 for our online program at the Mechanics Institute for What's Your Story, a celebration of women's history months with authors Rebecca Walker and Lily Diamond in conversation with Erica Huggins, political activist and poet. I'm Laura Shepherd, director of events at the Mechanics Institute. And tonight, we're so pleased to co-sponsor with the Museum of the African Diaspora of MOAD. And to begin our program, I'd like to welcome Elizabeth Gessel, who is the director of public programs at MOAD to say a few words. So welcome, Elizabeth. Hi, everyone. Welcome. I'm so glad to be here this evening with everyone, with these amazing women. Like Laura said, I'm Elizabeth Gessel, and I'm the director of public programs at Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. MOAD is a contemporary art museum, and our exhibitions and programming inspire learning through the global lens of the African diaspora. We are thrilled to be co-presenting, along with Mechanics Institute this evening's program, with these three incredible women. MOAD is currently closed right now to the public, but we have a wonderful digital exhibition that is accessible on the MOAD website called Meet Us Quickly, Painting for Justice from Prison. And it is 21 works by 12 residents at San Quentin. And we are also presenting multiple virtual programs every week. So please check out this incredible exhibition in our online calendar at moadsf.org. And please join me in thanking Mechanics Institute for putting together this incredible program. Thank you, Elizabeth. And for those of you who are new, Mechanics Institute was founded in 1854. And you can find out all about our history and our longevity here on our website at mylibrary.org. Of course, we host our beautiful Beaux Arts building, is the host of our incredible library. We have our International Chess Club, and we have ongoing author and literary events throughout the year, and a cinema film series on Fridays. So please see our website and join us for our other events and programs. Of course, tonight, as I said, is our celebration of Women's History Month. And tonight, we're also inviting you, the audience, to put into the chat women that have inspired you, past or present, in 25 words or less. And we would love to share the names and the voices of those women throughout the evening after our conversation with Rebecca, Lily, and Erica. Also, in addition to our conversation, the authors are celebrating their new book, What's Your Story, which is an unprecedented tool for self-inquiry and transformation, a method that reveals personal growth for collective liberation. And we hope that you will sign their book at Alexander book, Alexanderbook.com. And Pam will put that in the chat if you'd like to take a look and purchase the book online or at any of your independent bookstores. So let me introduce our incredible guests. Rebecca Walker has contributed to the Gold Global Conversation about race, gender, power, and evolution of the human family for three decades. She has authored seven death-selling books on subjects ranging from intergenerational feminism and multicultural identity, including to the real telling the truth and changing the face of feminism. A wide and Jewish autobiography of a shifting self and Black cool, One Thousand Streams of Blackness. She's also written many articles on the topic covering from Barack Obama's work and identity to visual artist Anna Mendiatta and also the changing configuration of the American family. She's also the founder of the Third Wave Fund, which gives grants to women and transgender youth working for social justice. I'd like to also introduce Lily Diamond. She is a writer and advocate, harnessing the power of digital media to democratize wellness and empower women through storytelling, accessible practices for inner and outer nourishment, and revolutionary acts of self-care within our Earth and human communities. She's the creator of the internationally-beloved blog Cale and Carmel and the author of best-selling memoir, Cookbook, Cale and Caramel, Recipes for Body, Heart, and Table. That does sound delicious. And is one of the celebrated top cookbooks, which was one of the top cookbooks from 2017, noted by the New York Times of the Independent and Cooking Light, as well as others. And she also has two decades behind her in the study certification and teaching in the art and practice of meditation and psychosomatic therapies. And also, please welcome Erica Huggins, is an educator, leading Black Panther member, former political prisoner, human rights advocate, and poet. For 45 years, Erica has lectured in the United States and internationally on the principles of racial equity in our personal and work lives, as well as abolishing punitive practices and establishing restorative practices as we shift from mass incarceration. Erica was a professor of sociology and African-American studies from 2008 through 2015 in the Peralta Community College District, and also 2003 to 2011 with the California State University's East Bay in San Francisco. Erica is a racial equity workshop and learning lab facilitator for World Trust Educational Services. And she lives here in the Bay Area. Please welcome our esteemed guests. Yay. Thank you so much for having us. Shall we take it away now, Laura? Yes, please. Lily? OK, I will take it away. It's Rebecca. And Lily? OK, so we're so happy to be here with you. Thank you so much to Moad. I have such a long relationship with Moad, and I really am so grateful that you all exist and that you're continuing to do programming, even though it's such a very, very difficult time. I think the work you're doing is just vital. So I'm thrilled that you're with us. Thank you. I'm the same to Mechanic Institute, which I knew nothing about until we started to create this moment. And the more I know about you all, the more impressed I am. So thank you to both of you for making this happen. And especially, you know, Lily and I, and I'll talk a little bit about our book in a second. But Lily and I, well, I'll talk about it now. In the midst of promoting our new book, What's Your Story? A journal for everyday evolution, which is really about helping people to rewrite the stories of their lives, have been doing many, many conversations with people about how they can rewrite their lives and really become more aware of the ways in which they're living out ideas that are not necessarily in alignment with who they are and to begin to start to write new stories for themselves. In the context of doing this for a few months, we've really decided that the most powerful gift that we can make through this process of bringing the book out to the world is to talk to human beings who have actually lived the process of transforming their stories. And I feel so honored and fortunate and thrilled to have with us today a dear friend and sister colleague and fellow spiritual warrior on the path, Erica Huggins, to share with us her story of really moving from being a political prisoner, someone who was on the front lines of Fighting for Justice and still is, but who has moved from that space, which she'll talk more about, that kind of psychological space, which she'll tell you about it, but into a space that's more balanced and integrated with a kind of spiritual practice of moving toward a kind of inner peace for outer peace, a greater balance and a real tenderness with her own being that I think radiates out into her political work. And Lily and I both feel that this is so, so important right now in the midst of all of the incredible reckoning that we're doing in our country at the moment. I mean, I think for people of color and activists of color and BIPOC activists, we've been doing this radical work of trying to evolve this culture beyond white supremacy, beyond hypercapitalism, beyond patriarchy for decades, but there seems to be this incredible moment right now where we have real movement happening. We have activists on the streets and we really wanted to invite Erica to tell her story, to contribute to what's happening. So that these young activists now who are fighting so hard can hear a story of someone who has managed to be there on the front lines and feel that rage and feel that frustration and fight so hard and also be able to dwell in a place of equanimity. Because I think that is so, so, so important and Lily and I share this desire for that. And I can't think of anyone else in the world who can speak more directly to that than our dear friend Erica. So we can tell you, I feel like I wanna jump right into Erica, but I could just say in two minutes, Lily, do you wanna just, before we start, talk a little bit about our book? Or should I just dive? I do, I would love to just contextualize the conversation and for those in the audience who may already have the book or be working through the book, first of all, hi. This is my first moment saying hello to you all. Really lovely to be here with you all and I'm so honored to be in conversation within the space of MOAD and Mechanics Institute and with Erica and with Becca. So it's really an honor to be here with you all. The work of the What's Your Story Journal is really one of being able to understand the stories that we bring with us into this moment, whether that be about our minds, our relationships, our bodies, our communities, our work all the way through to our mortality. And then to really assess those, honestly, how are those stories serving us? Are those stories bringing us closer to whatever sense of liberation and justice that we hold most closely to within our hearts and our minds and for our communities? And then to give us space to rewrite those stories. And so as Rebecca said, having the opportunity to sit down and to really listen deeply to the stories of women who have moved the margins of what a societally acceptable story looks like is such a pleasure. It's a deep experience of kind of enlivening, right? There's something that is really thrilling about listening to someone who has completely transformed what we have previously thought possible. And along the lines of what Rebecca was sharing in the context of these extraordinary social justice movements that are happening today, the Black Lives Matter movement and so many others that are anti-oppression movements, liberation movements, I think understanding, having an opportunity, particularly for myself as I'm an elder millennial, having an opportunity to gain greater context of the larger story that we have been living out, not just within this moment or in the last 10, 20 years. What does this moment look like in the context of the past 50 years, the past 75 years? How can we understand the story that we're living and how we need to rewrite it within that broader context as well? And so I'm deeply grateful to have the opportunity to learn in this moment from that space. Yay. Thank you, Lily. And one of the things Lily and I talk a lot about when we do these conversations is how important it's been for us to learn from each other. One, to have conversations like this between a woman of color and a white woman and a younger woman and an older woman and a woman who's grown up on Maui on occupied land and a woman who's grown up all over in different ways. And so much of this is about breaking down the ways in which we are so siloed in our communities. We're so segregated. We're so on so many different levels. And part of what is so important for us in our work that we really value is that we are trying to live that breaking down. We're trying to live that reconnection with the understanding that, you know, oppression is really about dividing us. It works when we cannot speak to one another. That's what the whole plan is. And so for us to work through some of our differences and be able to really trust each other and work together is one of the things that we're most proud of. So Erica, you wanna start? Just, you know. I wanna thank you for inviting me. And Lily, I wanna thank you for inviting me. And I also wanna thank the Mechanics Institute and our beloved MOAD, the Museum of the African Diaspora. It's such a haven and I hope it reopens as soon as it can. This is such a poignant endeavor. What's your story? Because we all have them, right? Every single one of us has stories. And I don't know, one of the things that I just wanted to say is that the stories themselves are one thing. But how we tell them is another, right? Then a decade later, how we tell them. And a decade later, how we tell them. And what do we tell to our children, our grandchildren, if we have them? So being sort of stuck in a story having been there is not healthy. Yeah. Can you? Go right ahead. Can you tell us when you realized you were stuck in your first story? I was grieving the death of my husband, John Huggins, at the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigations Counterintelligence Program. It was and it still is real. I was grieving, I was incarcerated. And my words, Lily, were considered contraband. I was in a state prison for women because I'd been arrested for conspiring to murder a young man who was murdered, I did not do it. But this was during the time in the late 60s, early 70s, when the idea was to arrest everyone and criminalize them publicly and in other ways as well. One beautiful gift that John Huggins left this world is his daughter, my daughter. And she was three weeks old at the time, and Rebecca, you know this, that I was arrested, three months old, I'm sorry. She was three weeks old when her father was killed and three months old when I was taken from her. So one day I was sitting in this solitary cell because I was confined to solitary because of my words, my beliefs, of freedom and justice for everybody, not just for some people. And it dawned on me that I could continue to grieve and grieve and grieve and grieve, not only John's death and being separated from my baby daughter, but all the heinous acts that had been committed to bring me there and all the heinous acts that date back all the way to American chattel slavery. All of this was going on in my 21 year old head and heart. And I said to one of my lawyers that my heart felt like shattered glass. And I couldn't figure out how to bring the shards together, how to make sense out of nonsense. So one day, as I sat there thinking about the fact that I could only see my daughter, I'm sure that there are those of us in our square circle, our Zoom circle who have children and grandchildren. I wanna say to you, because I'm sure you'll understand that part of the grief was I could only see her for one hour every Saturday. I really didn't know what I was gonna do with that. Not see her at all. No, I thought about it. And the reason why I thought about it is that I didn't wanna cry all the way through that one hour. And so it dawned on me that part of our legal team, which was the most extraordinary legal team, it would take me forever to describe them. But one of them was Charlie Gary, who had the nickname street fighter in the courtroom. And he'd become a fighter because he was of Armenian descent. He literally learned how to box because he was treated so badly, right? Because he was Armenian. So he practiced yoga, I knew this, because Charlie would do a headstand before he entered any courtroom. And I said, Charlie, you gotta get me a book on yoga and meditation. I really, truly don't know why specifically I asked him, except that I knew I couldn't go out like I was going, that I couldn't just sit there and let it all happen and not feel the aliveness that I felt before I was arrested, before John was killed. And Charlie got me this book. And I began to do the poses in this tiny little cell in this corridor that the guards called, it was an isolation corridor called, they nicknamed it the Panther Wing. When they came to bring food, they would say on their walkie-talkies, we're going to feed the Panthers. And I often would make myself laugh at the zoo analogies that I'm sure they were making in their heads. I had to laugh rather than cry. So anyway, with this book, I did the postures. As best I could, I had no teacher. I wasn't doing it for a cute body or even to relax. I was doing it so I wouldn't cry for an hour with my baby. When I first began to read this little book, I said, after you do your posture, sit still a while and breathe. And so I did, I did it every day. I would pause in the day when I could feel the sadness or the confusion or the lack of self-love which had been in my life since childhood. And I could feel as if I was given access to a place in me that I know is in all human beings that we're not taught about. We're not taught it unless we go to a particular kind of school these days that has the resources to do that. But certainly not in the public schools that I went to in Washington DC. Within a week, I began to notice that I was feeling less shattered and worried. I was feeling less like a horrible mother and not a great daughter. I was beginning to love myself. In the second week, when John's mother Elizabeth Huggins brought my baby, John's baby to visit me from New Haven, Connecticut to that prison every Saturday. I don't care what the weather was doing. I don't care what was happening. She was there. So in the second Saturday, I was able to sit with my baby and Mrs. Huggins and not cry. Believe you me, I would cry the whole way back to the cell and then some, but I didn't give that to my daughter. Then around the first month, I was recognizing that there was less to cry about. I was still grieving, but there was less to sort of break down about. I was having an internal, uplifting kind of a breakthrough about what freedom really is and where it's sourced. It's inside. And I began to feel free for the first time in my life in a solitary prison cell. No one told me to do it. No one told me how to work it out. No one told me how to feel about it, think about it, what to do with it. I knew it, just like I know my fingers on my hands. Eventually, and I'll pause after I say this, Rebecca and Lily, in case you might have a question of some kind. Eventually, our lawyers went to the state of Connecticut. Our lawyers, I mean, Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party and I, we were on trial together. To say to the state of Connecticut, this is cruel and unusual punishment. Our defendants are innocent until proven guilty. They have done nothing to harm that we know of anyone or themselves. And the precedent had already been set to release Angela Davis from solitary confinement. The state of New York had done the same thing. And so Connecticut said, yes, and so I was released into the general population of incarcerated women at that prison. And there's so many stories I could tell. I made so many friends. I believe everybody who knew that I was in solitary and that they could be put in a deprivation cell or in the hole as we called it for talking to me or sending me notes that they sent anyway. We'd all become friends sight unseen. I couldn't see them, they couldn't see me, but I got their notes, I got their love. And so when I met many of them face to face, it was like a reunion. So I'll stop there because then what I was about to say is that when I met them and they met me, I had all this love that was just impossible to contain. And that's what I believe we're here to do, love each other. And I don't mean it in that TV Hollywood kind of way at all. It's fierce, it's really fierce, so I'll stop there. Erica, can I ask you said the new story of freedom that had emerged was that freedom comes from within. And I'm curious if you could share what was the story before of where did freedom come from before? What was the old story of where freedom came from? That if we, and I still believe this is true, I don't ever believe that one thing replaces another. It's all interconnected, Lily, for me. I can't speak for anybody else, but for me, it's all connected. And it wasn't that I didn't feel that it came from within because as a little girl, I knew it. I could tell you a story about it if you want to hear it. I went to the march on Washington when I was the march on Washington. For jobs and freedom when I was 15, and I was standing there and Lena Horne sung two syllables, freedom. I don't know if you ever heard me sing, but she didn't have to open her mouth and let too much happen or you just melt it. And when she sung that word and it entered the air, all the hundreds of people, thousands of people became silent. And it entered my ears and fell into my heart. And when it did a valor rose, I'll serve people for the rest of my life. So I thought that serving people might be poor people and people of color, which is why we had all gathered there that day in Washington, D.C. I thought that I would want to be at places like that huge and beautiful event where women were allowed to speak. None of the women spoke that day. That I would be able to support others as people like Rosa Parks and Coretta King and Lena Horne had done. I knew I wasn't going to remain a black girl in D.C. There was a bigger world that was out there for me. I was right about that. But what I didn't know is that I would be able to fully access the power within me because I didn't love myself. I could see it in others. I could give you a long list of names of people who were so powerful and worthy of love. But I wasn't one of them. And that was because I grew up in an alcoholic family. I can look back at it and see exactly how. No one's at fault for it, though. That's another thing. I was able to move through. So rather than seeing just that freedom could happen here, I recognized it could happen here in this heart, in this body, in this Erica. And that it would continue. That it isn't, you know, we used to talk about the revolution that we were a part of. I was 18. When I joined the Black Panther Party, and we said, we'll see revolution in our lifetime. Not knowing that there was this continuous river of revolutionary activity that we had just stepped into. This unbroken. We knew we were a part of something, but we're taught history is in little decade, segments, and they don't connect. So I was able to reclaim Erica and see what ways I could free her from the story of my father or the stories of my father's family, the stories of my mother's family, the story in my house, with my mother, my father, my sister, my brother, all the stories. And many of them were so beautiful. See, that's the thing that this kind of excavation does. You peel back the story that keeps you in cement, with cement feet. And you're able to shake your toes and move your legs and move your body and see all these other beautiful stories that have been submerged or forgotten. So I hope what I'm saying makes sense, Lily. Absolutely. Yeah. And so much of what I'm hearing too is a reclaiming of that you were worthy of freedom. Absolutely. You were worthy of love. Yes. Yes. That I am worthy, period. Yeah. And how, how was that to come into that? I mean, you know, you started to do yoga and it affected you in that way. But did it, did it, like, immediately dissolve that old story? What was the journey that, that was begun with that work in finding the self love? Because I think when we were talking to everyone, I think that's what we're all hoping people find with their rewriting their stories is deep self love. I think that's the hardest thing for a human being to find who's been raised to have such low, you know, belief in themselves and low self esteem. I think if, and to that point, Rebecca, I think that if I'd had a society that also loved me. Yeah. If I was remembering the other day about my, I'm working with a group called the black teacher project. They're amazing. And I'm doing a session with a young teacher. And we were talking about our favorite ever black teachers. And I remember it was my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Roy. And I loved her. Why? Because she didn't yell. She was warm. She smiled. She didn't have favorites. She said, Ms. Roy, and when you're five, you need a Ms. Roy. Then as I went on in school, I had lots of wonderful teachers, but none of them taught me the history that made it so that I only had black teachers. That was great. But I lived in Southeast DC. That's, that's what I got. And I also learned that looking at what, in addition to looking at the story of my family, as I was saying to you, Lily and everyone, I was looking at the story the United States told me about who I am. I was eight when I was spit on by a little white girl. I couldn't put that together. I didn't know what to do with that. I ran home to my mother, thank goodness for my mother. Oh my God, she helped me so much. And I said, she used to tell us that we had to act like we had home training when we leave the house. You say yes, sir. You say yes, ma'am. She was raised in the south. You're polite. When you say hello, you look someone in the eye. Those kinds of simple things that a mother can say. And when this little girl spit on me and called me nigger, I ran home from the corner store because then, you know, children could walk anywhere they wanted. And I said to my mother, mama, mama, mama, little girl spit on me. Didn't she have any home training? And my mother said, yes, she did. But sugar, it wasn't the right kind. Somebody told that little girl something. And she just held me and talked to me about history. She didn't have all kinds of language like, you know, I want you to have an intersectional approach to that. My mother didn't have that. She didn't even use the term racism until later in her life. Because she grew up with the, the, the George Wallace's, the Strom Thurmans and so on. So what she said to me helped me. She said, for generations and generations, there are people who teach their children to hate. I want you to love. I don't want you to love that you got spit on. That's the lowest thing a human being can do. Of course, hitting somebody in the face. But I want you to love. Yes, I think so often in our communities, you know, these other stories, we are always telling the parallel, the story that will save us in the context of this dominant story that is so much about our dehumanization. And so it's our, it's, it's, it's part of our culture is to, is to retell the story for our own survival, you know. And not everybody got it. Exactly. Everybody has a mother like mine. Like, yes. Ditto. And not everybody talks to their children. There's the one thing to talk to your children about hate. The other is to talk, of course, to your children about love. The important thing we can do right now, by the way, is talk to our children about. History and its impact on us in this moment. And it's impact on our future. It's okay to talk to our children and tell them the truth. They can take it. I know I could. Can I use this moment to segue because I'm a little worried about time and I want to really get to this because we're talking about children and I know your story with your daughter. And because you left it a little bit, I want to, I want to just ask you about how your story about being a mother to your child evolved as well. You know, you had the story with her and seeing her and getting through and that has changed many times. I think your story about what your relationship is. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yes. Well, first of all, I was a very young mother when John and I conceived her. And then I was immediately a single mother, not just a widow when he was killed. I was incarcerated. And so by the time I was, a mistrial was declared and I was released and I was able to rejoin her. She was two and a half. So there was a way in which we were more like big sister and little sister. Do you know what I mean? And so over the years, I've done everything that I could to make that different. And then one of the things that you were saying earlier about, you know, working with the stories is that I had to make a lot of effort inside myself to look directly at me, to look directly at my family, to look directly at society and not have huge buckets of blame, but to just look at it, assess it so that I could move on. Looking back sometimes, but not going back. Do you know what I mean? Or not going backward. I so wanted to be her mother, but that isn't the life I was given. That was interrupted. And then when I was released, I continued to work from prison. I continued to work with the Black Panther Party, but the movements are not set up so that men raise children. They're going to be, though, because young women today, young activists today, boy, are they talking about it. And I'm happy to talk about it. But it was set up that you're, you know, you're a change maker and a mother, and you may be in the role of father, and you're everything to everybody except yourself. When I talked about forgiveness earlier, it was in prison that I recognized that I needed to forgive myself for a lot of the ways in which I had held my own being. It didn't happen during that two years in prison, but it began there. And so, over the years, over the many, many decades, my daughter and I have had conversations about the fact, for instance, that even though I didn't intend to be separated from her, that her father didn't intend to be murdered, that she was in a way living with abandonment. So that was something that I had to come to in my own way and not feel sorry for myself about it. Do you know what I mean? So, but we're good, she and I. And I'm so grateful. And I have two sons. And so in each of my children's lives, I'm a different Erica. But I'm named Erica. I'm mom. I'm mom. I'm mommy, whatever. But so I've come to recognize that there is no such thing as perfection, that we're all already perfect. If I hold myself as doing the best that I can, then I am. And it pointed out to me that I'm not. Then I make more effort. It, as I said, love is fierce. It's not ooey-gooey, you know, like sometimes we're taught to think it is. It's effort. And that effort puts love into action. Yes. I wanted to ask you, Erica, you, you know, you spoke about having the space later on to look back, not to be drawn back, not to go back, but to be able to reflect in order to evolve, to move forward and to shift the story. And I'm curious if there were specific tools or people along the way that really were companions and helpers to you in that process. I mean, that's so much of why we, we've created the what's your story journal because that process of review and reviewing honestly and simply being honest with ourselves can be so intense. And it can be loving, but it is that fierce love. It requires that fierce love towards ourselves. And that's not easy to summon. Well, tell me your question again. My question is who are the people and what were the some of the tools that allowed you to do that reflection and do that work? There are so many people here till tomorrow listing them. I want to, I want to highlight Maya Angelou. This is long at, I mean, this is decades after my time incarcerated, but she came, I was teach, I was the director of a school that the Black Panther Party started called the Oakland Community School. It was tuition free community based child centered parent friendly. We serve three meals a day. We were connected to Oakland Children's Hospital. It was the quality of a private school in deep East Oakland. And I know that you know East Oakland, but you know a part of a city like East Oakland. And all black and brown people at that time. And one day somehow, and I can't remember how it, all the particulars of how Maya asked me if she could come. She came to visit lots of people came Rosa Parks came. And Maya and I made a friendship based on that school. She loved it. She said every child should have this school. And then he said to me, and when I come back, I'm bringing Jimmy. Now she was referring to, well, of course Baldwin. And he came and he was at the school. And before he left, he just wept. Every child deserves a place like this where they're fully loved, where no one wants them to be something that they're not. Every child deserves this. So Maya and I embarked on some educational programs for children in Oakland and in the meanwhile became friends. And I went through a very another, a very dark spot in my life. An event happened that just tossed everything upside down. And I was meant to meet with her. Thank you, Maya. And I was meeting her at some little restaurant somewhere. And she was going to have a drink and I don't drink. So I was just going to sit there. And then we were used to having lively meetings with laughter and planning. And I came and I sat down and she said, dear, what is it? She just read it. She said a number of things to me. But what she did was she listened. She listened. She didn't look over here. She didn't ask for another drink. She was fully present. And I was thinking as I was crying my eyes out, telling her the story. It takes a lot for me to cry, although I'm very tenderhearted. But it was really something I couldn't figure out. And she just listened. She didn't try to fix it. She didn't give advice. She just told me how lovable I am. That's the story that popped right to the top of my head, which is why I had to ask you what's your question? Because I was trying to figure out if there was a better or another person to mention, but I mentioned her. Because she didn't have to spend the time with me. That she did in the way that she did. She taught me to listen, to really listen. And to regard every upside-down moment that we might have in our lives as one that will sort itself out. And for me, make it so that that story will help me to help someone, to support someone who's in that same place at a later time in life. So most of the people that I didn't mention who are mentors, or friends, or supporters, or accomplices in freedom, I love thinking about being an accomplice in freedom. They had that same quality of listening, and they had other qualities as well. That's a great question. That's really great. I think that's so important for, I mean, we spend a lot of time listening. I think that in our, in the original master course, Art of Memoir, listening is so important, you know, because people are so often just not listened to. And a space is not created for people to just speak their truth and dwell in it. And sometimes when you open that space for people, they find their own answers, you know, but they wouldn't have if you give them the space, you know, everyone's just, well, this you should do that, you know, but really the unfolding that happens when you listen is so precious. And in our time now, when there's so much distraction and distractibility, I think that listening is harder and harder to both do and find, you know. So I think that is such a beautiful story, and it is so emblematic of how we change. We talk ourselves as someone is listening from one story to another, in a way, you know, we can. It's a sacred space of listening because we can evolve right in that moment. Hear ourselves, you know, yes, I love that. That sense that there is possibility because space has been given for it. Yeah, yeah, and that's what we want to do. That's what this is all about. I'm so happy. I see that Laura is, are you signaling anything for us, Laura? Okay. Because I have all kinds of other questions. We can't hear you. Laura, you need to unmute. Yes, please. Well, I think since we have about 10 more minutes to go, we'll go back and forth between you, Rebecca and Lily with some comments about the voices of women that have inspired us in the chat. So carry on. Sure. Are there any questions out there? I was also thinking I could try to pull my mom and say hello to everybody. I see some, some lovers of my mom in this. And I know she would be happy to see Erica. Look, yes. I mean, I don't know if she'll do it because she's over there eating some delicious collard greens, but I could try. But do ask questions for all of us, all three of us. We want to. We want to hear your questions. I'd like to put questions in the chat. That would be yes. Put your questions in the chat. We'll call on you or we'll read out your questions. Okay. As you're doing questions, I'm going to go see if my mom will come say hello. Hold on. I think that would be really sweet. If you would let, I know it's kind of a lot of scrolling, but if we want to maybe just scroll up to the top of where we see that people started to share the names of some of these women in their lives that you're carrying with you. He'll move to start. I know I don't know if I'm saying this right, but Eva. Or Eva Johnson. Would you like to share any of these names? Sure. I thought it was me, but I didn't put stories at first. I had a lot of, once you start. My mother, my sister, my grandmothers, my great-grandmothers, my aunts, my cousins, Lucille Clifton, Audrey Lord, Toni Morrison, Jay California Cooper, Patricia Smith, Cheryl Clark, Julie Ensar, Lizette Wanzer, Awan Mance, Evie Shockley, Adelaide Limon, Natalie Diaz. Then Pat Parker came to mind, Elmas Abinader, Shay Younger. Faith Adielli, Serena Lynn. And then I thought about my, Nnedi Okorafor, Octavia Butler, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone. I put Evie Shockley again. She really touched me. And then my flute teacher, Yeda Weber, who I then wrote about because she, I was just so blessed to be studied with her. She was an amazing humanitarian and a brilliant, a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great. She was a great humanitarian and a brilliant, a brilliant musician and teacher. And so I put that last little piece. So that's it. Thank you. The more I think, the more I could go. So, yeah. Yeah, endless, right? But hearing the names is so powerful. Thank you for starting us off. Gina Robinson, would you like to share? Sure. I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready. But I have a daughter and only child. And I feel like when she was born, I thought I was going to be such a great teacher and inspiration for her. And I hope I have been, but she's just so much more poised and mature at 18 than I am now in some ways. And I just am so inspired by the way she has this quiet strength and she's able to use her voice without shouting anyone down and with allowing people space and being respectful, so standing firmly in her beliefs and in her, her sense of strength. And I'm just, I just want to be a better person every day for her. And she just published a book that she wrote as part of her senior project on Amazon. So I'm just so proud of her for just doing all these things and being so determined to just keep moving and, and just, she just amazes me. That is amazing. Thank you for sharing Kendall with us. I think Rebecca is back with a special guest. This is my mama. What a, what a, to see Alice Walker. Welcome to our screens and welcome to mechanics institute downtown San Francisco and welcome to Moad, our neighbors and friends. So we're, we're just thrilled to see you now, even virtually. It's just, it's a pleasure. We can join us in person at some point when we open our doors. And when you're back in, in the, in the Berkeley Oakland area, where, where are you now? I'm in Mendocino. You're in Mendocino. Beautiful. Yeah. We'll definitely have to, you know, embrace you to come to come and see us when we're open. Thank you. Yes. Wonderful to see you. Hi, mom. I just wanted her to come say hello, especially to Erica. We were talking about wearing our bracelets and to, it looks like Vachel is here. It looks like so many people. Amora is here and other people that we know. So we just wanted to say, Hey, you see. Take care. Okay. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Love you Erica. Thank you to our CEO of Mechanics Institute, Kimberly's Grafano, who's just opened up her screen. And just, just to say hello to everyone, Kimberly, and especially our esteemed guests today. It's just such a pleasure. Absolutely. Okay. What's happening? What did I miss? We've had some beautiful recognitions of women in. These incredible audiences live so we can continue with this. Let me see where we were. Gina just shared. And. Jane Glendening. Do you care to share with us? Sure. When I first heard the question, I was a little overwhelmed because there are so many names that come to mind. And as I've watched the names typed in, if I could, I would have given a thumbs up on just about all of them. But lately I've been reading both Joy Harjo and Marilyn Robinson. And the, the love of life that comes through is with me from these books. So that's, that's where I am today. So I had the opportunity to meet Joy last year and it was. Life changing in all the ways you can imagine it would be from such a. A light and a force. Okay. Yeah. As shared with us. Dr. Thank you very much. Hi. Hi there. I'd like to bring into this sister circle today. The blank sisters. They grew up in the Detroit area, Mount Clemens. They were born between 1924 and 1933. Their parents were part of the great migration from noon in Georgia up to Michigan. The five sisters were motherless in 1940. And raised by a poor father. All dropped out of high school as a result before finishing. Beginning in 1967. The sisters individually began to amass a large amount of real estate in a city that was vastly becoming. A wasteland for neglect. For social programs. Because of the money they saved. As workers in the auto unions of Detroit. All of them retired between the ages of 54 and 59 independently wealthy. One sister. Is Alice Pearl Mary weather. Was my mother. She eventually getting her GED in her sixties. She transitioned seven years ago yesterday. At the age of 85. She was a widow at 39, and she raised a son and two daughters. One to be a teacher. One to with a PhD in healthcare policy. And a journalist. I bring my aunts and my mothers into this circle. I bring my aunts and my daughters into this circle. Blessing love and light to everyone here. And all the tentacles is spread out to the sisterhood. On earth. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Oh my gosh. Wow. That was amazing. Thank you so much. And I hope that your mom had a beautiful transition. She very much did. She very much did. Thank you so much. Thank you. I feel her spirit from the moment I clicked on zoom. And beautiful Erica. Huggins. Came on the screen who I actually sent a direct message to when I first got on. So I love you all. And thank you so very much for this opportunity. Three weeks ago, I was on the call that was sponsored by Yale University. The daughter of Diane Carroll, the daughter of Perry Belafonte, the daughter of Al Sharpton. Oh, the daughter of Percy Sutton. I'm sure I'm missing. And it was such a wonderful spiritual experience to see these young women and women my age. As I so much. Was motivated and loved by the parents and the sacrifices they put in that love to you, Erica, and to you, Rebecca, and I love your mother so much. I drove all the way from Los Angeles five years ago with my daughter at the time who was 32 to see her at the Fillmore. Oh, yeah. And the I was supposed to come and she didn't. And we were two roles there and all the love goes out to her too. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Wow. That was amazing. You are amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Anyone else. Mora shared, but she said that she would prefer if we read it. I'm okay. Yeah, she says would love to bring light to my friend, teacher, mentor, healer. And artist infinite who has helped me to truly see myself in a bright light that she adds to my light life. To the artist, Alexa Garcia, whose work is beautiful and healing on very deep profound way. Whose work in life is a devotion to spirit. And to the wonderful writer, Alice Walker, whose work and presence on this earth has been the deepest. Of my life. And so I'm back. Heal and throughout my life since owning a copy of the color purple as a 13 or 14 year old who was surviving trauma so mirrored in the book. I'm so grateful for every woman whose life has affected mine, including fellow Scorpio, Rebecca Walker. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Amora. Beautiful. Elizabeth who journeyed home and joined my spirit team on the autumn equinox of 2015. Great. I shared a little bit about my my first teacher who's Mrs. Cornelius who lived down the street from us in Jackson Mississippi and my mom I think I was you know maybe two years old, three years old and I would she would push me down the street and I would go and Mrs. Cornelius just loved all of us little children and and I just felt so safe with her and so loved and she always fed me collard greens and black eyed peas which I just loved and and I I just you know the time that I spent with her was so precious you know it was so simple you know apparently you know it appeared to be simple but as we know things that appear to be simple sometimes are the most sophisticated things ever you know so she she was so skillful in taking care of us and recognizing the specialness of each of us and so when she talked about how special I was to my mom it just made me feel like you know just everything and I missed her when I had to leave Jackson and you know we were living in the first integrated subdivision in the city at the time and my parents were fighting the Klan and you know she she was able to create a space in which I felt really safe you know and and then of course I mentioned Bell Hooks who was one of my great mentors when I was a student at Yale and she really taught me so much how to how to think really how to think how to see how to how to have be how to you know she supported my writing you know really strongly and I think without her I wouldn't become a writer and so I want to give her all blessings and all love and to send her my my endless gratitude you know today and every day of course my mama who I love who I'm so happy she snuck in a day in the periods even though I had to kind of nudge her yeah well ladies I've got to thank everyone for such an inspiring and heartfelt program this has just been beautiful and and in very it's given us a sustenance and strength and inspiration and just remember that this is just the beginning of your list of all the women that inspire you so if it if it has struck a chord and opened your heart and mind please continue your list at home and give a shout out in any way through writing or through a phone call to a loved one that's inspired you or an email or or a chat however what however you communicate you know sub signals whatever or even in a prayer so I would love I would love to thank our really our our our beautiful guests Rebecca Walker and Alice Walker as our special guest Emily Diamond and Erica Huggins for this great program to celebrate women's history month it's just been such a pleasure and please brave women carry on thank you yes and wait wait yeah and before we go I just want to really bring us back to this idea of story and and the ways in which Erica really helped us to see how she was able to transform her story over and over again and move from a story of questioning self-worth and the ability to be powerful to one which she really was able to own her inner power and her understanding that the way to change the world is to really change you know our our belief in who we fundamentally are and and I know Erica's story a little bit more maybe than many of you but she has done this retelling this remaking of her story many times and is a real role model for that work and so I just want to thank I want to thank you again Erica for the work you've done and for spending this time with us I want to close with with you on you thank you thank you Erica and a special thanks again to Elizabeth Gessel Director of Public Programs at the Museum of the African Diaspora uh much thanks to you yes yes okay and we're going to just open up for a hello and a goodbye and for a minute for 30 seconds everybody can unmute and say bye you just said out in greetings they feel like we're shouting out thank you very inspiring hi thank you wonderful wonderful much love thank you so much thank you look at all of you all love you Erica love you Rebecca love you honey love you bye bye bye okay close in the doors everyone it's good seeing you again so long