 Before I hand over to primary moderators, we have a lot of heavy land, Edoa, and Matthew Elenu got that one, it's a 50 percent Matthew Elenu. My name is Yazir Henry, I teach at the school and I welcome you all, those of you from the school and those of you joining us. What I want to do very quickly is just frame this process, the panel, and the brown rules and then handle for Tumat and Pete. We are experimenting with different forms of dialogic processes so that we can deepen some of these very difficult and important conversations that are taking place in the world and at our school and at our university. Therefore we have structured this process very tightly but completely openly. I want to thank those of you that came that agreed to join us, secondly moderated respondents, and those of you that are in the second and third and fourth tier, those will lead us as a complete circle of amazing human beings here. And I would like you to participate together with myself and I'd like to welcome Troy Hadin from Chicago and East Illinois University. So what we're going to do is we're going to run through a very quick process so we can get to a broader moment and engage not only with ourselves but with you as members of the Ford School and the university and the broader community as well. There are 82 simple ground rules for today. The first one is do not harm anyone. The second one is think about what you are going to say. And the third one is when you listen to whatever is being said, listen as far as it is possible non-violently. It is our effort and attempt to develop a space here at the Ford School in which we can have hard and difficult conversations which hopefully will inspire further conversations that others and recognises the privilege and safety of this space that we can hold as intellectuals, as thinkers and future leadership resources of the world. Developing and creating and opening this space like this has taken a year. I want to mark that. And the construction will take several years more to consolidate as part of our DNA here at the Ford School. We can achieve and make that space possible only through you and through our collective engagement with each other as intellectuals, as thinkers and people who care about the world. Even its pain. And this is what we are working with inside of the structure for me. There are several timekeepers in the room that will, when time is over for ever speaking, including me, please, including me, raise up their time sheets. Thank you. And they will do so silently and when all these time sheets are up, please conclude your thoughts and your speech. Give the moderators a chance to move us further inside of the conversation. Now, I will say so now. I am fully aware that the conversation that we hold today will be as complete as the time allows it and it will always already be incomplete. But it's not my end or our end when we create the space to solve everything right now. We just actually have the important dialogue that hopefully will produce itself in such ways in which it does affect the possibility of an engagement with issues as they affect society not only here where I stand but at the near the end of the earth where I come from and was born. So I'm going to hand over a minute early, which is not usual for me to be mad. I think I've said enough. Me and people say that since my favorite is longer, I'll be the enforcer for this engagement. Just the first reiterate what Yazir tried and did convey is that this is not meant to be a performance, so an exhibition. We're talking about real problems, real things that affect real people. And so with that, you know, the goal is not to fix anything, to solve anything, but to talk about these things and talk about them in the way that you feel, not the way that you think is right. You know, accept your own opinion, your feelings and convey what you feel and from the heart. Also, I know we're all grad students and I see some PhDs in the room. You know, definitely make sure we're saying things clearly, coherently. Try to keep the words below six syllables if you can. I know it's hard for some of us. You know, the goals have a good conversation, rich in dialogue, not rich in performance. And so please come prepared to talk, you know, from your heart and your soul as well as your intellect. But with that, I'll introduce myself a bit more in terms of how I'm kind of related. I've known Yazir for seven years as a student and though I'm not directly related to the systemic violence in the way that they talk about in terms of public space, you know, I'm more in terms of researching the home and absent father and the way in which fathers have become an avarice in the home. And that is my contribution and I'll pass it on to you. Thanks, Matt. So I'll start off by introducing myself. My name is Pete Havilland-Dadewaugh. I'm a second year MPP student here at the Ford School, originally from upstate New York. And I guess I'm connected with the topics that we're here discussing today both within my own lived experience and as well as activist activities as I guess you could call them. I'm not sure that I would necessarily prefer them as that, especially over the past two years. I think I've always been passionate about communities of color and how systemic racism and oppression affects them. But I think I was activated when Trayvon Martin was shot and killed. And then I think that activation turned into a fire when I saw Mike Brown lying in the street in August of 2014. And so since 2014 I've been working with the million hoodies moved for justice in a policy position, working to end marginalization, criminalization and stigmatization of communities of color domestically. Been protesting here in Ann Arbor, protested in March to New York City, been around the country talking about these issues, working these out with other people that are passionate about this. And so I'm very happy to be with folks here today. And just to build on some of the ground rules that Matt had mentioned, how this is going to work is, I guess, your employer is going to give you some remarks shortly. And then after that we've selected 12 co-moderators which are in the space today, which leave most of your sitting in the lower circle here. And you will have two minutes each, two minutes each, to respond and give thoughts. And then we're going to have a little bit more time for a discussion. We're going to give Trayvon Yazir an opportunity to respond to your thoughts. And then we're going to open it up to the rest of the audience after that to have an opportunity to speak. So everyone, I hope, will have an opportunity to speak. That's something to say, and so I'm looking forward to this discussion. So, thank you. And also I'd like to give myself Matthew, a fourth year PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Public Policy. I also want to offer the seat in case anybody's down to sit down. I'm going to stand for the duration, so if anyone wants it, feel free to come and take it up to the side. So you can do it. I just wanted to acknowledge thank you, Jim Collins, for joining us. I suppose the seat is for you if you would like to take it. We thought you were going to slip in quietly and serve. So just before I start now, I was a minute early, so it looks like I'm going to take a minute back. Jim Collins, thank you for joining us. I want to acknowledge Dean Collins for encouraging and making the type of space that we're trying to create here to discuss as difficult as possible. Those of you who have programs as an abstract in the program, it is just that an abstract very broad. I spent many hours trying to make it very broad, so that we can engage with it. I'm going to speak to this for African possibility, and do so abstractly. If I speak into slowly, just tell me. South Africa, where I was born, is a violent place, but it is more than that. And the more than that is what I want to come to. But before I do so, I want to say it has always been violent. Now I'm not just an academic and an intellectual, and someone engaged with these issues in the world, but I'm also a survivor from a context in which most of the men who live their harsh lives, violent at worst, as violence on and against the body, and violence as best economically, as internalized and psychically embodied. This experience, expression and iteration of violent life as collective and group experience is, I want to argue, as part of this conversation, a political experience. It is not simply the result of being male, of being poor, of being administratively and socio-legally colored as less than human in soft terms. But in harsh terms, it is also direct and lived as legacy, and we, those defined and colored in this way are not, in essence, violent beings. No single category of identity is comprehensible outside of the language that describes, inscribes and circumscribes such identity categories in relation to and in relation with categories that are validated, valorized and imbued with a counter essence, what I would call here an essentialism of the ideal category, the modern, the civil, the civic, the less violent, the peaceful, the not barbaric category. The violence I speak here exists then in and across the structural, the political, the economic, the psychological categorization of identity and in and through historical and political domains and spheres of the systemic structure and policy coagulated as life, systemic then, as endemic, as interpretive and epistemic as everywhere and all the time. Still, it is not pure, nor can it be purifying this violence. I must move a little bit forward because each time Troy does that, I think it's the time sign. Sorry, no, that's fine. It is not this violence conceptually and intellectually, materially and morally the same type, the same feeling, the same expression, or the same deployment of force. It is textured and contextured, and this afternoon I may have created this word, please correct me by attributing it incorrectly to myself, contextured, and it can be verified, please, don't hesitate, into how human beings who share administrative, legal and social space understand, see, view and speak themselves in the political world of policy life, of social life and of economic life. This violence then lives its ensuing pain, its ensuing trauma as daily and as all the time. There is no freedom from violence, only distance to and proximity from as related to a violent external expression and deployment and experience, of course, as the legacy and the lived experience in the present of pain and trauma thus as extra psychic life. Therefore, the violence I'm conceiving of you intellectually and politically taking responsibility to name and apprehend and engage as dialogue is also the violence of what I call the meta-concept, what for me is the meta-concept one and two, the legal and the political construct of this meta-concept and three, the administrative and the managerial construct of this concept and four, the model and the social life of this construct of identity, of violent identity, of violent looking, of violent living, of violent seeing, of violent being and of violent recovery. For South African men who are colored legally as non-white, this has devastating gender consequences, not only for those men, but for their families, their communities, the women who live in such communities and the children who are forced to live through such community. So while the violence is alarming, it is not altogether coincidental, it is simultaneously expressed across and through this conceptual iteration and construction of identity as socially linked and lived, socially or spatially at the same time, but not in the same place. So I will conclude my opening remarks and emphasize that it's just that opening remarks to a conversation. The approach taken sometimes in a number of common and mainstream sources serves then to essentialize the color black, the color brown, the color red as associated gendered experience of black men who are violent. I hope that I sit here as living proof and experience that it is an interpretive category, not a truth. Alright, thank you, thank you. Thank you. First I'd like to just acknowledge the inculidences, as well as the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy for creating this space. It's an important conversation. I think this conversation has national as well as global implications and the continued conversation around this space. So I think it's important and involved to be able to have it. And I also want to acknowledge Matt, thank you for hosting this space and for your work and our conversation around absence. Because I think inherent within this larger conversation of violence is this point of absence, who's not present versus who is and what stories get told within that area. And thank you, Pete, as well for your work. And you reminded me that it doesn't matter when you enter and when you become active and struggle. The point is that when you hit that moment of truth that you go from there. And so I start there with this conversation is that we are in a critical moment in history where a lot of moments of truth are rising. With Trayvon, with Michael Brown, with Eric Garner, with Tamir Rice, with Laquan McDonald. We had a new moment of truth in Chicago recently with Laquan McDonald where there was a reckoning and continues to be a reckoning around the impact of that structural violence that takes place on a regular basis. So that's important to acknowledge those moments of truth and that reckoning because I think any conversation that we invite around this work, first let me just say this, so my work has been over the last few years really lifting up and thinking about what it means to be trauma-informed. And much of that discussion focuses on interpersonal violence, things that are happening within the home, or even some of the impact of the community violence that we see in the streets, right? And so as a social worker by trade and somebody who teaches in the social work profession, we often talk about what does it mean for a practitioner to be trauma-informed in his or her work, what does a trauma-informed school look like, what's a trauma-informed health clinic, etc. And what I've been positioning is that that's important and needed and critical and it falls short of the institutional framework because we understand and acknowledge what happens when an individual fails, but what happens when an institution fails, right? And what happens when that institution has a legacy in the history of failing and of establishing mistrust. And when the people are in it who are good people, people have been trained, people who are doing good work, people who are well-attended even within that system, you know, what happens when that system still fails, right? So I think I mentioned a little bit yesterday, I sat in a circle with a group of cops, police, Chicago police officers, and some young people a few months ago. And it was two days before the Laquan McDonald, McDonald announced it was getting ready to happen. And we were talking about police and community relationships and they were very worried. And they were worried and anxious because of this announcement, what would happen, and they were also personally worried because they were tired of being linked to bad cops. They were tired of the narrative because they were good cops, they do youth work, they do stand-up work, and so what would happen when this announcement came out and they would be caught in that narrative. And so I acknowledged first their work and their hearts and even why they might have been to the profession. But then I asked the question, what do you do when you see bad cops? What do you do with an institution? And they grew silent. They didn't say anything. They kind of just shrugged. And they talked a little bit about the cold of blue and how difficult it was to be able to say something and things like that, right? So I invoke King calling on Nitchki, right? You know, the greatest evil in the world is not done by evil people doing bad things. It's by good people who see it and do nothing about it. So I'll argue that violence and structural violence takes place every day in those moments. And those opportunities exist all the time for us to say something and do something, and we don't do it. So there I enter the trauma conversation with, as you just said, with a historical lens, a lens that invites both resistance and resilience in the face of trauma. There's a history of terrible things happening in communities of color since the beginning of this country. And coupled with that, there's always been resistance. And with that, I don't diminish victim and what it means to be victim within the context of that space. But I invite a new framing around how we might see victim into a serious conversation that invites the presence and possibilities of restoration and restorative accountability, you know, within that space. So I think we ask the question of whose voice is absent, whose not present, and how that might contribute to both objectification and the continued violence that persists, and then how we might create that inclusive community and that serious conversation of truth where, in those moments of truth, we can create that transformative justice framework. So I'll stop here. So thank you both. And I think that there was a lot that came up to me when the two of you were talking. And I think the concept of violence and the many different forms that it's taking is something that is relatively new to my intellectual process and how I think about structural racism and structural oppression. And I think about the way that this type of violence impacted me as an individual in my psychological development as a black man from a predominantly white community and it's things that happen that I didn't even realize. You know, for example, I was always, it was always projected upon me that as a black person I was expected to fail growing up. And within my own home, that was debunked. But my peers, my classmates expected me to do poorly in school, expected me to be good at sports and winning. I fell outside of those norms. I was outcast as another. And that in turn pushed myself and people around me to have this internalized oppression. And I saw some other black men that I grew up with take this and they really took it to heart. And it was to the point where I had a football teammate and we were talking about grades that we had recently got in high school. And when he found out I had done well, he told me that I was white. And that, to me, I was, it was a trigger. And I went off and I went at him with physical violence because I was so angry because I didn't know how to deal with this oppression. I didn't know how to deal with this violence in the 17-year-old. And it took four teammates to pull me off of them. But these are the types of things that we had to deal with. And I know that many of us we had this very difficult conversation last year when some of my colleagues here at the policy school we put together Walking the Line of Blackness. And we talked about our experience as black students in the public policy steering how isolating that can be because there's violence around us every day. And so when the two of you were talking that really resonated with me and I think that that's something I'd like to hear more about is the different forms of violence that we encounter on a day-to-day basis and how we can combat that. So a few thanks to that to me that crosses both of what you both touched on. Yeah, as you mentioned, something about a maiden narrative and identity formation. And thinking about the specific instances you talk about, Troy, what can we say and think about in terms of the way in which systemic and structural violence and marginalization impacts the way that identity is formed in the way it's imposed. And by that I mean, what does it say for a young black man to grow up in an all-black environment that's said to be violent? How can you construct identity in a lot of these structural imposition? Just the same, what can be said and how can we talk more about the way in which we impose meaning from external representations on communities. So how many times have we all said oh, an area is rough, or it's bad, or it's not safe? And what does that mean with blanket statements about spaces regarding people we don't even know? Such that you can see Troy by Martin with a hoodie and have an automatic idea of what he means. That no matter the context, these kind of maiden narratives affect us in our day-to-day and affect the way we think about ourselves, and how can we talk more about that kind of nexus between the imposition of identity and the kind of self-realization of identity in terms of violence? Oh, awesome. When I heard and listened to you, I was thinking about something I mentioned in the references yesterday, this idea of occurring in a certain context. In a simplified version that could certainly as someone who went off the college and came back home and little nuances in my vernacular change. I started using some of those six-syllable words a little bit more, right? And there's nothing wrong with a few six-syllable words, right? As long as we also are authentic, right? That I was also killed, I was talking about family and what that did. But I also put that in context, which is a larger issue around the politic of trust, right? Because what my family really wanted to know, what my friends really wanted to know was could I still be trusted? Which goes back to a history of people who have often betrayed the community at the expense of white power and white privilege, right? So, with that being said, then it's my obligation to respond in a different way. Yeah, I'm not saying I did that when I was 18, 19. But as I matured and grown, I realized that that context looms and those microaggressions that you referenced that happen every day in the hallway, they continue to happen. And they continue to happen within the politics of race, both interracially as well as interracially, right? It happens both within the race and outside the race. And so how we move beyond that, I think is a part of the larger conversation. So I'll stop there. I just want to say one thing too, that I reference the police because I think we see the injury that happens for the people in the community, but also those cops were injured as well by that experience. They often enter into that profession particularly coming from the community, you know, as trying to be another, trying to be something different. And yet they experience that. I would offer you some of the white cops experience that as well. Much like the concept of moral injury that comes through the military where people go off and they're going to serve the country and then end up feeling like they've been betrayed both by the institution, often sometimes by the government, and even themselves. Their own moral ethic and they come back and they can't resolve that. I'll offer that, that injury goes a lot of different ways. It just doesn't go to the other, right, or those who are impressed that also engages the oppressor as well. Me, to engage the cops the points that are laid out in terms of the, you know, lived met a narrative of violence when whenever I had spoken and iterated the word violence today each time at the same time iterated its opposite. Although it's spoken and for me understanding the relationship between the creation of space that allows for violent life is also understanding the possibility of creating space that allows for a more peaceful life. And this is for me, in essence, the idea of restorative accountability, which is in the title now many people speak of restorative justice, and oftentimes related and located very very specifically in a narrow, intellectual construct related to criminal justice. So for me restorative accountability sits inside of the person as well. I mean, I as a survivor of a context where most men in my community don't necessarily live beyond the age of 14. Just because that is true doesn't mean I'm not accountable as a human being as a person to survive and to survive in a way that acknowledge at the hands the structure of violence how it lives as an individual. So this is why it's become my life work and it's why I studied violence and structure because it lived with me from before I was born in a country that was legally called a crime against humanity before I was born. So that's for me. For me, this idea of restorative accountability, who escapes accountability, as Troy mentioned what is absent in our dialogue. Yeah, yeah, who is absent and why and how do we bring that possibility, that structure in us leaders as resources in the dominant narrative, the meta-narrative that I'm relating to socio-economy and in my country for example South Africa is still constructed in relationship to an idea of what is to be a successful white man. So the construction of blackness and the construction of brownness, the construction of any otherness is always a relational construction. And as long as this construction of identity remains rooted in South Africa, for example in the legacy of colonization and apartheid, where men, black and white, feel entitled in the validation of their power and if I do not as a man identified by others interrupt intellectually. When you were 17 14 people interrupted that moment. Not so many, many people who commit that are that lucky and end up in the hands of the criminal justice system. My responsibility is to interrupt that in every moment of my life and as a black man, as someone identified as other I carry that as an extraordinary burden. And with that I think we want to give our moderators an opportunity to say a few words. It doesn't just have to be a question, it can be a comment just how you're feeling, what you're at but just some words and I will leave it up to you to decide who goes first and who can navigate that. I am ready. Some of us were able yesterday to hear Troy speak about some wow in a short time I was saying to you that I'd like to call you by your first name. He spoke about some programs that utilize a trauma informed lens and they have succeeded in really reducing recidivism rates for young men. In fact in one of the stories he told us there was only one incident of recidivism and that young man could be called the failure of the program. However, by telling his story Troy honored the young man's path, his strength and worth and his value in his community and you made it easy to listen and to do nonviolently. Even the title of this discussion includes some very powerful words that bring men into the conversation about healing. I as a female observe often that men, particularly men of color who have perpetrated violence and at that after perpetration they are socially diminished. Their lifelong role and identity as a survivor as Yazir said someone is accountable as a human to survive that's stripped from them as they survive systemic interpersonal violence. Their complex life becomes a one-dimensional characteristic that becomes ready for us as a public viewer consumption. It's one-dimensional character, this violent perpetrator. So I have a few questions that you can ask or simply ponder. First is there anything else that you'd like to share that would help us to foster a more multi-dimensional interpretation or appreciation of human beings? Secondly, what does the role of survivors turn perpetrator? Do they play a role in restorative accountability? And finally the word gender has almost become normal-clectured for female or otherwise non-male genders. Why might you expand on your choice to address gender? What are you now seeing of the new interpretation of gender-based violence in this discussion? I'd like to touch a little bit on what you mentioned about the imposition of identity and realization of identity. And what stood out to me of the discussion was when Dr. Hardin said that we're at a critical moment in history and what I took that to mean is that we're both at a time, like you mentioned, that there's this increased violence against men of color but I also took it to I see that thanks to where we are now at this moment that we're able to be very aware of the situation and we're all very aware of what is wrong with the systems and maybe what we can do about it. You know, where we are and also how far we've come and also touch upon Pete's comment that there is this expectation to fail for men of color. And I just think that to me what stood out that we're at such a critical point in time is that as students, particularly graduate students at such a prestigious program and like we've come through and overcome many hurdles most of the time so we were able to we've been able to identify the sources of oppression and if we're able to identify them I think we should be able to be active on avoiding them and being active within ourselves to know what we've accomplished. So I'd like to just get some comments from you and what you think if you find a problem I got sometimes of color try to take on this role of oppression that is experienced in marginalized communities but is not necessarily experienced within the university and what message that sends to someone who actually experiences systemic violence. So 12 years ago I was getting my bachelor's in history and focus on women's studies and I was sitting in the classes and I also African American women in these classes and I wondered why I was at the case and so I focused my history graduation thesis on racism within the women's studies movement. So 10 years, 12 years down the road now I'm having these conversations with loved ones and friends and acquaintances and having to also reflect that the narrative and the historical story was also in me and then perspective as wanting to make a singular oppressor that the white man is the oppressor and all those other victims and line ourselves to take on the role of victim. Secondary to that is also this idea that well it's been problems been fixed we've had the civil rights movement has happened and there is this policy that has reversed the issue so therefore you know this is only an issue of one bad cop. This is an issue of that particular person almost be deserving of the punishment of his actions. So I don't know if this is necessarily something that could be considered as a response here but I guess my thoughts on this was talking about restorative accountability that violent recovery what does it look like within my demographic for that process to end on? So I first just want to start off to say that I'm from a barbie stricken neighborhood yet even though I'm not proud of that I am still proud of this revival so thank you Azir for bringing that to life because I too am proud of that and in America racism is a default setting to do nothing to go along with the market to claim innocence or neutrality it is inevitably to be a cog and a machine of racist hierarchy the policy makers and the activists that ignore the intersectionality of progressiveness are the heirs to this history not personal races but cogs and a machine that is working just fine restorative justice and the work thereof is historic and heroic innovator trying to go past the engines and the screams that hold such institutions discussed today together reaching for the cogs to see when it can shut down the systematic oppression the quickest as for policy students we are walking into the world once as an innovator as a hero heroine believing as another cog and a machine our communities my communities are failing and what are we doing about it restoring the historical trauma placed on the poor the poor that is constantly charged guilty until proven poor again it's a strategy that can be used to bless the communities that are suffering but my question is with what resources can we restore such a people if millionaires wanted to solve this issue wouldn't it be solved the machine would have been broken plenty we see the poor helping the poor can we ask the heteronormatives white wealthy brothers are they ready to consciously help this movement without being the saving grace how can we strategically facilitate the dialogue and discussion without violence we have started we have researched but now do we have the genuine power to restore the souls of the lost and broken while the machine is still working just fine to produce historical oppression in poor communities both in South Africa and the U.S an example of that machine working just fine in South Africa even though exceedingly violent history and how it is persisting for jazzy and structural violence is distributed by identity it's coagulated in a baby social economic and political life so one economic example is the way in which our social welfare system implemented in 1996 in South Africa is internationally heralded as being a redistributive mechanism by this system's institution so influenced by past and this system the social welfare system involves cash cash grounds on a monthly basis it's widely heralded within South African internationally as part of the solution there is a failure to recognize that this does not redistribute the structures of factors of production, land, capital important factors that produce systemic long-term change are not being redistributed they maintain a Romanian a handful of these are the kinds of I feel like structural we use these phrases and the vagueness although it's important for that abstractness to be able to have a broad conversation to be able to specify and call out and have a reckoning of specific examples of how these structural factors persist you know I think it's really important in these moments of truth and have a few other examples but I don't want to cover my time perhaps later we'll talk you later but I really appreciate as well the trauma-informed approach that you spoke about you say Dr Hanan in my work in early education I know that this trauma-informed approach is so important, crucially important actually in early childhood where physical and logical effects of trauma even proceed the structure of the brain proceeds that lead to psychological effects but I would contend that and I feel daily in my work that this is dealing with symptoms and so I I just feel and really and daily feel like structurally we need to be going beyond those systems and the root causes of why the trauma exists, the violence that presents that trauma-informed I can follow up next it's because I also wanted to thank Professor Harding for talking about or at least introducing today our understanding of the trauma approach and I think that it's something that it's an important question for policy students to consider as they reflect on the lasting impacts that policy can have on how society is organized and how human life and dignity is respected beyond laws whether they continue to be practiced or whether they become abolished I think I know we shouldn't say we but I'm going to break it a little bit but I think as policy students thinking about policy intervention changing the law these practices obviously can transform social norms over time and they do play a role in disrupting violence and political practice but I think that it's important to remember that even that it's not given that legal and policy intervention addressing the legacy of political oppression that led to the devouring of human life and dignity those things are not interchangeable and I think that's something that has been acknowledged in this conversation and so thinking about from the perspective of policy students repairing the legacies of political oppression is a shared social responsibility I do believe that and in particular for people in this room that have been shaped in some way by political oppression we have also navigated through it and have even benefited from the current political structure that continues to deny basic dignity to our friends to our family members to people in our increasingly globalized community whether they are brown, black, transgender poor whether they are women here in the United States or south of the border and so my question that I hope that we can think about is how as policy students we can especially folks that have been touched by these oppressions how we can obviously respect these oppressions and respect our experiences and also sort of understand how we can leverage our current positions our current power in addressing some of these legacies of oppression I'm a senior at the Ford School and over the course of my four years here at the University of Michigan I've seen this institution students, faculty this institution as a whole failed people of color a few years ago some of you guys might know there's a social media movement called Being Black at U of M and there's a lot of like backlash that happened students of color were giving their personal truths about oppression and violence that they faced here at the University of Michigan and it was faced with a lot of backlash from students saying they're just complaining they just want to have a place to talk really just shutting down and acting acting in a violent way by silencing this community so my question is at the University of Michigan such a prestigious university where students can't even express their own narratives and their personal truths how as policy students do we expect to be able to go outside the structure of the university and allow for people of color to express their own personal narratives and allow themselves to you know move up a lot or rather than just continuously being pushed down by people in power so my question for comment I'm not sure which it is we'll find a buddy in it has to do with how people view history and also the social sciences and this isn't necessarily at a post-secondary level I also was able to come to U of M for undergrad and I wrote a persuasive paper for my question writing requirement the need to learn black history as a high school requirement for the state of Michigan and it had to be workshopped in one of the comments was that this is racist and I think everybody when they reach that critical point where they're learning something new and after they've kind of digested the information quite a bit looking back at the past they think to themselves how could I not have seen that so so my question is how can we teach the social sciences better so that we understand history we understand knowledge as being more fluid than the suggestion of learning black history is racist whereas learning black history all throughout K through 12 is not but I think the first thing I wanted to say is that I appreciate the way that this conversation was springed one in the fact of acknowledging the constant presence of violence and how it's recurring in every moment that we're in but also in the description of the ecological relationship between individuals and institutions in their circumstances and kind of going off of Frank's point we don't talk about in policy spheres how the very tools that we're using were actually initially intended for creating fault lines and for creating divisions and for the oppression of communities of color in this nation system we don't think about how the rise of statistics in the social sciences correlate with the condemnation of blackness that existed you know post emancipation in the industrial revolution of this country and the thing I appreciate to also from you Dr. Hardin is the acknowledgement of paraphrasing your words but thinking about the way that people engage institutions as being both an individualizing and a collectivizing process so something where people it's not only incumbent upon the individual but also the institutions they're engaging with and what we fundamentally don't understand is what that engagement is and so my question then you know is first how can we be better at informing people about the tool the history of the tools that we're using in everyday practice in educational spheres but then second in a more kind of implicating us all how do we better think about the way that we engage with institutions and acknowledging the experience of others who engage with institutions particularly when we're making political and economic and social decisions on so sitting with many things many wonderful things have been said and one of the things that immediately stuck out to me when looking at this abstract and when listening is that is thinking about where these systems are coming from or how are they being this machine how is it running and as a white person thinking about my not just legacy of pain but legacy of violence and harm and where is my responsibility within that and instead of individualistic symptom conversation how do we get to that macro system root cause conversation more and more especially at the school of social work I think that's something that we are moving towards and I wish we could pick up some speed and the other thing that I also am holding with that is is this idea that you were talking about Professor Hardin of injury with the oppressor so what does it mean to have been socialized as violent and to be the oppressor in this system or part of that body so so my question is how how do how do I as a white person take action so when we are addressing these systems adjusting requires action so how do we do that actively and authentically and most importantly in an accountable way how do I take action in an accountable way and then also how do we heal and also as a sort of justice practitioner and a keeper of circles how do we also have circles for healing for those with this injury that we talked about so I just know a lot of people said and I'm very appreciative that this event is occurring not in the way that I have this conversation around very many different complex intersections of identity and what's happening around that here I want to speak to or just give a bit of context from where I'm coming from I'm a survivor of violence and I'm also an out queer person and growing up and where I did it was very an oppressive situation to be myself and there were many situations where I had to avoid a violent confrontation as an adult and what I pursue through my higher education and overcoming many obstacles of being a first generation college student and relying on my own resourcefulness to find my way through to what is guiding me to want to know more that in the experience of trying to understand yourself in relation to the world that there what I come to know is that there is a kind and gentle way to do that but I haven't found the best approach that I think it would be a universal single opportunity but to consider that and all that I do especially recognizing that violent situations when needing to be interrupted or called out that is also a moment when you need to acknowledge that who I am communicating with as a human being regardless of their past or my past and I and I see these very separately but yet they're contained in the macro that we're talking about and it's not a narrative of you know your identity is defined from the how it is otherized and different other contextual pieces but I would like to know how to incorporate the gentleness and the kindness of more or less we're missing no no we're good okay yeah so I think that now we have a period where the four of us are going to respond and something that came up for me as all of you were speaking was the certain power that we all have and I was thinking about that and the power that I have with my identity and being authentic to that and I think all of us within this space have some access to privilege if we didn't none of us would be here today and I think that we can all utilize that in different ways and what came up for me as somebody we're talking especially as we're talking about gender-based violence there are times where you know there's been oftentimes I think of my situation as someone that's been oppressed has not had access to everything that they could ever want but there are also times where I can look in the mirror and see the oppressor there especially as it comes to violence against women or violence against the trans community because that has been committed by people that look like me and identify like I do and I understand that with my identity that I'm authentic to I can have conversations that other people can work differently and I think that's something that I think we can all take away in our own circles with our own identity is that we can have conversations that not everyone in this room can have. I can have conversations with black men that perhaps Jen might not be able to have and I think that goes for all of our identities so just holding that in this space is something that I wanted to say. So as a former MVP student I definitely sympathize and I'm happy to hear all of you so encouraged to address the topic that you're talking about but like Pete said I also want to make sure that and encourage you all to think and remember that beyond being policy students and graduate students there were still people and we're all endowed with some type of privilege whether you want to own or not and so we all have the capacity to invoke and impose some kind of violence and that's not a bad thing but it's a human thing but we're not beyond that as policy people. When we go to DC we still take these privileges with us and I think it's important to always consider that and you can't fight it but always acknowledge it always be mindful of it. In my research I study absent fathers I'm cognizant that I'm not studying mothers and I don't think that's a purposeful privilege or a purposeful invoking of that privilege but it's a privilege I may be exercising nonetheless and I have to reconcile that and I think it's important that whatever we do that we're mindful that we're still people making mistakes and we still are not going to be perfect and that we're not going to be absent of privilege and despite occupying you know multiple identities of marginalization I occupy identities of privilege and no one's guilty for that, no one's wrong for that but as policy students you're not exempt from that and it's important to acknowledge that along the way. A lot is said and I want to use all of the space fathers to speak with their cousins focus I'll just suggest one issue where I ended with the idea of an extraordinary burden when I there's the concept of extraordinary burden for me it's not simply the negative concept it's not something I carry as bitterly or sadly it's an acknowledgement but if you have the experience of growing up as being colored black or brown or any other color for that matter that is expressed legally as having a color that it's not the only thought line of identity that defines me I mean I'm defined as male as well I'm defined in so many other ways as poor, I'm no longer in the same way and for me I have a responsibility both as a classical responsibility a gendered responsibility a political responsibility racialized or colorized responsibility to live my burden more gently more carefully, more restorative and so for me the anger should not be expressed in my skin and it begins there but it also begins at the point of large systemic structure and policy and it's at that nexus that's a very complex nexus that oftentimes gets silenced too complicated to discuss or it's just not talk about that now because it's going to be too hard or it's going to cause too much pain or there's going to be conflict I mean I want to have informed and inspire such conversations and I think I want to acknowledge that even having this conversation in this way is part of that interruption that that struggle for finding more nonviolent more gentle way to acknowledge some of the historical questions that exist sometimes very quietly and sometimes very silently as norm and one thing that I learned in my own studies and process is that some of those norms are not always conscious it's easy to run to blame without taking the moment to understand and for me as part of my own my own intellectual process really imposing an understanding even if people try to tell me that I'm person of practice for me I do not distinguish between the intellectual project and the project of making the world a more a less violent place so structural failures are not failures that have to continue students of policy and I consider myself one as well I have a responsibility to apprehend where it's failing and direct my efforts to where it might succeed and not fail in the future but I know that it's not going to be immediate on my skin or in the future and there's no guarantee that I will succeed as a human being apprehended as firstly of color and then secondly as a male of color and where I come from in my country often times as a violent it's often times just violent in that community and that geographic specificity and so hopefully my sound has changed now from earlier on when I present I normally speak like that but when I'm talking as an human being I soften up a little bit so yeah I'll stop it you soften up right you know what I appreciate about Professor Henry is the both end of what he just said is the intellectual rigor and the compassionate heart to this conversation to this work somebody mentioned kindness I think I look at that not from a touchy feely place but from a serious accountable compassion and empathy what's the word that folks use that thinks about the just and connecting compassion so I'll start there going back to the machinery of what do we do with the process with the form that we created that was designed to do a certain thing our great constitution started with many flaws that were amended and three fifths right and even with that we could make that argument that there's still a question about that in terms of how society values and other right a black male's life a black woman's life and so on and I think our engagement is in that point of asking real honest questions around can it be reform does it need to be overthrown and created a new and I think we are obligated to do that with any of those tools that have to be used and I think that's part of the great democracy we live in is to be able to do that so within that I ask a lot of questions around some of those things that happen this guy who said this and I can't think of a name right now but she talked about how the question of gender yes we have to start talking about boys what this construction does to boys right what happens right and that injury that even occurs around living in a highly sexist patriarchal society does to me to my son and what policies principles are in place right and reinforce that in our work with veterans around this issue more part of that conversation has to turn to military sexual assault and how a highly masculized institution creates that which connects us to collegiate sexual assault campus which what happens here and how this institution of these institutions might also reinforce that which then again connects us across the board so then we work to then look at those policies practices and procedures right that transform and change how that happens right it's a lot of work and it often takes those of us who sit on the oppressor side to do but nevertheless right engaging that conversation and I would argue that in some ways it starts with that acknowledgement of injury right and how it happens as well as that injury to even that person in that seat and so I think they're in last possibility so I'll stop there but I think that's where I think about our engagement our possibilities for restoration and our possibilities for the accountability so when I move to general audience questions and just to remind if this isn't you know again this don't though this is an exhibition this is just a space to talk about how you feel the reaction to responses and any questions you have for anyone on this panel or the panel so please feel free to share I have a question about did you know what should mean when you say more injury about your understanding a little bit sure so more injury a simple way of saying it what I mandated or sanctioned to do something that may go against my moral ethic my understanding and ultimately I see a failure in that institution or people around me I might witness something and feel like I don't have any power or control to do anything about it and so it attacks my sense of who I am in terms of my value right maybe my faith, maybe my character, maybe my culture right and within that injury first is the knowledge of the injury but then also what it may mean down the road right so in that veteran military context you know it might mean that I feel I'm so impacted by shame or guilt or distress that I hurt myself you know or I'm unable to reconcile with that piece some argue that it's a healthy response to war that's an argument but nevertheless it is bringing the question of morality and ethic to this conversation of institution institutional and structural violence what is the moral ethic in response to X, Y and Z police brutality when people are collective respond and say I'm hurt by these particular actions what is a moral and communal response to that is it to say it's not my issue it's not my pain or is it a shared responsibility that we take place in being able to do something about it I'd like to add one dimension another dimension to what Professor Hayden is saying it's oftentimes there's a question that is posed in very common terms why when someone has been victimized is the act of that process repeated for example many groups of people who have been collectively harmed get accused of that in different ways and for me that adds that I mentioned to which comes to an injured spirit when communities well made up of individuals are harmed in such a way that even your spiritual and I don't mean spiritually, religiously in a sightly is damaged, is affected in such a way that disrupts the individual first and then the collective ability just for the response the community becomes in a sense paralyzed or constricted and then gets blamed for not being able to resolve their issues one or get blamed for the violence that is endemic and systemic in that space but is not necessarily embodied in each individual so individual number of points individuals can take responsibility and who are not broken who have a different response to that type of social historical policy and sometimes politically induced trauma so for example this is an example of that type of response women who have been through it, many people who have spoken that understand what that means and are speaking back as an interruption but also as a project of daily life a response to restoration but not necessarily restoration in the physical sense of ability but restoring even the spirit that can be broken through a violent impact and this doesn't mean that any particular group of people can be so essentialized anybody can commit violence the conversation is not simply black or white which is hopefully something that I've heard from what I would like to reiterate in terms of this idea of a spirit of an injury to a spirit of a spirituality a moral fabric of society I think about the term I can't breathe and that has multiple meanings there's the statement Eric Garner, the political piece of that but it's also the collective capturing of that moment of injury and the breath of the spirit associated with that so I can't breathe means more than just the literal of the figurative piece of that so how do we engage collectively and take a breath and now in one sentence how do you find the restorative language of the company? so I'm really interested in the idea of empathy and I know we've talked a lot about different types of empathy so between a professor and a class then just kind of at this story at large I was interested to be able to talk about the physical role in trying to inform where she's going or kind of just in this conversation at large I think it's inherent in that work I think it's inherent in the restorative work that happens in circle keeping I think it's a powerful place where that occurs because it allows for this deeper voice and engagement it also gives me permission to take a little bit of the professional lens off for a second be human within that so part of our work is as we get our titles and earn our degrees and get the letters behind in front of our name all this kind of stuff it's how do I still engage the human within that and when I'm in those spaces of just a couple of days ago sitting with the head of probation juvenile probation and sitting with the state's attorney's office it's how do we still engage that human how do we invite others to see as I mentioned yesterday things big as well as things small a friend and colleague a former deputy commissioner with the city of Chicago Azin Ramelis says that we need to everything that everything that that we can count doesn't count always and some of the things that we can't count counts so how do we engage in those discussions to bring out some of these other voices in that work I think that's where that empathy you know comes in if I may piggyback off of that something that Mo brought up that just went next to her as well as the gentleman right there and Pete is the privilege or lack of privilege intersecting gender and race and something that's really helped me become a better person and more empathetic is realizing that while my skin color may not be a privilege my gender is along the lines of that gentleman over there is growing up K through 12 I think a trauma that I'm surviving and overcoming that is an address in education and seeing images of myself that are smart and positive that aren't associated with slavery you may not know this but Katherine Johnson is a great mathematician who was a black woman who programmed the trajectory for the initial movement I think and my niece doesn't know that she's a black woman I don't know that and other races outside of my home don't know that so I think part of empathy that's beautiful is you can see not only do I not have a lot of images of a black man women don't have images of themselves period look at the dollar bill Alexander Gray on scientists the mainstream consciousness of thought fits a very certain dichotomy or a very certain image of yourself so you can understand yourself better so trying to look through the lens of a woman in recent months and weeks has been very beneficial and I think that's the power that has to be asked this might be controversial but what's been interesting looking at and watching the other side since you stand on kind of vitriol towards Hillary Clinton there's a certain meanness that I wonder is it rooted in something related to this gender construction in the real world so coming off of this idea of empathy and then something you had said earlier how do we take a collective breath actually coming up with everything that I just heard two things are standing out to me right now and one is time and another is and I don't mean to be flippant about the use of vileness but the learning process and how it can feel sometimes vile how it can really shape people to the core to learn something new and as an educator I wrestle with that specifically with I think something you said about how somebody responded to your paper and said well but that's racist and I started thinking about you said how do we teach this better I thought some of that is a function of time given that wherever that person is in their learning journey it's clearly not where perhaps they need to be with awareness but how do we meet everyone sort of where they are and how do you do it in a way that's not harmful and I'm not totally sure that harm can be without that we can teach in a way that doesn't harm maybe we can follow this kinder and gentler way but when I think about my own learning processes and the times that I had to step back and say whoa okay there's this thing called whiteness and I'm from Georgia as well so race is in your face southern Georgia not Atlanta so it's like in your face a lot highly highly segregated so the idea that I had to go through all of these experiences to get to where I am today and some of that is a function of time so how can I respect people who didn't live like what I did kind of had the same knowledge and experiences but yet I can't accept that people who don't have that continue to harm so many people and I guess I'm struggling with it which I guess there's some hope as well that I think it's a collective struggle and I really appreciate the spaces like this because through dialogue and being able to talk to each other and listen to each other which I've never heard privately but that's a really I really am going to sit with that but to hear what people are saying I think that that should be embedded in all that we do but it takes time and in policy specifically oh we often ask I'm in the school of education but I'm doing historical things and we say well why don't we have historians at the table with policy makers and I wondered it's the functions of policy that quickly and rapidly it moves what we miss when we don't have what Damar sort of brought up like a real historical understanding of how those tools have been used so I don't want to take me up off the space there's a lot of stuff going on up here there are two things one thing that contributes to the conversation and another that's procedural so start with the formula and I think the idea of our trans-generational trace I want to introduce as well to this concept of not only radical empathy but also to understanding pain trauma even violence as part of the human condition textured into our self and corporal construct it's not simply a categorical conversation it has been with us for a long time as people we construct only for me the idea of living life only with privilege meaning everything is fine there's no discomfort there is something that is new as I my whole life was one the word privilege did not even exist as an English word so in that sense when one speaks to the question of policy and history and has it relates to trans-generational identity trends it is not accidental that one identity category can procedurally mark its history whilst at the same time other identities are at sea I'm trying to find where is it, how do I get to this place as a human being and why is it that I cannot see myself in how this time looks like and this is a struggle that is an issue that has been conversed and voices spoke about it and this is there spoke about it every time when there's been a generation making history looking for a language this issue has occurred and so it's important to think of that as part of the policy making process the historical process meaning not history in the discipline narrowly but history in the making as we sit here and I had to think about that as a young man very carefully because it was very easy to get lost in all the pain of being victimized and becoming part of a painful society and to disrupt to remove myself from that as a thinker whilst realizing that I can't remove myself that it's happening at the same time all the time so for me that was being able to to take a long time and actually I had to I had to read maybe 4,000 testimonies to violence when I was working at the South African Convention Commission to understand that oh my god the actual victims of this process were you know the families the mothers and the children not those who were participating in making the historical moment you know and it took me a long time sitting, reading, editing those stories that testify to loss to understand that oh my god these people testifying to loss actually are the real survivors of the violence and it allowed me to begin to think how and what do I do to contribute to that restorative process because as long as their voices, their sounds, their names are unheard, there can be no counting for that experience no accountability and as long as it is not an accounting where is the restorative policy frame that will come from so that's the one point I would make the second point is procedural and we've been discussing it because we are 20 minutes, we've taken Michigan 10 minutes and we know that we are over time so it wasn't you that would like to stay and continue this conversation, you are welcome and anybody that you know doesn't want to stay, that's okay that's it you're so welcome you know we will not take offense you know so but I mean I would with your permission Matthew and Pete for just a laughter concluding statements either from anybody just very quick sentences to conclude and to lead us to conclusion because that's also part of the restorative circle process and this circle that we've made here is a concentric restorative circle there is a single circle in the middle and then it ripples literally outward so it stands as a monument, as a memorial for the idea when you drop what is it called, the ripple effect that's supposed to be funny but you know I'm not talking about it when you drop the paper into an ocean and it ripples out, we are embodying the ripple and hopefully this conversation will end here, so I want to allow everybody just quickly a quick offensive sentence statement even if it's one word and then anybody but to start with anybody from the audience if you want to just say something very quickly please, I'm not going to lead this chair the last person who decides to stay here outside of the regulated Michigan time that we've taken back there's no law, the law has not passed you know wintertime it hasn't been rescinded yet yeah okay so I'm going to give a hand back to Pete and Matt and external moderation and then we'll conclude it is my sincere hope to be out here at the Ford school that are much needed and they've been ongoing and I think it's our responsibility to more of a lasting discussion than I commented about I'm really intrigued by the way in which you've been talking about trauma and identifying it and saying that people are experiencing it but I think there's something really intricate about the way in which we identify and see trauma as being there and I say that as a person who studies farther than the person thinks about you know I say that when I study absent fatherhood and as someone who comes from absent father background with many peers with absent fathers sometimes I feel like when everyone has the same problem no one has a problem and how do you get people to understand and engage and deal with their trauma if they don't see it as such and what can we say about then in our efforts as policy makers as academics as social workers that work of getting people to maybe be aware of pain of suffering but also not imposing our sense of pain and suffering on them you know who might have told someone that not having your father is a bad thing but at the same time if it's normal for you you'll never see it as bad in the first place so there's more of a question about this idea of trauma and it being normal and how we think about the ways to engage it not just those from it but also the way in which we impose the idea of it one I'm sort of thinking through from this conversation is how metanarratives of violence also exist in relation to constructions of the ideal and so as something to consider for myself as I move through the world to consider how confronting metanarratives are becoming aware of metanarratives of what success looks like or what ideals look like institutionally and professionally someone who has studied social work and is working through with that identity means to be able to kind of also look at narratives of success and ideal and relationship to violence and how they might be violent in their relationship and thank you we're going to talk about like places and so I really appreciated a comment that you made about bad places you know or how places get termed as being sort of holding the potential for violence essentially I think so this is not a question but I'm sitting here trying to think about how the discussion today I'm hearing I hear violence very much as an idea of an embodied encounter with like structures but then trying to think about how are structures and systems embodied otherwise like by the violence it's one individual type of x right but yeah I'm just I'm pondering also these questions of ideals and norms and the bad places are places where there is some sort of a deviation from norm that when I talk about a space and an abstract sense that might be kind of safe that we're talking where there isn't a friction between the structure of that space and what's happening in that space and that then we have other places right that get termed or covered because there is some sort of friction and deviation between this like unremarkable normal state and what is actually involving the present moment I have been struck by the conversation around kindness and gentleness and especially as it relates to kind of privileged frailty I don't know if there's like a better way to put it right but that the first times I as a white person started learning about whiteness I probably experienced like white frailty that like everyone had to be really gentle with me because if they were just truthful and honest I would perceive it as harm and it would shut down my ability to keep moving forward as a white person in my own growth in a similar way that when I talk to straight people and cisgender people about queer stuff it's like I'm a starter queer right like let me introduce you to the concept of people who are not straight and who are not cisgender and let me do it very gently and as a pastor right like part of that is like let me be very pastoral with you and just listen a lot while you talk about things that also are causing me harm to listen to you but you need somebody to listen and it has to be something that's going to take me like baby steps so I just I just want to like hold that or I don't know if it's possible to not do harm or at least like perceived harm and how we experience that just to respond to that I think that's a really good point you make and you know having that sense of you know people are coming necessarily from a place of malice but more so a place of ignorance and like your role and like educating them of what it's like to have someone experience it I think again to the point of knowing that what they might be saying causes harm I think it needs again like a lot of exploration of your own self to know what triggers you what doesn't and like how you're going to be able to separate those emotions and how you're going to be able to move any conversation forward because if if any comment that someone says that's ignorant triggers you to have a violent response or just to shut down and tell them that they're idiots or something like that right it's not going to be conducive to anything so I think that's I like what you said because it resonates with that idea how it's important to be very self aware if you're truly trying to work toward having social change in any environment that needs it I think a lot of points that were brought up today were just powerful in general and just from the previous two comments that were shared in the space I think moving forward when I think about restorative justice I'm always thinking about the coping mechanism because for me and my life I had to cope by myself to be called white cope with it by yourself at predominantly black high school to be called a slave by a 10 year professor in class in front of everyone three times to cope with that by yourself to be called nappy headed to be called all those things that can trigger and I think about when I'm being kind and gentle to explain to people those moments and tell them this is not out of harm this is not out of violence and that when I say the word black or race don't close up just yet but at the same time understanding that this conversation requires coping and where does that start and where does that again and where does that end is there a middle do you have to cope by yourself can you cope by yourself do you use to cope my concluding comment I mean there obviously will be many questions and when I sent out a message and today it's not to resolve every question at least to pose them and to begin to interpret some for me I'm normally very abstract and I try to be less so I mean me, I I have struggled to cope as well and I think when one experiences bodily as well as physical repetitive experiential trauma as social but also as physical but for me words are not words are active as well they are physical we cannot see them but somewhere in the mind in the ear they are being received translated in an organismic way and then reiterated into the physical extracellic world that I inhabit and we as human beings inhabit and so coping it's important to distinguish between holding a space like this and coping with it I don't want to conflict us producing a space together as a substantive space even as a hard difficult space some people call it brave I mean I don't want to go simply to brave because brave and courageous can live together even if it's gentle gentle and kind doesn't mean without power coming from where I come if I did not learn to cope with what happened to my community as I live now and many of you have been to South Africa as well so if I did not learn that language of coping then I would not be sitting here alive today as a survivor taking this issue of structure and violence and restorative accountability seriously now I live the language of that but I also remember the language of those who are less fortunate who did not make it here and when I say yeah I don't mean the Ford School in the seat who did not make it here to brave to go back to this idea of I cannot breathe it's important not to conflict holding a brave space worth encountering terror they're not the same and it's very important to make that conceptual distinction for me as someone who has seen that in the world and if I go home see it from the minute I get I leave the airport to when I get into my front door and it never goes away a bit of stress I'm internalised and I can see it so I think that part of creating these spaces and these dialogic possibilities is crucial if we are going to learn to cope together because as I said yesterday and I would agree with him completely is that I cannot and I would not and I don't think anyone can come to cope with that trauma alone yet it's done communally the restorative bond, the restorative relationship is co-structure always when that isolation takes effect and I have buried at least 25 men in the last 10 years I've been to their funerals who I grew up with which is extraordinary I never speak about it publicly because of the same point that you make it's too much for the public states and I've learnt to be gentle and slow because I know why I exist as an intellectual because I project myself into the future and so for that I have to cope and unfortunately and I've said this to and I say this to others as well even unfortunately it's unfortunately doesn't make any difference I still have to cope with it and I plan to because I care about where I come from and the people who I've left behind as an intellectual responsibility so in that sense I mean restorative accountability coping and when we do so collectively like this for me it is an act of disruption hopefully we can if we can listen non-violently hold each other bravely and powerfully then we are beginning to live a possibility just here right now thinking about the word coping and thinking about the word violence I've taken those away thinking about so there's that term that we use in social work precarious trauma to hear those stories that we see and we take them home and suddenly I've realized that I'm having something, some symptoms because I've taken all that in and how much can the human being take in suffering without feeling something being something that is inherently human even within the professional and licensing clinical context so how do I take care and how do I build solidarity with people in community to be around that and that probably arguably is one of the first searches is finding that community that that is of others who I can be with with a common language a common understanding and who can hold me within that black, white, whatever in the beginning it was black men, black women now it's multiracial ethnic, gender you know, sexuality all live wrong, right because we all share in this space like collective the part of it is finding that and so I was thinking about the fragility question because I think it's very real certainly I've dealt with in the beginning talking and having these conversations I would be really okay with somebody being very upset okay deal with the struggle and even deal with men and ego right so and over time taking on that what does gentle mean and then in leadership creating the space to hold that that comes up fragility across the board not just from a white space but also even for a person in color to be vulnerable and risk revictivization and retraumatization within those spaces because that is often the unspoken theme that happens when those conversations happen as a person walks out so so how do we structure allies points of solidarity as we do the work expected that harm may occur and that if I follow the mantra of do no harm or leave a space better than it was that I walked in then what is my obligation and responsibility to that and I think that's where I think about these spaces but also even institutionally right how we set that solidarity up there's some practical pieces that I won't get into around doing that thinking about that but I think that's a very real piece so I'll just say this and be quiet um is that I'm thinking about disruptive technology that's the business for it and that this is that technology in this world that we move in and so that is what I invite this space and the people leaving here is to consider what might be the disruptive technology in the policy framework right that creates this transformation in our world and I just want to also just really lift up those of you and my comrades in this conversation as this moment of inspiration and this moment of truth that we share here that I truly plan to take this concentric circle back to Chicago so we're going to wind down the spirit of time before I offer some announcements and thank someone to give Pete a chance to say um um and I want to first say that and I want to thank uh Yazir in the 10 years I've been here on and off as an MPP and now a PhD student and I'm very happy to see um the spirit of disruptive and the norm that 10 years ago we've not had a conversation like this where people could talk about suffering and coping and all the components of the fragile human spirit um conversations that would have normally taken place in Yazir's office um in the bathroom at home you know crying to your friends like can be had in this kind of space and I want to thank Yazir for advancing that in the time that I've been here um left and came back um and I want to thank the panelists for encouraging such a discussion over that time that you know when she came 10 years ago this was a space that this could not have happened and now it came and I want to thank both of you for encouraging that effort um and encourage you all to also keep this conversation going and we're all human like I said and we all suffer we all have feelings um engage those you know don't forget that you know beyond your discipline now you're human beings and it's important to remember that and that's all we can be acknowledged at the end of the day with the people we interact with um so I'll pass it on to Dr. Hardin as they're making the final comments but I also just want to again acknowledge and thank you all for participating in this discussion can we give it up for a two moderated I'll just say this real quick one quick sentence um I want to acknowledge my ancestors our ancestors right um who showed the pathway into resistance and collective struggle right the healing and restorative process so we look to history um you might find some of our answers and I want to acknowledge those of you in the first the complete first circle that it's not the easiest position that you know in this conversation so I want to thank you for being courageous um and joining myself uh Troy Keith and Nat in completing this conversation and thank everyone else who came and said we're next to have our uh in this space and I want to acknowledge that oftentimes that's not usual but it's hopefully something that is an example of what is possible and what we can do in this moment and hopefully that it will translate itself uh as we leave as experts and leaders and thinkers um so thank you very much I understand that the conversation is not completed cannot be completed it has to be in my opinion ongoing um we've completed and we've completed development and development necessary so uh thank you very much for making this possible and for spending time and uh putting in the effort that you have um as thinkers and women beings who experience some of the traumas that we've talked about as as identifying so many different ways um um women, men, black and white, brown and red, pink and all sorts of other things um um yeah at some point it is my responsibility and I've learnt this to transcend of all of those things and find my ability to see another you being able to talk with them so thank you very much for engaging me in this dialogue and you know for me to take uh what Dean Collins has also created uh to create the possibility where you can talk to other human beings in this space so thank you, that's it