Welcome everyone to our Thursday Night Poem Jam. We appreciate you being here. All right. And tonight is a very special edition of Poem Jam in connection with our One City One Book Campaign. And so it's sure to be a powerful night of reading and we thank you all for being here tonight. And if you have not heard, I can't imagine if you have not heard, but I hope you have heard and will be in the house March 16th when we celebrate Chanel Miller and her book, Know My Name. And Chanel is an artist and an author and a survivor. And her story is the Stanford campus rape and her subsequent trial and judicial system and her whole or deal with that. She went viral on her victim statement that she read went viral on Buzzfeed, and then she wrote the book. So please it's not going to be recorded one time one time only. So come check it out. All right, whoops, I didn't mean to do that. Let me try that again. What did I do? Okay. Welcome to the unceded land of the Lonnie right raw mutish tribal groups and families. We want to acknowledge the many raw mutish alone tribal groups as the rightful stewards in the lands in which we live and work here in the Bay area. And we are committed as the library committed to upholding and uplifting the names of these communities. We acknowledge that the library is not a neutral institution and that we stand in solidarity with the black lives matter movement, and ending our own systemic racism, and working on our own racial equity within our own house the library, but also throughout our community. And we do all this by providing factual useful information. There are lots of reading lists and lots of events. So I will later on put start putting some links in the chat box about all of the great stuff we're doing at the library, and all of the stuff about this campaign, including a link we are partnering with SF war, which is SF women against rape. We know these are very powerful and triggering topics. We know that the adult is very, you know, one in three women are assaulted sexually so it's triggering for a lot of people so we will put links into SF war who are on the phone right now if you need them. And also be putting my email address if you need anything from me I can help you find resources. And next month's poem jam will also be a one city one book inspired poem, poem reading so please come check out all of these amazing women on the topic of sexual assault and sexual violence against women. So very powerful. The amazing thing with one city one book is we get to have a lot of events around that, and we're going to be hosting the gorilla girls March 24. And I'm really proud of this series and again, I was just telling the poets that the programs that we surround our topics of one city become almost more powerful than the actual event. So every Monday, March and April we're hosting a series called know your name, including some amazing women and some amazing people doing amazing work on the topic of sexual assault and survivors and healing so we'll be featuring. No, the rape documentary a legendary film to a lot of folks will be doing a panel on international transgender day visibility, our transgender community is high on the statistics of sexual violence.  All the way through April. So many amazing events that we're super excited about one that I am totally think is going to be amazing and powerful is our partnership with SF war sharp which is a department underneath the human rights department. We're training for first responders and how to appropriately deal with sexual assault victims, and they're going to do a panel on our unhoused community and the sexual violence that they face. All of these people are partners for this one city one book so it really is a huge campaign something that you might not know as a, as just a member of the public is that we get to bring Chanel Miller to our schools. So we'll be having a one on one talk with the students of mission high and Balboa high school and this will be student led and I'm just, you know, constantly blown away by our youth and I gives me hope. So there's a feminist club at Balboa high school go Balboa high school feminist club, and then youth outreach workers which is missions high does a school to work pipeline. I'm not even going to talk on the school to prison pipeline mission high school is working to get our children to work and in amazing places and do amazing things such as mental health care and the health field and in libraries and so I'm really proud of those things that we get to do with this campaign. All right, and I think that is about it as far as my announcements and just you know because this is a safe space and these are tough topics we just want to make sure that you all know we do have a patron code of conduct that we can go fall back on. We have a tech host here and myself will be monitoring the chat. All those feel good things that we go through take space make space. What you learn here goes out names and privacy stays here. All right. And with that, I'm going to stop sharing. And I'm going to read, I'm going to be the first reader. Oh, my God. So I'm just going to switch up a little here so I can see what's going on. All right, so my poem is called us attaining things we thought we would the photos from when we sailed high on the sunship. I smile consisting of snowflakes and sunshine. Our shadow that links has disappeared. What without him, are we lost souls that once claimed the other as their prize, mending the broken gashes of living the ascension of you as I descend hard like sweet bitter love, belted out by the queen. This is followed by its partner tears. When gravity's pulley brings me to your lap. Thinking with my lips rationality is not logical. When love becomes the valid argument. Our snapshot reminiscence rolled tight in their cylinder coffin awaiting escapism. All right, I'm turning it over to the magnificent Kim shock everybody. Thank you so much for the magnificent I can manage today. Thank you all for coming to this. Many of whom could have easily been readers tonight as well. And I know that, and I've been talking about this a lot. In the last couple of days, the, the topic of violence and sexualized violence against women leaves no one out. I could have booked pretty much any woman poet I know, and they have experiences and material and all of those things, and I know that. And then much the same way that whenever I do an anthology I know that choices have been made that I've made them, and that there are a lot of other ways to go nothing like this is ever complete. And I just, I appreciate you all for being here, whether you're reading or not reading what I need you to understand about the group of women who are reading tonight is that collectively this. See, it was, I asked everybody for how long they've been putting both this month and next month. And our collective poetry experience is more than the amount of time that any of the local colleges have been active. These are experts, and collectively, we are deeply expert in poetry, and in our own experiences women and being in women's body. Some of the material is rough. And that is absolutely like, and everybody understands that that it's up to them like how much they can give in the moment so sometimes you think you can. So I just really want to appreciate everybody who's here and everybody who's reading, even more than I usually do which is a whole lot library. There are as many stories of dysfunction and violence that there are individual people. And I feel like it needs to be acknowledged that are our upbringings are often a grooming process to make this accessible. And I just really want to put out there that break, even in your own head for your own body break with that grooming, it takes an act of will. And I really just can't say enough about how in awe of all of who I am. Margoni. Rather than giving people individual accomplishments, I just want to say, there's a handful of laureates and former laureates here in the room. There are people with very impressive degrees from very impressive places. There are people who have been working in the poem line for a very long time and to do it better than anybody else. And just as a group. Jackie Rogoni has a book, a new book, which I hope she'll fold out the waves of people. And if you would please welcome Jackie. Thank you, Kim. Thank you for gathering us all together on this important topic. I also want to thank Anissa and John in the San Francisco but library for having the courage to spotlight this topic. I also want to support the partners who sponsored this reading and made it possible, as well as SF war for being here as I know this will be triggering for a lot of people and I encourage you to take that support that's in the chat, and I may find myself calling to I especially want to thank my fellow poets who are here who have the courage to put beautiful words to ugly things and to share them here. I thank you for sending me this amazing book. I had heard about it but I had never read it. And I think what's true is that so many of our details are different, but so many of our themes are the same, and there's so much truth and so much that I resonated with so I thought I would pair a couple of passages from the book that resonated and connected with some of the things that I wrote so the first thing that I wanted to read words from Chanel Miller riches for my first home. She says, whenever I hear a survivor say they wish they'd had the courage to come forward. I instinctively shake my head. What about your courage fear of retaliation is real. Security is not free. It bothered me that cover coming forward should feel like heading toward a guillotine. I don't think that most survivors want to live in hiding. We do, because silence means safety openness means retaliation, which means it's not the telling of the stories that we fear. It's what people will do when we tell our stories. Tonight I'll be reading from my book seven skirts seven skirts is inspired by incidents of upskirting which is a form of void voyeurism. And it is not illegal in many states as of the publication of my book that's coming out next month. The first poem I'd like to read is called. I decide not to stay quiet. But what about the kids. Family shame is a knot black hole in every nearby thread into its tangle. My lips snip just close enough to release us all. The next poem is from a sear a longer poem called seven skirts. And after an incident of upskirting, I was not able to wear a skirt for a very long time. And so this poem is an act of reclaiming skirts for myself. And it goes through a series of seven skirts that I wore throughout my life and this is the I won't read the whole whole poem but this is the first poem. First part of the poem one camel suede backslit knee length. I stand at a stove in my a line and heels back when he still spun me to solve so trumpets, and I still made him Pesto gnocchi back when he did angry and I'd say sorry sorry back when he hugged hello from behind and I couldn't see him hit record. Back when I was his wife, before I was just one of 200 up skirt videos on his hidden hard drive dressed in my suede effort. And the next poem I'd like to read is called. Actually I'd like to read a passage from Chanel's book. Why did this one strike me and it. So many things just made sense when I read this.  And insisting, there must be something wrong with her because that would never happen to me. And this poem was written after a restraining order was denied. The judge was female and both of the attorneys were also female. This poem is an erasure poem and it was, it's written by blacking out lines of restraining order. denial. It is called request for restraining order denied an erasure. I have personal knowledge of all. Hereafter, hereafter, hereafter, I am living with 100% physical custody of my history. And this next poem is called shared physical custody. It would be so easy now to be demeanor. I am building my children over to that sex offender. Every other weekend, Thursday evenings and Father's Day. I could dry up acres with my saltwater, but then I'd be the one with a solstice heart and ex-husband Hades, he'd be off with the kids riding bikes in the dark while I withered. I'm not going to suffer that way. Not while I can winter the toy on berries to a juicy red. Love manzanita flowers out of my still warm cut. Even though I have been Persephone, grateful for every parsimonious gift, savoring each needed seed. I wasn't counting. And the next poem is called. I took my daughter to the women's march and had a blast. I said pussy, until it was funny.  Oh, I'd been angry. All right. So good and furious. I spat instead of spoke until the right side of my brain buzzed on the regular with migraine. James said, get angry. But that weekend, I was having too much fun. On the plane, knitted ears poked up all the way from 29 F to one a. We nodded pink hellos to Metro strangers, not strangers, wished each other have fun. We smiled for selfies with our Congresswoman few should ear to toe. Nobody got angry. Breasts to back hip to hip among hundreds of thousands. My daughter feigned boredom. The way a 13 year old, whatever's her way for a while through an overwhelming world, unable to escape being squished onto a page of her granddaughter's history book. If one person had shoved or God forbid fired. We've all been trampled. I was that close to responsibility for my own child stuff. Whatever. She needed to find a bathroom. We excuse me excuse me through that enormous ball of yarn. Nobody got angry. Nobody groped or grabbed at our delight. Not for that weekend. Anyway. Two krill swing together in the multitudes feeling safe. No matter how looming the chasm of a killer whale.  I just have two more poems. And this one is called even my orchids. Announce me to a sage and feng shuied my new home until I stopped obsessing about locking the door. Friends brought housewarming orchids that purpled the place with optimism. Before going dormant. Three years nothing. I had a glass of a bloom. Though I kept watering. Only those wide green tongues. And they didn't budge. Mouths frozen a gate in the last words they uttered like nobody listening. Why bother. They've been whispering all along in their furtive vernacular from pot to vase across the room. Not now to risky. Wait and see. It is the speckled. My gentle one. That says enough. Braves blooming. And suddenly. All five orchids are sending out stocks. One after the other. I keep it coming keep it coming syncopated fireworks exploding flowers. Held in. Long enough. And before I read my final poem. I don't really love this quote. Chanel Miller which is nobody. She wants to be defined. By the worst thing that's ever happened to them. This is called new sewing project. You stitch a morning along the deckled edge of a mountain range. Cut with pinking shears.  Doug from a bargain bin. Wind your bobbin. Start in without a pattern. For your chiffon dawn. You see sequence where there had been lies. Not one more day. Could you tailor that wife costume and nude lipstick. Of someone else's fantasy. So you get to work. Blind needles and machines. Stitch by stitch.  Until it lasts. You slip into the sky of your making. Trim the last hanging threads. Twirl around in the mirror. Thank you. Wow. So many lines in that. I hope people get your book. Because that's a lot. Okay. Is somebody who I heard a lot about before we ever met. And I'm delighted that we did. And I'm just going to let you. Let you do things. You've been working on a lot of great work lately. I don't think one of those things is a book, but I could be completely wrong. I've got to apologize to everybody. I recently had my second COVID shot. And I've got the brain fog. In a real way. So. If I mess up. Anyway, we. I'm mute. And. Let's do this thing. All right. All right. Wow. Well. Firstly, I just. Really just so grateful. So grateful to be here. I'm just such great humility. To be here. You know, it's a, it's a. It's women's history month.  What a great honor. What a great blessing it is to be here. With all of you. And also with our Bay Area communities. I'm really humbled to be zooming in from. Which is the Lashan. A lonely name for this territory for Oakland. From the East Bay, California.  What a great blessing it is to, to have met you and to have worked with you. And to know your work. I just wanted to, to let, let our community know. How much it went out for Pacific Islander communities. We had an event that the San Francisco public library. Organized and also supported. Was so much hard. Right. A community that's so invisible, like Pacific Islanders. And when we had so many of our young people. Were attempting suicide and we came to Kim. We said, Kim, can you help us?  That we deeply respect. And our children are in crisis. And Kim said, let's give you the space. Let's give you the opportunity. Let's give you the opportunity to tell the stories. Kim really so much is such great humility. Thank you again. And thank you so much for this invitation. You know, Anisa, I also want to say thank you so much for your work. I am sitting here trying to, trying to keep a, you know, a steady face because I knew I was coming on soon. So I am really excited that when I finally get off that I could just really listen. And as everybody who knows me well knows, I'm going to be crying a lot. And you know, Jackie, I was listening to your work. And when I hear your work, Jackie, I just wanted to say. My life. It's actually what I would say to you as well.  My life. My life. My life. My life. My life. Thank you for the great love. Thank you. We would say, we would translate that as Tongans into our Indigenous police system. Thank you so much, beloved warriors, beloved sisters, for doing your ancestral calling. So I just wanted to start up with a poem. It was written a couple of years ago, but it's important for me that still has so much meaning because it's really about the work that I do and the research that I do. And then this book that I'm manuscript that I'm trying to finish, it's actually about the Tongan Mormon family. So for us Tongans, Pacific Islander, we have one of the highest conversion rates into the Mormon Church in the 20th and 21st century. And in the work that I do, I talk about what that means to be a Tongan daughter in a Tongan Mormon family. And so this first poem is called LA Stories. It's called LA Story. It was published a couple of years ago, but nonetheless a story that's still relevant. The bright lights of the city surround her like flies. She mumbles a prayer learned in Sunday school and holds on tightly to the cold air. Hope funnels through her fingers like their daughter, her parents couldn't keep. Two weeks ago, she fled her home in Utah, fleeing the grasp of the Mormon Church. And her parents, Shane, freshly pickled like the apricots church leaders taught her to preserve every autumn. A skill that promised to make her into a good wife. Tonight on the corner of Sepulveda Boulevard, bright lights expose the blue bruises on her body. Disguising her as an older woman. She is her mother, her grandmother, lingering in dark corners, abandoning guests and the tedium of polite conversations. 3am, 3am, she telephones her mother, pleading for her life, for a cusp of warmth to quell the cold. She imagines that their shared silences, histories of bruised abdomen and crushed collar bones at the hands of men were reasons enough to reconnect them, bury the aching distance and reunite them. But the silence on the other end hangs and festers like a wound. She is reminded that in her family, there are only sons. And then the next poem, the next poem is called short story of the sacred. What happens to the spirits of our Tongan ancestors? Our Tongan sacred? Once they are cast as criminal and forgotten, what happens to the spirits of our ancestors after we have severed vah and cast them away from our homes? Excuse me. Erase them from the flesh bodies of salt water that archive our memories.  Do they live inside the prison walls of our Tongan amnesia and the simplicity of our silence? Or do the spirits of the dead, our Tongan ancestors, our Tongan sacred grow weary of loneliness? Do they become angered? Please forgive me, guys. I'm having a little bit of web problems here. Here we go. Water is growing into acres, aching without end. Floods of mourning created by the hands of European and U.S. greed and militarization, courting the native as if we were ever consensual lovers. Oh, the seduction of surrender.  There is a taste that lingers aroused, a flesh of memory that the colonizers are unable to mine, although they have tried and tried and tried. It keeps refuge for centuries inside the salted corridors of my copious Tongan women's thighs. Rainwater, vimele, sweet water, the black sand caves of Oholay are moist with the young leaves of sea, mohokoi, ripe fika fruit, saplings of kape, talo, ufi, and manioke. Enough to feed generations. Kabirut and galoa offered to the female god, fellahune, our mother, circles of octopus body, generous like ceremony. Circling the heartbeat of our Moana Nui, Tracing Wah, genealogies from Hawaii to the shores of Seguritay, the Ohlone sacred site, the occupied land now known as Malayho, California. Yes, yes, let me reach inside the darkness, but only night, vayi, dafu, dafu, water trickling, crooning without end. Touch the heartbeat of Tonganess, our sacred, the beginning that leads me to tell you the ending of the story. The spirits of our Tongan ancestors, our Tongan sacred, the Old Ones, names of those of us that were criminalized, raped, killed, and forgotten, the names of Tongan women warriors, they and we. We steal the Mormon missionaries, matches and kerosene, and burn down these motherfucking prison walls. And so the last poem that I wanted to end with, I wanted to really say, thank you so much, Kim Shuck. Thank you so much for your guidance. Thank you also just for your encouragement and for your mentorship. And this last poem is, is for the West Berkeley Shalemount. The West Berkeley Shalemount, as many of you also know here in the Bay Area, is currently under, is currently being occupied. It is right now there are, it's actually surrounded by barbed wire fence. By barbed wire fences. And there are signs that say, do not enter. The West Berkeley Shalemount is America's 11th most endangered historic place that was recently given to, named by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. And it's also one of the most, it's one of the oldest Ohlone sacred sites here in the Bay Area. So the poem is called from the West Berkeley Shalemount to Moana Nui. Moana Nui is Oceania. It's the Pacific. Or to translate into English, Moana Nui is people of the ocean. The Pacific Ocean, which is the largest body of water here in our earth. Story number one, the desecration. The desecration of the sacred water. Violence against her native woman body persisted upon his arrival. He brought out all the instruments of progress, baptized and renamed her Berkeley. Her body submerged under him. He is heavy and unrelenting as empire. Her plated black hair, he wrangled into platitudes, he drew descent strands to silence. He is the weight of asphalt, a lonely parking lot. His ownership of her, he terms as freedom. Story number two, the Tongan Mormon Baptism Ceremony. I am an eight-year-old girl at my Mormon Baptism Ceremony in a chapel, in a small chapel in the middle of the town. My hair plated and split into a division so inconsolable, my mother tenderly tied the wounds with bright white ribbons to mark this moment. That the missionaries termed as the coming of the light. Under a leaning red fruit tree outside the Mormon Chapel, hungry dogs mate in the early of the piety inside. His priesthood authority intrusive, like the bleach baptismal water, surrounds me. My black hair contorted in their nets, severing the cycles of memories until I am no longer able to discern my breath from drowning. He renames me. He renames me. Declaring the moana on behalf of his gods, bounded my feet with ropes made from woven human hair, lined with spears of well-boned tide with knotted foul, baptized and converted me into a carcass of an obedient daughter and wife. This moment, he proudly records in his missionary diary as light. And then story number three in the poem, it's called hashtag, we're still here. The West Berkeley shell mound. Her native woman body rests under asphalt. Luminous mana silenced by a parking lot. Man-made and mundane.  Oh, I'm the battlegrounds who chin and we are under the hands of missionaries and mercenaries.  The flagrant sour taste in our tongues. Yes, when we thought I was lost. When we thought I was lost. The sacred was there. She picked up our memories ancestors left for dead. She fed our mouths with the flesh of sweet acorn and saltwater from her breasts. Until we grew strong. Fearless. She weaves the circuitess dance of death and birth into her long black hair. Dream times exchanged through collective breaths from our one and newly to who chin. She coughs origin stories birthed before his arrival. Innumerable constellations. They grow in our alters like the flowing yellow poor garlands in our hair. She is survivor. Creation. Creator. Always here. Yes. We remember the stories of us. After the missionaries and the mercenary. Are gone. Thank you so much again, beloved warriors. I just before just just just leaving. I wanted to just just to let you know about the recent campaign. If you can you have some time. Please take your wonderful selves or your families in your pot. Right. And you're doing this social distance. Please go down to the West Berkeley. Share your prayers. If they're in little forms of beautiful poetry or personal memorabilia. Please share your prayers to help to protect the sacred. So thank you so much.  Thank you. As always amazing. Our next poet. Is again, and I could say this, and I will say this for everyone of these people. Really formidable poet. The Connie and I are connected. In more ways than that. She's been an incredibly powerful friend. No matter what energy level she had. In moments. When I wouldn't have asked. That's been amazing. Bernie post. Thank you, Kim. I'm so grateful for you also our connection is really important to me. I feel the same way. I just wanted to thank Kim. And San Francisco public library for supporting this really important program. I think that. Especially now in the pandemic, people who have survived. Sexual assault have particular kind of either loneliness that might remind them of other loneliness. And so I think this is so important for all of us to be part of it. And so I'm very grateful to be joining you a fierce and amazing poets. Very grateful. Thank you. I'm going to start with a poem is from my book, prime meridian. And I'm showing the book because this is, because mostly about sexual assault and childhood. And don't mind saying because of a nature of this program that my offender was my father, which has a lot of particulars that make it difficult, but I will start however, with a poem in the book that I wrote to kind of encompass all of the things in the negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative.  And so this poem is to have my all encompassing poem. It's entitled to all of us who it was my brother. It was my uncle. I was alone. Someone was next in the next room. It was my father. I was young. I was in third grade. I was wearing something in my drink. I was wearing winter clothes. I wasn't wearing any clothes. I was on my way to work. I was on my way home. I was afraid of him. He told me he would fire me.    He told me I teased him. He told me I would ruin the family. He told me no one would believe me. He said nothing and stared right through me until I was dead. I didn't tell for years. I told and was not believed. I have never told. I have bad dreams. I avoid parties. I avoid dark rooms. I avoid long lurking glances. I avoid skirts or winter or summer or seasons where my skin remembers violation. I drink. I don't eat. I keep it quiet. I tell my friends. I take pills. I don't walk alone at night. I hold my lover's hand. I worry too much about my kids. I need to tell the truth. So I hope that kind of helps us encompass all. There's something that happens in the nighttime. Thank you. There's a way of shedding the night that's so traumatic because of the post-traumatic stress that often comes with it. And so this one is accessory after the fact. I destroy the evidence upon waking. Wash the blood from bad dreams. I make sure there is no subconscious splatter on the curtains or floor. The blankets are pulled from the bed washed over and over. I cover the mattress with a loose sheet. I hide the evidence, the shards of night. I hope nobody notices how I left my body fled the crime scene. I burned the dreams with one lit match the ashes of a single nocturne falling out of your mouth.  And walk around like a normal person and people always ask you kind of what's wrong, but of course you don't really feel like going into it. It's really hard kind of thing to carry that and then kind of be a normal society. This one is about my father. Sunday in September. I saw you exiting the grocery store today. It's been over 20 years since we've spoken. But I still see you now and again. I think this time you recognized me first. But this time I was the one who made you look away. I was the one who I used to call father. At the other end of the parking lot, six police cars barricade the entrance, arresting some guy who stole a basket of groceries. The siren lights unmistakably quiet and measured. I watched you get into your car. A slightly hunched over old man holding two half filled bags of groceries. A Korean war veteran. Rapist of children. The police are now driving away and an old silver Buick. The police reading Miranda rights to someone else while I watch you drive away. My father finally passed, but it was very daunting for me to live in the same town as him, but yet I wasn't making, having him make me leave. I'm okay on time. This other one is about, you know, there's a relationship with the offender, especially if they're very close to you and then the family. So I'm glad that I got this thing to kind of survive to have breakfast with your rapist in the morning. But this one was about, my dad went to the lake a lot to fish and he would get drunk and come home. And so this one is called forgotten war. And many of you may know the forgotten war was also the other name for the Korean war. Forgotten war. You stumbled around the house through most of the 1970s, sometimes muttering things about young Korean girls. I didn't understand. I was in the middle of a dark water and wouldn't return until there was no breath left in that lake. I asked mom about it once. I knew you had been in a war, but didn't understand it had anything to do with your off center gate, the rage you held in your right shoulder, the passing out at seven PM on the couch. One day I went to get a popsicle in the garage refrigerator and you were standing there. One hand is always on the Pat's blue ribbon. I asked, did you ever kill anyone in the war? You went silent, looked away, but I knew already. I knew it in the way you laid the hooked fish on the counter, the way you cut one long line down each body, severing their forgiven skins, taking the eyes out, saying they were a delicacy in other countries. You seen in me how I relieved I was, they could not see you anymore. I knew the lake would someday disavow the fish as I have you, but at times when I drive past a murky lake, I still see a stumbling over the soul soaked fields of our Korean, our forgotten war. And soul is spelled S-E-O-U-L. You create these relationships because we're associative beings with things that happened while you were being abused. They're these things that you kind of displace the trauma onto. So I have a lot of poems about the experience of my father fishing. So this one's called deboning a fish. I wonder what the fish saw in my father before he gutted them. Were they relieved to know they'd soon be out of misery, relieved to stop the gasping for air, to cease the futile flailing around the countertop? Did they wait within themselves and pray for the long knife? Did they remember the lake? It's muddy bottom knowing they can never return. You can tell me and I already know that fish don't understand these kinds of things, but neither does a small child. At some point, don't we all beg for mercy? I think I have a couple more minutes. So taking this innocuous object of the hoop hoop, and I wrote a poem about that. As I said, these things that we think of these objects and how they're related to the trauma. And sometimes for me, I can't even have salmon because of all the fish stuff. They all know. We're making salmon. If you want to leave, mom, just leave. Hula hoop trends 50. In 1967, there were a few things I wanted more than my own cylindrical smooth plastic neon pink hoop. Like a story, I climbed inside the sphere again and again when my waist was still straight and bony. Countless times I dropped it to the back patio and the scratches around the rim always appeared after the first few days of summer. I never understood the chup chup noise and what places of the earth were inside of it, but it must have been the deepest black. I believed it had something to do with the reason my father walked towards me so often, watching intently the movement of my hips, teaching my body to understand the irrevocable forces of gravity. Each week I learned better how to navigate my own talents. I already knew I was a sinner, as mother told me at night, for not saying my prayers. But I knew better than she what was more important. I practiced all the time. I was bonded to the idea of retrieval. How the hoop would drop below my knees, spiral downwards, how desperately I needed to predict descent. The summer's past, the patio covering crumbled in unpredictable patterns. Eventually I started practicing in the side yard, but he found me anyway. I forgot how to pray, but each day I would rehearse the understanding better each time the undulations of a broken dance, the sound of the death rattle. I'll close with a poem. For me, this poem is about getting distance from the trauma, but then not getting distance from it. But how you kind of view things years later. And when I escaped, when I was 18 and never went back, I moved down to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. And that place whenever I go there is like a refuge for me of kind of feeling escaped from what happened. So this one is Coastal College Town. I leave the hotel room early looking for a small cafe.  I merge onto the same freeway of 30 years ago, the same one who took me away from home. I am wondering again if I got everything from the garage, the sheets from the closet, the letters you stole from me, pictures of myself in grade school. I knew I would never return. He knew it too. The fog breaks and I find a place where the locals go on my way out, throw a dollar in the tip jar. On the way back to the hotel, I find a hidden easement between the small cottage beaches. I find a few narrow steps each slightly covered with sand, each a geology of fine gravel and salient sorrow. I think I did get everything. I think mostly about the sorcery of the word whore, your voice low and moist in the back of my ear. I think I got everything from the garage, the sheets from the closet, the sheets from the kitchen, the sheets from the kitchen, the sheets from the kitchen, the sheets from the kitchen, how every day, decades later, I am thankful for small easements, how the fog suddenly lifts itself from an old road. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to hearing Elaine. Thank you. I'll mute myself. Thank you so much. I feel like we should have known each other before we actually met. But, well, I'm just going to ask her to please unmute herself. And share words. Thank you so much for being here. Prepare to be done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to say thank you to all physicists so healing for me and amazing. My staunch. Response has always been like water.  So though it may be triggering for some. But. We have to normalize conversations on this. I'm a firm believer. And so I talk like. It's normal to talk about it without shame. So I'm going to read an insert from my book. A cried out laughing which will hopefully, you know, soon, we'll see what happens. The dates of changing and things, but. And just the background story of it. This is when I guess I, I. Officially came became poetry spoken. I don't know. But I confronted my uncle when I was 12 years old and I don't call him uncle. I call him Charles.  We were at my grandmother's house and, you know, he always tried to corner me and growing up. I just thought that that was the thing to do because he was doing the picnics and all, you know, the classics. So. I'll start. Bear with me, y'all. I too got my shot the other day and I'm like fever and chills right now, but I'm going to get through this. I was a fast learner, but when exposed to adult situations and issues, it can be a blessing or a curse. Alcohol was always around me all the time. My parents were heavy drinkers. I would go around taking a sip of Jimmy Walker red with Coca Cola and wrangle beer. I should be telling you how I became an alcoholic, but I witnessed firsthand what it could do to your body. One time I did get a little tipsy, but new enough to drink tomato juice. What 10 year old do you know that knows how to improvise when there's no tomato juice to go out in the garden and eat a tomato? I mean, Google wasn't out then. Not at other stuff. I just didn't mess with because Miss Barbara and my mom were forever talking about someone who died from an overdose. Hell, if it wasn't drugs, alcohol, a violence of some kind.  Now, families are made up of predators. And I'm not saying all, but there's a significant number of family members or close friends who prey on children. When you come from a large family made up of mostly men and you are the baby girl on both sides, they teach you how to fight and to stand up for yourself as though the enemy is outside. Families are not prepared to deal with uncles, especially the ones they look up to. So I had to take matters into my own hands because I was taught not to be a victim. So who I am 12 years old confronting Charles, like an adult, I don't know where the words came from. It's not language that you could hear from a child, but I just knew I could no longer take the abuse. Now this may be triggering for some, but it also may give you the strength to stand up and not be afraid. We were in the hallway of grandma's house. When I approached him and I said, everyone looks up to you. You are always doing picnics and getting family together for special occasions, giving me hush money as though that nullifies you touching me. You have destroyed my life to the point where I could barely function in relationships. You will go home and act as if everything's okay. See when I was younger, I didn't know. I actually thought this was love and that this is what you are supposed to do.  I know this is the last time you will ever put your hands on me. I don't care who believes me or not.  There's no greater threat than the one I'm throwing down today.  Today I let my mom and brothers know who you are if they didn't already.  I only wish others will stand up for their daughters and their daughters to come. I felt good to take back my power. I wrote those exact words in the journal that I was keeping and would refer to it whenever I needed to. I wrote a couple of poems. Out of that. 2016 was the worst year ever.  She waited until she was cured and went back east. Within months all of her siblings died and my mother is now the matriarch of the family. And laying the woman that I'm named after she went into the hospital and my son was there with her grandson to wait to let her older son know that she had to go to the hospital. So he heard a noise went downstairs and it was that motherfucker. My son went to jail. My son almost went to jail which meant I almost went to jail. As a result I had to leave because I was going to jail and so I wrote this poem called Lord Hear My Christ as a result of the trauma that ensued. I'm going to tell you how hard it was to live through so much turmoil. Soiled in family secrets and lies and no matter how hard you try to break the cycle you become a part of the family ties. I can't function in relationships because they always end up in goodbyes and Lord I just want to release these tears and the unions and picnics found me isolated and alone. Yeah I just write for the picking, I have no clue what it meant to be truly loved. Now I'm just afraid of affection, hugs, I met with rejection so to my closest family and friends it's nothing personal it's just perception. But here comes my blessing. See when my son was born I was torn because I didn't know where to begin until I and he taught me how to smile and I laughed, especially when I saw the dimples in his chin, woke up those feelings of innocence. So I guess you could say that I was reborn again, not much for religion, but our spirits share a connection. And though I am a child of God, you must remember that I am still human. So for my son, I will shortly die.    And I don't know where I guess the gene wilted or whatever have you, I am not that way. So when things happen, I'm like, no, we got to talk about this. We have to address this right now because I got to get this out.  But it took me a long time to learn why my mother and my sister were the way that they are. And I didn't come to that realization until recently of how I needed to be different for them. So this is called the bond separated by four years. So by the time I was born, she was already hooked to the elements of family. So she protected me. See, she knew patterns, she knew truth, she knew how to lie, she knew pain, she knew how to fight, she knew hate, she knew how to love. She knew how to love, well, at least me. She knew what it meant when mama said what happens in this house. She knew who not to take candy from. And when we were alone, she knew to take me with her. She knew she was the mirror of mama's mistakes, her escape, a world where she could feel safe in, where her magic lets her shape outcomes and secrets. We share a language that only sisters can understand. I exist in these two worlds because she fought for me to have a voice. See, when I was young, I didn't know the meaning of sacrifice or how for words, you're just like mom meant a life sentence. And if I am to change the scope of their vulnerabilities, then I must wear these women like a badge of honor. Thank you. So I'm gonna do this last piece.  And so this piece is simply called My Sermon on Amount. To date, I think it's safe to say that millions of women have died by the hands of their husbands, boyfriends and even their children. Their crimes, a culture of oppression. You see, violence is a condition, not a religion, but if you need a 12 step, let me take you on this road to benediction, you see. He without sin, let him cast the first stones, but I guess you'd be that exception. Well, who needs your seeds when Mary's given birth to Christ through immaculate conception? And if it wasn't for Eve, would there even be a resurrection? You see, the curse is not that she deceived, it's that we are treated less than. So it's only right that when he rose, he chose to show himself first to a woman. Did not new heaven save Moses to deliver you on to the promised land? Did not Deborah come to judge with honor and respect shed in light on God's master plan? And if it wasn't for him to tell me, where would Joseph stand? And in order for Islam to survive, did not Khadijah stand on that front line? What about that Abba rebellion before women, by women in 1929? You see, the paper gave a low number and said that 50 women die. Well, multiply that by infinity. And well, welcome to my reality. You see, violence against women is violence against women is violence against women. There are no technicalities, no mercy and honor killings harder behind your religion just to get your fixing from Apache to the Zulu nations. Now I'm not drawing bloodlines because this sisterhood be my congregation. So I think it's about time that we break bread and partake in this communion. Sip the wine and toast his to our reunion as the mothers of earth. And rarely do we put each other first, so sisters. I say the time is now. So as I walk upon this mountain, my knees bent head down. I'm saying, father, why must I die by the hands of the ones that I bore life? Cause I, I just don't understand. And if this is my fake master, please send me a new master plan.  So from a moment you entered that birth canal, you would nurture with love, honor and respect and protected by women. Because before man, you were child back when we were treated as equal and seen in his likeness and image as one. So no matter your color law, God, God is a prophet. You are still my sons.  Compliments. Thank you all. Thank you. All. Oh, thank you. It just occurred to me that I decided to put myself after a lean. Just saying. We're going to call that pilot error. Thank you. This is. All right, you. Motivating. Woo. Moving. OK. So for those who don't know, run Kim. So I thought about this show a lot. And I thought about reading some stuff from this book, Murdered Missing, which is about murdering and missing indigenous women. Because it's all part of the same conversation. And then I thought about reading something else. And I'm going to read the something else. And then I'm going to end with a very new thing. This piece is called Preserves. And it's a little long, particularly for me. This morning, the hill I live on is tucked into under dark smoke. California is burning. The street cat I feed has been sick on the porch. And when I walk outside to have a moment with him, he looks at me with half-lidded, sticky-looking eyes. It's probably not going to be my favorite day ever. And I am capable of being pretty damn cranky, often with the side of snarky tongue. There's a tape of our current national spectacle playing over and over on various radio stations. Losers, a spate of commentary, then. Losers. Mariamni's body was kept in honey for seven years, as the story goes. I picture honey beating on her skin, what it does to hair. Whenever I have honey, I make a mess. I find sticky bits in my elbow hours later. Out of love, they say, he kept her body in honey to preserve it. Melified corpse. Or corpses of some honey. He was supposedly used as a warm cure, though. Honey meat has been used for the same thing in this year to get. I doubt Herod's body was creating medicine, nor do I believe that he was acting out of love. I think he was keeping a relic. Love, they say, in honey, like figs or apricots or some other fruit. Some people need to preserve memories. Some people need to keep pieces. Something about the time spent indoors, the poisonous snarl of the air, my own unpleasant mood, has me reviewing my relationship with the world. I was taught to be pleasant, and I'm not known for being pleasant, but the family did try. I move too loudly.  This never makes sense to me. Truck drivers not known for their walk, but OK. Not ladylike, I suppose. The walk on my heels. I dig them in with each step. Something. I also talk too much or not enough or about the wrong thing. And I accept that wholeheartedly. I also now make a living with my words and have a small collection of rewards for talking about the wrong thing. I will take my next message with me. Thank you. What does the name Mata Hari pull out of your imagination? It's not expired, comes to tell mother wrongly convicted, executed, or sensuous. Seems to be popular or occurring words. She had much sex, reports assure us. She had much sex. Her trial testimony assures us she was an erotic dancer, sexist. Then they convicted her of being a double agent and shot her over. No, she became a hosting ball that she makes regular visits into all kinds of art. She has admirers, even now she has admirers. Some things that it's one of these admirers who stole her mummified head. Yeah, mummified head. After they shot her, they cut her head off and put it in the Paris Museum. Her head's gone now, so we took it. Where does one keep a mummified human head? Conversation piece in the living room, maybe? Box in the bedroom, maybe? Office of the sliding panel controlled by a button in the desk drawer, like a creepy Thomas town. Does the new owner look at it and condemn wild women? Or peek at it to self-seize in times of stress? They touched the notorious red hair with a stinger at their ability to force a connection with someone's name. The air smells reminding me of my dark room experience. I was taking a photography class at a local museum and I was the only student. I was eight. Two hours of hunting interesting photo targets followed by an hour in a dark room with a 50-something man. On my first day, he asked me where I was ticklish. I told him I wasn't. The next day, he tried to prove me wrong, digging hard fingers into my knees. Other places. Confession. I am ticklish. Additional confession. I am a mutinous cut, and I have been for some years. Final confession. I decided not to react. I stared at him with my best bailful glare, which is actually pretty good. He stopped trying to tickle me and made me scrub every inch of that dark room. I am now photo-reluctant. I don't like taking pictures. I don't like having pictures taken as me. I think these things are related. They might not be. The whole experience was clearly inappropriate. The question is, how inappropriate was it? If I've been more welcoming when I have been less sensitive, it could have easily been arranged by my attitude and that could have triggered him to molest me. But neither thing happened. My glare. My magical shield plus three glare is mighty. My partner is a photographer, by the way. We don't have a home garden. When I found out that Julia Pastrano was going to get a dignified burial, I sent out prayers and burned trimmings. Pastrano has hypertrophy, because it's an intangible hypotragic, which are the sorts of congenital conditions that have inspired crowds of all eras to provide appointments for her. Her uncle sold this to the Stoker. She spent the rest of her life performing under a number of offensive stage names, where she sang and danced in front of the audience. He had a son who looked just like this. When the two of them died, they were preserved, stuffed, and toured around the world until the 1970s, when she was displayed in Sweden because people found more of that kind of gesture. She then moved to a sale coffin in Oslo in 2013. The governor of Sunilala had to sit home and say, human dignity is the thing measured out in portions determined by someone else's authority. The odds of good that most of the people here are afforded whatever dignity they are allowed because of someone else or some law, rather than a global belief in inborn rights, in particular, if you find yourself other in what calls itself the first world, ground of unusual appearance, poor, odds are that you do not have an absolute right to your body and people will do whatever they want with it if they think that they will get away with it. Maybe, yeah, that's the way things are going. So that's my courage back. I'm told, I said, be careful of what you teach me. You told me that years later. Be careful what you teach me. I am going to outlist you because even then I knew what the limit was to this game. The game. I will keep hurting you until you cry. That's important. Knowing full well it would stop at that time. I told him you can take blood and I'll give you a stick, but I'm not going to. And I didn't. For 25 years.  In high school, the guys who said, maybe we just won't let you go home and I looked at them to what had already become the left side that was the right side. Then laugh in their faces. Be careful what you teach me. A few years later, at a bar in London ordering something completely inappropriate and waiting for a friend. The guy at the end of the bar looked at me and said, you're a killer. And I smiled at me. But you be careful. It is possible to live through things you don't deserve. One morning, giving birth to my final son. In labor, an argument that the doctor who was there on the spot, I started crying. And laughing at the same time. And I'm pretty sure that's why I was absolutely crazy. But that's a gift my friend gave me. And I'm not done talking. Thank you all so much for being here, for being powerful.  Thank you so much. I hope everybody gets the help that they need to come to the place that they need to be at. Please thank all of our readers. Manisa, who needs to make herself visible again for a moment and get applause. Jackie. Hello. Queen. Connie. Elaine. Thank you, John, for always being very, very displeased in all of these endeavors. Thank you all of the audience for being here. I saw nothing disrespectful in this chat. And I am grateful. And we're gonna do another one of these next month with a different sort of support. This is the hard work that needs to be done. Please, if you can, unmute yourself and share a round of applause. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you to everybody. Wow, very powerful. Man, just have a look at the library. Kim. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for the courage. It took a lot of guts to do what you did this evening and I applaud your courage. Thank you. I'll chat. Amen to that. I just put in the chat box, the link to next month's home jam with another group of amazing readers. As well as all those other chats and resources and my email, if you need to get a hold of me for anything, pitch me a program. I can help you. Let me help you. I miss you. Help you with resources, books. And John, thank you for being back up tonight. Appreciate it. And thank you all for being here and being so brave. Thank you, everybody. It meant a lot to me to be here with all of you. Thank you. Beautiful. It's so nice to see you. Good to see you again. I'll text you soon. Okay. Bye. Good night, everyone. I'm deeply grateful to you. Thank you. I'll hear you. Lots of love. Thank you, Kim. Thank you, Anisa. Thank you, beautiful, beautiful warrior poets. Stay safe, everybody. Let's leave it on that one.


I lost my belt, YouTube. Can't imagine getting a sponsorship right here. You've only done this for 15 years. Squat, dude. All we do is squat.  I think I'm gonna go high bar, belted, heavy single. So we did, what did we do? High bar Monday, front squat Tuesday. Yesterday I did a low bar on the transformer bar, beltless, and we're very tired. I'm very tired. But we're gonna hit a new low, 201 yesterday, 202 today. You know, I think fluctuate. And then, yeah, so we'll go a little heavier. See, we just handle single, some over four, out of nothing crazy, some over four, and then another pull day. So back, back buys, back buy, back buy. So today's video, we're gonna talk about a little bit about sumo, why it's cheating. Conventional, when, why, how, why you should pull one or the other, and actual truth about the muscularity. So whether hypertrophies your goal, strengths your goal, general athleticism, or powerlifting specific, we'll dive in. We got, Eddie likes it, dude, look. Is it worth it? Let me work it. Dude, there's a banging playlist. I got the playlist on today, dude. I wish we could share a good, I know, I wish we could share a good music with you. Oh, it's Missy Elliott. I didn't make the playlist, I should, but it's like a Spotify, just like Missy Elliott dance hype or something, man. It's good. It's your, if you can pick it, pick it there, pick it there. This is good. The whole list good though, just wait. The arguments. You mother, freaking TikTokers are making about deadlifts not being good for hypertrophy, but then all of a sudden everyone thinks RDLs are like the best glute and hamstring and back exercise on the planet. Is that there's no eccentric in the movement. It is true that eccentrics are having double the stimulus of a concentric and eccentric lift will allow you to build more muscle. But guess friggin what? You're allowed to control the eccentric on a deadlift. There's nothing in the rule books of life and the unspoken rules of the barbell. And you want to see some frigging hamstrings in? How do you flex them?  Teach me how to flex the hammies. So long story short, you can deadlift and use more weight. It's gonna be more stimulus, fatigue on the body. You can control the eccentric so you can get the benefits of the eccentric portion of the lift.  I think it's a great strength move too, just like a tempo or a pause squat or anything else. Controlling the eccentric and the deadlift helps. Not to say that you must deadlift to build muscle. There's a lot of other ways and hamstrings and back exercises you can do, but just to throw them out the window makes no sense.  Statistically, a bench, a squat, the risk towards reward or the risk being injury is so incredibly low on all those movements. And they're the exact same on all three movements, statistically. So if you think deadlifts are gonna, you're gonna get injured, I better not see you heavy dumbbell pressing, I better not see you benching or squatting. And I doubt there's statistics on it, but I would highly argue anecdotally and just from 15 years of this game that squatting, deadlifting, the statistics of the risk is the exact same as a heavy ass leg press or hack squat. I guarantee it. So don't come at me with the risk versus reward. If you don't like the exercise, just friggin' say it with your chest. Yeah. Still probably like a, you know, I'm trying not to get fired up, trying to chill out a little bit.  Even if you're competing, squatting heavy three times a week, you gotta save it. So, RPA, eight and a half on a no hike. More deadlift fun facts. Seabass said you guys are being sissies if you don't want a deadlift. I didn't say that. I may or may not agree. But one thing is a big like misconception is everyone says like, oh, I can't deadlift heavy and I can't do it that often because it tires out my CNS. But evidence also shows that squats, bench, deadlift, they'll all tire out your CNS equally. The difference is that most people don't have the skill or the musculature in the squat or the bench to lift the same amount of weight. So you're moving more overall weight in the deadlift. That's why you feel like your CNS is more tired. But the truth is, again, because the squat is concentric, anti-centric movement, you're starting at the top, deadlift you're starting at the bottom, it's actually less overall systemic fatigue. So if you wanna get better at deadlifts, just like any other lift, doing it twice a week isn't a bad idea. Now you have to control for intensity, how heavy you go and how hard you push and volume, how many sets and reps you're doing.  And the CNS's excuse is all placebo and like no seabos, plus seabos, all those things work if you believe it. So stop believing that because actually it's just not true. Tell yourself you can deadlift and get stronger more often and you literally can't. I don't know why it's like a thing. People still talk about like sumo being the best glute exercise. And I do think a hip hinge in general is really, really great.  If you're truly built for a sumo, it's actually probably the least advantageous to target the glutes in a workout. You get some glute mead which is this little guy on the top left, but that's not really what's gonna give you like a dumpy. We want the glute max which is like all hip hinge stuff. So as much as this angle right here can change under stress, under load, you're gonna get more dumpy work. And so that's probably conventional. So conventional works the dumpy a little bit more, slightly more hamstring, because same idea, this angle's gonna change a little bit more. And again, some of it does depend on your leverages, but most of the time, dumpy, hammy, conventional. And it's actually more of a quad exercise with the sumo. Because again, this angle's gonna be the same, but where the tension is, we're gonna be extending our knee when we sumo deadlift. And then a lot of our back, our lats, they're all stabilizing. Erectors, if you're doing things correctly, are stabilizing. They're not like main movers or secondary muscles, but you can still build them. Some of it is genetics, but a lot of my erectors, my back, and my traps are all done and built via deadlifts. I haven't done a lot of shrugs my entire life. One thing that's like semi-antidotal or like semi-hypothesized, even Mike history tell, I think, talked about it. Biceps, and I believe he said there's one study done in birds. I haven't read the research on this, my exact self, so don't quote me. But about hypertrophic effects of a muscle being in a very stretched position. And I think they did it on birds and the anecdotal evidence is a lot of gymnast. They don't do a lot of weight training, but their biceps are in extreme stretches, under load isometrically for a very long time, and a lot of these athletes have huge biceps, and so that's shown in birds. And that's something that I've said and I've read before, but for traps, you don't have to be shrugging and make your traps a main mover. They're not a type of muscle that's made to move or explode. They're made to stabilize. And so in a deadlift under heavy, heavy loads over time, they're stabilizing in a strength, length, and position, and that builds traps best.  So how, when, why to choose what stands. If you're a competitive power lifter, I suggest learning how to hip hinge properly with conventional. Just learn that movement pattern for six months to a year, and then you can experiment with sumo. There are different body types that go into deadlifting, sumo versus conventional, but typically if you have a shorter torso, meaning hips to shoulder and longer arms, you're gonna be set up to be a good deadlifter. You'll get in a better, more optimal position than people like me with very short arms and long torsos. The main difference then is if you have really long femurs, short torso, femurs meaning your thigh bone, and longish arms or even average arms, and you have the mobility to kick your knees out pretty good, you'll be set up for sumo. If you're built kinda average, you're somewhere in between, chances are they'll be similar for you. So the whole argument of sumo being easier or cheating or whatever is just a lie. That started, I guess, because strongman doesn't conventional. I don't really know why it even started. Yes, the range of motion is shortened for some people, right? Because you're moving the bar less distance, but if that was the case, then wide grip bench is cheating. And then why isn't everyone squatting with a super wide stance? The fact of the matter is range of motion, the distance you have to carry the bar is one factor. You know, finding rigidity, finding leverages within different stances, grips or widths plays just as much of a factor than the range of motion. And I know it's somewhat of a meme, but if memes carry on forever, they become true so people just don't know. So that's just simply not the case. See bum, come fight me. Just kidding, I don't wanna fight nobody, but you're literally wrong. If you look at the world records over time in powerlifting, they're probably broken down pretty close to 55, 50%, both conventional and sumo. Sure, some of the biggest weights now, Jamal Browner's absolutely crushing his sumo, but that's just because he pulls sumo. Dude pulled like 980, he's also pulled like 900 dimensional. The man's an absolute savage, regardless of stance. And similarly, look at his squat. His squat stance is very moderate. If it was just range of motion, trust me, more power lifters would have their legs way out to squat more weight, but it's one tiny factor in the scheme of things. Everyone would bench out here, they don't. Some do, some get away with it, some don't. Eric's photo held the world's strongest bench for the very long, long time, with 722. And he benched very moderate for what his size is and his girth. New videos every Tuesday, Thursday, man. Be sure to give this thing a thumbs up. New clothes are up at 3sb.co. Third Street Barbell off your Norco, man. I'm Salam Alikum, outta here.


I'm James Milan, and you are watching our Public Affairs series, Driving Forces, which is a series that profiles those who have chosen to spend part or much of their energy in social activism. Today, I'm joined in the studio by Noah Stang Osborne, who's chosen, well, I think at least one of their chosen paths of social activism is in the transgendered issues. So I just wanted, first of all, to thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate your being here. And I wanted to ask to begin with a kind of, to ask for a kind of gender 101, by which I mean, if you, what are the things that you, as an activist, steeped within the community, would like somebody who knows very little to nothing about these issues, what are the first things that you would want such a person to understand? I think one of the most important things is that you can't tell someone's gender by looking at them. There's no way to know except by asking. And that's a hard concept for a lot of people, because we think, oh, if you identify as a man, you should look in a way that I can identify you as a man. But there's no one way to be a man or a woman or a non-binary person. And I think that's very important. And when you say that, do you mean that it's really that people are making assumptions and not being willing to ask the question? Or is it that people are making assumptions and don't, not that they're uncomfortable asking the question, they just want to go with the assumption? I think the assumption is the most comfortable thing to go with, asking someone can be awkward. And in a lot of situations, there's no real reason for you to know someone's gender. You don't really need to know the gender of the person making your copy. You can use they, them pronouns for them, then you can move on. But if you're friends with someone or you're dating someone, you would want to know their gender and their pronouns and you would want to make them comfortable. And so what, for instance, makes you comfortable? What pronouns do you prefer to use? How do you identify? I use they, them, and he, him pronouns. And I am non-binary and transmasculine. And transmasculine means I guess if we were to think of gender as a spectrum, which is not how I usually think of gender, but I think it's the easiest way to explain how being transmasculine works. I was assigned female at birth when I was born. They said it was a girl, and they were wrong. But I see how they got to that point. And as I grew up, I realized that I was not a girl. And although I am non-binary, meaning I don't identify as male or female, I am closer to the male side of the spectrum. Yeah, so you would be comfortable, again, as you've already said, using pronouns or having pronouns that are he and him as well as they and them? Yes, I am. And I asked, I know that you know Valerie Overton, who I had the pleasure of speaking to recently as well. She is one of the co-chairs of Lex Pride. And I asked her a question I'm going to ask you to. And I hope it's OK, basically, to ask these questions coming from a place where I hope that I'm not ignorant, but I also don't understand things from the inside in the way that you would. Do you have experience in your life so far? Have you found effective ways to help people who don't usually use they and them pronouns and want to? Want to be supportive to those who would prefer to identify that way? Any helpful hints, so to speak, or guidance? I would say the biggest thing is to practice. I think the mistake a lot of people make is they call, like they're mentally still referring to someone by a pronoun they no longer use. And then they expect to be able to switch when they speak out loud. When you think of this person, you need to think, OK, they, if those are their pronouns. And the repetition will help. I know people who have said, oh, I'm an English teacher. You know it's grammatically incorrect. But that's, it's not true. Not only is English a living language, it is still changing, it is still growing. But singular use they pronounce have been around since the 1800s. They haven't always been used to refer to non-binary people, but someone whose gender you don't know. But they are not grammatically incorrect. Is that right? So in fact, they and them has been used for hundreds of years when a person is not sure of the gender of the person that they're referring to? Yes, like for example, if you found a wallet on the ground or something, you could be like, oh, whose wallet is this? You know, I hope they come back to look for it. And that would feel natural. You might look inside and see an ID, and that would change your perception. But if you really didn't have any information of them, you would probably use they then pronounce. Right, we certainly, I see what you're saying, because we all have a habit of using they and them to be impersonal. We don't know who it is we're talking about. Oh, they say such and such. But in this case, again, attaching that to specific people who are singular individuals is, again, awkward for many, many folks. And I hear you, practice, practice will help. So tell us a little bit about, because we are always interested in this series and in general, in finding out about people's particular journeys to get to where they are now. And in your case, just tell us a little bit about how things have gone in your life so far to get you to a place where you identify yourself as a transgender activist. So I, many people knew they were transgender from a young age, and I don't think that I was one of those people. My mom says that she knew that I was transgender from when I was very young, because when I was younger, I told her that when I grew up, if I developed breasts, I would cut them off. Oh, wow. And for her, she was like, oh, like, I might be raising a transgender kid. And she was not bad about it or anything. But my biological father was very much against transgender people, and he helped raise me until he lost custody of me when I was 14. And so he had a lot of these views about how transgender people are just genuinely bad people. And that's what he told me a lot as I was a kid, that they only wanted to use the bathroom to hurt children, that you shouldn't use their pronouns. And so I never imagined as an elementary schooler or a middle schooler that I would be transgender. And after he lost custody, I started meeting more queer people, and I started realizing, OK, he was very wrong about everything. And when I was 16, I came out to my mom, and I was like, I think I'm going to use they pronouns and she pronouns. And that changed into me using they pronouns. In the neo-pronoun Z, which is spelled X-E, so it was Z-Zim, Z-er, in a sentence that would be like Z is currently doing an interview. It is Z-Zir decision to do this interview. And now I'm using. I'm interviewing Zim. Yeah. And now I use they and he pronouns. I didn't, Val is the one who really introduced me to giving speeches and being on panels. I didn't know Lex Pride was a thing until one day when I was volunteering at the farmers' market, they had a tent there. And I was really interested, well, partially because it's my job to make sure everyone has what they need.  But I was like, I think I like girls. It didn't go very well for me. And so I didn't know that Lexington had this kind of support. And I started going to meetings and originally I just wanted to work with kids. I wanted to help run a support group for young, like questioning children. And one day Val said, can you be on this panel? And I agreed to it and it went really well. And that was two years ago when I was 17. And since then I've done panels and I've given speeches with Lex Pied and for Transitive Remembrance. And I also worked with Yes On 3 to try to convince people to not take away what rights transgender people currently have. You know, I'm struck by the fact that your reaction, even as a young teenager, was I wanna work with people who are, you know, for whom I can help them. Like I've just been through something or I'm going through something. It's not, like you just said, it didn't go well for you. Things don't go well, things are difficult. Things are hard, you find strength in yourself, et cetera. All that is a great personal story of growth. But the fact that your reaction to that would include, hey, I wanna get involved helping others similarly situated to be able to navigate this given what I've learned and what I know and what I have in me. Again, that's the kind of thing that folks that we talk to through this series, that's a common theme that you turn your own experience and the adversity that you deal with in your life into a desire to work on behalf of or with others. Again, to make things a little easier, perhaps, for them. Is that, am I overstating it or? No, I think you're right. Ever since I was young, I've known that I wanted to help kids and help make sure that they had a better childhood than I did. And that's why I'm in school. Yeah, so you said you're in school. Where are you in school? I am an art therapy major and biology minor at Lesley University in Cambridge. And is that something that you also knew from an early age that you would wanna do or? I knew I wanted to work with kids and in psych when I was 13, but I didn't know art therapy was really a thing that someone could major in until I was 17 and had already been accepted to Lesley. And I decided I wanted to work as a guidance counselor because my college essay was about how I would improve an elementary school so that school can be like a safer, more comfortable place for children to be in. And Lesley really liked the essay that I wrote and it made me think, well, maybe I can change schools. Like maybe this doesn't just have to be some sort of hypothetical. Like I could help from the inside out. Yeah, I mean, I am interested to know.  Still relatively fresh in your mind, your own experience and the experience of children at different stages of their schooling. So in other words, elementary school, middle school, high school, those are our divisions. Are you, do you have opinions about where we need to start making changes to make things better? Is it as early as elementary school that we really need to concentrate our efforts? I think it is. I'm always inspired when I go to speeches and I get to talk to teachers and educators after and they say, hey, these are the things we're doing. And it's like, wow, this would have meant so much to be like 10, 15 years ago. And I think some of the stuff that is happening right now and some of the stuff I'd like to see more is more gender neutral bathrooms, more casually using they, them pronouns. So I know some people who will just include them in math problems, like Noah has 10 apples if they give five of those to Joseph. How many apples do they have left? Just small stuff like that really makes a difference. And another reason I want to work in schools is because as a kid, I didn't know that many disabled adults. And I definitely did not know transgender adults. And I think transgender adults. And I think that being able to see people who are like you as a child is very important. So you can see that there are different ways to be an adult. You don't have to grow out of it or something. Yeah. So when you think about your future, it will include either as therapy, therapist, art therapy or guidance counseling or something working with kids in these ways again to help their own journeys be a little bit easier than they would otherwise be or than you endured. How do you see the activism part of your current life moving into the future? I'm not sure how it would work in the like very distant future. For the more short term future, I'm excited to continue giving speeches and being on panels. I think that's what I'm good at. And I think it's helpful and like it feels good. I like giving speeches. I like being on panels. I like talking to people afterwards. That's my favorite part, always just connecting with people. And what are the kinds of events that you would give speeches at or talk on panels? Who are the audiences? What, you know, how much do you feel like you are validated by the reception that you're getting versus having to deal with people who just don't get it, kinds of things? I think that the audience, so I've spoken at Transday of Remembrance a few times and I did panels with Yes on Three and I've done some smaller events just like where they would watch a movie about transgender people and then they could ask questions afterwards. And I think the audiences at those events, they are really, they want to learn more and I think that's good. Like the intent is there, they're there to learn but they can still say some very hurtful things. At the last speech I gave, I wore earrings and I had a lot of people come up to me afterwards and tell me that I looked like a girl and it was very hard to use my pronouns when I looked like that. But at the end of the day, I'm not a girl.  Right, right. So again, it's about, it sounds like it's about acceptance in the most fundamental and also the broadest way. Again, not making assumptions, instead finding out what the reality is for whoever it is you're interacting with and accepting and respecting that. Definitely, and I think what's hard for some people is acceptance in most cases has to come before understanding. I don't need an ally who knows all the lingo or who knows all the words I use to describe my gender. I just need someone who's willing to be like, okay, if this is what makes you comfortable, then I can do that because there's a lot of words to know. Like I transmasculine five years ago, I didn't know what that word meant, but if you can still see me and just be like, okay, I know that Noah isn't a girl and everything else about this kind of confuses me, but I know that it would make Noah uncomfortable if I use she pronouns for them and so I won't. It can be that simple. Well, it is, I mean, it is both simple and incredibly challenging for people. But I think that you're absolutely right that, and I'm so glad that you put it that way because that's a very simple. Acceptance comes before understanding and if you can start with acceptance, maybe there's a better chance you get to understanding for sure, but at least for you in interacting with others as you move through your life, being able to count on acceptance would change, I assume, your daily experience. It would change everything. Let me ask you to, again, this I know, there's no easy answers to these things, but again, thinking forward for a sec, what are you most optimistic, what gives you the most optimism or hope and also the converse, what do you worry about or concern, are you concerned about or really hard to see how that will get better? So both the light and the darkness, what do you see going forward? I think I'll start with the light. It definitely inspires me when I get to see other activists doing amazing work. You had Valerie Overton here. She's amazing. She is the reason that I really feel safe to give speeches because she's at every one of those and sometimes I need to talk to her after about things that happened and she's always amazing when I get to hear about the work that's being done in schools. And speaking to people who had an easier coming out experience than me always really helps. And right now I have a very accepting family. My mom, my brother, my grandparents, they are all doing their best to use my pronouns but it took a little time. So seeing other people have an easier coming out experience definitely gives me hope. Some of the less bright stuff, I still experience a lot of transphobia just in my everyday life with stuff as simple as bathroom use. At my school I use the men's room and usually that's fine. All the students are fine with me in the men's room. When you say all the students are, does that mean that the staff or the adults, so to speak, less so? Definitely, most of my teachers have been men. So most of my teachers haven't been shocked to see me in the bathroom but one of my professors this year has only called me she all semester no matter how much I correct him. And if I saw him in the bathroom I'm not sure how he would react. I've had public safety try to prevent me from entering bathrooms. I've had people run in after me and be like, Miss, Miss, do you know what bathroom this is? And it's like, yes, it's the one I've been using for the last year and a half, I got this. So that's hard. And then of course with transgender day of remembrance which was very recently, we say the names of all the people who were killed by transphobia this year, which is as it has been in past year, mostly like trans women of color, especially black trans women. And like in that way I do have some privilege because I wouldn't say I have male privilege but I definitely do not face the discrimination that trans women face. And it hurts to learn about this sort of stuff and to learn about the people who are dying to talk to my friends and hear the stuff they have to go through on a daily day basis. And of course when you go onto the news there's so much false information being spread around about transgender people, about how we're sick or we're dangerous and that is certainly disheartening. I know after I voted in the election that question three was up. I cried, I just cried in the car with my mom because for me question three was about, it was about many things, but like personally how it would have affected me is my access to medical care. Question three was about transgender rights in public spaces and hospitals count as public spaces. It would have made it legal for a doctor to refuse to treat me because I'm transgender. And as a chronically ill person who has to go to the hospital more frequently than most people it could have killed me. And that was terrifying to think about that people would have voted in a way that could kill me just because I'm trans. Yeah, it's, you know, there are, I mean easy for me to say I don't have to deal with hardly any of what you have to deal with every single day. But it is definitely an uphill struggle for us as a society. It's certainly most so for folks like yourself who have to navigate this literally every day. And we were talking before we went on camera that there is also the fact that even at Leslie, you know, a college of an institute of higher learning that particularly caters to a segment of the population that wants to in general go into the helping professions, et cetera, that you find that you can't even access and can't get into in a wheelchair a certain number of the buildings. Also trouble with your apartment, you know, access, et cetera. So clearly, like I said, every single day you are facing these things that we hope are going to, we're gonna be able to make better. We, as a group, as a society, gonna be able to make better for you. In that way, on the level of kind of societal change, things that could happen through legislation, et cetera, what do you feel either coming from your own life or what you've observed would be like the most urgent and dramatic place that we could make some real changes? I think for me, something that I think about a lot is police brutality.  I think that would be a big thing because I think that would affect a lot of other things. Imagine a situation, well, I'll imagine a situation where if someone did something to me that was illegal that I felt comfortable to call the police that would change my life because you can put laws in place and that's great, but if the people who are supposed to be enforcing the laws aren't, one could argue that they are doing their job, they're protecting private property, they're protecting the rich, which you could argue is the real function of police, but they're not protecting the people and so I think that would be important as a change. Right, I hear what you're saying and certainly that's, it's hard to argue, hard to argue with that. Okay, is there anything that you feel would be important for the people who are watching and listening to know that we have not really covered much in the conversation so far? That there is no correct way to be transgender. What do you mean by no correct way? You mean like there's no single way. There's no, you can't be transgender in a way that's wrong.  The dress does not change your gender. If you identify as a man, but you aren't really sure about he, him, pronouns and you want to use they, them for now, that's okay and you're still a man and that's still okay and I think in some ways people understand transgender as long as trans people continue to fit into the boxes that are set up.  Okay, now I can accept you as a man, but you don't need all those things to be a man and you don't need to be on estrogen to be on a woman. To be a woman, you can be a woman with a deep voice. You can be a woman who just wants to wear suits and not only is that okay, that's great. That's part of what I love about the transgender community is there's so much diversity and there's no one way to be trans. No, I want to thank you very much for coming in today for chatting. I have had, it's been good for me and I hope for the audience as well. I think that you speak really, really well from a place of painful, but also optimistic experience that you've had and again, just appreciate your voice being part of this public conversation. And I anticipate that there are a lot of people who are gonna continue to benefit from your own efforts and experience and have an easier journey of their own because of what you do. So keep it up. Thank you and thanks for having me. Yeah, I really appreciate it. For Noah Stang Osborn, I'm James Milan. This is Driving Forces and we appreciate your being here.


Why is there a global silence on Hamas' stated aims? As we examine the complexities of the Israel-Hamas war, we notice a disturbing trend. The world is quick to lash out at Israel for unintended civilian casualties, yet turns a blind eye to Hamas' open agenda of eliminating Israel. This hypocrisy is glaring, given that unintended casualties are a sad but inevitable part of any war, including this one. But in this war, Israel is being held to an impossible double standard. That said, the question remains, will the world ever condemn Hamas' goal of eliminating Israel? Israel, in this conflict, has been placed in an unenviable position in a war it did not instigate. Yet, it has taken painstaking measures to preserve the safety of civilians, a testament to its respect for human life. Hamas' tactics, on the other hand, reflect a very different approach. Taking hostages, operating from terror tunnels, and the use of human shields for instance, are deplorable practices that escalate the civilian toll. It's a strategy designed to support propaganda, and it is a testament to Hamas' disregard for human life. Hamas' stated objective, the elimination of Israel, repeatedly reminds us of the group's intent, a reality that is regularly overlooked. The world, it seems, is eager to point fingers at Israel for unintended casualties, but silent on the destructive aims of Hamas. These facts speak volumes about the true nature of the conflict. So what does this all mean? It means it's time we shine a light on the world's hypocritical anti-Semitism, which holds Israel to an impossible standard. It's time we stopped overlooking the actions of Hamas and their stated aim of eradicating Israel. It's time we recognize that unintended casualties occur in every war, and that Israel has shown meticulous care for civilian safety. It's time to notice that the world has chosen to remain silent about what Hamas is about and what it has done. In the face of these realities, the world's silence becomes deafening.


On Sisuah Beach, lots of people here from all over the world. Tourists, you got myself rich. Everybody here is having a great time. What's not to enjoy? Hey over here, then I'll give you an umbrella. Hey my friend, tell me, why should someone want to come to the Dominican Republic? Look at this. This boat is called Paradise. And we are in Paradise right now. We are in the Dominican Republic. Walking down Playa Sisuah Beach. Beautiful day. Sunshine, blue skies, palm trees. I'm okay my friend. Thank you. I've never seen so many boats out. Look at all the boats. Boats everywhere guys. Loving it. I'm like halfway through my trip guys and I'm just absolutely loving it. I don't want to go back home. Obviously I have to go back to reality but it would be nice to just like live like this every day. Every single day just enjoy the sunshine, blue skies and the ocean. Nothing better than drinking pineapples and mangoes on the ocean in the Dominican Republic while you're sitting in the sun and swimming in the ocean. So he's building a sandcastle. This is Rich from Rich to Be Live reporting from Playa Sisuah Beach on Saturday. Beautiful sunny day. Beautiful water. Everyone's having a great time making sandcastles. People just chilling. Families, tourists, everybody. Sisuah Beach.