 Hello everyone, welcome friends here, friends there. It's my pleasure to welcome you to this two-day TV event that we are calling the Long Match. It's a conversation, it is an encounter. My name is Matthew Glassman, my pronouns are he and him. I'm currently an ensemble member with Double Edge Theatre and I'm proud to be welcoming you on behalf of Double Edge and howl around Theatre Commons. And it's director Jamie Galoon who couldn't be here today but who co-curated the series on the intersection of art, culture and comedy. And beyond comedy, important. Which aims to underscore the unique role that artists and culture workers play in reimagining and reshaping our future. This is day two in case you missed day one. It was yesterday, it was great. It was an online conversation that was put together by Art.coop, Caroline Woolard and Marina Lopez. Had some incredible artists and practitioners there. It's living in the archive, I highly encourage checking it out if you missed it. And this today's conversation will also live on so please feel free to pass it on. One other piece of technicalities is not you because you're here. We can interrupt each other and talk as we want to. But for those of you that are out there, there is a chat window and we invite you to put your name in the chat, bring your questions, your comments, your thoughts. Also the land that you are a guest on. Anything else please, we invite you to be as active as you want to and as much as we can we will get your questions and interjections and free form associations into the conversation. Great. Let's see here. I need to begin by saying where I'm speaking to you from. I'm speaking to you from a place, a town that is now, we now call Ashfield, Massachusetts which is the homeland of the Nipmuc tribal people. The Nipmuc which means people of the fresh water. I want to honor and respect the Nipmuc tribal sovereignty, its elders, its ancestors, its life ways, its experiences, who continue to live on this land. I want to honor their sovereignty, their traditions and I want to express gratitude for all the culture that is being shared despite all that was stolen and harm that continues to be done. I want to honor the other present day indigenous tribes and I want to say that there's acknowledgement and there's action. Thank you Rhonda, leading me towards this. I really appreciate it. So action can look like many different things. It can look like at the local level, the state level, at the national level, finding out which bills are being passed, which initiatives and movements are afoot, finding out ways that we can recognize and make changes to the dominant narrative that glorify colonization like we have here with the name of the Pioneer Valley and find ways to support movements afoot to change those names. Support as well, uses of bills and movements afoot that find alternatives to terrible imagery found in mascots and generally being a part of action that uplifts the respect for cultural heritage. And also find out about the Land Back campaign LandBack.org is a great place to go and as you are writing in the chat, please feel free to acknowledge this land that you are a guest on and the people that need to be honored as a result of that. We are drinking here in Asheville the water from aquifers that come from glaciers from long ago and I'd like to just call on Joy Harjo who writes that glaciers swim backward in time. I say this because I want to continually bring us back to inter-generationality and this continuum of time today. I want to acknowledge today is March 18th. It is 2.0 something p.m. It's Friday. It's a full moon, the worm moon. It is during the decline of the Anthropocene and amidst ongoing historic and racial economic injustice, this context needs to continue to hold primacy for us even as we delve into that which is possible and that which gives us hope and that which we are embarking on together. And as we watch and feel from afar, war is ravaging in many places in the Ukraine where my great grandparents escaped from about 100 years ago. Again, grounding us in this place of inter-generationality. My great grandmother, Becky Hunt, who 14, found a way to hide and escape and make a long journey. Again, this is more than acknowledging but to know and to feel this cordedness of time. This is a slipstream of time that we're on and inviting this into this conversation that there is a past, there is a present, and there is a future. This notion of the long match. The long match refers to ways of carrying fire over long distances practiced by many indigenous people in many different ways. Embers carried in loam, in moss, in bark, other materials. Having live embers obviously meaningful to be able to start a fire after a long migration but most important is the cultural and spiritual continuity that comes with those embers. The fire that we bring with us, the stories that we told by those fires, the people we sat with, the knowledge that we gained from lived experiences, the healing that happened and the laughter and the animated spirit of something inside a mystery that we kept and we got by those fires we take with us through long dark journeys. So this question of the long match is an animating metaphor to think, yes, this is a series about art and culture and commoning, but it's more than that. It is to say, what are the embers that we carry with us? This is an invitation to widen the circle beyond that I stand in the circle of art and culture and commoning. And it's to say, who knows what change will live to see? So we're holding these embers and we're traveling with them and we're sharing them with each other. This conversation which has, you will see in the camera pans, an incredible array of visionaries, doers, dreamers, thinkers from many different disciplines. It's in the spirit of acknowledgement, I promise I'll be done very soon, but I need to acknowledge my teachers who are also in the room with Stacy Klein and Carlos Uriona whose teachings and hard fought successes and lived experiences are gifts that I bring into this room and part of the reason why this is happening. Again, thinking about this continuum that we're on. This impulse for this conversation with this group of people from theater and not theater, from solidarity economy and research and activism to the commoning to Indigenous cultural center beyond and all of you is inspired by this question of the role of the artist in forging this future. Often unseen, often unrewarded and unacknowledged. Six years ago I was lucky to meet David Bolier whose life has been dedicated to this movement of commoning thanks to Vijay Mathew of HowlRound. And this conversation that we had began to inform us that double edge is a part of this. We are commoning, we didn't realize this. We started to think about that this is an economic framework but as time goes on of course this is not purely economic and it's not just political, it's cultural. Culture is upstream and even within culture are ways of knowing. So today is an invitation to think about the poetics and the practicalities and the ways of knowing that inform our work. There's not enough time for to go as deep and far as we'd like to today with all these people. I want to mention our dear friend and fellow panelists today, Jonathan McCrory of National Black Theater is on his way. He's running late and you'll see him arrive shortly. But I just want to thank everyone for being here in the spirit of coming together and these embers of the long match. I want to invite you all now into the conversation. I'd love for you to briefly introduce yourselves. Your work, perhaps something you bring with you from past generations, is what you're carrying with you. Yeah, I'll stop there. I can assign someone but is anyone feeling moved to speak? Larry? I think I'll go make sense. My name is Larry Spada-Crowman. I'm a citizen of the Nipmuk tribe of Massachusetts. I am speaking to you from my traditional homeland, the same land that my ancestors have been on since the beginning of all things. Thank you, Matthew, and everybody who had a part in setting this up. It's always an honor to be able to speak on my homelands and share because I think that's the time my words are truly the vessel of what this land is speaking and sharing. And so with that, the most important thing I can open up and share is before I get into some of the work I've done is the words that were the first words spoken on this land, the first language by the two legates that were heard, which we call the ecology of the land. And as we say in our language, wu nashana tumu menatu, tabatni. Watu chikinnisin, okumis. Tabatni wu chi sapausu. Wusuketie huuna. Notas ninawan manantionk. Kinnuta ayu pantaminuk. Animeyo ninawan mekwantam kichia. Ka mata awananta. Ka nagutie kokutam ninawan. Menatu. Wusuketie huuna. Wamanetetiu. Ka nosokomusu amoke, ninawuken kantuchokesice. Niayo. I greet you in those words and I mentioned our grandfathers and grandmothers and all our relations that come and share in a very good way, in a reciprocal way, that we would, and it sounds funny in English, share our breath. But we know our breath is what we breathe and if we can't breathe, we don't have a life, we have our spirit, so it means our spirit. And this is why our words are very important, the things that we say, because our words are our breath and our breath is our life force. And so we ask that we share that life force in a good and positive way. And so in English, again, I'm Larry Spotter-Crowman, citizen of the Nipmunk tribe. I'm a writer, poet, founder and co-director of the Oki Tale Cultural Center. I've been doing this work for three decades now and had the wonderful opportunity to travel around the world and share my culture and traditions with the multitude of people and experiences. I'm also currently the artisan residence at Bunker Hill Community College and I'm presently working on a children's book and briefly set way into Indigenous people and writing. What my latest book, Drumming and Dreaming, can be, it's appropriate for all ages, however it's not necessarily a children's book. I got the opportunity to work on this wonderful project with the University of Iowa and the Indigenous group out there to create this children's book series. I'm really excited about that. And as I dove into this, I'm really happy I'm doing this because as we looked into the research as of 2015, there was about 0.8% on the market of Indigenous children's books. About 2% Latinx. And African-American probably about 5%. And then 12% animals and trucks come in. And then the 70% or so percent is all white. So I was really thrilled to do this and kind of shift that when we're speaking in terms of commoning and reciprocity. And I'm sure I'm going to have a lot more to say but I just wanted to add real quick that in our language there's no word for art. There's no word for conservation and there's no word for commoning because these are all natural things that were done since the beginning of time for our people to share. There was no what I'm going to do, it's what are we going to do. And the sense that our society has inculcated this idea of me instead of we. And we're all out there trying to find our destiny and not about what we can do for our community and our people. And so it is important that we go back to this. And lastly I want to say, I really stuck out something you said, Matthew, about what changes we would live to see in our lifetime. And right now I'm living that. I grew up in the 80s, there was still segregation. We were still abused by our teachers as Indigenous people. I come from three generations of boarding school survivors. And right now I'm seeing changes where we're running the first operated and owned Indigenous cultural center ever. I'm seeing reciprocity with allies. I'm seeing land back. Our tribe in Massachusetts alone had 2,000 square miles by the late 1900s we're down to five acres. Today we're up to a couple hundred acres and growing. And so these are fundamental changes that I thought I would never see in my lifetime. So it's really thrilling to live to see that and be a part of this and see the young folks and have this center to inspire and uplift them. And as a writer, and because I was an artist I had the platform to push my books like, hey you can sing and dance, maybe you can write. I forgot my books, but we know that Indigenous writing as I mentioned with children's books are always a niche genre. And so to have this center, to have this opportunity to lift up Indigenous artists from all over the world and given that platform that they so rightly deserve and have been missing for so long is very important to what I get to do and it's really fun. So thank you. Pardon. This term commenting obviously will be coming and going. I feel like I'd like to ask David Bollier if you wouldn't mind going next and introducing yourself and your work so we can connect to that. Well, I'm David Bollier and I've been... I fell into the commons after a long stint in Washington in the policy and activist world there and became a refugee from it because I knew it just didn't have the promise that we needed. And I want to thank Double Edge Theatre for hosting this conversation because I think it's so important to have this cross-sectoral conversation to find out we're all refugees from capitalist modernity or at least we aspire to. And for me, the commons has been a vessel or vehicle for trying to make another world. And I realized that the past that I'm bringing with me is both a legacy and scaffolding for what I'm doing now and it's also some heavy baggage that I need to drop. And I think that's a lot of us have that challenge of taking the embers from the past and making some new fires. So I really like the framing of this conversation. And for me, the commons opens up doors because it talks about reciprocity and relationality as opposed to individual market transactions which is the definition of our culture more or less. So to the extent that we can develop these new frames for developing different types of relationships we start to grow a different kind of culture. And one lesson I learned from my days in Washington was that discourse trumps everything, even policy and law. And so in some ways the challenge on us is to develop a different discourse and I think the commons helps us understand it's not just the commons, the noun which is co-optable and corruptible it's commanding the practice which you either do it or you don't. And so to the extent that we can open up some new types of commanding here I will find that really helpful personally and I think the embers of the old fire will illuminate some new pathways forward in new fires that we might start. So I just will leave it at that because I think we'll have some more time for conversation later on. Can I just ask one quick follow-up to you which is can you say something about you've been interacting with Double Edge and other arts organizations. Can you say something about how you see this relationship between arts and culture and... Well I think it's precisely that arts and culture are not cognitive, rational, logical, dominant narrative. They're about getting to some deeper levels from the collective unconscious to the stirrings and yearnings that we don't even know how to name and can't be poured into words. So to the extent that artists can express this it makes it real, it makes it something we can talk about and relate to. And so I think that that's partly... arts and culture is maybe an essential path for our escape to a new place. So I see that in so many different artists which is why... I'm a writer, I live by words but I also am keenly aware of their limits. And so I think that's why I put a lot of stake in art and culture. Thank you. Stacey and Carlos, how do you feel about going next? Okay. It's up to you. I get it. I'm Stacey Klein. I'm the founder of Double Edge Theatre and that was in 1982. So we are about to celebrate our 40th anniversary season. I think there's a lot of seasons and traditions that have framed Double Edge. Hi Jonathan. Jonathan Keynes. One moment please. Hi. I probably made it. It's a long trip from here up here. Thank you for doing that. I'm going to keep going. I was in the middle of my introduction of myself. So you're sharing with me already. I think that Double Edge includes many traditions and backgrounds but I just talk somewhat about the ones that have shaped me. My teacher, Renna Moretzka, I want to say her name. She is 88 years old. She is nearing the end of this period of reality. And she has taught me for over 45 years. One of the things that I brought into the founding of Double Edge was her idea of ownership as something that is internal, spiritual and emotional and that has nothing to do with buying and selling things or even interpreting things but it has to do with our relationship with our partners. So that also relates to the Jewish tradition which I'm part of also from the Ukraine and Poland for a couple thousand years and that tradition is about dialogue and that tradition is also about self-leadership and sharing leadership with the community in different aspects of the community. So that really is a key in the formulation of Double Edge as a partnership organization and collaborative organization. Leading me to a project that we did with Double Edge right after the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990s in outside of Lvov in the Ukraine which was about the both the ruins of the Jewish people from the Holocaust and from the Soviet Union and also about the youth there and how they could identify themselves as a people. So I'm sad to see that that is today they continue that fight and I just want to acknowledge that they're with me in the room here today. And also finally I'd like to really moved by the partnerships that Double Edge has in the room here particularly Okiteo Cultural Center and also the Theater Offensive and also the National Black Theater who we're partnering with another partner the Jupiter Performance Studio. So I think today in the last several years Double Edge has had the opportunity to root ourselves in our artistic work but also the partnerships which we feel represent the world and represent how the world should be represented. Want to jump in? Sure with doubts like in the swimming pool I'm Carlos Suriona originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina I arrived to Double Edge Theater in 1996 you know over the time I became one of the co-artistic directors I grew up in the land of the Mapuche, no sorry the Pampas and the Mapuches are there but that's not the land and and there are Ankeles I started theater during so I was 20 years old when the military coup d'etat happened that took about 10 years of our lives 8 years so I started making theater in those conditions and that is something that I always carry with me that's sort of the the other thing that I learned is that for some reason fate or whatever it was somebody brought me into researching Gaucho Theater and Native Theater in the early days something that I didn't know but today I was talking to Olga about that and David which was an engine of the culture that now everybody talks about Buenos Aires and the engine came from the rural areas and from people that were not European I am a European descendant but I would say from marginalized groups in Europe that ended up migrating to South America I think we all confront somehow the same but we need to really be aware because it's very difficult for us to understand what Larry was saying earlier as we are victims of colonization we also have victimized others so that's something that I grew up with and is still the things that brought me to commas that to me I learned with 6 years ago when I started listening to David this way of framing because my previous history was more about communism not about commons and it was more about anarchism and other forms of political work that then imbued my work as an artist that the things that brought me to commoning was during those years of war the thing that I believe helped us the ones that we survived together was this kind of small group active defending ourselves so after that we became a cooperative and different stages so that's the cocktail I carry with me I like to drink it probably every day I'm glad you said a couple of things when I was acknowledging you both I was talking about successes but really what I was wanting to acknowledge was that you were both of you in the last 40 plus years of work have actually been fighting against tremendous odds so that's more important to me than whatever else that this is the result of and that was important for me to acknowledge and thank you for reframing I also want to say thank you for inviting in the Spanish anarchists who we've talked about and these sort of different modes of thinking and ways of knowing because there are so many conversations of foot right now I've sat in the art.coup learning sessions and delving into the solidarity economy and I think about the circle around the solidarity economy and I think about the Spanish anarchists and what's so misinterpreted about that and how incredibly practical and spiritual that movement was and I think about the ways of knowing an indigenous culture and so that's thank you for bringing that in because that's what we want to be having together without saying the name is who I am and what I do but the verb that I choose is most important so I would like to ask you Francisco do you mind going next and introducing yourself and your work and anything intergenerational you want to bring in of course first of all thank you to HowlRound and Double Edge for hosting this conversation thank you to all the panelists already learned a lot from you looking forward to learning more my name is Francisco Perez I am a Dominican New Yorker I grew up in a limited equity housing cooperative so that was my first lesson in the value of solidarity economy and commenting so we own our building which means we get to live in the Upper West Side of Manhattan you know in an apartment that we own and is permanently affordable although again not able to sell it at market rate so that showed me the tradeoff and give up the ability to earn a handsome profit in return for the right to shelter right I'm now a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and I'm the director of the Center for Popular Economics we do workshops and trainings with social economic and racial justice activists and have also started working with artists so we do workshops and trainings to help people understand the economy my partner Natalia Linares who is taking care of our two small children which allows me to participate here today is involved in art.coop which many of you should have learned about yesterday but if you haven't please check out the archive and listen to that conversation but you know she and I have been talking about how to have these conversations with artists right we both strongly believe and I'm sure everyone on this panel would agree that the creative economy is broken it is failing artists it is failing our culture so artists absolutely need a solidarity economy but also the solidarity economy needs artists as David was saying earlier you know we need to imagine a whole new way of being a new way of living and relating to one another and we cannot do that without the creative powers that artists are gifted with so you know we've tried to have do workshops and trainings with artists around the economy and one of the figures that I've been thinking about a lot recently and you know I look forward to talking to the people on the panel here with today is you know we ask about intergenerational knowledge and struggle is the great Peruvian José Carlos Mariattegui who combined arts, culture, activism and indigenismo, indigeneity so he was the founder of the Peruvian Socialist Party founder of the Socialist Workers Federation but also the writer and a journalist who edited a cultural magazine that included you know poems and essays by world-renowned artists like Miguel and Amuno, Borges and then also you know labor notes from organizers around the Andes you know very famous for including indigenous art and indigenous people and for always for arguing being one of the foremost advocates of the idea that we could build a future society based on the communal traditions of the Quechua and Aymara in the Andean region right so I feel like if we're looking for revolutionary ancestors, people who've carried that long match you know we should, we can learn a lot by invoking his example and ideas so his name again please Thank you we'll talk more about Matthew asked me to interrupt earlier so it's not that we're talking about somebody in the past because Bolivia which is the first ever I think which is something that we haven't experienced until probably 30 years ago is ruled by this party that has its origins in Mariette's ideas but also the movement of the Aymara people in Peru is still today present we're gonna have a couple of visitors in the next month here in Ashfield from which is a theater group that is related to that so we're not talking about the past we're talking about the recent presence today of all this and that I think is important too because you know the tendency in this course is to talk about what happened and then we get stuck in what happened but no, it's happening now Thank you Good? Yeah, I mean unfortunately I think he's not very well known in North America but that tradition lives on in very powerful ways in Central still so they're still carrying that long match and we could learn a lot by picking up on many of the same concepts and ideas Wonderful, thank you Francisco Abigail would you go next? Sure Abigail Vega she, her, I am the current creative producer at Hal Brown Theater Commons so very honored to be here today which is based in Boston, Massachusetts I if you're watching this and you're like wow those people are amazing that's what I'm feeling right now like I have serious imposter syndrome so I came into commoning through the Latinx Theater Commons I started with the LTC when I was 24 before my brain was fully developed so I it kind of hardened and developed in the doing of the Commons and like you said Matthew, yeah dreamers and doers I don't know that I'm a dreamer but I do know that I'm a doer so that's where I come into this space I'm sitting next to Olga Sanchez Salt Bite and what so beautiful is that we just in the math we haven't seen each other since July 2019 Yeah, terrible This is too much It's a good moment Yeah, so that's where I'm coming to this space from and I think something I'm bringing is that when the LTC, I'll just speak to that the LTC is a piece of a movement that Olga has a lot more information on and will speak to that is many many many many decades old and when I started working with the LTC one of the most generous things that happened was that a lot of the we'll say elders of the movement shared their mistakes with me in an effort to not make them again which was so radical they were so willing to talk about successes and challenges and obstacles but they were also willing to share the things that the mistakes that we make by just being human and trying to be human with each other I always try to bring those with me and share those when I'm in spaces, especially with people who I'm offering I don't know, mentorship whatever because that is so radical to be so at the forefront with that and I think that's when I'm bringing into the space today I don't know that I have anything else Well, I'm going to ask you one quick question and thank you for that so far can you say something about HowlRound? Sure, yeah, how about that? Well, I think I'd like this order that you're proposing I think it's not right or wrong it's the order that feels meaningful because I'm glad we're starting with you and this connection to HowlRound as an organization as an institution, as an infrastructure as a set of tools and resources as a cultural movement I'm going to pass this into what you said before Sure, sure So HowlRound like I said, based in Boston HowlRound Theater Commons is a knowledge commons for the global theater community we have a number of tools including a TV platform which you're watching this on right now a journal, a podcast platform we do convenings we're the home of the National Playwright Residency Program which is funded by the Mellon Foundation but beyond that are a place for people who can bring their ideas and contribute them to this knowledge commons so there's no paywall for HowlRound everything is accessible for free we pay people to write and be on HowlRound in various capacities and one of the core values of HowlRound is generosity and abundance this idea that maybe we don't have to all live in a silo maybe it's not about competition always maybe there's a version of things where everybody can get ahead and there's been a lot of when we speak about the American theater for a moment we are a global platform we have readership and viewership and participation from all over the world but if we speak just for the what's known as the United States right now there's been a lot of changes in our field in the last decade or decade and a half but we can be traced back to this kind of awakening that we're going through maybe reawakening our elders might say yeah okay we've seen this before but this idea that we're not going to put up with that I don't know what it is what we're not going to put up with stuff anymore we're going to ask for transparency no no no we're going to demand transparency we're going to expect it we're going to expect people be treated like humans that they be paid equitably that things have to shift and so I like to think that HowlRound is part of that conversation is it a part of that opening that people have a place to go to say to platform radical ideas that's great that's great I'm going to keep moving down the line Olga especially because you're just referenced and would you mind going next? I do not mind I'm wondering if Ronda if you would like to go as one of our hosts okay I'll go hi everybody Olga Sanchez, Salt White she hears and I'm currently a guest on Endakina which is the homelands of the western Abenaki and the Abenaki and the Wabanaki larger scope of land also known now as Vermont I'm in Middlebury Vermont as an assistant professor of theater at Middlebury College which is very cool and very new I'm a theater maker and I engage in theater as a forum by which we share and our humanity and our aspirations our hearts I'm so moved by what you just said Abigail and our our flaws our frailties and our potentially best selves and my focus has been on Latinx theater for a couple of decades now and I served as artistic director for Milagro which is a Latinx identified theater focused theater and cultural center in Portland, Oregon and from there I was invited to participate on the steering committee one of the first steering committee of the Latinx theater commons which is brought me here and in that very generous space which amplified a personal goal to connect beyond the silos that had been happening for Latinx theater makers around the country to rebuild some relationships that had kind of been pulled apart because of forces let's say. There had been programs that had been able to bring us together and they were no longer and they were disbanded because it felt like those projects were deemed unnecessary and there was a lack of community that needed to be healed and so part of that was the impetus for the Latinx theater commons which emerged out of an act of generosity which was Karen Zacarias who was a play right at the arena theater in the American Voices project which was had been this is where the howl round connection happens just a little bit of this had been facilitated, organized by the J by J. Migueloune who's been mentioned by David Daurin and P. Carl the play right who was offered some funding to do whatever she wanted with the money in this residency to develop her work decided that what she wanted to do was to bring some people together to have a conversation about the state of Latinx theater in the country and where were we and what was happening because we missed each other and we were also feeling the very presently the ramifications of misrepresentation and of lack of our own presence in the field and I know many people will share that as an impetus for coming together and trying to reframe how we are perceived and how we are and how we presence ourselves in the field and so she used her funding her discretionary funds to bring together seven people who had a conversation around where are we taking the pulse who decided that seven people or eight people were not enough people to even begin to have a conversation about the community and so a larger thing happened and about 80 so people were brought together and then more people and more people and it is a movement the LTC is a movement the Latinx theater commons is a movement within that we have had multiple we have moments of echoes of that generosity we have operated within what we hope is a commons framework thanks to the support the infrastructural support from howl round we have gone through many iterations we have gone through what is called passing the baton meaning that when we can no longer do the work ourselves as an individual we pass the baton to the next person or to somebody who might pick up that work and continue it forward knowing that that work has been identified by the group as a whole to as a thing that we have decided together that we would like to see done reflecting upon our own work and our own who is in the room also reflecting on our own biases that we have had to confront and learn about our own anti-antigenity anti-blackness within Latinidad and how that manifests in our work and who is in the room and all of those concerns are back to your original question which was what do I bring into this room and those are the concerns and the things and the the thoughts that I carry with me into this amazing table of people with whom I am learning so much from already and can't wait to hear you speak can't wait to hear you speak and so thank you very much and howl round and double edge for this invitation Thanks Olga Jonathan would you mind going next please? Yeah I'm happy to go next so hi everyone my name is Jonathan McCory I've been piece-milling what am I supposed to be answering and I think it's what do I bring into the room how am I showing up who comes with me I bring into the room a lot of grace I got here today my driver's license was expired on my birthday I had to get a new driver's license this morning my car had a flat tire 20 minutes to getting here so I had to pick me up so therefore there's grace I bring into the room radical grace transparency and compassion I bring into the space a known sense of what spirit can do if you lean into it with compassion and with that grace and with that understanding I bring into the room the notion of my ancestors I'm powered by my ancestors so I bring into the room that notion of the 3000 the notion that I'm not a singular the notion that I'm a tuning fork listening to their unsung unknown uncompleted sentences I'm the lucky vessel that gets to articulate elements of it be a fraction of their light in some form or fashion I bring into the room also being a creative doula first but then also the executive artistic director of the National Black Theatre I bring into the room the legacy and the beauty of Dr. Barbara Antier the founder of National Black Theatre I bring into the room my teachers my mentors mainly the people that pop into my head right in this moment Talvin Wilkes who I call Yoda he calls me Luke and we are we do the Star Wars thing and he's like young Skywalker what are you going to do how are we going to do this I'm like Yoda I'm trying to get there so I bring into the room an amalgam of all of those points of interest and I also bring a listening to the present moment and I and also I bring into the room that I'm on the advisory the advisory committee for HowlRound I bring into the room that I have been doing this thing for a while a minute I bring into the room that I have a fierce commitment to utilizing black liberation which is the theory of change for National Black Theatre but black liberation plus our place making for the service of human transformation I bring all of that into the room and I bring a nuance notion of what blackness looks like that is not predicated or actually bound by the limited scope of its singular definition that we might all hold but actually is brought into actual beauty by its friction by the notion that a sci-fi play is also as good as a play that's done at EBBO which is also done as great as a play but as long as it comes from the vessel of a black body it is a black play it doesn't matter and as long as that individual owns its position as being a part of the continuity of the African tradition we're good right and that challenges me that challenges me not to sit inside of the anti-blackness that I was conditioned to call normal and ask me to lean into the curiosity of my own friction because I want to create diamonds I bring into the room that I want to create diamond experiences diamond conversations and we all think about how diamonds are created they're created through pressure they're created through the breaking they're created through a durational process not a popcorn process so I'm actually also here what I bring into the room is that I'm here for a durational relationship that will allow for us to think about not just what do we gather in this moment but how is this a stepping stone on a larger trajectory I bring into the room that I've had a long love-dance relationship with Double Edge it's come in many it's part of that durational relationship I bring into the room a long standing relationship with Harold you know what I mean as my brother I bring all this into the room to create a space of buoyancy that I can allow for my intimate self to show up not my performative self to show up because to be honest I'm just all top of don't stuff I have nothing prepared I ain't got a sheet of paper I see everyone right I'm like I'm failing school like that's how I feel like and I'm just like okay I'm just gonna you gotta trust your ancestors you gotta trust your wisdom you gotta trust deep down inside what is birthed what is birthed is yours will be yours and what words need to come out will come out I'm gonna be quiet Carlos doesn't have any paper oh yes so we're ready for school yes I want to say thank you before I pass it I just want to say you referenced Yoda and Luke and I came to Double Edge 22 years ago and I wrote a thank you card to Stacey saying that Double Edge is and it wasn't is my Dagobah system and what happens in the Dagobah system right yeah it's great what a great name the Dagobah system it's a system that is actually where you're close to the source yeah right yeah and as we in the time we have as we head towards applications and implications I just always want to keep close that there's this conversation that what does it mean to stay close to the source as resource because this question of artistic becoming relates to as you said human becoming and I think there's something about these places like the Dagobah system is in the swamp it's in nature it's it's primordial it is it's in the caves so thank you for bringing that we started these introductions with Okiteo and I would like to end with Okiteo with Rhonda Harold Harold thank you so no no you're at the table Harold I'll keep it really short take your time you're here please Harold Stewart my pronouns are they he the job that pays me is the executive director at the theater offensive it fulfills me in a lot of ways we are queer and trans people of color theater so 30 years old and just a few years old this new mission new identity as queer trans people of color theater but always LGBTQ and Dallas Texas is where I am I'm a proud southern I typically identify this is why this is not good for me right now because I have to say I was behaving so now I have to identify as a safe sex positive southern sissy just to kind of match y'all's energy so I bring all of that in the room really grateful to be here I'll be responding to the beautiful offerings or at least try so I'm like generalize generalize generalize that's what I'm over here working on thank you Rhonda for this invitation well should I give it to Rhonda it's great I asked Harold to come here as a responder to help make sense of all of this he's in residence at Double Edge and I see we walk our dogs together and I said the more the merrier but thank you of course you're at the table thank you Rhonda for bringing up the dogs I'm going to see I'm going to go to Rhonda Anderson the co-founder and co-director of Okateo Cultural Center with Larry and I'm going to also jump into the first questions that you have just so that we can keep things rolling as the last person so I feel like the work that we're doing through Okateo really is centering our indigeneity reclaiming that in a space where it has been vacant for hundreds of years I grew up next door in Plainfield the next town over I went to school in this town elementary school and I was the only native person here and I felt why I was the only person and I also felt like this land needed to be loved and who better to love it than the original inhabitants why aren't they here and so this is a lifelong dream for me and coming into a relationship with Double Edge Theater with historic sort of land back agreement that we have Double Edge has very generously given us space asking what do you need and I said we need a space that's not institutional that's not our own space where we can just be indigenous the indigenous people that we are from all different cultures and they graciously gave us that space and also gave us their expertise and their time for that I'm immensely grateful because now here we are we're operating on several different groundbreaking funds grants that allow us to do what we need to do to get our work done for our community first and foremost so I'm pretty new to the terms commoning and a solidarity economy and wrapping my head around it you know I talked to Carlos we we did a thing with Carolyn Woodard and still having this block what does this mean and I realized something like this well this is indigeneity this is Carlos has been saying we're doing this work and I'm thinking but it's not what is commoning no this is indigeneity these are our principles our tribal values at its very core I have depending on how old the elder is there's up to 17 sharing, respect for others cooperation, hard work respect for nature, spirituality hunter success, domestic skills humility, responsibility to your tribe as Larry said it's what we can do for others it's the we not the I that is the foundation of our values and so we're doing this work not really understanding that you know this is commoning or this is you know solidarity economy this is our values for tens of thousands of years and so what I want to try to bring to the table is to understand the decolonization process that needs to happen within this solidarity economy within commoning is to understand how you have come to need to do this work how this work has been done for tens of years on this continent and why is it important to all of us to be liberated from this oppression and marginalization how that is important for all of us to continue forward in that way that's not capitalist that is looking out for each other and what can we learn from each other without taking but sharing I think that's it thank you for bringing us into the conversation so beautifully and for identifying why we're together and why the names are necessary and problematic we are all bio-kumalafi Nigerian poet and philosopher talks about us all being sort of refugees on the highway of white modernity and that possibility is you acknowledge Larry is happening, is living and it's also bubbling up out of fissures and cracks, small places like here I would like to ask pointedly how how you all and I'll ask you a little bit more concise than the introductions for a sake of time anyone want to jump in about how you understand commoning and the solidarity economy and all of the other wonderful sort of encampments and philosophies and approaches within your practice and your lived experience I just resonated with what you were saying Ronda about the way in which Double Edge provided space and how imposing because that's often the negotiation is the imposition of oh yes but you must then provide a report or how many people showed up or whatever it is that is demanded and I want to acknowledge the way that HowlRound did the similar thing for the Latinx theater comments for the LTC in that when the first eight people got together in the same room with the HowlRound folk there was a sense of okay we're going to get sandwiches I'm not exactly sure what happened but there was a way in which they were holding making the space available without imposing any kind of you should do this and you should do that and you should do that and continued that relationship and that has continued for a long, long, long time for the 12 years but very, very present at the beginning particularly before we had a producer who was going to be the person who was kind of the point person and that started off with Jamie Coulon who's now the executive director at HowlRound in that she was a model of an allyship that didn't impose well you have to do this and you have to respond to us and this is what we think you need which is a function of in essence and I hate to use the word allow but allowed us to self-determine which I know is part of this work and modeling that allowing us to be in conversation with each other freely and coming to it then also as volunteers completely as volunteers for again resonating with what you were saying for the benefit of our community and how it engages to your point Jonathan how it engages with the larger community because what we do is not just for ourselves it has resonances it has other ramifications that hopefully are transformative and healing and better for how we engage as human beings that's great and I feel like it touches on this question especially those coming from institutional settings about because these are post or non institutional behaviors and practices and I think that can be really hard for people to wrap their minds around so I appreciate you bringing this in Larry thank you yeah I got quite a bit on that so I get really so yeah what that means to me is that it's not even an application it's a lived experience a way of life me and my siblings are first generation city prior to my generation my mom and other family lived in tribal communities reservations where all this was practiced daily and there was nobody else around but them family relatives, cousins the sharing all the things that Rhonda mentioned were happening without a forethought and mostly because white people didn't want them around they weren't welcome anywhere else and so this practice was part and parcel of who they were and so it's and it's really as Rhonda said it's kind of funny to hear that like I did a talk recently at the Massachusetts conservation commission and I reminded that this is a new phenomenon late 1800s they were protecting land mostly for white people and so the idea of being protected because it's going to be harmful you shouldn't overuse land I mean this is something that we knew for thousands of years and they were in Europe and pretty much messing up everything and dying off in great numbers because of that and so they came here and kind of did the same thing so now they're catching up oh wait a minute we got to stop polluting and we're killing ourselves and they're led in the pain and all these toxins and so and as Rhonda said it's really important to have that conversation how we got here you know everybody's doing land acknowledges they're back not everybody's some and before folks get too excited about patting themselves on the back it's a reminder that you know we've been forgetting about you and as an artist for over three decades I think about I've seen and been on many arts and equity conferences and most of them forgot about native people and they're applauding themselves and calling themselves doing this great work but they're still forgetting about indigenous people and so there's a lot of work still to be done with that and that's why I'm so excited about this relationship with double edge and as an artist you know I've been so used to just going to these institutions performing and get my little check and walk away I can't uplift my relatives I can't uplift native people and so it's kind of just me right the one and we're about the we so now Okie Tail I'm bringing Indians from everywhere and it's scaring people we got more brown people at double edge in the entire town I'm loving it and so and I just want to mention Stacey here what she's personally done for me as a friend and as a colleague artist and she may become a playwright and so I've shared my story of my relatives who were taken from their homes by the authorities and put on these work farms when they were stealing our land and so these are lived memories within my generation and Stacey talked and she said why don't you write a play about it I said I write books I don't write plays but I thought about that and it's just been and it was a little difficult at first because there's a right of your one to show everything and then I realized I'm showing people with my body and with my actions bite the strawberry so yeah we'll tell you about that later so tune in next week so getting to write the play freedom and season which is about my great-great-grandfathers and their experience in the civil war sharing that story how while they're fighting for freedom they weren't citizens themselves they weren't free themselves technically and while they're doing that they're getting their children taken their land usurped and that's that was a story that's probably never going to be told anywhere else until other folks get to see it and get that inspiration I got to do that here because of Stacey's inspiration and guidance and helping me shape that and bring that story to life and allow other people to come into that world it was a painful process for me to do that because I'm a traditional storyteller not an actor so when I'm sharing stories I'm sharing that stories that have been passed on for a long time so this was me embodying one of my relatives and taking on that spirit and so it's just thank you for all that because what we're doing now and again nothing pleases me more as an artist than to see other brown faces come in here and getting their just do and getting their accolades and their support and the things that they need to happen and finally I'll say that folks who are out there listening you absolutely have the opportunity to get involved and I hope you do because and I'll throw some more numbers at you think about black and brown arts institutions we hear about them failing and that's because they don't get people aren't investing in them we live as Ron mentioned we essentially function off grants from the government or the state and when they dry up we close down because we don't have the support of the community white art institutions get about 75% of their funding from everyday people they're giving dollars and tens of thousands of dollars whatever and black and brown institutions get about 6% so we're not getting the support people aren't investing in this in the way they should they love to come and see us dance and sing but they need to show that physically in a way that keeps us able to be responsible to our artists which means pay them not having them come for free as I used to be asked to do when I first started many years ago and I did because I just wanted to show what I had to show and share and then we really need to get paid to stop collecting cans to get gas money to go and do these programs for these people who got millions of dollars sitting around and just kind of like oh well the Indians are going to come and they're going to entertain us and we'll be happy and feel good about ourselves and so that's where I'm kind of at with that is that let's take that conversation a little deeper and to reflect why we have to have it how we've been really neglectful from doing that so thank you in both of those incidents which is quite powerful it makes me think about how there has to be a reframe or a reteach of how capitalism has been bastardized to have a supremacist lens instead of having an indigenous lens that there has to be a reappropriation of language I think sometimes we give language we call capitalism the evil thing but capitalism is the sharing of goods for exchange it is actually an honest way of we live that way even if we think about it from a day-to-day practice an indigenous practice it's only supremacy that actually has created the conditions for us to now not be able to exchange the concepts together in an authentic way and so when I think about the story of the Latinx Commons I think of this moment we are reckoning with the notion of how to reclaim language reclaim the action with inside language and give it space to create a new universe a new way of operating which is new muscle it means that there's going to be damage along the way and damage is not like I'm working out right now I have a personal trainer I have to tear my muscles in order to actually build my muscles and reclaiming the kind of society that we want we're not willing to have tears and then you have to have a sav you have to drink a lot of water you have to put some sun in that you have to do your do but you also have to be willing to take the conversation to a place of vulnerability and through that intimacy you get to awaken a new space of being it makes me I'll stop with the metaphor because I was going to go with the catalepsy metaphor Yes, I'm going to go to David and then to Olga just because I know David so much of what your work is thinking about language and discourse I mean I think absolutely right but to reclaim it we need to name it and those of us living within the beast the refugees of white modernity need to name this to decolonize ourselves and I think that this is maybe an across the board political challenge and for which Rhonda is absolutely right that indigeneity is common that hasn't even had to name it because it was a lived experience and I think there is a really interesting conversation that should happen between that indigenous experience and what so many people trapped within capitalism or perhaps willingly participating in it need to learn need to hear and this goes beyond liberalism or progressivism in the belief that the market state is going to save us because it's not and I think people are starting to realize you've spent 30 years or more since we've known that climate change was a problem and what has the market state done so it's going to be this external process of learning the language of commenting the lived experience of commenting the social practices the ethic, the world view as a counterpoint to this progress narrative that we've been fed for centuries so that's where we need to go Thank you I'm so inspired by this so let me so I can gather these thoughts and some kind of coherent way but you were talking about the definition let's say of capitalism and then you were saying it has been somewhat usurped by supremacy 100% the notion that there is reciprocity in practice that is different that might be theoretically a model for capitalism you make bread I make shoes you make theater I make dance and we share what we bring to the table because we can't do it all alone so what happens though is when you have a framing where supremacy suddenly starts creeping in and David you bring this up the notion of enclosures where suddenly this parcel of land is mine as opposed to this area is ours we care for it and it cares for us and we have a relationship with it that is also reciprocal and we understand it to be family but rather when this is mine and I own it and I have dominion over it and I determine what goes on it and who goes on it and who does not go on it and how big it gets wait a minute that's mine too that idea of greed which then is antithetical to the thing you brought up earlier Abigail about the notion of abundance that there is enough for all of us if we kind of step back from the greed which again powers supremacy because if I have all this I certainly must be better that's all I'll say thank you Olga yeah so again thank you for all of these thoughts I mean a few things in response you know I do a lot of workshops on solidarity economy and people ask me what does this mean and we say it means to own and control our community to own and control our workplaces to own and control our land and our housing to own and control our finances and investments and then to own and control our governments right so small D democracy, direct democracy and usually I get a few responses you know so some people are like that's impossible that'll never happen and I'm like other people are like we already do that so I you know David Graber the late anarchist anthropologist of communism right all the different ways that we share right and you've seen we've gotten a big lesson in this the last two years during the pandemic of all kinds of mutual aid all kinds of ways of people looking out for each other you know we can think of millions of examples right so back when people would smoke if you ask someone for a cigarette they wouldn't charge you for it if I'm you know if I'm if Matthew and I are working on something and I say hand me a wrench Matthew's not going to be like that's $1.50 for a month daily basis and then the other response we often get is people are like my people have been doing this for centuries this is nothing new right and it's like absolutely right like in many ways what we're trying to do is remix Indigenous economies Indigenous ways of being for the 21st century right trying to hold on again to that long match right so you know part of the appeal of someone like Mariah Degui for me is there was a big debate you know he was writing in the 1920s in Latin America which was mostly rural large Indigenous communities and many you know people on the left argued we need to go through capitalist modernity to get to socialism right it's a necessary stage right we can't we have to travel down that road and the argument that he made was we don't have to imitate Europeans we have our own Indigenous comments right so we are he's writing from Peru he says we have the Aiju which is you know family clan or commune again it's hard to even translate some of these concepts because they don't have analogs in our own sort of English you know capitalist inflected language and they have the content of Aini right so which is translated as sort of reciprocity or mutual aid some people talk about it as sort of the exchange between humans non-human nature and like the larger cosmos right so just to give you a sense of like these are not new ideas right so many ways all we're trying to do is expand that everyday communism from you know kind of mutual aid among neighbors to something much larger which means reclaiming these Indigenous traditions right reclaiming a way of being that existed here in what we now call the Americas but in other parts of the world certainly for a very long time for much longer than capitalism has been around I just want to jump in because that's important thank you for that I was going to mention earlier after you spoke about speaking at the University of Cuenca in Ecuador I had a fascinating time and I can't recall his name right now but there's a tribal elder from the Amazon but he's also an academic and he knew I was coming and so he came from the Amazon just to see me and just an absolutely brilliant he didn't speak English he spoke Spanish in his tribal language so they were interpreting but I could just feel the it was just resonating off from that power and energy he's just an amazing human being and I got so much good medicine from him and sharing with him and he talked about some of the things that you're saying about that connection and he's just so wise and it was just a humbling experience that he would come to see me and he gifted me one of the conch shells so I have that at home now and I wanted to add that what you just said is part of our Algonquin ceremonies is one of them is very significant ceremony there are many times of the year we just give things out because it's a healing to give and and it's kind of funny because and you know this economy this capitalism is built on you know if I have a lot then I'm somebody right but indigenous cultures that if you have more than others it's a shameful thing you should be embarrassed it was an embarrassing thing to have more than others and so it wasn't even our way of life if you had so much everybody looking at you like silence like what's up with him why does he have all that what's he going to do with it you know yes it was a terrible thing and I had one more thing to say and so it was a true way of life for indigenous people to share that and I had one more thought and I'll probably come back to it later but it slipped my mind it's calling for me this you know sort of some of my famous book called The Gift by Lewis Hyde which what's that great subtitle The Erotic Economy of The Erotic Life of Property The Erotic Life of Property which you know speaking to your points especially Rhonda as you know it's like a white artist finding these ways of understanding the role of art the role of storytelling as dream as healing as community becoming and finding these white academic exciting and good translations of indigenous culture and practice as a way of understanding there's value there's reward and there's a different way of thinking about it and also to dream and to imagine has existed in that gift economy that the story needed to be needed to be acknowledged the role Stacey you spoke at the beginning about your work in the Ukraine in the early 90s and this project and you didn't mention it but the name of that project was Republic of Dreams and I wanted to know if you could just say something about because I as I understand it Republic of Dreams is not only that project but is a bigger idea that's informative for you in the conceptualizing or the finding and unfolding that which is double edge and that has to do also with the role of dreams and the imagination in this act of recreating and remembering our life ways yeah that project was called Republic of Dreams that's a title of a short story by Bruno Schultz who was a Polish Ukrainian writer and it was about basically creating well his vision was creating a republic in a sanatorium and which is like a metaphor for creating your own reality and your own system of operations wherever you could find that or live that you carry that republic with you and that the your your dreams your ideas and your communities are what creates that republic and I think that's been since the beginning of double edge and inspiration and I think this has nothing to do with Republic of Dreams but I do want to say something about what I think is commenting because recently we've come a long way with Okiteo and all of our partnerships in very unexpected ways like Okiteo is not a room it's not a building it's a whole hundreds of acres now shared with double edge it is a lot of residents who are living at double edge and there is an exchange and we have to deal with each other so I think that's something and now like Okiteo when we first started just had to deal with double edge and double edge just had to deal with Okiteo and now we have these other partnerships and they're also wandering around the land and so we're all dealing with each other but this Okiteo made a Mishun in October November cold it was cold that's a dugout of a canoe that's burnt and this was for nine days and nights 24 hours a day led by Andres Strong-Bearhart Gaines he is Okiteo and double edges artist in residence he made that by a stream that is next to our design house because he needed water there so we started expanding the reach of Okiteo in that way and then with that he took part of the design building and made a Wampum workshop so he is in there and all of the community comes there and does whatever they do in the Wampum workshop but yes and then Harold decided that he was going to make candles or something and he started using the design house too so Jeremy who is our design director went in yesterday he sort of doesn't know what's going on because she's been busy directing a performance and having a baby so and she's like hey what's going on in the design house because like the whole house is filled with all of these people that she's never really met before and communities and everybody's working fine of course there's going to be the normal fights about who gets to use the kitchen or whatever it is which I think is also important because sharing means you have to collaborate and you have to organize and you have to agree and disagree on things and all of that on the one hand it is not hard at all just encouraging anybody who has a space and has a creative practice or whatever practice to think about sharing because the rewards of that are immeasurable on the other hand also take the responsibility of that what sharing means which is not just giving up everything it really means a lot of work and that's the kind of work I feel like we should be doing so getting back to Republic of Dreams I feel like the design house is a real example of a Republic of Dreams that was created a total surprise nobody planned that but it can happen those shared experiences can happen with honesty and hard work I need to follow up on that because Stacey mentioned something very important the massoon which is and it goes to your opening in terms of the fire fire is a very sacred being to our people and the massoon that fire stayed lit that whole nine days and when somebody passes to the spirit world and around the clock people are there keeping it going and recently one of our elders passed and we had a fire and also incidentally one of our artists and residents she is from the Anishinaabe Ojibwe people now a little history on the Anishinaabe there in the Boreal Forest of Wisconsin, Michigan and Canada area they were here a thousand years ago it's documented a fire with them they're sacred fires they carried it all the way there and it never went out to this day and so to have her back here as an artist and resident it's just bringing her home to where her ancestors had been for thousands of years they left because they knew of the prophecy there was people coming to do us harm but we stayed because we're crazy and we were defending it so where their relatives that stayed behind as they refer in the language so that fire does have a very important meaning in so many ways how it just goes full circle in what we're talking about here today there's a continuum between the dreaming the sense of agency to create autonomously and then the technicalities and practicalities of encounter and sharing that is up high to the earth you had responding to Stacy and also what Larry was just talking about and the invitation to talk about dreams first and this is kind of taking a second point earlier but the notion that the commons part of the commons agreement among those who decide to be commoners means that we have identified I'm going to call it a resource for lack of a better term a care wealth a care wealth thank you a care wealth that we've decided we're going to mutually care for and we are responsible for it so when you talked about the kitchen just that idea that we also have to negotiate among ourselves as people who care about this kitchen and care to use this kitchen how we're going to also care for the kitchen and then the kitchen will care for us but so the earlier thought about the dreams and the notion that your image that you presented Stacy earlier was the idea there's all these people walking around this land and all these different communities and here comes somebody who's been here before and doesn't know who these people are but there's such a sense of trust and I had to flash back to the idea of the original folk on this land and new people coming onto this land and the engagement that happens there and how different this is model that you have created here with the will and with the willingness to share but also trusting that the people who you're sharing with are not going to abuse the trust which I think is the historic tradition that we have this abuse of trust of people who came the people who were here said oh here you are I see you're starving whatever the different encounters were because there were different encounters that's interesting but but there was ultimately an abuse of trust that led to where I think we are now in terms of now we have to step back and reframe how can we go forward which I think is part of the decolonization acknowledging that harmful interaction that abuse and and how can we move forward and dismantle the systems that have been created through that power grab and greed yeah one beautiful piece that I didn't actually get to speak to it's kind of important is Stacy said to me you're really good at getting people together you should have community forum educating the community about X, Y and Z indigenous issues and I didn't think I had it in me but she has this way of pushing and so we started the living presence of our history series which is an educational series and how around records and saves these incredible essential conversations that we have that is really my dream of lifting indigenous issues and bringing them to the forefront educating in a larger community sense so that we are no longer invisible and for me that part of our relationship is rebuilding the trust making sure that there's a safe space making sure that we're heard we can say whatever we want to or need to we're going to be punished or silenced or disregarded and that is part of that rebuilding process and acknowledging decolonization and how important it is in the work that we're doing yeah thank you Abigail and Francisco everything that's supposed to happen is supposed to happen because the whole time you were speaking you were speaking all I could think about was the word trust just kept coming back and Olga said trust trust as a currency and I think about like sometimes maybe that it gets complicated, not bad, complicated when we say the way I'm going to show good faith or the way I'm going to ask for trust is to pay you money but because that's the system we're in maybe at the beginning for some relationships but that over time you can build that and I think about I'm not a good person to answer this question because I'm not really a dreamer but I am a doer and when people are like well how do you make a commons happen we might already be doing it but we have to build the trust and then I like what you said Jonathan earlier about like sometimes it's going to break sometimes the muscles will break, sometimes the work is just constantly breaking the trust and rebuilding the trust and then going back to the old Hertz and coming back and saying listen that wasn't me but that was them and so I need to work that through and something with the LTC that we always we still struggle with it is this idea of it's not necessarily it's not I, it's we it's that it's not them, it's us and this idea that maybe if we're in community together for a moment we have to extend the trust to extend the trust to say it's us so that we can fix the thing together and if it doesn't work then we have to have another conversation but even in what you were saying about the cigarette, like it doesn't actually take a lot of trust to extend a free cigarette but that's okay it's just a tiny bit of trust like you asked for the wrench but you trust he'll have it so how do we that might actually be the work of bringing the commons into more spaces is like doing whatever we can using whatever currency we can to to build more trust yeah so you know again this a lot that comes up I mean the question of dreams I am a dreamer and I think part of why I've enjoyed working with artists is because you have to be able to imagine something else and so many of us, so many of the ways these systems of oppression continues because we assume that this is all there ever was this is all there ever will be this is just the way things are and it's like no things are constantly changing and moving if we can only imagine something else right and I feel like much of what we discussed today like Jonathan is wearing a shirt this is what powered by my ancestors and then Carlos is wearing revolution of the heart and I feel like you know those two together can summarize the entire two hour conversation which is we need a revolution of the heart right that's powered by our ancestors and you know I keep coming back to Amadeya thinking for that reason accused of being kind of a romantic you know he's working with all these artists and he very much believed in the idea of which he gets from the philosopher George Sorrell of the revolutionary myth these are every political project is a utopian project so Sorrell also talked about the myth of progress which is what liberals try to sell us right things are always getting better with time and you know conservative sellers the myth of yesteryear things were always better in the past these are all myths right and as someone you know I think Davis said it earlier right like we you know as intellectual struggles I think that you know I should be able to make a logical case for why you know solidarity economy would be better than what we have now and it's like really you have to hit people in the heart right like you need a revolution of the heart people need to think that things can be different that we can be different that we can relate to each other otherwise and you know it's it's a myth and hopefully a beautiful one that we can all fight for right it's it requires imagination creativity dreaming on a collective scale so thank you for wearing the shirt Jonathan I was going to uplift and I probably would love for you to talk about a little bit if you are so inspired the etymology of bravery versus courage or I can speak to what I know about it okay great so you know when the experts in the room you asked that yes so what I wanted to uplift was a couple of things and everything that we were talking about and we're talking about the heart we're talking about trust we're talking about all these different ways of being is that what does it mean to center the feminine way of living versus the masculine way of living like not saying like allowing for the feminine energy the soft energy the courageous energy which is the heart energy so the brave energy which is the masculine muscle energy the masculine masculine masculine masculine energy of old right and I think when you said it feels like we're doing our elders might say we're doing it it's nothing new but it's like the same old it's the same thing if that is the case then we're destined to replicate if innovation is not a part of it which I think in many of our generations actually I have a conversation and I think all of you are a part of that generation I have a conversation with the feminine side of their being not the masculine side of their being like I say my spirit is a she he him my spirit is a she I acknowledge that when people are listening to me they're listening to a feminine energy a vibration that's coming through a masculine body and that I have the I have the opportunity to be a vessel of nuance because of that right and we all can understand the very space of how our heart is how our heart can be led from not a place of closure but a space of openness then we can then we can start to have this this kind of radical new world show up this kind of radical new space of the commons this kind of trust that it really allows for like just I mean you know just thinking about birthing itself right the trust that it takes for a woman to trust that their body is going to allow for this vessel to come out and that through that courage wisdom shows up through that courage ancestors show up through that courage life begins to cry for the first time and that very essence is a new space of the universe that it wakes up to right and so like when I think when we start thinking about and I was going to say also when we also think about this kind of currency and also this commons I think about the premise of National Black Theatre and Dr. Barbara Antier and how she bought a city block for a community of African descent to have a home that was not tethered to slavery that was tethered to its understanding that they were crowned royalty and that their royalty and their abundance was found on a continent and what she named as for her was Yoruba was Nigeria that's where she said was her space of being her space of abundance right but she was bringing that technology to the corner of 125th Street and 5th Avenue for intentionality right 120th Street because if you go anywhere around the world it's black you think of black people black culture you think of 5th Avenue you think of opulence you think of New York you think of sex you think of the intersection of the two so that there only could be a space for opulence and blackness to show up and have a conversation with each other and that intentionality is a shifting of possibility is a shifting of how we see each other and is a shifting of what becomes the beacon who we can become and how we also have to share it what's so powerful about Dr. Tier laid inside that soil was not just that was a space for National Black Theatre to do National Black Theatre to work but we have incubated over 250 nonprofit organizations and black business owners right we have given the opportunity for a catalytic launching pad like I say an ignition for us to begin to think of new worlds that lean into abundance and that say that the the telling that I have done allows for you now to now go another step further and so I say all of that to say that if we allow for the film to guide the precipice of our language, our actions and our doing and we allow for us to abolish the notion that our masculine energy, our masculine self is the dominant thing that will create progress we might create conditions and policies and different ways of being to then begin to address the very systemic thing that is our own oppression we are working from a space of crafting a world for our own oppression because we are we are sucked on the teat of that conditioning like how our parents taught us to love each other right, this is a beautiful thing and I'll shut up after this, this is a beautiful thing that Hoffman, this is a Hoffman institute, I don't know if people know about it but it's a week long professional development process where they seclude you on in a mountain with 40 individuals no cell phone, no no medication, no anything you're just with 40 individuals, you have to eat the food that they make and you have the therapist there and stuff like that the purpose and premise of it is that Hoffman believed that love is the highest vibration that this world has ever known yet none of us know that vibration because we're taught it from our parents and their parents are taught by their parents so we don't have our own relationship with love because of that it's disrupted from birth because of that conditioning so what would it mean to take all that distraction away and start to have a relationship with that intimate vibration called love and if you can unlock that, unleash that relationship with it, what worlds would then start to be created and so I say that as we talk about the heart and we talk about being part of our ancestors this notion of how do we also retool ourselves to understand that some of our actions need to be reframed as conditional trauma bonds to historical narrative that's deep that's deep inside of our blood and that needs to be rectified baptized and reclaimed as that so that we can have a different relationship what happens when we don't talk about race anymore as a construct what happens if I don't name myself as black what happens when I start talking about my culture instead of my race what happens inside the room and who do we become then who am I if I'm not a black man but I'm a man connected to an indigestion what world becomes what's the becoming and that becoming becomes the commons just jump in real quick a thing that that echoes for me the last statement but the earlier ones is the notion that even the idea of blackness as an identity or indianness as an identity is a framing that was meant to otherwise not only otherwise but homogenize or erase the complexity of your identities your heritages that have so much richness but someone came in and said those are black people and those are indian people and then I can just put those people in a box and otherize them then and also because they are they are generic I don't have to deal with them as individuals I have just one more little thought which is absolutely the ancestors that what you're talking about in terms of generating the love and generating the integrity of how we walk in the world is not only listening is not only harkening and honoring the work and the love and the struggle of the people who came before us which is why we're sitting in this room thank you my grandmother but those who are coming ahead of us whether we create them or they are just the next generations who will learn or will inherit what we give today how we act today absolutely and Jonathan your words are intoxicating like my mind is just intoxicating we're here to take your notes I want to throw one word back at you that hopefully will be like as indigenous communities one of the things particularly Larry's community that they're doing is re-matriation re-matriating and so it is a process it is happening it is ongoing and it is recognized that that needs to happen I'm thinking about time and I'm thinking about that this table holding this space with me is happening trying to hold this trying so it's like no more thoughts I'm stopping to feel you next to me so I want to give you a moment yeah I would say I want to start with gratitude I think for all that has been shared and also acknowledge breath again and invite us to breathe again in the spirit that you offered it that and this is a practice talked to me by Jonathan and I of Eternal Twins I'm on the other side I'm not that prolific so if you want to know I'm in a real regular conversation come see the darker brother but he keeps us grounded but in his practice of taking unified breaths to acknowledge so I do think your generosity, your wisdom your spirit, your vulnerability is worthy of a breath so let's breathe together so as I've acknowledged multiple times but not in this way I really didn't know what I was getting into just walking the dogs and saying yes I'm glad I did and I want to respond to the beautiful opportunity and responsibility I also want to acknowledge to be highly generalized and talked about from my vantage point so again it's important to know that I believe that I'm a safe sex positive Southern Sissy and even honoring that I think queering is common that's what I'm learning especially in a world like this where the normative approach does not serve us I actually serves no one so in all that we do to push against the normal that does not serve us and the spirit of the world that we desperately need for ourselves and for those future generations I offer that it is important for me to come at this as a safe sex positive Southern Sissy in the ram of theater where August Wilson, one of our great heroes said that you know the South for black people feels like the cultural ancestral lands that we belong to so when he addressed us or when he yet in the 90s I also think again in trying to respond to how do you respond to the bounty and the richness that's been here often times brother a black feminist perspective never fails because feminists by theory and practice is really connected it considers as many people as it can as many generations as it can so I'll approach this from a black feminist perspective by evoking first my mother Betty Jean Stewart she would say to me that Harold you got a lot of book sense but you ain't got no common sense which if you know my mother that makes sense for her approach to the conversation for her child but also she was a mother of eight including this queer radical child that was questioning had all of these ideas that were informed by something he was reading coming a queer scholar she was a grandmother of 15 and by the time she died it became an ancestor because Betty Jean does not die in 2014 she was the great grandmother of five so for her she ran her house on the common good not exceptionalism my paternal grandmother lived at the top of our block she reigned over the whole family with a spirit of abundance and a healthy reserve of faith so as important as I think about how I'm arriving to this conversation, how I'm responding those two now ancestors but black femme spirits are important to acknowledge and it is how I understand or I think I understand the comments aside from that we've already acknowledged that I am at the helm of a arts and cultural institution and as you all have really acknowledged in a white and western supremacist society a country actually but in a society where white folks are not the majority and western thought is not dominant your eccentric thought is not dominant in fact if we think about whiteness or a strip away whiteness what we understand in western thought outside of capitalism and its capitalist intentions and its spirit of domination we tend to butt up against this thing called commenting that we are talking about we butt up against it the common will of the people what do we need, what do we want to do and how we can do it I think that is the example definitely that I've experienced a double edge being a witness and I also think it's a testimony of your work in this room so I'm glad to be in this room with people who are doing that kind of work and really grateful to hear the practice of balance cultural rights and responsibility as well as uplifting the functional areas of your respective organizations and cultures balancing those cultural rights and responsibility I think it's a delicate dance often full of tensions a dance that I believe is not served I believe that it's best served with all of the book sense to acknowledge my mother and I think about that as ancient wisdom, I think about it as muscle memory as Sharon Bridgeforth would say as well as common sense and sensibility abundance to me is both a cultural right and a cultural responsibility in need of balance book or book sense and common sense and sensibility and art when I define art as the metaphor living in the metaphor living in the complexities of the metaphor and the dream and also the magic of it is a cultural right and a cultural responsibility in need of balance book and common sense adaptation to me is a cultural right it's a cultural responsibility and it is best served by balance book sense and common sense mutual aid is both a cultural right and it's definitely a cultural responsibility that demands balance a sense of ancestral knowledge book sense and common sense self-determination is what I also heard you say I think of self-determination as both a cultural right and a cultural responsibility it is worthy of balance it's worthy of book sense and it's worthy of common sense cooperative economics as I would define it cooperative power is also a cultural right it's a cultural responsibility it is served best when we understand it in the wheel of balance book sense ancestral knowledge history and common sense domination it's not a cultural right it's not a cultural responsibility it serves none of us or our functions well this one I'm stuck on so maybe y'all can help me teaching a white world indigenous methods of survival is what is it a cultural right is it a cultural responsibility is there a way to balance it out with common sense and book sense I'm stuck on it and I think this conversation uplifts some of that that doesn't necessarily answer it I feel like that's the continuation because I do think for people and I think there's a difference between people who happen to be white and white people right I think there's some people none of us really had a say in how we came out and what happened after that but there's some people who have bought into it as you know a white supremacist society and there's some other people who actively work against it so when I talk about white people and white culture it's different from my stacy someone who happens to be white right so I'm stuck right because Tony Morrison says that the function of racism is distraction keeps you from doing your work somebody says you have no language you spend 30 years traveling just to prove I have language I have music and all of that Tony Morrison says none of it is necessary when you think about this present moment when it seems so urgent and it seems so necessary I have to admit I'm stuck because as a person who's never lived in the bounty of joy you know that's what I'm trying to do so when I come to double edge and make candles there ain't queer candles there ain't black candles there ain't artist candles it's someone seeking a sense of joy so again how do we function as a society common ways of functioning is the question is governance a common thing that we think about it's resource and I have to say resource in the honor of my grandmother because she would say as a black woman I'm a resourceful woman so I think she had the right relationship with resource but I hear care wealth I think resource or care wealth development and management is that a function that we're talking about here community development management and again I'm thinking about the right relationships with these things and if they don't serve us don't use it but what is it is that a common function that we want to unearth communications as a common function as well as cultural advancement and cultural survival I'm intrigued by indigenous notions and I don't know the tribe that says once a thing died let it die don't start it again because that doesn't necessarily line up with what I believe that my black elders who you know we're going to keep Dr. King alive until you know he's you know we're going to surface it and surface it so this notion of cultural survival sometimes means letting some things go something that I'm still sitting with in honor and acknowledgement of something else will be connected to that whether we acknowledge it or not and emerge right I think the common desire should be that during the cultural shift that I acknowledge as the harvest feel like the harvest is always a cultural shift in our black practice we think about it during Kwanzaa the festival of the harvest right but it's a cultural shift right and if we've done our job right we've stewarded the culture well then there are plentiful benefits from our harvest I will leave you with this I'm supposed to be a preacher so this sounds like a black southern sermon this is my way of just you know making my grandmother happy right so I'll leave you with this and all of your getting get the type of film divinity in your life that reigns over you with mystic faith and that is exceptional in the commonplace when we do this it is nearly impossible for us not to acknowledge that the divine in me sees honors respects the divinity in each of you thank you giving Harold the last word today thank you so much the fire is still going so this conversation will keep going in all the ways it needs to and wants to and I guess it's a good time to leave a party when you're having a good time and perhaps a sign of a fertile conversation when you don't want it to stop which is how I feel right now so there's a bit of pain because I want to know what you're thinking because I know you're thinking and feeling and I feel that with all of you and with you virtual people I want to just frame one question to take with us and to put out there which is with all of this spirit which I'm so grateful for how much of it is here because the desire was for this to be a conversation around spirit as much as it is about the how so maybe this conversation continues in honor of the how I would love for us to be thoughtful of how we carry forward that which is a foot the upswells of activity around us the models and structures in your work in our work that's around us and sharing on because I feel what is necessary is for those models to be known in those upswells to be felt we are fighting it's not the fight with an institution we are so much after it's the making those institutions obsolete through our models so thank you I'm going to close out thank you for those that were commenting and asking your questions thank you Double Edge Theater for hosting this, thank you to Hollround thanks to each and all of you and however we can keep this conversation going will be great and we can keep it going everyone else, thanks