administration but in in general public school is still available to us yeah well let's um take this time uh and kind of pivot to the video please of your work in the us so that we can uh i think there's a question in the chat about you know what are some of the differences between working in the us and in south africa so we could see this one we can uh yeah transition to that that conversation so thank you can you uh we're not getting the sound can you turn it up please i so appreciate you library folks you're doing this on the other side of the country multiple that's right that's right yeah so i appreciate you so yeah the it's happening we'll give you one more you want to give it one more try and the sound was not working let's see um i have another i have another plan don't worry okay well we'll let you work on the plan we're with you yeah we're right here with you so um well uh radessa can you tell us a little bit about how you started working in the women's uh jail in in san francisco you said something about aerobics yes i well yes so i was i had always i had been a cedar artist and i had been working in the public schools grade schools with children as an artist and uh i wanted to find ways so can you tell us a little bit about how you started working in the kind of uh jail in san francisco you said oh okay uh i i'll i'll i'll say this again i was working uh as a um an artist with grade school children and i was constantly trying to find ways to share what they knew through the art through an artist's lens so one of the things i did was wonderful that i created a show and tell because there were so many different children in the mission district i mean samoa africa spain mexico jerusalem all these children were in my uh in my class and and i wanted them to know each other better i wanted them to to know that it was wonderful that you're sitting next to this person that person but do you know about how that person eats you know about that person that person's food how do you know about that person's dance i also said to them i said get your grandparents to come in and talk about what they were doing at your age so i wanted to engage the grandparents and the children and in in their basic education they're still dealing with the familiar structures and that they're all that there's we have so much more light than unalike and it was such a hit the grand the grandparents would show up with food they'd show up with you because the children would say you gotta bring some cookies or you gotta bring some fried chicken or you gotta bring you know your favorite dish and the and the uh i remember a woman from mexico brought uh of course she brought uh enchiladas and she had made homemade tortillas and and also she had been a mexican hat dancer and you know now she's like in her 50s or something and she had her costume on and the children were just over the moon and so the your really positive experiences got kind of uh california arts council was watching yes this one we should get this one and i was a dancer with tumbleweed i was a i was a known uh national and internationally a dancer to some degree so they were and uh they and me uh they wanted to teach aerobics because that was what was popular and they thought well you're a dancer right well you can come in and teach aerobics i'm like aerobics and what does aerobic stuff do with changing the lives of women but i said i'll go you know i tell anybody out there you gotta have adventure some spirit you gotta go with it you just gotta go with it and i went uh and the women didn't want to do aerobics but i i did aerobics i did handstands i did back dance i did all these things as i talked about who i was so we try it again i'm ready oh yeah okay here we go i promise we're good we're with you we're with you yeah i'm so sorry what the this is um living proof right i know it was actually your natural mother's theater company was that the one not your mother's theater company if possible well as you're working on that i was going to say you know part of the reason that i think um you know the uh there was this urgency um even if you know your teaching aerobics was kind of a look what one might not automatically think of that right is because so we're talking about the early 1980s and in which this huge influx of women yes crack cocaine women were implicated because they were implicated in the arrest of their men and also and then we we start looking at it and there's the addictions that are growing and uh women are leaving women are not staying home you know crack cocaine keeps you up and out you know and uh and realizing that if he's gone if he can be out here i can be out here you know and everybody's forgetting about the babies and then uh joe and little had been a political issue that knocked the wind out of me before i was working in the jails that the joe and little this african-american woman who was uh who killed her jailer who was attempting to assault her while she was already in lockdown and she wasn't having it and sweet honey in the rock uh did a whole song about it you know and uh and and it you know joe and little she's our sister joe and little she's our mama joe and little she's your lover joe and the woman who's going to carry your child and that that stuck with me was like you came out her case is in the mid 1970s she's in view for north carolina yeah it's like they're on charges of shoplifting gets arrested and sentenced for like a ridiculous seven to ten year bid for basically breaking into trailer homes which she should not have done granted but yeah her sentence was by no means commiserate with she was the first time offender and yeah she's there she comes into the jail cell in the middle of the night she's the only female prisoner only female prisoner in the castle and with an ice pick and a plate of sand sandwiches and she did yeah stab him he died she then escaped she was on the land for a couple weeks um but in case becomes this cause celeb right davis is part of and it's the early 1970s so it's this time period and correct me if i'm wrong please redessa of well uh so we're coming out of um you know civil rights and black power organizing but also a rising um black feminist white feminist feminist i know people can be angry about feminist but you're not going to take down patriarchy unless you're willing to talk about the way that sexism and patriarchy work and feminists were doing this work first second wave whatever wave you want to call it i mean we're doing this work and black women were central um and and joanne little's case became an international cause uh came to her aid after she was relieved on you know those trumped up charges about her being somehow complicit in the murder of those people also in in uh in california the the courthouse um george jackson's right exactly and who tried to break him out and so joanne little yeah definitely i mean she was this this flashpoint and um and an important from what i remember when that recall reading um is because she was not you know what people consider normally a good girl she was not a political prisoner like angela davis no well hated despised could stand but understood clearly that she was being prosecuted for her political beliefs and her activism as a black panther and as a as a communist and then a member as a communist party and here is joanne little girl everything a cat burglar she was she was like she was like out there uh she was out there scrapping you know uh she was she was uh staying alive in a lot of ways you know and at the same time there's a boldness because we're still dealing with why don't you'd be better off if you stayed home you know why don't women's go sit down somewhere you know and at the same time then there's the idea that we should be barefoot and and i'm pregnant all the time and here's somebody who's broke all of that down like no i'm not doing any of that i'm not you know and if it means i've got to go out here and break these laws just to live fine and i think i think along the way you get so empowered you're strong that's how she surprised that jailer he was not ready she was like oh no no this ain't happening tonight you know it's like uh and i think it really surprised them and and then we go and then america as black women sweet honey we all move to the front and go uh and same thing somewhat happened to george floey it was like wait a minute no no no this is we got to do better than this y'all we got it you know and uh so ken she was an eye opener she became a historical figure and you're right about angela was you know angela had a compartment to put in you know she wasn't necessarily loved either but you know uh she was a professor she you know she was these kinds of things and then joe and little and there were several um women that that came up you know behind joe and little uh and uh was just fighting for their lives you know fighting for their lives and that's who you that's who you meet at at the the county jail i think we're going to try the video one more time yeah hang in there san francisco how's it going anisa i don't know why the sound is not working why we'll work without it that's okay maybe we can uh try and get to the the next clip then the living proof one yeah let's see that that happens so glitch in the system so so you're invited to teach aerobics that's how and i think it's just because they knew they had to do something the the powers that be knew they had to do something because the jails were overflowing with women and i will say one thing on behalf of our our our gender our sex is that i have been in the jails and women can be so angry that they're just standing around fuming and books are falling off the wall i mean we have that kind of power and i think i don't know if anybody would ever agree but that was happening hey what am i what are we gonna do you know and then they're eating these terrible diets and uh nobody's coming nobody's coming to to get them back to their children's or because a lot of women that i met were totally in jail because they had been implicated i met a woman from britain a black woman african english she got locked up here in california in san francisco she came here looking for a relative uh a grand relative had gotten sick in england and they there was somebody here that should know she was supposed to be bringing this person back home and she's walking around six streets south of market with this address this hotel and uh she gets caught up in the suite and then when the police finally they bring her in and she says i'm looking for my i don't know if it was an uncle when they're and they start making fun of her and saying oh that's what we're calling it now and they didn't give her any room to make a phone call when i met her she was just this bewildered person sitting in jail and she had gotten caught up in a you know a street walker suite you know so and that's how lame it was and that's how indifferent it was i think also not knowing what to do you punish people that's what you do but what is what does even punishment look like if they're in lockdown you know so and this and this is a time period in which you know um i mean some people know the story of mass incarceration in terms of men but you know between 1970 and 20 that to the year 2010 that that 40 year time period the number of women behind bars actually grows at a face of double the the rate of men um yes the number of women behind bars was very very small in the early 1970s because the country just didn't believe in it in locking yes most women up but the ones who you saw there were would be low-income black women and other women of color um and lgbtq folks without a doubt and then legislative changes that happen um you know as a result of really nixon's you know group failures people's the backlash responses to the successes of civil rights organizing women's organizing lgbtq activism produced the war on drugs and so the country begins to criminalize exactly the kinds of crimes that women are most likely to commit or i should say better better put um it begin to criminalize the things that survival well so uh yeah and also what happened was that they found that our tolerance as women for drugs and that kind of stuff was much lower you know uh you would just lose it i mean i i met started giving birth to the medea project grew out of a uh meeting a woman who has smothered her baby in retaliation for the father who was leaving her because now she was displaying incredible sites of being a drug addict a crack addicted addict and he forgets that he brought the dope in in the first place and now he just wants his kid and he wants her gone and the ferocity that comes with just being wronged you know she you know and i'm not making excuses it was a horrible thing to do but but uh she she smothered the baby and there she was sitting in jail and she would say to me i you know i met her two or three times and she wouldn't go to the gym with me but she would always say i'm just waiting for god only god can judge me and i was like what has happened to this person and that's when i found out from the the main desk who didn't want to give me information but i kept saying what is going on with this woman in the back and they finally told me what her crime had been you know and then of course when we look at uh classical literature medea you know that you know she was wrong you know it was a bit different that jason was seeking political uh a political stature and and mary's a woman after she leaves her country after she has betrayed her family after medea has betrayed her family comes to right she has all this stuff to put him on the throne right yes yes and then he says oh you got to go because you know i i i found the woman that's going to be more fitting to to this position and and she said oh really you know uh give me give me one night and she you know we if you don't know medea uh she actually kills their two murders their two sons in retaliation for how she's been wronged you know and uh that matters women's lives matter people you know and uh and i will say again it i'm not necessarily saying it was the right thing to do for that but as chris rock would say i understand you know i understand yeah that's part of what your you know your work has been is really pushing people to tell the the truth about what they've been through yeah we understand not only how you know racism works but really how racism and sexism and and patriarchy patriarchy and anti um and and and classism you know our deep seated hatred of the poor what that's people um but it looks like what it starts to look like you know and here we are you know um yeah we see a couple of the other medea images i see maybe one uh i don't know where we got to but higher some so the ensemble now is a combination of of currently and formerly incarcerated women yes yes and uh students and uh actresses uh poets women living with hiv uh at one point i had several little girls i love that younger much younger women in the group uh but it because i was at that moment i wanted it to look like the world and we were doing a uh and at one point we were working with plan parenthood plan parenthood that approached me about doing a a joint a joint uh venture and it was interesting because they weren't certain that well the the first woman who wanted to bring me in was working with plan parenthood and i think she got axed because she wanted to work with theater for incarcerated women and and and this grand organization is too worried about their own image and they just don't think that when because washington was giving uh uh the whole plan parenthood a lot of problems they didn't want to sort of merge or set themselves up with a group of incarcerated women and you know but uh but what they found was that the incarcerated women that i met had had just as much support from plan parenthood understood plan parenthood and uh and i made a show that i wanted to reflect the women you know and this is this is from a piece when we did and probably when did your hands become a weapon this is looking more women and domestic violence and and uh that kind of thing where where plan parenthood was the piece we did birthright which was about um uh women and and our rights to our bodies to our children or not to having an abortion or not and and i was very moved that the women in the media probably the ex-offenders the offenders of course san francisco's multicultural community was fine but when it was women behind bars who had very positive things to say about plan parenthood and of course there was women who weren't you know again you look at history and there were black women that couldn't deal because they had a whole idea that plan parenthood was about killing babies and they you know they and they they were very honest though they told me that they couldn't do it you know because and i and i started to stand back and look and i thought look at history again look at what's happened to us in history and not having any control over yeah i wanted to make sure we go to the next slide sorry yeah control yeah control all right control over their own bodies and their families they you know their bloodlines that's who we are as black women in this culture it's like we for so long we had no say over but even our own body you know so i understood but that was i only lost three women that way everybody else stayed but this is us in rehearsal um this is uh there is a ladder and now that's uh um uzo who's a wonderful artist from nigeria who is who works with the medea project she's also a public health nurse which i love the mixture of dance mysticism and and she's very very learned it in and public health yeah can we go to the next slide uh so this is a little bit about what we were talking about in terms of contacts um now that certainly there's been progress made in terms of like decreasing the number of people in state prisons and certainly um you know covid has played a significant role in that but as people can see the number of women behind bars who's grown astronomically um 700 along between 1970 and 2010 and then you begin to see a dip this chart ends in 2015 because of course it takes time for the federal government to produce um to share the data with people so that they can go ahead and crunch the numbers but we um know that even unfortunately as the number of men has been downward trending significantly as a result of some court cases especially in california that forced them to depopulate the jails which were terribly terribly overcrowded that despite the dropping numbers of the men's population the number of women remains the same if it doesn't continue to grow and that is because we have decided really in the last 40 years for the first time that we are going to punish women for those crimes that they those the truth they do in order to survive so and i and my i have a frustration that lies and i hear about you know ending mass incarceration but i realize it doesn't have a lot to do with women's lives it's about men's lives and i'm not opposed but i'm always one of the people in the back of the room going but but you know i work with women i work with women and and still there are many um um portals or organizations that have baffled you know there's a very famous women's funding organization in america they would never give me money because they keep saying well this is really about teenagers and this is about you know and i'm like well i work with incarcerated women and but they would never fund anything that i propose because they kept telling me that well you're you're just not the right fit it's unfortunate because women have been the fastest growing segment of the prison population and have always consistently been a good 10% and can you imagine just ignoring 10% of any population the yes we learn but oh we we miss an opportunity to understand how things really work if we only focus on men and yes men are 90% and they have definitely born the bulk of the the violent racism and the public policies that have been put into place but um patriarchy and sexism and classism also work to very directly prey upon and target the most vulnerable some of the most vulnerable process and that that includes women and girls and the ramifications from um maternal incarceration are really devastating there's only like some five million children behind bars whose parents are behind bars and certainly many of those are like that's behind bars but when a woman and you know this story when a woman goes to prison i mean that means who's taking care of the kids yes the guy goes to prison it's the whoever the his wife baby mama yes exactly and and now it's the grandparents who are getting old and they're left if you're lucky your that your your your parents or grandparents will take up the slack but in a long run it's just poverty you know crowdedness um you know uh and everybody also um the age gaps sometimes are not so great that somebody some grandmother like i'm gonna do uh i don't think so you know and the kid is left hanging out there you know uh and but also the old people are are the elderly that you know i'm 73 i know i'm cute but i'm 73 and i love my little great grandson to the bone and i but i do hope that his mother and his grandmother gonna hang in there but if it came down to it i could you know i could i would be mad as hell with them but i could take up the slack yeah thank you now there shall we try this because this looks like it's a film with this one is this is part of living this is uh living proof yes this is part of your more contemporary work yeah hiv examining hiv but still the sound what is it oh my goodness as a goblin in the work somehow is a goblin in the system well why don't we pause the video then and i hear the sound on my end that's so weird that is i know it's not coming through i've even had to put um i've had to put earphones i had to put like uh my earphones in because i don't hear as well as i did yesterday um my computer i'm gonna try one more time here we go hey kind of question when you shared did you share audio i did yes so bizarre okay display while we're working on the tech if anyone has any questions please feel free to put them in the chat or the q and a depending on which medium you're you're using um i'm glad you guys are working on that can i ask redessa um so it seems like i mean part of your work with women in the jail led you to the work with folks with who are hiv positive yes it seems like very much in the same way that women are ignored in the conversation about policing and incarceration that they also overlooked it nor ignored dismissed trivialized in this conversation about about hiv um that been what you've encountered and so if and if it is then what are your hopes for the the theater the theater work um considering the stigmatization and the the silencing i uh you know the profile wait i thought did she say something give her the sacred actually yes maybe it's maybe it works i can step to a defined line between life and death i start using drugs when i was 11 years old growing up and um i got into that street life you know i got into prostitution um i started going to california news authority prison and that was my life up until in my 40s it was doing one of her prison terms that basanta got tested for hiv it was 1987 and she was 31 years old we had a couple of women that i knew and we all went up there to get tested and they came back and said it was negative and it was my turn and i went up and they told me i had it and i started crying i started crying because i thought it was a death sentence for almost 15 years kassandra kept it to herself until she met dr mcdonough who began to care for her the biggest misconception about AIDS in the minority women community is that it's exceptional that that it's something unusual that a black woman with hiv is a priority when it's when it's not at all dr mcdonough is the director of the university of california san francisco's positive health clinic which was designed specifically for the needs of women with hiv i went into medicine to be an hiv doctor i went to new york city in 1985 as a young gay kin AIDS was exploded in the early 80s mysterious fatal diseases struck the gay community they were later identified as AIDS by the time kassandra was diagnosed the total number of hiv related deaths in the u.s had reached 20 000 i wanted to kill myself with drugs because i thought that i was going to die being hiv positive because that's all i heard back in the 80s everybody's dying kassandra's turning point came seven years ago when a drug dealer threatened her life either i was going to get killed or i needed to do something not only did she need to make a change for herself but also for her family who she had neglected while hooked on drugs living out in those streets i lost a sister out there in those streets i got raped out there in those streets i got beaten up out there and it's all behind you know trying to get my next eye when kassandra told her family about her diagnosis she faced rejection that sent her back to the streets my sister did they want me around her they want me in the house they want me around the kids you know and um i start using it again dr. marketinger says black women with hiv have difficulty revealing their status putting them and their community at additional risk if they can't come out to their families if they can't come out to their child if they can't be out of work it's very hard for them to take medicines as religiously as they need to it's very hard to go to the doctor um it's very hard to protect their partners today hiv is one of the top killers of black women between the ages of 25 and 44 according to the center for disease control by the end of 2006 black women made up 15 of all existing cases and 15 of all new diagnoses despite being only seven percent of the population dr. marketinger wanted his patients to be more open about their lives and found help for them outside the medical community the biggest issue in front of them is rule is how to get them to go there to talk about being hiv actress and director redessa jones is the founder of the medea project for almost 20 years she has offered data workshops for incarcerated women this year she began helping dr. marketinger's patients the clinic is looking for any way to enhance their lives to to deepen their understanding of where it is to to work to be healthy and strong and sane redessa is focusing on shame and stigma and silence in a way that isa doctor can't any medical community tends not to be able to work on the health campaigns have trouble doing redessa teaches the women to turn their personal experiences into theatrical performances that will help ease their pain kassandra wants to go even further not only doesn't help me look we're gonna pause there okay thank you so much for getting that and look at this powerful image at base t-shirt hiv is living with me this is uh this is the way we approach the um dancing with the cloud of love which was our first performance with the in partnership with the women's hiv clinic i wanted to have women feel as protective as i care if you're worried we will do a mask as well as it becomes something else with a mask and the clown you know tony morrison um she wrote a book entitled love and i was reading love at this time and morrison had said that um marriage is nothing more than a long conversation anything else is sex is dancing with the clown of love you know it's like uh and so we we we found that i i liked the title as well as women had stories about uh contacting the disease through you know either sexual commerce or through relationships with partners where nobody was taking care of themselves and but that was like i think this was opening night actually but i think they're beautiful the faces are wonderful yeah there's a couple questions in the chat that i wanted to share with you um uh looking at the time we have about 20 minutes or so oh dear wow i know it's good it's just blown by blown by but um people wanted to know thank you for yes moving through the slides thank you wanted to know um you know how you maintain this work on a personal level so um it's not easy it's not it's busy taxi it's emotionally spiritually um hard to hold people store hear people stories period but um and to hear them in the kind of circumstances of the prison of the jail is hard really hard um because you i know as one who has done not nearly the work you have but if i've been with you in south africa i mean i i repent other places i really will never forget the the um the sound the smells the the song uh so i was wondering how do you how do you take care of yourself um and how do you how have you learned to hold kind of space for others well this question comes up all the time about self-care and i i had the great privilege of being on a panel with alisa garza about three or four years ago at hamilton college and um she said when this was somebody from the audience asked her she said i'm not so interested in self-care as i'm interested in collective care how the alisa garza you know the black lives matter and she was so she said she said i want she said i i would encourage a group of people that are doing this work to pay attention there may be a leader in this case rhodessa jones is the leader of the medea project but i would she said i would i would want people to feel like they could step up and say bro maybe i'll take you'll take a bridge and everybody be willing to step up versus letting somebody crash and burn like u ep newton u ep newton crashed and burned with the panthers for all i'm sure there are reasons i do not know but i met him and he was kind of stoned out of his mind by the time i met him but uh and that that always stayed with me now my heart shout is my soul shout is is that i am so blessed that i get to do this you know it's um i'm a migrant child my mother and father were migrant workers we lived in all kinds of spaces and places and i have to admit that it was hard it was so hard that as a young girl black girl growing up the way the the violence that happened between men and women i said i don't want any part of this i don't want to be married i don't you know i don't want to be subjugated you know and uh and i put it somewhere inside of me i had a baby when i was 16 it was very painful i just said no no more babies that you know i'm not gonna do that and uh but i do have my yoga i do have my um i had a lot of therapy early on not so much from this the medea project but just trying to pull my i felt i felt so splintered in my life and the medea project kind of helped me pull it together um like i said i love my my great grandson he's and he loves me in a very special way and i end back to love so many women appreciate the work that i do that i'm showered with love in some of the strangest places i was in new york this was about 10 oh i'm over 20 25 years ago i'm walking down the street and this young woman runs up and she says um miss jones miss jones you don't remember me but my mom and dad brought me to see you at lamama when i was in high school i saw big butt girls and they're looking at me with such and i'm like oh and they said no no no you don't it was it was so real you just kept it so real and their babies you know they're in their 20s now and they're just saying can i give you a hug can you know i hope i don't get covid people are still hugging me all the time but you know it's like this is a blessing this is such a blessing to answer that question but no i do um i uh i'm glad i know what i know about you know working out with i i love my garden you know i work in my yard you know and i've learned to be quiet i've learned to like take some time just to be still you know uh and i write you know i write a lot and the covid has been interesting because i i love walking around inside my head you know i really like i live alone you know so i i've spent a lot of time alone walking around inside my help i hope that answers the question oh yeah and this i'm back i'm going to give you some love from the chat right now and then i'm going to ask you another question but um we got a comment from um sheela jump james i'm sorry um she says redessa i so appreciate your work as a woman who was married to a man incarcerated in the prisons within california department of corrections i visited for many years and early on knew that i wanted to do something arts related to tell the stories of thousands of families in california but the stigma and shame of being married to an incarcerated man was paralyzing their work is so affirming of the experience of our humanness oh thank you thank you so much and uh well you know we who can really judge us i just left another i'm i'm working with the la mama international uh doing a big workshop around uh the same thing teaching a performative teaching the art of performative uh change for for people across the world who want to work in prisons you know right now we are doing a large project uh here arts and so arts and corrections the california arts council has has has um approached us and we have taken the challenge to teach people who want to work in prisons you know so the media project will start the first of september uh i think it is and we're going to work right through to to november teaching folks from other arts groups of the theater uh community but i think also other arts uh as social change groups that they want to come in they want to have some tools to go in and work with incarcerated people and so i would say please if you're really interested in doing it get a hold of us we're still gathering groups that we'll be meeting with online because that's what's happening but back to uh ashila's comments what i found is like uh um you know i understand shame and shame and stigma because i've gotten old and i've gotten information everything from joe and little to uh you know to george floyd to all the all the places in between and my own brother who was in lockdown uh and looking at the the way black black men are shot down not to mention black women are falling in the streets and screaming whoa what do we have to be ashamed of somebody should be apologizing to us amen somebody should be saying i am so sorry that this has happened to you and i'm waiting for that still i'm waiting for that you know uh and i'm trying to hold on god knows you know i i'm you know i'm i'm just trying to stand in my truce and uh look people and i it's and come with some empathy but they got to know you know we we're old a lot of apologies a lot and we brought so much to this culture you know and we're still standing you know we weren't meant to survive but here we is and and as david chappelle would say come get some of these nigger lessons yeah yeah yeah yeah well you know what i appreciate is um you know thank you for putting the information about how people can can sign up for the workshops um we only have oh my time was off we got about five minutes or so um but people i hope you will take down this information so that you can learn um more from dr jones more about the media projects where please come and go and see a live performance when the opportunity arises there really is nothing quite like it um thank you i like it nothing quite like it from seeing folks arrive to the moment the every moment on stage the glimpses of the officers you know um in the wings and down to the moment where people have to get shackled and back in the van um the work is is both i think need a balloon wrote about this in reference to your work that we learn a lot from the media project about the the things that contribute to women's incarceration but also about the performance of prison and that is something that's supposed to be locked away we're not supposed to know about that right we've been trusted um dealing with the best so called bad people and and and as you said redessa there are people who've done terrible things to other folks without a doubt and we we people do need help in figuring out how to deal with that that pain that was hurt that hurt those the wounds the want the wrong but the issues that we have come up with perpetuate more trauma you know more pain more suffering which is why we're in this moment now of people yes and i think about i think about brian stevensson you know who says um you know of just mercy his book and the film and and his organization in the south he says even if someone murders somebody there more than a murderer absolutely if someone robbed somebody there more than a thief right and he talked about being a little boy and being jumping into a pool that was he didn't know was segregated and all the white parents and their children jumped out and he says he and his sister have never forgotten it and he often wonders if those white kids who jumped out because their parents said do they do they ever think about it probably not but again it's back to like you know we better we need to be handled gently we need to be honored for hanging in here and i would at same time say as we close you know i really believe that politics don't work religion is a bit too eclectic for art art could be that parachute it just catches us all i really believe that and thank you lisa and be the parachute that what that catches us all that you know that it's it's it's that place it's a basket you know that we can all jump in we all got something to say we can all got a song to sing you know a piece of cake that we baked a dress that i had that we made and this art you know and then as africans we are the first artist you know so and i and i found my way back to that but thank you lisa so much for for this conversation it's been great and uh and all the just thank you the san francisco library thank you sonia tulson uh my administrator thank you eegis akamor uh thank you a kim thank you anissa just thank you all so much um for for this um but this afternoon because it's been great thank you so much rodessa for all of your work and i encourage people to take advantage of this this is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you to learn um from what the preeminent practitioner teacher of theater for incarcerated women and i would argue amongst the the both um underappreciated artists working in our time um a question we didn't get to was about about how do you do this work sustain yourself but also stay safe behind bars and these are questions that you know in rodessa's 30 plus years of doing the work she's become a master and so and don't get it twisted don't even i'm worried about the guy the people with the guns behind bars you know because because they know you you know ain't nobody like school them on like where we're safe where who you're protecting how you're protecting we're all human beings and i mean you know when you think about the catwalks and prisons and anything goes down these cats are just trained but high-powered rifles they shoot into what literally is a basin you know so i don't worry so much about the women you know or the prisoners it is the people with the guns who are they're they're their own gang you know and even the ones who might mean well they're gonna go with the flow if things if there's a large enough rumble in that place yeah right but one of the beautiful things that i'm sure your workshop will will cover is is kind of confronting your own you know the misinformation about who's behind bars for what and how one ought to handle oneself because it isn't this isn't an easy lift to do people need i mean the rest of the programming nothing against all the people in the church you know who are who are offering things yeah by that much the church can do and you know if it was up to the church we were just counting you know the amount of like programming provided by church we should have solved this problem by now we need to yeah yes and and i would just like to do a shout out for the medea projects teaching methods this art and corrections one of the things that there are two ex-offenders from the company angela and fifi they're going to be talking about the the mishaps to to avoid inside they're talking about how to interact with people who are in prison and and because they are prisoners they'll give you the the warnings and the flags you know as well as there's going to be a lot of navigating of emotions and taking care of yourself and so this i got lisa and fey and angie and fifi and the course that they're teaching is really going to be about best practices in the jails best practices in the prisons for people who want to do it and a big shout out to black acting methods i did see that i've been using the book uh with the u and i both are lisa and i both are in black acting methods so that's part of what makes us so fabulous but but it's been great it's really been great thank you kim thank you and this so thank you so much for thank you san missus go public library uh we gotta get our sound and stuff together but that's the next we do i'm so sorry for all of those technical issues we apologize but youtube and you know all of those videos can be found on bimio and i follow up to all of our registrants where you can find this amazing information and of course you can check out these books from the library and um rodessa lisa you are both amazing humans just amazing work amazing work thank you for being here today and library community thank you as well naveli thank you for behind the scenes and kim always bringing us the best of programming thank you so much everyone have a wonderful day