 Okay, good evening everybody. Thank you very much for joining us this evening. Hi, Emily. My name is Dan. I am the Director of Development Program for the Bedford Playhouse and I wanna welcome you all to tonight's conversation on King and the Wilderness. We are partnering with the Koonhart Film Foundation represented by Emily who's gonna take you the rest of the way in a minute. And we're very grateful to them for allowing us to present this film. We think it's really great. We think the work that they do is fantastic. And in accordance with our mission, in observance of Black History Month, we think it's a very fitting piece of programming for us. Just really quick, wanna remind everybody that you have the Q and A button, which is at the bottom of your screen. Please direct all your comments, questions, thoughts through the Q and A. Please try to refrain from using the chat. It's easier for us to keep track and make sure that all your questions get answered. And you can post at any time. So if anything, something comes up and you'd like somebody to elaborate, please post the question in the forum and we will get to it at that point of the evening. I wanna just remind everybody that we are doing another program on Tuesday Bedford Playhouse. We're having a conversation as part of our classic Tuesday series about A Raisin in the Sun with Sidney Poitier, which is always a lot of fun. You can find more information about that on our website. And if you are not a subscriber to our email newsletter, please consider doing so. You can get information about upcoming programs. You can visit our website, bedfordplayhouse.org at any time and see the upcoming slate of programs that we have coming up, both for Black History Month, for Women's History Month and so on. And we're very excited to be having a lot of, we have a lot of great stuff in the pipeline that I think everybody's gonna be very, very interested in in this period while we are still closed, thanks to COVID-19. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel. So we're hoping to be able to reopen come summertime in some capacity. So with all that, I wanna turn things over to Emily, who will introduce you to our panelists. And thanks again, Emily. We really appreciate all of the help that Coon Arts have provided to us over the last couple of years. I'm really happy to be here. And my thanks go to you, Dan, the Bedford Playhouse team for all the support and the collaboration for our films and our work. It was just over a year ago in the before times that we had the opportunity to bring true justice to the Bedford Playhouse and had a lovely conversation on that beautiful stage with actually one of our guests tonight. So it feels like things are coming a bit full circle. So thank you to the Playhouse. Thank you to everyone who's joining us tonight and for spending a bit of time. Hopefully by now you have a little bit of a sense of how these programs flow. I'm gonna introduce Reverend McNair and Stephanie McCain in a moment. And we're gonna have a conversation. I think we're gonna find that balance. We certainly have planned and have prepared a bit but also wanna have what feels like and natural and organic and curious conversation. And I have some questions for the two of them and we'll keep an eye on the time and allow an opportunity for everybody who's attending tonight to also have an opportunity to ask a couple of questions. So please, as Dan said, the Q&A is the best place. So I only have one spot to monitor. That would be a huge help. So let me really begin. I want to introduce these two amazing women who I'm really grateful to for sharing their time tonight. They've already both had a very full day of the work that they do. So really, really grateful. Stephanie McCain is a native and longtime resident of Katona, New York, a wife and mother. She is the Associate Director of Admissions and DEI Committee Chair at the Harvey School and is currently serving on the Bedford Town Board. She has volunteered at numerous community-based organizations and boards, including Girl Scouts, Westchester Youth Alliance, Bedford Community Theater and the Town Idea Committee. Thank you so much for being here. And Reverend Kim McNair is the descendant of Jamaican immigrants and enslaved Africans who are community activists, preachers and organizers. She was born raised in Silver's Eyes in the Katona Bedford area. Reverend McNair is a community organizer and trainer with the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond, which is a multi-generational, multi-ethnic collective of anti-racism organizers and trainers. She also works full-time for My Sister's Place, which is a domestic violence agency based in Westchester as the Director of Community Education and Organizing. And I'm really, really grateful that you guys are here and that we have this time together to talk about the legacy and the life of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. And I've heard someone say that trying to talk about him can be like trying to talk about gravity or air or water, something ethereal about it. But I think we have an opportunity tonight through the film to really actually have a conversation about him as a human. So I thought if it's okay, I just want to quickly, quickly give the tiniest bit of background on sort of how I come to this conversation, which is just I am Director of Development and Education at the Kuhnhart Film Foundation and we're a sister organization to the for-profit Kuhnhart Films, where both entities are based in Pleasantville. So we're right down the road. We are a fellow Westchester workers and community members. And the Kuhnharts have been making films for really for generations and involved in film for many years. King and the Wilderness was directed by Peter Kuhnhart and his two sons, Peter and Teddy. And as we'll touch on in a bit, it was actually very much through the making of this particular film that the idea of the nonprofit organization became an idea and ultimately a reality through this film, they had the opportunity to sit and record these interviews with these civil rights icons. And as filmmakers knew that in the editing process, minutes of that interview would end up in the film and very likely those interviews would sit on a hard drive on a shelf somewhere and in a really deep commitment to those people and to that work launched the foundation and the nonprofit to make all of those interviews in their full form available to the public and to create education resources and to bring these films into the classrooms. So it's a real honor for me to sort of have an opportunity to work with the films that they've made and certainly believe in their mission. So onto the film and to this conversation. So I wanna just begin, I think I framed with these two women sort of an essential question about how does King in the wilderness deepen and expand our understanding of Martin Luther King, why is that new narrative important and how does that alternative narrative help us understand our current moment? So that's a lot but I think we have these two people to help us unpack that and to start, I'd like each of them to share a little bit of sort of how they came to this film in terms of, I think there's varying degrees of sort of depth of knowledge and understanding of Dr. King's work. And so I'm curious if you can let us know, you know, coming to that work as an activist, his work as an activist, a humanitarian, a faith leader, did the film teach you something new or show you something new in his work, in his life, in his fatherhood, what sort of, what struck you in the broadest way possible in the film? Reverend Kim, would you like to go first? So you can go ahead and stress. Okay. For me, you know, as a native of Westchester, initially, you know, going through the public schools as an African American girl at that time in the 70s, Dr. King was, you know, a saint really, right? He was the savior. That's how he was presented in my household. That's how he was presented, when presented in my classroom setting. And, you know, in all honesty, my study of Dr. King really didn't go past what mainstream media has provided and the general education that a student would get in this country. And so for me, this film, you know, made Dr. King a little less polarizing. So, you know, normally he's either a saint or a sinner, right? When we humanize him, we make him a sinner. But in this case, he was just a person and I very much appreciated that in particular. And as a parent and as someone who works with kids who want to engage, I think it's really important for Dr. King to be presented as a person, as a full human being with scars, with character flaws, with, you know, a great deal of empathy because ultimately that's what we all are. And I think when we can believe that a person can make change rather than a myth, then we all can start making change. Yeah, thank you. And if I could just have one quick follow-up question to that, is there anything more specifically that to sort of zoom in a little bit that felt that brought you into that sort of humanity in the film? Was there anything in particular? Honestly, I think more than the story in and of itself, I think it was really the narrative from the people around him. It's that first-person account of being right there with him and really appreciating the mental turmoil and the fact that he really felt so dejected at some point and really felt so disenfranchised by the people that he was working for and just even seeing the risk between, you know, how those individuals wanted to see the movement go versus how he thought it should go. Like, I really felt like the first person from, you know, the interviews really made an impact on me. Yeah, yeah, I think I shared some of that same experience, right, I mean, it was a very conscious decision not to have the story told by academics and historians and it's really, it's that closest inner circle of friends, of, you know, advisors. Yeah, thank you. Reverend McNair. I, the title King in the Wilderness already sets us up to see him in a different way. We're so accustomed to hearing on January 15th or thereabouts the, I have a dream speech that he gave at the March for Freedom and Justice in Washington in 1963. So even just the title positions him in a way that we're not accustomed to seeing him or hearing him, you know, there's no sound bites here. There's none of the eloquence that they were so used to elevating. We actually see how, and for a lot of people it's not a new narrative, but it just reinforces for me some of what I already knew about King. So we get to see the conflicts, right? The, what happens when he goes on a march and he's not welcome there, right? I don't think many of us know the story of him stopping in Chicago and living in that apartment, right? We don't know those stories. So then if we don't know those stories we don't get to see how often he was rejected. And sometimes you're rejected by the very people that he was trying to help or the people who looked just like him because we're accustomed to seeing white people reject him but we're not accustomed to them. And there are many narratives of him being rejected by the black community. I think, so there's that piece but also like the humanity of King. So the moment when he's sitting down with his family and his son says, daddy, you're not saying anything. And then you respond and I was like, yeah but he's also probably not saying anything because there was a camera in his face and he can't be himself when he just wants to be with his family. The one story that I had not heard was the story in the very beginning where how his sons jumped on the car and said, daddy, please don't leave. And he said, and he's saying it's so prophetic in that moment that he's saying, when I get back I really have to change how I do this work. I have to change how I'm a father. We don't get those intimate moments. And so we need those intimate moments to see him as a human being but then those moments are none of our business. And so he's trying to navigate how to be this very public persona but also be a family man. And in a way, he was boxed in by the very movement that he was called to lead. Yes, yeah, beautifully said. I had a similar experience of that around that footage of him at the table and that feeling of like feeling like you're in a very intimate space because we're really unaccustomed to it. And we have grown like, sort of respectful of that aura in which he's most often presented. And thank you for calling up the title because I think too, I mean, there's religious connotations there. There's just, there's a lot of layers to that and I think it does. I like how you said it sets us up for that experience. And so I think we're gonna, it's important that we implicitly sort of called out what is generally missing from that very conventional and most often taught and told narrative. And so we of course need to ask why and whose narrative, master narrative is that serving. And I do wanna share an excerpt of Peter Kunhardt, the director's statement because I think it'll set some of this up in how they came to the film. And it is an excerpt. So it may not read as eloquently as it was written, but it'll get us to some of the core ideas. And just to quickly, again, note that the film came out in 2018 in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the assassination. So Peter writes, in 2013, we first brought the idea of doing a film on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to HBO. The country was a year away from the unrest in Ferguson and still reeling from the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting of Trayvon Martin. 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination. As time moves on, he becomes less of a man and more of a myth upon which principles can be grafted to suit a narrative. As a filmmaker, I felt a mandate to go beyond the speeches and the sermons to create a true personal portrait of Dr. King. Most teachers and scholars covered Dr. King through the first 10 years of the movement, through Montgomery and Birmingham and Selma, because I think we're in an era that wants to pigeonhole Dr. King as someone who's about, I have a dream and the end of segregation. And it's a shame because if you really want to know who Dr. King was beyond the fanfare and who we are as a nation, it's all laid bare in those three years from 1965 to his assassination. So I'll pause there and just, I think we hear echoed some of the thoughts that you shared and I think it also starts bringing it. So I love your, I guess your reaction to those thoughts and also we can hone in on this idea of what those last three years teach us about where we are now that may be that much more linear progress going from bad to better, what, you know, what those different versions sort of, how they inform our current moment. That's it. I don't want to go first all the time. So that was a lot. Yes. So, you know, I think your first question was, you know, who does the master's narratives serve, right? And, you know, I don't mean to be so blunt, but I do think that it serves white America, especially well. Because again, it sets you up in a way that says, you know, this is an exception. I think that's such a message that is given to many African-Americans, you know, that you are an exception. You're different from all the other black people. And so Dr. Martin Luther King was an exception. It's not likely to be repeated. You can't have that ever again. So I think there's some element of that which the narrative serves because, you know, how are we going to aspire to that? You know, the moments past, we missed it. You know, I think that in terms of how does it relate to, you know, the more contemporary situation, I think it, especially for me, highlights the intersectionality of all the problems, right? So we first started talking about, you know, access, right? Like we want to desegregate and we want to be present and recognized. But then, you know, you start talking about poverty and, you know, and those systems. And as we, as our maturity around anti-racism, you know, develops, we can better appreciate that, you know, that these things go hand in hand, that they are systems, that it's not just a matter of, oh, you know, access. It's not just housing. It's not just whether or not we're being sent to war. It's all of those things. And unfortunately, it kind of sets us up for trying to figure out, as I think Dr. King struggled with, how do you address all of those things at once? Because they are so interrelated and yet some people prioritize one thing over another and they create conflict within the movement. So I don't have any answers, lots more questions. Absolutely, absolutely. And I hear, I hear that sort of like the real story, the full story is so complex that we unfortunately have this way of sort of simplifying. So that's, you know, just a small bit of what I heard, but it is, and I hear you on intersectionality. I think the film does a really good job of weaving those different elements together. And Reverend McNair, you wanna add, respond? Yeah, I'm thinking about that last, the last question. How does the master narrative of Dr. King do us all a disservice? That was your question, right? That's, that was, yes. Part of the question, yeah. Cause, you know, that was something I focused in on. So that reminds me of a dead man's dream. And it's that poem by Carl Wendell Hines. And I pulled it up because it's connected there. And I'll, I was gonna say, I'll read a piece of it, but you need to hear all of it together. So it's now that he is safely dead, let us praise him, build monuments to his glory, sing Hosannas to his name. Dead men make such convenient heroes for they cannot rise to challenge the images that we might fashion from their lives. It's easier to build monuments than to build a better world. So now that he is safely dead, we, with ease consciousness, will teach our children that he was a great man, knowing that the cause for which he lived is still a cause. And the dream for which he died is still a dream, a dead man's dream. That's the disservice. Because we are so quick to throw out a pithy King quote that we don't even think about one, the time that has passed. We only think about his dream, but we don't think about why he stood in Riverside Church, why he said it was a time to break silence, why he was pinpointing militarism, capitalism and racism. We don't think about those things. And it's so much easier for us in response to that master narrative, to build a monument to him than to work towards this dead man's dream. Then to think about the cause that he, for which he died, right? We don't think about that. And that's how, that master narrative, gosh, the language here is so compelling, that the master narrative kind of lulls us to sleep. It's like a siren song that pulls us away from the work and almost threatens to cause us to dash our own purpose against the rocks. Because all we can hear is, I have a dream today, but we don't hear the rest of his life. And we also don't hear the call to rise up as leaders. That's right. And to develop other leaders as well. Yeah, that's right. You touched on so many things. I mean, the sort of the singularism of the work, the feeling then that the work is over, that it's done, right? I believe it's Diane Nash, who in the, or it could be maybe Marion Wright Edelman. It's one of the amazing women in the film in the final few minutes, as the film is sort of closing and having its sort of final remarks. She says, if we want to honor him, we really should be developing his work and that there is still so much up, clearly to be done. And are we developing it? And to your point, are we developing the other leaders and learning from? And I think that it's also particularly salient in the North. I mean, that was another huge part of the story that we learned. This was something that happened in the South. And again, these big milestones that were incredibly important, Selma, Montgomery, and so on. But why isn't this region, why isn't Chicago, LA, New York, Philadelphia, what kind of complicity are we willing to look at in the ways in which discrimination was upheld? And I've heard it sort of said it was, it may not have been said it was just shown, and yet the pervasiveness of all of that. So sorry to go on, but that poem's beautiful. It's not one I'm familiar with. So maybe if you wouldn't, I'm going to ask Dan to maybe put that in the chat so folks can check that out. And read it in its entirety. Emily, if I could. Yes, please. There's something else about the master narrative. And I think this is the part of King's work that people don't really want to talk about because he's been so deified. So that master narrative also, it deflects us from any kind of criticism, right? And so there are people who critiqued his work and not out of a hate for him, but also out of a love for people. And it's really, for me, it's also about leadership development. So when we think about the civil rights movement, it's the single savior model. But he was surrounded by other people who, given the chance, would have come up the ranks to be a leader as well. And I'm speaking particularly around the women in the movement. We don't hear enough of the women in the movement. And full disclosure, Emily and Stephanie and I were already talking about women in the movement. And I was already pitching an idea for another documentary. But there were, especially when we talk about the Black Church, women we're the ones who are funding the church. We show up. We turn on the lights and turn off the lights. I mean, we're there. But our voices aren't often heard. Our faces don't get told. Our faces don't get seen. Our narratives don't get told. And I think here, we do see Dorothy Cotton and we do see his wife, of course, and we do see Miss Clayton, but we don't see Gloria Richardson. We don't see Georgia Gilmore. Like there are so many women who are just not mentioned. And I understand it's king in the wilderness, but there's got to be a way to weave some more stories in here because we saw C.T. Vivian. We saw a little bit of Abernathy. And so I think to the question about the master narrative doing it to service, we're not allowed to critique him. And even right now, someone who's watching this video is thinking, wow, Reverend McNair is really hard on King. I'm just pointing some things out. Well, it's funny that you say that right now because I was almost going to put Stephanie on the spot in a way in the sense that what I heard in the very first question is that Stephanie had a little bit more of an experience of this was a little bit more revelatory for her. And I'm wondering if you can speak to that experience of feeling like somebody who has been an icon and this untouchable and was sort of right-sized a bit just in terms of his own struggles, if there's a way to sort of think about how that feels. And what does that new knowledge potentially open up? Yeah. So I can't say I was necessarily surprised. I'm a pragmatic human being, and I tend to expect that people will be human. It wasn't so much that it was a surprise as much as there was just a better appreciation for what that reality really looked like. Again, I think Reverend Kim said have it. So it's something about the passage of time. Like, we don't get a chance to really think about that. And again, we focus on those first 10 years, and then time stops, time stands still. And interestingly enough, in so many ways, as much as time has marched on, time has stood still. So I think in so many, it kind of gives you an opportunity to restart the clock from that point forward rather than saying, OK, that's it. We had our march on Washington. We've got our voter rights, we're done. You could really say, I think, as you, I believe Emily said, talked about how we can pick up the work. I think that was really the most compelling part. It really resonated with me in the sense of being able to better identify my role and my place and what I can bring to the table. Thank you. Thank you for that. I think that to go back to the women in the movement piece of the conversation, I wonder if you have any thoughts on what that sort of absence has meant. What has, how has that served this? Was that just our fairly patriarchal male generated version of things? Or is there something more at work? I will say, so I'm looking at the time, and I'm like, that's a three hour conversation. I'll say this, I've been listening to Ella Baker. There's a recording of two interviews of her. It's about, I think, four hours' worth of recording. Listening to her, listening to her talk about her experience with, I can't, oh, I'm drawing a blank now, so I'm going to say this wrong. I don't remember if it was SNCC or SDLC, but her, I think it was SDLC, but her experience there as an emerging leader and the roadblocks that she came up against. And I really appreciate hearing how you know that she loves people, right? She loves the organizing. She loves being a part of the movement. And she was able to weave in her critique of not just King, but all the leaders with her love of the people, right? Yeah, it is patriarchy, but it's not patriarchy that's born in a vacuum. Most of the leaders at that time were leaders. They were all ministers, right? They're coming out of a particular context. They're coming out of the Black Baptist Church or the Black Church TM. And so there's already something in there that gets perpetuated. And you see through the film, like when they call on people to be a leader, they're looking at the church because these are people who had congregations, who had congregations that would follow them. But we also know that there were no women pastors. So it perpetuated itself. I will say that I do see ways for us today, again, to look at that dynamic as a lesson for disrupting that narrative that we've been carrying because we know women make amazing leaders, right? I mean, you're looking, there's me and Stephanie are here right now. There's you, Emily, like we know that women make amazing leaders. So then the question is thinking about King. And the other thing we know is that, so one of King's, they call them captains, but one of King's right hand people was Bayard Rustin, who was an openly gay man, who coordinated the entire March on Washington on index cards, right? This was a friend of King. So we know that there was some kind of openness there to work with folks who normally wouldn't have been picked for a leadership position. What would that look like in 2021 if he were alive today? How much of his thought process would have evolved to the point where we wouldn't even have to have this conversation, right? So he's not here. So then what does that mean for us today? Then for me, it means listening to Ella Baker talk about how to develop leadership. It means listening to Dorothy Cotton, listening to Propia Hall, listening to all of these characters, all these huge figures in the movement and using them as role models. Georgia Gilmore was baking pies and cakes and crying chicken, right? That's a leadership right there. So the leader doesn't have to be in a pulpit. They could be across the landscape. They could be a leader. Thank you. And thank you with respect to it being a big question and a much broader, I think. It's not that I don't want to delve into it, but I know. Amazing job, I hear you, I hear you. I'm gonna have sort of one more question for the two of you before we give some of our attendees an opportunity to ask theirs. And just before I do, I do wanna call out that on the Kuhn Hart Film Foundation site, which is KuhnHartFilmFoundation.org, in the interview archive, you can click, there's now probably four or five films there, but if you click on the King of the Wilderness, you'll find these full length interviews. And there's also lesson plans and an engagement guide. And I think the lesson plans that we developed in collaboration with a company called Blue Shift Education, try to pull out some of these themes we've touched on, including sort of King the Man, Women in the Movement, and one theme we haven't touched on at all quite yet, sort of the philosophy of non-violence, sort of radicalness of that as a practice, as a philosophy of the training. So anybody that's interested in learning a little bit more about some of the aspects of the film, please check those out. And it leads me into my last question, which is, if you can just talk about any thoughts about how this kind of alternative deeper, more nuanced, more complex version of this man, how can we help sort of bring this into education spaces? Stephanie, you're working in a school now and certainly Reverend McNair, you're in a role as a community educator. I mean, is this possible? How do we do it and why is it important? I guess I'll start. You know, I think, I did take a look at the Archive Gold footage and the interviews and it was really spectacular. I mean, it's very dense, but I mean, I think there's a lesson in that in and of itself. I think there's so many levels to what can be offered to a school community in particular, but I think that teachers today really appreciate, you know, clear lesson plans, you know, unfortunately, you know, there are so many competing priorities that it is hard for them sometimes to be creative even though they might want to. And I think that the lesson plans that you've created are amazing. I think it's really important to sort of, you have to reach out though. Unfortunately, people don't have the capacity they don't have the bandwidth to go looking for the information. And I also think it's really important to make sure that you communicate the ways in which it's meaningful. I think often this kind of work, this information is, you know, boxed. It's put in a box. Like this is, this will be good for your Black History Month. This will be good for your study of MLK. This will be good for your study of, you know, civil rights movement. But again, there's the research. There's, you know, like original sources material. I mean, just that aspect alone is something that students absolutely need to learn and they don't get the opportunity to do that enough. This is, I think Reverend Kim, you're talking about leadership. We know that leadership development is a big part of what schools are doing, particularly in high schools in order for students to be really great candidates for college. I think there are lessons for that. I think it's important for you to make the connection for teachers on how this is relevant in all aspects of their curriculum, whether it's speeches, you know, organizing, whatever. But it's a great resource and I'm super excited to tell my faculty about it. Thank you. Yeah, I'm thinking of how often, how often do we talk about King? We talk about King maybe once a year for a week. So I am, I'm a firm believer that education is a tool for liberation, not for domestication. And quite frankly, I feel like some of, I think a lot of our educational experiences domesticate us rather than liberate us. So where are the other places that we can reach young people? So they can learn how to be a leader. You know, I've worked for a domestic violence agency where we have a, we have a program that goes into middle schools and high schools, right? So is that, and it's, maybe it's not King. Maybe it's starting with the principles of non-violence or maybe it's starting with, you know, unpacking. So you've heard I have a dream, but what's the rest of it? You know, maybe it's the community centers or the youth centers. Maybe it's, you know, and also thinking of the ways that young people learn. I can't tell you how many TikTok videos my niece is sharing with me, but then we talk about them, right? So it's, you know, one of the things I know as an organizer is I can't drop into a community and say, here's what you need to do. It's really going to people and saying, so tell me what do you need? And so how often do we, it's working with the Westchester Youth Alliance, right? Like, and that's a group that stretches its arms across a certain part of Westchester County. So really being creative about teaching young people leadership, one of my, one of the biggest critiques of one of my nieces is that I lecture too much. So maybe it's not the talking, maybe there are other, I know, and maybe I do, but maybe it's not the talking so much. Maybe it's asking, you know, it's weaving it in with young people, but also I think it's just looking for alternative ways and also recognizing that everyone learns differently. I'm a visual learner. So I kind of tune out if people are talking too long. How are you teaching people visually? Is there music? Like there's so many ways to reach young people. And by the way, there's a lot of us old folks who don't know as much about King as they think they do. So what does that look like as well, right? How can we be creative about pouring some new wine into some new wine? Yeah, that's, maybe that's not working. That's not a good metaphor, but you get what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I'm mixing up my scripture there. So I'll just leave that alone, but- The new spices. Yeah. I think your niece is a very lucky person to get to listen to you a lot. I'll tell them you said that. And I do, and I, yeah, I mean, I asked that question very, very authentically and because I do, I think it is complicated. And I think, you know, I acknowledged even to the two of you, you know, it's a dense film. This is not something that I would expect, you know, a 15 year old to sit down and stick with it kind of needs to be broken out. And, but in a broader sense, again, this story just, I think Stephanie, you also really honed in on, you know, just how do we take this work of teaching history out of these very, you know, small and very somewhat predictable sort of times of year and think thematically and think creatively. So I'm, you know, I'm just grateful for the part that both of you are doing in that work every day. Let's give, I'm seeing a couple of questions which I'm grateful for. I think this might be my friend, Nielgensberg. I'm hoping it's you. And he asked, when watching the film, I could not help but see Dr. King as a role model for Barack Obama as a community organizer. It really highlights the importance of trying to change the ills of our society. How has that been a model for the panelists and you as well, Emily? I've actually never thought of, I've never seen Dr. King as a role model and I may be misunderstanding this, a role model community organizer because I've grown up with community organizers. My mother is a community organizer. Like her work with the community center of Northern Westchester, like begin, first president, like she's always been the organizer. So I've had organizers right next to me who have inspired me, who have shown me what it means to be an organizer. I belong to a collective of organizers, like the pastor of my childhood, Reverend Dr. Rufus A. Strother was a community organizer. And I think for him, as well as for King, and I can't say this for Obama, but I think for King, he's, and you can read his writings, read his prayers. He was always looking at the prophets and he was always looking at Jesus Christ. And if you don't see Jesus Christ, I mean, okay. So if you're not a follower, you can at least see him as a community organizer, right? And so for me, those are my models. Having the title community organizer means nothing if you're not doing the work. And I think for me, I've been doing this for a long time. I'm just learning how to be better at it. So yeah, I've never seen him that way. Yeah, thank you. I think I share some of that that Dr. Kim said, I've never really thought of him that way. And I think I see more of the pastor, right? The spiritual leader, the person who is exemplifying the teachings that we're learning. It's about being engaged in your community, being invested in your fellow man, lifting up others. That's where I see, and where I resonate with Dr. King in his work, just using your gifts to the best of your ability to better the people around you. I definitely do not regard myself as a community organizer. And I am just now arriving to trying to do the work. So, my models are really Reverend Kim, my family, the people around me, the founders of the Black Lives Movement, those are my role models. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, and I would add that movements build on each other. So, and it made me think of that when Stephanie said, thinking about Alicia Garza and the other, gosh, my mind's going blank. But so Black Lives Matter is building on another movement. King was building on another movement. So, as a pastor, yes, he was a community organizer, but he wasn't, again, he just wasn't my role model because I was surrounded by people who were deeply invested in challenging the oppressions that were compounding their community. So, and for some, he is the V model. For me, he is a model. Okay, I think I grew up with more of, who did you say, Georgia Gilmour's? You know, like, I grew up with those people. Like, we're the people who cook, you know? We're gonna nourish your soul. We're gonna give you access. We're gonna make you a blanket. We're gonna drive you where you need to go. But Stephanie, that's organizing, though. And that's where we get mixed. We get it twisted because we don't think that's organizing, and that is. Yeah, right. And so that's where the narrative is damaging because now we don't know who we are. Yeah, it's beautiful. Well, thank you for that question because clearly it's, you know, it's raising some interesting conversation. And I just to quickly, quickly sort of make a note on the, I'm also interested in that comparison between Obama and I think I'm personally learning more about his work, you know, before being in public office and I think that's a little bit of his lesser known story. And the next question from the chat, a new poll shows that 29% of Americans think violence is acceptable to make change. 70% disagree in responding to the events in Washington. How are you addressing that issue? So I'm guessing that that is referring to January 6th and the attack on the Capitol. So how are you addressing that issue? So I guess, excuse me, sorry. I'm going to hopefully not twist this question, but hopefully maybe clarify it in, I mean, I'm hearing and this will be my own editorial here. I think that 29% is astonishingly high number to think that violence is acceptable. How do we, you know, and please, if you two would like to interpret this question differently, I welcome it. You know, how do we reconcile sort of that notion that violence is justified, you know, as a means to an end? So yeah, I think about violence every day just because of where I work. I work for a domestic violence agency. So we're always thinking about violence. I actually don't think that's a high number. I would imagine it's probably a lot lower, but it's polling. So then the question is really what is violence because to some people, me defending myself may be seen as violence. You know, almost everything I do in this world is perceived as being violent simply because of the ways that I've been collectivized as a black woman in this society. So if I speak too loudly or if I'm too forceful, some people will view that as violence. And we see this, we see how this shows up, especially in the ways in which black women are harassed and often assaulted virtually in social media spaces because of the perceived violence. So, you know, there's that question of what is really violence, which is maybe too broad a question to answer here, but then also thinking that moment on the steps of the Capitol and inside the Capitol, that was horrific. Do I believe that that's the kind of violence that we need in order to affect change in America or that's acceptable? I do not, but I think we're not ready to have conversations about what violence really is. Even in the work that I do, people think violence is what they see on law and order, but they don't see the subtleties of what really is force. They don't see that as being violence. And so until we learn to really find a common ground, a common understanding of what is violence, I don't know if it's possible to answer that question because on one hand, you know, I'm seeing by any means necessary, but it's by any means necessary, I'm going to defend myself. And again, my defense of myself may be perceived by others as being violent. And I already know that when people watch this video, they're going to say, well, Reverend McNair is advocating for violence. That's actually not true. I'm advocating for a deeper understanding of what violence really is. Yeah. I really cannot add to that because that is, I can't add to that. And I think I just, you know, I want to honor the question, but I also want to honor the complexity of that type of violence that, you know, from some extremist groups that have a very different sort of philosophy and worldview. So I think it's an interesting one. I think it's a difficult one to address fully in this context. But I do, I think it's provocative. And so I honor it for that reason. And Emily, just to follow up on that, when we think about King as being non-violence, you know, I think people mistake non-violence for lying down in the middle of the road and letting people run over them. And that's not what non-violence is. Non-violence is actually action, right? So just like Angela Davis says, it's not enough to be non-racist in this society that we have to be anti-racist. Non-violence is an action against, even if it's non-violence, it's not being a doormat. And again, to your first question about the disservice of that master narrative, the way King and Malcolm X get pitted against each other, that's, do we want to be a Malcolm X? Do we want to be a Martin? When they were both extremely radical in their positions, and that's what got them both killed. So you can be non-violent, you can uphold non-violent principles and still lose your life to the struggle. That's right, that's right. And I think that word that you use and be radical, right? Yes, thank you. Yeah. All right, I would really love to close it on that note. I think it's one of the most important sort of through lines of his work that as we've mentioned, perhaps that's our call to action is to further develop. Dan, I'm gonna give you the last word here and closing and just as I do, thank you Reverend McNair and Stephanie so much. I'm, you know, the better for this conversation and my final thank you to Dan and the Playhouse for all the support of Kuhnhart Film Foundation. Dan, thank you very much Emily yourself as well as to Stephanie and to Reverend Kim because this was really great. Just wanna let everybody know who's listening that we did record tonight and we will send out in the next day or so a link with the recording that you can share if there's anybody that you feel would have benefited or would have been interested in listening and couldn't make it tonight for any reason. We also will have some additional information. We're gonna include the poem that we read before so that if you wanna reference that, we'll have that as well. So look for that in the next couple of days and I hope that you'll join us again. You know, we'd like to do this. We're gonna be hopefully doing another Kuhnhart Film at the end of March for Women's History Month which is the Gloria Steinem Film and we're looking forward to that. And so again, if you don't subscribe yet to our emails go to bedforplayhouse.org. You can sign up to get email information and all this stuff will be on there. And even advanced notice before it gets to our website you'll get a heads up about it. And I should also just make one more pitch for membership. If you become a member, as we slowly work our way back towards reopening members get discounts on tickets and lots of really other great stuff discounts on the cafe and all that. But we also give members heads up on special programming before the general public. So when we are gonna have things for available back in the theater as people make their way back if you become a member one of your benefits is getting a heads up 24 hours before everybody else. So hopefully that's something for you to think about. And it's all on our website. So bedforplayhouse.org. Thank you very much. We really appreciate everybody taking the time on a Sunday evening to tune in for this. And thank you again to the panel and to Emily for all of your hard work. Thank you guys. Thank you. Well, thank you. Good night everybody. Good night. Good night.