 My name is Matt Chazansky. I am with the Office of Arts and Culture in the city of Boulder, Colorado. And yes, thank you. I hope you're having a good time. Colorado is a great place. And there's an awful lot of you for a breakfast plenary on the last day of a conference, so that's great. And usually I like to take these times to, you know, talk up the arts in Boulder in Colorado, tell you how great we're doing here, and be a good booster. But today, maybe it's a little bit different. I do want to tell you something personal about my family, because it really matters to what we're about to see. My father was born in a detention camp. Just at the end of World War II, my grandparents had brought him there. They were refugees. They were in this group called Displaced People, DPs, the small countries of Eastern Europe where people were swept out by the war. And they started this journey of being immigrants from that point. And I grew up with these stories that they told of that experience. And it's been really formative for me. There's the story of my grandmother walking to Berlin just in time for the Allied bombing campaign and the stories of her time there. It was horrific. She ate from trash cans. She scavenged bombed-out buildings. They found an apartment with their last few dollars. They weren't dollars. Reichmarks at that time, I guess. And they were able to sort of survive for a little while. They decided to hide a Jewish person in the attic. And when they were discovered by the few last bedraggled Nazi soldiers, they mined everyone in the building on the street and demanded to know who had been protecting it. And they refused to give up that person, the person who had been protecting this Jewish person. And my grandmother got to witness the soldiers shoot every third person in line. My family was number one and number two. The hardships didn't end there. It was a hard story for them that when the war ended, when my father was born in the detention camp, there was a story of hardship, but they landed here eventually. They came to the United States and this was a safe place for them. They were able to build a life. It was a final place where they could settle and be safe and not worry. And I've been thinking a lot about my grandmother and her story and two things sort of popped to mind is, first of all, my entire childhood was spent every time I would go to her house touring the different places she hid money just in case the Russians were on the way. And actually she's now almost 100 years old. She's in a nursing home and I got the tour last weekend. The second thing that I've been thinking about is that the story of this place, the sanctuary this place created for my family is not the same story today. There are people here now who face a similar calamity. Their lives are horrific and they have come here. There are some people who have been here for generations for millennia, whose lives are not safe here. And my childhood of understanding this place as a safe place was mistaken. And that's troubling to me. There's a history of injustice, of racism that is a vein through our culture that I'm only now beginning to understand and in some ways will never fully understand. But that tragic history I have come to learn is very, very real and very obvious to many of my neighbors. And it needs correction. And the direct threat to people's lives, it needs to be resolved. And I struggle with the fact that there's this difference between my family's experience and my neighbors. And I guess my family is European and white and that matters into that experience. But there's more. And we know that the change that we need to bring about starts with the arts. That the change that has always happened through history has led with the artists. And you are in this field because you believe that too. You believe that there's change that is possible. And you believe the artists are ready for that and you crave that change. And that's why we do what we do. And we presuppose that progress in politics, policy, society, and justice, that's what's going to make lives better. And that's why change leads with artists because people need their minds to change. So now's the time for an admission. There's been moments in my career where I've forgotten this. Because art has also got this power to degrade progress on important issues. Just like artists can grab us by the head and turn our sights towards justice, they can turn our heads away from justice. And I have been responsible for art experiences, or I've participated, I've supported arts experiences, that are beautiful and intriguing and decadent and at best benign and at worst insipid because the art I've been congratulated for sometimes is like fun and games. It's serving unknowingly to reinforce systems of injustice because it ignores the real power that art has. So I am excited today, honored to introduce you to Modus Theater because of that. My community in Boulder, they are a group of people just like you that are demanding culture do a heavy lift, that culture works for justice. And that impact is something artists wrestle with. The artists need to understand the power that they have to change minds, and we all need to understand the power that we have through them and the responsibility that we have. So Modus Theater in Boulder, Colorado is a group working in profound ways on exactly that. Modus was founded in 2011 by Kirsten Wilson to create original theater in facilitation of dialogue on the critical issues of our time. They use the power of art to build alliances across diverse segments of our community and our country. Key to their success is authenticity, using the tools of theater to elevate the first-hand accounts from the most critical and vulnerable communities in the United States. So this body of work that Modus has produced includes rock karma arrows, which built on the accounts of indigenous community in the wake of a series of hate crimes. Then they did women of resolution live performances featuring stories of four Colorado women living in Sanctuary. And I also want to mention Undocu America, a courageous storytelling about the pain, struggles, and resilience of so many undocumented Americans. And it's been really effective. In Boulder, the movement to become a sanctuary city and to recognize Indigenous People's Day, those things were directly the result of City Council and the community participating with Modus Theater. And agreed, yeah. And so this is the true meaning of the term avant garde. This is the front lines, art actually making the change we know as possible. So here's something that's about to change you. Modus produced the Just Us series. These are short stories from formerly incarcerated leaders, as read by law enforcement, lawmakers, and a network from the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice. I'm going to leave you with a highlight video of this unprecedented performance that inspired the work Modus is doing today. In April 2017, Modus Theater brought to the stage five police chiefs, the Boulder County Sheriff and DA, the Vice Chancellor of Safety at Colorado University. They went on stage with undocumented monologues and read their stories. Law enforcement leaders were not just showing solidarity with the dreamers and undocumented immigrants. They were also dispelling the false association between criminality and immigration status. The performance was attended by 250 people. There's been more than 13,000 views online, but the experience continues through those online, social, and traditional medias to have a rippling impact. So please watch the video and please enjoy Modus Theater. Do you know who I am? Do you? Do you know who I am? Well, think before you say anything. And having grown up watching newscasters and police officers use and utter the words illegal alien and framing me and my family as criminals and then to hear some of the people on stage utter our words and reflect our agency as people was very powerful. Our fate was to be born fighters. Our fate was to be born poor in a country where our people have to suffer hunger and no matter how much we work, we stay hungry. Your fate was to be born in the United States and maybe to your advantage, your fate was to be born white. Taking the hard jobs nobody wants and yet he's stereotyped as a criminal. I believe that we have an obligation to fight to protect the vulnerable people in our community. We need to learn how as a community to develop the narrative of this reality in a way that is convincing and will be convincing on a statewide basis and a national basis in a political context. I am not a criminal. I'm not here to steal money or to take anyone's life for no reason. I'm here to help. That is why I was born. Feeling and reflecting has really been a luxury. When they were telling my story, I was reliving every single moment of it. He's are focusing on him, ticketing him. Debating whether or not to take him to jail, making him vulnerable to deportation. She told me I was the very first person on her side of the family to ever graduate from high school. Sometimes I just want to hand someone my social security number. Just take it. Take it. Do you know what my dream is? What my nine digit American dream is? I'm going to make sure that their dreams are realized. Will you help me? Hello, everybody. First and foremost, I want to say it is a privilege to be here at the grant makers in the arts conference on the ancestral grounds of the Arapaho Ute and Cheyenne people. I'm Joaquin Mobley, a formerly incarcerated individual. And now I am a modus autobiographical monologous in the Just Us project and the vice president of Community Works where we provide people who are formerly incarcerated with job training so that they can move from the illicit to the legal economic opportunities through our pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs. Thank you. Just recently, we premiered the seven Just Us monologues at the National Association and Restorative Justice in June of 2019 for an audience of 1,600 people. At that performance, we both presented our own autobiographical monologues as well as asked law enforcement, DAs, and legislators to stand in our shoes for a moment and read our stories on stage with us. The aim of the Just Us monologues is to help people understand the injustice and criminality of the criminal justice system itself so that together we can create true justice. We hope not only to tour this performance in front of the audience across the country and in the Modus Just Us podcast series, but in special performances at offices of district attorneys to reach prosecutors and law enforcement. Today you will have the opportunity to hear two of the Just Us monologues, a story of Brandon Wainwright and Sierra Brock. Early this morning, Brandon and Sierra met with Roberto Bedoya and Susan Fetter, two board members of grant makers in the arts who are going to stand with us on stage and read a section of Brandon and Sierra's autobiographical monologue. These two grant makers are listening deeply to the stories of people on the front lines of the criminal justice system so they can be better strategic allies. Through practices of courageous empathy, we can more skillfully collaborate in using the power of the human story to dismantle the humanizing systems of punishment and the exploitation in the criminal justice system. So on behalf of the grant makers in the arts, we present two of Modus Theatres Just Us monologues. Thank you. Please enjoy. How y'all doing? Ooh, that was a little loud. All right. All right, so just to let you know, I'm going to introduce myself first. My name is Brandon Wainwright. I am part of the Just Us League or the Modus Theater doing monologues. The reason why I'm sharing my story today is because I know I'm not the only one. I cannot be the only one that has gone through this. I know everyone knows someone who has or knows someone who is currently or has gone through this. So while I'm doing this, I have also Mr. Roberto Bedoya with me. He'll be reading my autobiographical monologue with me as well. And it's entitled, Trying to Live, I Lost My Life. At birth, I was named Brandon Marlowe Wainwright. That is the name my mother used as well as the teachers at school. On the street, my name is Dub. D to the UB? Or you can call me Young Black King. But on a serious note, I tell you 90% of the people from my hood are considered failures. And I'm supposed to act like I can't be part of the 10% because of the way you think of me and because my ways are often too ignorant. Trying to live, I lost my life. I have a young mother, young father, brothers and sisters at home. Barely food in the fridge or water, depending on if it's on. I'm surrounded by old hares and young ins walking around with handguns and they won't hesitate to let me know how they feel about my honorable ass if I cannot fight. Trying to live, I lost my life. School is kind of a sanctuary, if you will, or a safe haven. It's like, look, I can be myself. I can be a nerd. I can be a thesbian. I can do sports. I can do whatever I want while I'm in school because I'm living my life. This is how I want to live. This is how I want to live. Trying to live, I lost my life. But outside of school, I put on a whole other mask. I fight and I fight and I fight. And I am Dub and me and my gang, we do what we do. Big time shoplifting, small time drug dealing. Like I said, in my hood, 90% of the people are considered failures and they are the people whose approval I need in order to survive. And you might not like the guys I hang out with, but they are the only ones who have my back and I have their back. Damn right I do. This is not the life I want to live, but this is the life I have to live. Trying to live, I lost my life. Things became harder when I turned 16. I stood up for my brother against my father and for that, I'm out of the house. I no longer his mouth to feed. From 16 on, there isn't anyone to give me a roof, clothes, food. I had to go and do that with the help of my gang. And that's why I said I had to live, find a way. And then I was losing my life because at a young age trying to be an adult, you know, you can't have a life. You've got to kind of give that up. Trying to live, I lost my life. But still I'm a star student, on a roll. State champion, athlete, blah, blah, blah. Against all odds, I kept my cards. I kept my cards. And my senior year, it is clear I'm going to be part of the 10% that makes it. That makes it women, money, cars. I'm heading for the NFL. I have a full sports scholarship. I'm choosing the offers. I'm going to be pranking. Trying to live, I lost my life. So with all that heading my way, did anybody ask me why on January 12th of my senior year, I shoplifted six video stores in one night? Instead of working hard to prove what a terrible criminal I was, did anyone consider I might also be a young man having a hard time and needing help? Did anyone sit and circle with me and say, Brandon, rain light, what were you thinking, six stores in one night? You must have known you would get caught. I'm for a few thousand dollars. You threw away a hundred thousand. Full right scholarship. You're going to be part of the 10%. Why, Brandon? Trying to live, I lost my life. No, they didn't ask. They charged me with robbery. They kicked me out of school. They made an example out of me. Nobody acknowledged that I had to be the best at being Brandon Wainwright, star athlete and star student to make the 10% and thrive. And that I had to be the best at being dubbed to have shelter, food and survive. Trying to live, I lost my life. They didn't acknowledge the fact that I was locked in a terrible split that put surviving and thriving at war with each other. They acted like Brandon, the high school vice president of future business leaders of America was a lie. And that I had finally shown my true colors black as if I was by nature essentially a criminal. Nobody in the justice system or the school system cared enough to even ask why I did what I did. Nobody. Hey, Brandon, Marla, Wainwright, Dub, young man, young black king, why did you risk all you had worked for, worked for by shoplifting at a video store in one night? It's a long story. A long story. But at the moment I made that decision, I was exhausted by the fight and I didn't even care. You want to know why I didn't care? Because that night I was hurting and I didn't feel love. You know why I didn't feel love? Because I wasn't getting it from the parents who I thought had made me their son. They didn't come to my games. They didn't care. I was on a roll. They didn't care that I was going to college or I had a scholarship. And why wasn't I getting that love? Because I was living on my own at 16, away from the only home I had known. And because my parents were young, they hadn't grown up with much love and they were busy fighting poverty as well, fighting racism, fighting their own ignorance, fighting to survive themselves, and tired of fighting with me and struggling with how to raise a young black son in a place where the streets have so much power and a parent has so little. Or you can just knock it down to the fact that where I was raised, you're either born with it or you're born without it. No matter what you apply that to, and I thought I'd rather be caught with it than without it. I'd rather down my feet than live on my knees. I needed money to live for food, for shelter, clothes on my back. And maybe to graduate looking nice in the prom king suit I was going to use that cash for. Yeah, it's a long story. That you slam into one righteous move of your gavel and you would have to actually care about me to understand. As Cornel West said about true justice, justice is what love looks like in public. Instead of any help and support dealing with the challenges I faced, I got a lifelong label as a criminal and more obstacles to overcome. I was already tired and the fight just got harder. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon or good morning. It's not afternoon yet. My name is Sierra Brock. Reading with me is going to be Susan Fader. I'm actually really excited that she's going to be reading with me. I've been reading by myself for the past two times I performed. I'm blessed to be here. I get a chance to speak problems. Like you said, everybody goes through. I'd say that doesn't matter what situation you're in, small or big, it's still a problem, you know? So without further ado, this one autobiographical monologue developed by Sierra Brock in collaboration with Kirsten Wilson, my 21st birthday. It was just us, my mom, my sisters, and me on a trip to Cripple Creek, casino for my early 21st birthday. It had been a hard spring and we were all living out of a U-Haul truck so my mom with not much left to lose and wanting to do something special for my birthday drove us all up in the U-Haul truck where we could spend one night in a real bed, take a hot shower, and I could possibly try my luck for the first time gambling with the $40 that my mom managed to scrape up for my birthday. After I had never gambled before but I needed luck and a win, I was having trouble finding a job and I had a big ticket on me for a broken tail light and driving without insurance. I didn't have the money for the ticket or the tail light, let alone the insurance but we needed the car. It's hard to keep a job without reliable transportation and without a job there was no way for my family to get back into an apartment so I was praying for some birthday luck. First I tried a $5 slot machine and I lost 10. I was like, hmm, I'm going to try the dollar machines. Like maybe I'd have a better chance of winning something on the dollar machine. I came up with this rule, to only spend $5 on each machine and then press cash and move on. I was losing so quickly so I switched to the quarter machines and eventually to the nickels. Mostly losing as I went and hoping that the next machine would be luckier and indeed it was. I pressed cash and I was like, oh well damn, I just won $62. It's more than $40. I didn't know how the whole winning thing goes I was trying to read the instructions on the little game box but I thought hey, I got $62. I think that's pretty good. So I found a place where you could put a card in and cash out. As I was going to find my mom and tell her I won these casino security offers came up to me and told me that machine I was playing on had somebody else's money on it and asked for my ID. I told them there wasn't anyone at that machine there was no reserved anything on it and it was just the next machine I was playing in line. I explained it was my first time being there I didn't know how the casino rules go but they still wrote me a ticket with an $800 fine and assigned me a court date near Cripple Creek. I later found out that there is a little known statute in Colorado called fraud, take the money, not one that allows casinos to prosecute gamblers who are somebody else's slot credits even small amounts like 75 cents that are abandoned on a machine. I didn't know any of that. And by the time my court case was coming up in May I wasn't even sure the actual court date either. You see, my family was still homeless and living out of a storage unit but my mom couldn't pay for the storage either so they put a lock on our unit and I couldn't even get my ticket out. But I knew the court date was on a Monday and I thought it was the first Monday. So I waited for the bus going up to the courthouse near the casino, the Ramblin Express gambling bus with $200 in my pocket $30 for the bus and the rest toward the $800 ticket hoping to get some of it behind me. That's when they told me the bus that they don't go up to Cribble Creek on Mondays and I'm like, damn, how am I going to get up there? My mom no longer had a car and no one I called could drive me the hour and a half than wait all day and take me home. I was freaking out because I already had a bench warrant because I didn't show up for the court date for the broken taillight and no insurance. So I'm calling the courthouse trying to explain to the gambling, hey, I tried to get there but the gambling bus doesn't run. Is there a way I could reset my court date? You know what I'm saying? Ended up, my court date was the following Monday but like I said, there was no buses going up there on Mondays and there actually was a way I could get a form to deal with the court if they mailed it but I didn't have an address because I was homeless and staying with friends for two weeks in the mail. So I never made it to court. I was finally arrested in October. The timing was terrible because I had just managed to get a job after looking left and right for months but by then it was too late. They put me in the handcuffs and put me in a police car for the first time. I was just crying. They took me to a jail far from my family at the casino for almost two months. I didn't understand how it all worked and I messed up the whole bond thing. I just knew that no one was getting me out and I knew that while I was sitting in jail I would lose my job. I knew that my eight-year-old sister was missing me bad. My mom was in jail in the springs so my little sister had been staying with me on friends' couches and my friends lived far from their elementary school so I was the one who had been walking with her the hour to school every morning and my other sister was pregnant and not eating so it was all a mess and I was just sitting in jail. I was ignorant about the whole situation but I guess ignorant doesn't count at court. I didn't understand how the gambling system worked. I didn't understand the game and I didn't understand the criminal justice system or the whole bond thing. They said I stole $62 but I didn't know I was stealing from anybody. I didn't even know I was stealing. I thought I had won but even if ignorance is not innocent what about what they stole from me? All the benefits they took from my failure I had to pay an $800 ticket, $75 donation fee, $50 jail fees, $30 court fees. All of it's $62. I lost my job part of my sanity sitting in that jail worrying about my little sister and my family and now I have a record that steals my presumption of innocence. They even put that shit about me the Friday in the casino in the newspaper for somebody's entertainment and when they finally let me out almost two months later from something smaller than a cell maybe a trap they said oh and by the way I'm not paying off any extra fees and we hope you could steal a few hours in your day to finish your 24 hours of community service but of course then I have to pay for the $30 gambling bus ride back up to Cripple Creek to sign up for that community service because I still don't have a car. Thank you. Another round of applause to Brandon Wainwright, Roberto Bedoya, Sierra Block and Susan Feder. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining me yet. My name is Rita Valenquin and I am producing director of Modus Theater. Thank you. Thank you again to Eddie Torres, Nadia Locta and the conference committee for having us at this GIA conference. It is a pleasure and an honor to share our work with you all. I would like to close our presentation with a few short notes. The two monologues that we presented here are part of a larger project called Modus Theater and the monologues that you heard are also going to be featured on season two of Modus's podcast, Shoebox Stories. The first season which will be premiering soon is called Andoque America series and it features 12 prominent leaders in America such as Jorge Ramos from Univision, Gloria Steinem Nicholas Christoff from The New York Times Marina Rosa from NPR Huston Police Chief Evangelical Leader Joanne Lyon and John Lithgow reading the autobiographical stories of undocumented leaders from Colorado. Each reading is followed by a conversation and each episode ends with a musical response. Yo-Yo Ma who was just here the other day even went to the studio just to record a song for our podcast. Shoebox Stories Andoque America series premieres actually next week on Thursday October 24th. You can subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts just search for Shoebox Stories. Also on the 24th in Los Angeles at the Museum of Tolerance we have a launch event at 6.30 so anyone who might live in Los Angeles please join us. And now I would like to leave you with a special preview of the Andoque America series. Thank you. If people in this country would listen to stories like this and really just take a couple of minutes to digest everything that you said it would be a different story. This is our country too and they get so upset when I say our but it is our country too and and it's full of stories like this if these were to be a Hollywood movie you would be the hero but then suddenly you're being persecuted and you don't know what's going to happen to you. I thought I didn't fill in English until I read what you wrote. I wouldn't be able to write that in English it's not me but then somehow that's a beauty of literature that you can leave somebody else's experience what surprised me is how I somehow just for a few seconds I was you. One thing it can help us understand other people who are going through this I mean you have a deep great understanding of people who are unable to move freely so are deprived of their family and their cultures and so on and you can be such an important messenger and comfort to people who are in the same situation. There's nothing on earth more supportive than people sitting in a circle telling their stories telling the story you think only you feel three other people say oh you feel like that? I thought only I felt like that. Then we discover some ways about power or injustice or something and together we can change that. So I read it but it becomes flesh and blood in this context when you hear it and I think that indeed the problem with our immigration and so many policies is that we don't think of them in terms of flesh and blood we think of them in terms of policies and it's very easy to create discriminatory policies toward a group of people we have this natural tendency to other eyes people and I think that's the way to fight that is to have a real person tell their real story and that's certainly what emerged here.