applied improvisation network. Lisa Jolly kicked it off with this request. Good morning. I'm having a bit of a block coming up with a name for my workshops. Do you find that the word improv scares some people away because they associate it with comedy? I just got some feedback expressing that very thing and I'm realizing I have to tread lightly with the very people who could benefit most from it. Thoughts and Diane Johnson Kettering jumped in. I have gotten the same feedback or they compare it to what they see Michael Scott do on the office. Now, while the word improv may be an accurate label for a genre of entertainment, mostly comedic with making up stuff on stage, comedy and incompetent winging it are both undesirable connotations for our field of applied improvisation. If we do want to bring valuable ideas and practices to a wider context of organizations and people's lives, we don't want a notoriously dreadful manager as our touchstone. So it's useful to make distinctions here. And I propose improv for the art form and improvisation for the principles and practices that inform the art. And these will be the same principles and practices that also underpin all other arenas of improvisation such as jazz, dance, sports, coaching, cooking, and as we now know, professional, personal and social development. It's quite common for abbreviations to come to mean something different from their original longer forms. Rehab, for example, has drifted away from rehabilitation. Hood has detached from neighborhood. The world does seem in practice to be separating the two along the lines I'm proposing. Practitioners of improv generally use the word to mean the theatrical forms, and they make little comment about stretching the term to cover the wider uses. And at the same time in the more academic literature, improvisation is the more used term to discuss their studies when they're addressing concepts of what musicians leaders and other people are up to when they're improvising. And of course, it's identifying a shared set of concepts that makes it possible for us to cultivate a field called applied improvisation. This original question in the Facebook discussion, carefully considering what to call the workshop or training is indicative of second wave thinking in improv of second wave thinking in applied improvisation. And this talk is about the three waves. And the three waves of applied improvisation take us through wave one, theater, wave two, workshop-based applications, and wave three, a wider range of creative explorations. As AIN has grown as a network over the past 20 years, we've quite properly been refining our concepts and offers. In wave one of applied improvisation, we simply learn how to do improv, theatrical improv, in one or more of its various forms, short form or long form, more or less comedic. In rehearsal rooms, the teacher's teaches how to do it on stage, and onto the stage we go, or we don't. Along the way, we may notice or be pointed towards various parallels with work or pick up useful life lessons. Adverts for these kinds of programs or classes say, you'll learn how to do improv, which will be valuable for you, whether or not you go on stage. Your insights and the skills you develop are often valuable byproducts of the primary purpose of putting on theater. Wave two builds on the classic insight that people often have of, I'm learning about more than theater here. It's when we deliberately seek and articulate the learning from improvisation. In current practice, these are usually lessons from the theater strands of improvisation, as those are the most accessible and well formulated, but they could equally derive from music or dance. Workshop and conference sessions typically include many of the same activities as in the wave one theater workshops, but with this extra view of applying it principally offstage as part of our personal development or professional training. Enter titles, including words like confidence, creativity, working better as a team. Often these workshops don't even include the word improvisation in their descriptions. The focus is on the results that improvisation can produce. And if we move from wave one to wave two as personal practitioners, we discover that some of the tips that are handy shortcuts for creating an onstage instant drama, for example, say yes to everything, are less applicable and more problematic in other contexts. When to say yes and when to say no becomes a really good debrief topic. Similarly, ways of getting actors to be more relaxed, allegedly, such as applaud mistakes and embrace failure, do not transfer well to the more consequential worlds of children riding bicycles on roads or adults piloting passenger blades. The teachers have work to do either to redefine or rescue these terms, to be honest enough to point out their limitations, that they're safe only in low stakes environments, for example, or preferably to adapt and come up with better formulations that more closely match improvisations, universal principles, to say things that resonate with truth in more contexts. What should we be saying about mistakes and failure when we wisely teach children about bicycles, roads, homework, social relationships, and all the other circumstances in which mistakes of various significance may occur? Those would probably be the best things to be saying or not saying, as the answer may be to say very little, as appropriate risk is a more fruitful avenue, in an improv class. What's happened in improv has tended to be the other way around, advice which is okay only in specifically low stakes situations gets offered in higher stakes applications, and then the teacher feels committed to justifying it. The transition to wave three is more complex and varied. Wave three is characterized by taking a plausible sounding improvisational principle, let's say, embrace uncertainty and testing it in offstage experiences and environments. Wave three events may include workshops, but the practice of the improvisation goes beyond this single workshop and it's explored in life settings. The quest, for example, by Del Close and updated since by Jeannie Lamb and Joey Nervig, and Street Wisdom, developed by David Pearl, are good examples of wave three improvisation. For an individual participant, these events consist of exploring an improvisational mindset in public spaces, noticing, reflecting on, and then perhaps discussing what happens. By creating and participating in wave three experiences, we discover what is and is not improvisational, without any reference to theatrical forms or performance. In particular, first they remove from the equation any of the elements of being watched. And that in turn takes away the pressure to be funny, or interesting, or anything else for the benefit of an audience. Second, it removes anything to do with being in a role other than yourself. Both of those elements are unsurprisingly present in many of the typical wave two workshop activities, residual, though non-improvisational aspects of the theatrical origins of wave one improvisation. A wave three improvisation consultant author might be, look, the world has changed with a pandemic. We've all had to depart from the plan and adapt to new circumstances, and these continue to evolve daily. Let's start a project in which we work with you to rethink your organization. In the Facebook discussion, Jean Sheridan reminded us that we didn't all learn improvisation under the name of improvisation or improv. She said, I was introduced to many of these games and activities through my outdoor leadership training, and then through various experiential education programs. I don't ever remember the word improv being used. We refer to them as icebreakers and experiential activities or exercises used to help solidify a concept. While it may be fine to consider applied improvisation as a bundle of games, exercises or activities and some loosely related concepts that we can draw on in the service of experiential learning programs, that seems to me to sell short the magic and the potential of our field. It's worth remembering that the theatrical strands of improvisation themselves derived from education, social work and training in direct line from the work of Neva Boyd and Viola Spolin. Keith Johnston, too, who eventually became a theatrical practitioner, began his innovative thinking in education and migrated to theater via script writing rather than performing. What if we started from the idea that everybody improvises every day in conversations and daily activities that are to a greater or lesser extent unscripted? It's all perfectly natural, even mundane. You don't need an expert to get you started. It's a common human ability. Without getting into hard and fast definitions, improvisation involves adaptability, a here and now use of whatever is currently available to take a new action in response to a challenge. And it's always in a particular context, such as improvising an answer in an interview, a kick of an awkward football, making a meal from whatever's in the larder when visitors arrive unannounced. And it's always improvisation in contrast to the prepared answer, the rehearsed sports move, the planned meal with a fixed recipe. So those are the three waves I'd like to present to you, and we can move into perhaps some discussion of how those waves relate to us and our own activities.


What's up everybody, Jayz here with jayspeakscasebreaks.com giving away seven mixer spots in this one-pack of Panini score football This is a one-pack break Grand Emptiness number seven as you can see number seven sold out pretty quickly earlier today before we went live So Nick has already uploaded number eight, but this is gonna be break number seven As long as it sells out Joe there is no scheduled break So if you guys sell it out, it'll break if not then it'll break tomorrow But I expected a sell today since we've already sold out the first 11 spots straight up So again guys, we randomize the customer names and the teams distribute the hits out of the one-pack sell And then at the end of the break we'll randomize only the 32 customer names and numbers one through seven top seven I'm gonna spot each in the legends football mixer. So good luck guys. Let's roll it. We got a four and a six ten times Ten times. Good luck guys. This is just for the pack break one Two three four five six seven eight nine and ten Asa then Adam ten times one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 Colts down to the Washington Redskins And again, no trades guys. This is just a quick sell about our quick score packs.  Again. No trades. Let's just close it See what comes out of the one score pack And then we'll start No worries Frankie. I always just want to say Washington football club Sounds better than watching the football team, but I know they don't want to be like soccer No veteran base card ship. So just the rookie's inserts Will These are all base cards up until this point right her Yeah, Curtis Weaver artist proof to 35 So we'll go by the checklist on that one on group break checklist. You got Jerry Judy Jonathan Taylor Depends on pack there. I know seaship. There's just Will they tell you in the item description of the feature, but it just kind of give you a cell sheet. That's pretty much it Tells you the names at the bottom from Dan marine all the way down to like Rob Gronkowski or something like that All right guys, so let's switch scenes Again top seven get in Roll it and we had a four to one five times one two three four top seven get in Tice Jason Patrick Aisa Patrick Patrick and Jason. There you go after five times Top seven in congratulations guys one more way to win on the website numbers eat Jatsby's case breaks calm


This paper examines the sentiment of tweets about COVID-19 and Mpox, the top hashtags used in those tweets, and the top words used in those tweets. The findings show that nearly half of the tweets had a negative sentiment, while 32% had a positive sentiment and 26% had a neutral sentiment. Additionally, the top hashtags were hashtag COVID-19, hashtag coronavirus, hashtag pandemic, hashtag world health organization, hashtag who, and hashtag Ukraine. The top words were corona, virus, pandemic, world, health, and Ukraine. This paper also compared its findings with 49 prior studies in this field, showing that this paper contributes significantly to the existing body of knowledge. This article was authored by Nirmalya Fakhor.


In this video, I want to explore the different types of discontinuities one runs across in a typical calculus one course. So let's look at a few functions to discuss what type of discontinuities they're going to have. So consider the function f of x equals negative x squared plus 3x plus 4. You times that by x minus 3 and then you're going to divide x minus 3. So as we talked about in the previous slide, this is a rational function. It's a polynomial divided by a polynomial. And rational functions, as we mentioned, are continuous on their domains. So the only place for which we're going to get a discontinuity would be outside its domain, which when you examine the denominator x minus 3, the only thing that makes the denominator go to 0 would be 3 itself. So what type of discontinuity is happening at 3? Because after all, the function is defined, undefined at x equals 3. Well, with this rational function, you will notice there is a factor of x minus 3 on top and bottom, in which case we could, you know, it's tempting to cancel out the x minus 3 and say that, oh, the function equals 1 or minus x squared plus 3x plus 4, which that's sort of true. The function f will agree with that quadratic polynomial at all points in its domain, but 3 is outside the domain. So there's going to be some disagreement there. You're going to see the graph of function f over here. It looks like this parabola negative x squared plus 3x plus 4. The only difference, though, is, of course, at the point x equals 3. The parabola, y equals negative x squared plus 3x plus 4, it's defined for all real numbers because it's a polynomial, but the rational function does have a problem at x equals 3. You'll notice as we illustrate on this graph, this open dot is occurring right here to suggest that the function is defined at all points near this one on the graph, but it's not defined at that point as well. This is an example of what we call a removable discontinuity. A removable discontinuity. Specifically, a removal discontinuity is a continuity where the limit as x approaches c of f of x, this exists, it exists, but this limit as x approaches c of f of x does not equal f of c, right? And because, after all, to be a continuous function, the function has to be defined, the limit has to exist, and the limit and the function have to agree with each other. So if any one of those three properties fails, the function we say is discontinuous at that point. Now, for a removal discontinuity, the limit exists, but it doesn't agree with the function. Now, that could be like in this case because the function f of c is undefined, right? In this case, f of 3 does not exist, right? f of 3 does not exist because when you plug in x equals 3, you get 0 over 0. That's not a number. On the other hand, if we take the limit as x approaches 3 of f of x, this limit does exist. We can actually see that there's a point here. We see that it should be 4, right? That's what the limiting value is going to be. So the limit here would be 4. And where do we get 4?  Negative 3 squared plus 3 times 3 plus 4, that's going to give you a 4 right there. And so that's how we find this removable discontinuity. The reason we call it a removable discontinuity is because if we were to redefine what happens at f of 3, we could fix it as we could remove the discontinuity just by kind of just filling in the dots right here. Look at that. Now, the discontinuity has been removed because we could redefine f of 3. We could define f of 3 to be 4, and now it fixed the problem. Another type of removable discontinuity is illustrated in this graph. Take the function g of x, which this will be a piecewise function. You'll notice a lot of piecewise functions in our discussions at discontinuities because it's very easy to create discontinuities using a piecewise function. Take g of x to be the function x plus 1 as long as x is itself not 1, but then at 1, x equals 1, we're going to find g to be 3. So g of 1 is equal to 3. So you see that point right here, 1, 3 on the graph. Now, the function's limit suggests that as we get close to x equals 1, the function wants to be 2, right? You see this removed point at 1, 2, but the function's been defined to be at the point 1, 3. Why did we redefine it that way? Well, out of context, it's hard to predict why, but it is a removable discontinuity. We could have redefined this point to be 1, 2. If we moved it, that would fix the problem, right? And so we have this removal discontinuity. g of 1 is equal to 3, but the limit as x approaches 1 of g of x is equal to 2. So the limit exists, the function's defined, but the limit and the function don't agree with each other. Hence, we have this removable discontinuity. As we study limits of difference quotients in this lecture series, these are the types of discontinuities we run across. We get these removable discontinuities where if we simplify the difference quotient, we can then calculate the limit with the simplified form of the function. Now, another type of discontinuity, which we're going to see in this example, is what's commonly referred to as a jump discontinuity. What's a jump discontinuity? Well, let's investigate this picture a little bit more. Let's take the function h of x. It's also a piecewise function. We're going to say h of x is equal to 1 when x is positive, and it's going to equal negative 1 when x is less than or equal to 0, so when it's not positive. And so let's investigate what happens at x equals 0. So you'll notice at the y axis, something funky is happening. There's a jump on this graph. This is a type of step function we see. And so let's let's examine what's going on here. The function is defined at h equals 0. You'll notice that h of 0 is equal to negative 1 by the rule right here. If we look at the left-handed limit, like so as we get closer and closer to x equals 0 from the left, we see that the limit as x approaches 0 from the left of h of x, this will likewise equal negative 1. On the other hand, if we approach 0 from the right, we'll notice that the limit as x approaches 0 plus of h of x here, this is going to equal 1. And so you see there's a disagreement happening here. The left-handed limit is going to be negative 1. The right-handed limit is positive 1. And so a jump discontinuity occurs when the left limit of a function disagrees with the right limit of the function. So if the left limit exists and the right limit exists but they don't agree with each other, we call this a jump discontinuity because they don't match up with one another. Now the function, whatever the function's doing, doesn't matter. We still call it a jump discontinuity. Now in this situation, because the function agrees with the left-handed limit, this is an example of a function which is left continuous. It's not continuous at x equals 0, but it is left continuous because the left-handed limit agrees with it. You see this often with jump discontinuities. A function which has a jump discontinuity could still be left continuous or it could be right continuous if the function agrees with the left-to-right limit. But we could also have redefined this function. Let's say we have an open dot now. I'll use a different color to emphasize this. Maybe we have an open dot here on the bottom, but we filled this one up. This would still be a jump discontinuity, but now it would be right continuous. But hey, we could actually keep that as an open dot. Maybe define the function as something else. Why not? We could say h of 0 is 0 for all we care. In this case, we'd still have a jump discontinuity, but it would be neither left-to-right continuous. In fact, the main difference here between a jump discontinuity and the removable discontinuities we saw earlier is that there's no where we can place the point that fixes the discontinuity. We could define the point down here doesn't work. We could define it right here doesn't work. We could put anywhere else doesn't work. At best, we can make the function be left-to-right continuous, but not both because you have this jump discontinuity. The third type of discontinuity we're going to talk about here is what's called a vertical asymptote. That's going to be illustrated in this example. So consider the function f of x equals 1 over x and consider what happens at x equals 0. And so you'll notice that this function as you get closer and closer to 0, things are going to get very big or very small. So for example, the limit as x approaches 0 from the right of 1 over x, this is approaches will be called positive infinity. On the other hand, if you take the limit as x approaches 0 from the left of 1 over x, you're going to get negative infinity right here. And so we say that a function has a vertical asymptote if the left or right limit. So let's say that x approaches c either from the right or from the left, I don't care. So if x approaches c from the left or from the right, and then the function approaches positive or negative infinity, we refer to that as a vertical asymptote. So we see there's this line that our function is asymptotically approaching right here. And it doesn't matter if they approach in the same direction or not, we'd call this a vertical asymptote. This is a type of discontinuity. Why is it a discontinuity? We'll notice the function is undefined at x equals 0. So it's going to be a discontinuity. And in this case, the limit is approaching plus or minus infinity. Now, so why would this be a discontinuity? Could we change the function so it's not a discontinuity? Like I said, if we'd taken this part and moved upward, we could still get the limit to exist at that moment as x approaches 0 of 1 over x. Let's say we took 1 over x squared, for example, that would be infinity. That still will be a discontinuity, okay? Because if the limit, whether it's the left-handed limit, right-handed limit, or a two-sided limit, if the limit is equal to plus or minus infinity, then there's no chance that the function could agree with the limit. Because our functions have the convention that we only accept real numbers into the domain, and we can only accept real numbers in the range. That is, there's never going to be a point on our function where we're like, oh, f of 7 is equal to infinity. We can't let infinity be a possible output because infinity is not a real number. So if our limits, one-sided or two-sided, ever equal an infinite number, that's automatically going to be a discontinuity because the function cannot output an infinite number either. And so we get what we call this vertical asymptote. As another example, consider g of x equals this piecewise function, 1 over x squared when x is not 0, and x equals 1, excuse me, y equals 1 when x equals 0. In this situation, we still have this vertical asymptote occurring on the y-axis, you can see right there. And when you consider the limit, as kind of mentioned this on the previous slide, when you approach x equals 0 of g of x here, your limit is still going to be infinity, right? So we can tell you what the limit is, but the function g of 0 equals 1, 1 is not infinity, right? So this is a discontinuity and because limits turn out to be infinity here, we call this a vertical asymptote. Another example I want to mention, I don't have the picture prepared, so I'll just kind of show you what's going on right here. Imagine we have some type of like vertical asymptote going on like this. Perhaps our function is doing something like this, right? It approaches infinity, say on the right, but maybe it's actually defined on the left. You get something like this. So in this situation, you would see that the limit as x approaches, let's say this is the line x equals 0. As x equals 0 from the right of our function, we'll call it say f here. f of x does equal infinity, but on the left-hand side, you see that the limit as x approaches 0 from the right of f of x. That's just equal to 0. It agrees with the function evaluation. So this would still be an example called vertical asymptote because even though the function is defined on the vertical asymptote, both of these pictures do that, and even though the function is left continuous as it approaches that x-intercept, which is on the vertical asymptote, because the right-handed limit was infinity, we'd still describe this as a vertical asymptote. And so these three types of discontinuities, removable discontinuities, jump discontinuities and vertical asymptotes, this gives us what we call discontinuities of the first kind. And so these are sort of the benign discontinuities. There are more malignant discontinuities that exist. A prime example would be y equals sine of pi over x. We looked at the topologist sine wave earlier. This function was discontinuous, but it's what we'd say discontinuous of the second kind because unlike these examples of removable jump and discontinuities and vertical asymptotes, the discontinuities of the second kind, the left and right limits don't even exist. For removable discontinuities, the limit exists, which means the left and right hand limits exist. For a jump discontinuity, the left and right limits exist, they just don't agree with each other. And for a vertical asymptote, we see that the left or right limits will probably exist. It's just, I mean, some of them are infinite. Discontinuities of the second kind, the left and right limits don't even exist. And so they're much more malignant. Now, the good news for us in calculus one is we don't really study discontinuities of the second type with the exception of we mentioned them to show that things can get much, much worse than what we're talking about right now. We have enough problems as it is. And so we'll focus on these type of discontinuities for calculus one. Those are the first type.


I'm basically scared to welcome you to what I'm going to be doing in this conversation. I want, I'm very, very sad about this agreement in this conversation. And the thought that's been in my head all day is, and I say, do you want to change the conversation? You have to change who that is. And I'm very honored that people are around this table. And I feel they probably didn't have to put a lot of tables. So I feel like we've had a table and then sit around. And now you're sitting on the table with us. And I thank you very much for joining us. OK, we're also moving the microphone closer. So first of all, I'm sitting at a table with four very early artists and second artists back here. So I'm basically going to get out and maybe ask them a few questions to get to the bottom of the table. I think you're going to be a lot of chance for you all to ask questions as well. So first of all, I could just have an honor to introduce a connoisseur who has accomplished an award-winning film, TV, theater, actor, radio broadcast, and community playwright and director. In fact, I'd like to let the people in this room have seen the action. We've worked out many pages with social urchins, particularly the violence-expecting youth at his Love Life Foundation, which is an annual free impact. And we will be hearing about that, I'm sure. And then we have Eric Edward Temple, who is on board of our powerful multi-daughter team. They are surrogate daughters of me, too. And in 2009, they started the meet-and-lead and the foundation, which is a very important foundation, to work on issues of civil rights and to keep the legacy a little bit until the end of the first life. And of course, it was also a form of the meet-and-lead to start it. Yes. I just think it's very important to have issues that are mixed in, just to make sure that it's going to the right side, but not on the right side. I think now we can advocate for a lot of violence like myself, who are going through violence. Just a really quick comment before we move on to some questions. Performance has always been an important part of social movement activism, just since there's been access to performance in our part of that. And it serves a purpose, it raises awareness, to people who don't know about what's going on. So they can also be directed at people who are already in the mood to encourage them. Some people refer to that as reaching to the choir. And maybe they say that's a bad thing. But actually, the choir did some love, too. It was very bad work. It was directed at people who were already in the mood to do social justice and should do this. You need to have a community, you need to have art, you need to have the community activists as well. There's something you need that the arts can offer in social justice community. Sometimes it's just going to be to call attention to oppression or injustice that has become naturalized. In other words, people just think it's immoral that things aren't this way. And I'm sure because there are a lot of examples of that where people say, oh yeah, that's too bad, but that's just how things are. And we've had a lot of artists who have come up and kind of been chacked in this, who use dramatic techniques or artistic techniques to call attention to that issue. They say, actually this is not normal, it's not natural, it's not okay, and in fact, we can change it. It's not something like the weather where you just have to accept it, be this racist and sexist and so on. In the civil rights movement, there was a great deal of, the people had a lot of strategy in this plan and they thought in terms of dramatizing issues. They talked in terms of creative suffering. And in fact, when Dr. Taylor was asked underneath the press once, he said, why is your movement causing so much trouble with these sit-ins and these actions like this that result in violent responses? Why don't you just do things that are more calm? And Dr. King said, well, you know, I understand that, but there's a lot of people who don't understand how bad things are. And they haven't given enough thought yet.  And he was thinking in terms of social drama tonight. And so a lot of the actions like the sit-ins were devised to put the oppressive racist power structure on its back foot and off balance with the surprising intervention that was devised by the group that had less power. And these were successful actions. So this awareness of the idea of let's be creative with our suffering, let's dramatize the issue. This term creative suffering was essentially, we're suffering anyway, let's get creative so we can win real victories with our suffering. Humor is not always appropriate for every social justice campaign. But of course, as Mr. Lazy has shown, it can be very effective, right? I was empowered during the revolution during some artistic activism there. You had an old man in Tartary Square holding up a sign saying, Mubarak, resign already. My arms are getting tired, you know? So that kind of, even in the dangerous context that I've seen around the world, where people find ways to use humor in their activism, both for their own uplift and to surprise the satirized people, that's right. So having said that, I'm gonna just move on to our speakers here. And I thought I would just start with a question just to get some of the conversation going. And by the way, Donald Lazy needs to leave at seven to go to a show that he is in. He has kind of managed to do this on an evening where he's actually performing for a very, very long. I just wanted everyone maybe to just kind of go down the line. And if you could just answer in a few minutes, what was, can you name a major event that influenced you in the work that you do? And maybe talk about who your influences are. Could be an event that happened or an artistic thing, artistic influences as well. All we're doing. I actually, we are cousins to Emmedale. Cousins? Yes, we're cousins, but we're also serving daughters, granddaughters, to Emmedale's mother. And I say that because what influenced me in life was Emmedale's mother, his grandmother. She called me the great child she never had. Six months old, I grew up in the house with them. My mother was in college. To help my mother finish school, I stayed with Emmedale's mother. Growing up, I would sleep in the bed with Emmedale's grandmother. She would tell me stories. I would make little stories, turn her stories. You know, as a child. And it wasn't until I became older that I realized the story she shared with me were stories that, you know, there were true stories of her, fine memories of her, Emmedale. I traveled with Mamie very often in my lifetime. And I would hear her share the story of Emmedale. I would witness people see her and recognize her as I take her, as I got older and I would drive and I would drive her to a grocery store. Someone would recognize her, fall to their knees in the aisle of the store and lay their hand in her lap and cry. And I would get upset because at that time, you know, she was just maiming to me that I had something to do. I probably had a date or something. And I'm like, oh my God, really? Can we hurry this up?  And to me, not really understanding the moment that was happening in front of me until later. But I was also an Emmedale player, which was a touring troupe. She trained children after Emmedale. She trained them at Martin Luther King's Excerpts of the Speeches. And we learned those, not just learning how to recite a speech. We really learned what the speeches meant and how to recite them. And we traveled across the country reciting those speeches. And she trained hundreds. And today, we are lawyers, we are attorneys. All of us are professionals in all walks of life. I'd say 90% of the young men are clergymen. She influenced so many children. She influenced myself. So the work that I do, I was speech therapist by trade. But things changed in life. I've had two kidney transplants. Mandy was on dialysis. Well, she went on dialysis, I was, because I knew that she was about to embark. You know, fine. We've had so many similarities in our lives. But what really impacted me was maybe traveling and seeing her and not understanding that from six months of age, I was being trained to continue to work because she didn't have any more children. I was the one that God had ordained to continue with the work she had started because there was no one else to do it. And so that's why today, I have the Manny Timokin Foundation, which I've dedicated myself to 100%. And I'm blessed to be in a position to do that. What my mother's held and my husband's held. So, you know, when you ask what influenced me, that influences me. And what drives me is what she has stated. A lot of people didn't understand how bad things are. These are bad today. When you have the children that are being gunned down, especially in Chicago, when they're calling it Chirac now, things are very bad. So we have to be dramatic in what we do. Dramatize everything, whether it's humor, whether it's dramatic, you know, whatever you wanna do, we gotta get down to it because we're losing our children, especially where I'm from. So, you know, that motivates me and what influences me is my legacy of my family. Thank you. Well, I would say that Emmett's mother was my greatest influence. My family, I guess at about age three, I remember meeting her. My family migrated from the state of Mississippi to the Chicago area. And Emmett's grandmother was a person that afforded other family members, the financial abilities to come from the South into Chicago. And as we migrated from Mississippi to Chicago, of course, we stayed in the house with Emmett and his mother. And it was a family building. Emmett and his mother lived on the second floor that we had. Emmett's great-uncle, his mother's uncle, lived on the first floor and eventually they modeled the basement and my family lived in the basement area. So, my memories go all the way back until age three. Up in, I think that I was about seven and a half, almost eight, when Emmett was killed. So, I do remember Emmett. I remember attending the same grade school, McCotch School as he did. I can remember him being a fun lover of Joseph. He loved to make people laugh. He loved to entertain people. And I would probably have him live if he wasn't been a comedian of some kind. I think that he would have done very well in that field. So, this is what I remember of him. I remember that he was my protector. And I could get into some given trouble all the time. He was like that big brother that couldn't even do whatever else and nobody was a better father. So, I knew Emmett. And knowing him and having that bond and then going up in the house with his mother, I also became, she was a teacher. And I became a teacher. And as life went on and she began to age, she used to tell me, Ali, someone needs to carry on my work. And I would never commit to it because it just seemed like it was so tiring and never ending. But I said, I can't do that. But, you know, I am. And so, I think that I know I'm motivated because her voice and her wishes were echoed through my voice and through my behavior. As I continued to carry her work on, I went into special needs, socially adjusted students and behavior disorder, where I found my niche. I did teach what Chicago College of Schools for 34 years, which I did 17 years inside Cook County jail. How I ended up in the jail, God only knows. But it was a mission, I always call it missionary work because as I taught these young men in women 17 and 21, I found very quickly that I had to address a total person, not just from an educational standpoint. And it was so rewarding to see these young men and young ladies start to really gravitate toward me for what I have to offer. And I started to see change. And then as Erica said, she did the oral part. I started to work with them, like giving her emotions and giving her feelings from paper. And I was amazed at what I got from that. And I was also amazed at how these students started to turn around. And I said, okay, this is my name. This is what's coming out. And I'm working with this population of young men that she so dearly cared about because many of them found themselves in situations that if their environment had been different and their home structures had been different, they would not have been in that situation at the first place. So my thing was to show them a different way of life and motivate them to want to go out and achieve and do that. And I would say my greatest reward was my first class. I had 17 young men in that, my close to hearing. And I love 17 young men. 16 of them passed a few tests. And they, these were still there.  One, only one did not take the test because it was released from jail and then before the test. And so that didn't really got inside of me. And I said, well, okay, if I can do this without, that's what I don't know, people can't tell me how it's working. My class was called the GV room. And I didn't know that there was an officer at the door for the new young men, when the new people would come in and they would say, the only thing going on in here is to rent. And if you're not looking to pay the rent, do the work and get it. This is not flat tuition because you won't last an year. I'm motivated that young man to even be the gatekeeper as I call it, I don't know. But I go back to Mrs. Mulvaney all the time because she was my experience, she was my motivator. She was the first professional person that I had been around. And she would always mold me and instill me and tell me what I needed to do and guide me. But as my daughter said, it was only when she died and I had the awesome task of doing her funeral that I really realized, oh, she used to always say, Ali, I wish you could see me through the eyes of other people because I couldn't. She was just me. But then when the president started calling President Carr, wait a minute, maybe she just wasn't ready. Right now. And so here I am today, continuing her battle against injustices and trying to mold young people to not just be ordinary but go to the extraordinary and continue to try and bring change in our society. And that's all that puts me to the point. Question? Just what was it I think, the question is through, what is the event that has moved and maybe you were influenced by it? It's my son, and you don't mind if I stand. My son, are we? We're half of it. This is just a bigger picture of him that I care around with me. I've been, oh, sorry. I've been, my son was murdered August 14th, 2006. And it's been seven years already. And I've been fighting this battle for that long and not just for my son but for other young men and women out there also. My son was murdered in front of my house to a semi-automatic gun, 30 rounds of bullets left that gun into my son. He just turned 17 years old. And I, yeah, he just turned 17 years old and he walked out the house. Will you show our viewers as well? Thank you. Yes, he just walked out the house and he saw the perpetrator just wanted to shoot the neighbor down the street. And my son put himself in the way and said, run, run. And everybody ran that was on the stairs. And I think it was about 10 of them. They all ran. And the only person was left was my son. They walked past my son. They didn't know who he was. He was just the person walking out the house on his way to work. And everybody ran. The only person was left was my son.  And to this day, I still think that's an overkill.  And he didn't die there. He died at San Francisco General six hours later. I don't know how his little body held those bullets. I just don't know. But he was a fighter. He was always like what I always tell him. When we see crime or something on the street, say something. When I see people doing stuff, and I'll pull over and call. And they always see me doing that. And I know he did only what he saw me doing. So he'd leave behind two sisters. He was my only son. And at 17, they had to take his life. That day, my life changed. This, a part of my heart is done, my arm. It doesn't matter. This changes you. I never drank before that I started drinking. But that's old now. I finally doubted myself. I said, I gotta stop doing this to myself. I need to get out and bring attention to this crime that's happening on our streets. So I started going to the healing circle with mothers and fathers who've lost their children to homicide and hate crimes or whatever it be. And I stood up and that's why I'm standing up now because we learn how to stand up. I always sit in the back, but I learn how to come to the front and say what I need to say about our children. I talk with my pictures. I go down to 850 down at City Hall. I stand in front of City Hall two, three days a week with my son's pictures.  Everybody coming in and out of there. Even the perpetrators. Believe me, I believe they saw me and they probably know they shot my son. Six guys, six grown men. I don't have my pictures in order, but I take these pictures. He has, his father is from Nigeria. Me and his father are no longer together because he blamed me and I blame him. I go out to the schools to talk to the children. I go to San Quentin Prison because I need to know why people killed. What put it in their mind to kill? Why did you kill the person that you did? So I would go up to San Quentin and they would tell us, okay, we're not gonna negotiate for your life if there's a ride here. At that point I had lost everything that I had. So there was nothing more they could take from me. So I went in full force and I would bring my pictures and talk to them and understand what made you kill somebody. It was, you know, I thought I was hurting by myself, but they say hurt people hurt people and they do. And I needed to understand why did you hurt your victim?  Because I went in there with hate. Straight hate, you know, and the perpetrator was there. But I started realizing that, you know, like I said, hurt people hurt people and it just wasn't me. They took their victims, they didn't give revenge because they said, well, you made my mother hurt so now I'm gonna make you hurt. I'm gonna take, you took my brother, I'm gonna take your brother, you know? So anyway, I needed to talk to kids because they think the bullet won't hurt them. They think that they're invincible, you know?  And I said, a bullet doesn't have a name on it. It shoots you, it shoots whoever.  It took me a lot to do this and I didn't know what this picture was being taken of me when I was standing over my son. It was a lady at the funeral home who did this and I'm glad she did because I don't hesitate because I can stand and talk with my voice all the time but if you don't see what I'm going through, you'll never understand what I'm going through.  I also have his father, I can say that his father was from Nigeria, he was standing over his son too. So, like I said, we're no longer together and it's been seven years and we're no longer together because of that. And I have no desire of being back with him but we still grieve for our child. And what inspired me a lot was listening to, you know, I didn't know about anything until I started standing out there on the streets and I stood out there with my son's picture, his death picture of his body relived with bullets. I took, this was before the, this was after the autopsy where they turned my son's body from head to toe, lift his face up off of his body. His rib case wide open, you know, I'm, people say, why do you carry this? This is my story. This is my pain. I still have no justice. The perpetrators are still walking the street. So I use this to keep fighting. This is my purpose for fighting my son. Him laying on a gurney full of bullets, 17 year old boy, young boy, now looking like an old corpse on the table.  I come and tell my story, whether it helps or whether to let other people see that it just doesn't stop at my door. It stops, this can happen to anybody. You can be an innocent bystander. I go out and I go to the police commission and let them know, look, this crime needs to stop. We have no venue. I have no venue for my son's wanted poster. All I can do is go out to a pole and stack it up there and watch somebody tear it down. So as much as you tear it down, the more I put it up, you know, I asked for a venue, put it in the schools, put it in a public library, put it somewhere so that perpetrators are, so the crime can stop. I think if I saw, if I killed somebody and I walk around and saw this picture and I killed this boy and I saw his picture hanging up sometime, I think twice. And I also think too, people of color don't get the justice that they deserve. And I'm gonna say this, if my, I believe my son was a little white boy, he would have been, his case would be solved down if he was a little white boy. If these pictures were hanging up and his face was white, I bet they wouldn't be torn down. This is what I have to deal with. This is my neighbors that I'm dealing with and this is the system that I deal with. When I walk in the courts and when I walk in the police commission, I show these pictures and I know they're tired of seeing me but I can't stop, I'll be doing this for the rest of my life. That was my child. He is still my child and that. And so this is what I do and I, like I said, I don't only fight for my child. These are other young men that I walk with their mothers often and we go places and speak. And it's just not, like I'm saying, even though these are colored young men, I have pictures of Pacific Islanders, Latinos, it doesn't matter. I can wrap this building with it that I carry with me every day in one bag and sit down there and hang them up. I've also asked the police commission, because you know these, we don't have, like I said, we have no venue. It's where were you when I was murdered? These were on the bus, but if they're not up there long enough, I decide out of mind. So that's what I do. And you know, like I said, these are other mothers that I walk with every day. These two mothers I stay, I walk with them. They've lost their children. I wish that they could be here tonight, but I wasn't sure what was gonna happen with me. But I'm glad I'm here and I'm glad I'm able to tell part of my story and that the crime needs to stop. It needs to stop. This is a mental issue. This is mental, mental on us as parents. You know, we can't go just take medication and say, oh, it's over with. It's not. This is gonna be a lifetime feeling for us. So, I'll let you say it. Thank you. Thank you. First of all, I'm humbled and honored to be on the panel of such a powerful ring. I know this says that we had a town hall meeting Love Life Foundation. I believe the first time I mentioned the radio broadcast, she told me that story. What shape he was growing up, black and he's open in the sixties, getting handcuffed to the sidewalk, because I had a big apple right in my bike on the sidewalk. My mother, when I was a small child, showed me in Matilda's picture. And to this day, no offense, I've never dated a white woman. She told me that story. I was terrified of white women. Even in high school, a white girl say, I'll be like, sorry, can't talk, keep walking. Right or wrong, but I'm saying, we grew up an era of terrorists. And thank God, we had the Black Panther Party for self-defense, who, you know, crossed the sides, educated us. I would hang out at the, I grew up in East Oakland. They had a headquarters, I believe it was on 90th to 91st, somewhere around there. We'd go by there and the brothers would talk to us. We'd watch them pull over to the police when the police had somebody jacked. So I didn't have a choice in terms of activism. And as an artist, prior to the murder of my daughter, almost every work, I don't, nothing against entertainers. Oh, give my regards to them, bro. Nothing, but that ain't me. We live in serious times. In 19, since 1996, I don't know how many of you know this, almost four million Congolese have been murdered in that conflict that the U.S. is funding the rebels. Nobody bats a knot, you're right. Black life is cheap. This young lady right here is my 16-year-old daughter. Her name is Loeshe, which is Igbo Nigerian, which means love, life, and I'll tell this story as briefly as I came. First of all, it's not lost upon me why her life and death came and what it meant to me and the repercussions that it has. I delivered her in the car while it was moving on 580 Freeway, troop story. I had one hand on the wheel and I was pulled in the head and she drove out on a truck flat. You can look at her birth certificate, you can look it up, don't take my word for anything. It says place of birth, 580 Freeway. Attending position, Donald Lacy, BD, baby's dead. I was the first person to say baby's dead, I was BD. But I delivered her, she was a hurricane. She was as bright as William Lighting says in the Bible in a lot of African cultures, the name of the thing for a person who describes it and loved life. So I was going back and forth between L.A. working as a professional in the entertainment industry. I didn't want my family down there because I had more of a support network with my family here who watched my family when I was around, so I would go back and forth two weeks down, two weeks up, or however much I could commit. But in the summer of 1997, as I was up here, she called me, as I was coming back up here, she called me and feel like she was crying. I said, what happened? She said, well, a friend of mine, James Valerie, they called him Newman, was murdered, right? Over there by her house, 26, in the chestnut, 30th in chestnut, and she said, I want to do something. I said, well, what do you want to do? She said, I want to write a play about stopping the violence. And I remember telling her how proud I was of it because I was just impressed that she took her grief and became proactive. So when I came back later that day, me and her cousins got together and we just sketched out some of the stuff. We didn't really get to work on it. But flash, four months later, October 20th, 1997, as I was about to go on stage at the improv, I got this 911 page. And I always tell people, do not page me 911, because usually when people page you 911, it's like, what time does the game start? You know that kind of stuff. So I always say, no. But for some reason I didn't think it was nothing bad. I thought it was something trivial. But her mother was crying to barely tell me that she was killed. What had happened was, she worked at McDonald's. She was a beast and she was a conflict resolution media which the city of Oakland and all its infinite wisdom canceled the program because point blank was too effective. And don't let me get on my soapbox about why these things were like they are. But long story short, she was coming from her job waiting at the bus stop with a printer first who her mom had took in, was having trouble with her mother. She was seeing some young man who was kind of in the game, as they said. What they did know, she was sitting in the back seat of this van and he was in the front and Maya, her friend, was in the front seat next to him. But soon as the car stopped, four individuals walked up on the van shooting at him and he ducked and she took all of the duck five, seven bullets penetrated her body. And so my first reaction, because I've never been involved in street activity but I always knew people who were. And I got plenty of calls that night from people who said they knew. But let's be clear, we know who the murderers are.  And forgive me if I get a little agitated because when I hear this sister's story, you don't understand, since this happened 16 years, all I've been dealing with is death. Death, and the part that just bothers me, nobody is better than I. Even our so-called leaders. Barack Obama had to be shamed to come back to Chicago. 500 plus murders, that's an outrage. So my initial action was to get revenge but I talked to my grandmother, it was 101, she just passed away two months ago and she told me something to turn me around. She said, grandson, what the devil meant for evil, God was gonna turn you good. And then I thought about the conversation I had with her. I said, no, I'm not gonna, I don't want, I called everybody else, I said, no, leave, don't let justice be served, however justice is served. But what I wanted to do is make something good. I want to take her vision and do something. So my friend, who I've known forever, stopped his job, he started operating his office, we didn't have any money. And that's another source problem. You have all these nonprofits, no offense to anybody, get all these money because they write good grants. But the rubber ain't meeting the rubber, trust me, trust me. The rubber ain't meeting the rubber. So we just got involved with these youngsters and my nieces started helping me with sisters, friends, to this day we don't have a board necessarily other than family and friends. If I had made one mistake, it's a lousy administrator, I'm not no pencil pusher, but I do know how to mobilize people. We mobilize thousands. On the spot where she was killed, we had 2,500 people out there, Barbara Lee was there, the mayor, we marched through the town of the killers. Even some of the killers were there. So I say all this to say that I feel like I'm fighting a 12 alarm fire with a squirt knife. But this good news is, while I lost one, I've been able to reach thousands. And I don't get paid to do it, nor do I care to. Nor do I care to. It's the right thing to do. Don't wait until the bullet hits your door to get active like my sister or other people. This is a national emergency and what is so alarming again, even our black leadership.  And I don't know what else I have to do. I got invited to the White House and I'm not saying that to pat myself in the back, but I'm going to speak the truth. I don't care about making people uncomfortable.   We should all be ashamed of us. I'm ashamed to say I live in this country. And because they're black, no one is batting in. Oh, we need more witnesses.  There was a lady, God rest her soul, who was jogging in Concord. They found a cigarette butt. They convicted the man on the DNA. It wasn't a witness. The witness was the cigarette butt. So you're telling me, when it comes to solving the crimes of black kids, there's a burden of proof that you don't care till you're dead.  Yes, that was horrible what happened in Newtown. I cried for days. These are babies. But it happens every day and nobody's dead now. So to cut off, yes, art can be acted, but we need to be like in the civil rights. We need to start turning over tables at City Hall and saying enough is enough. Do something about saving our kids life. Otherwise, we deserve what we get. I had a quick question, but I also kind of want to open it up. So I want to ask, how long are we going until? I know that Ms. Elise has got to leave at 7. And are we going to end at 7? 7.30. Oh, 7.30, OK. So maybe because you're going to leave, can we get some? I have a question, but I'm going to hold it back so people in the audience can have the best questions. Does anybody have something you'd like to ask the panel? I'd like to ask Don. I met Don on my two sons' road with Austin Grant and I asked him, Grant, what's the matter? And that's how I met Don Lacy. And what bothered me is, like, from each other's story, like, you know, being an activist, this was when it started getting to me. One time I was at a sports park, and a mother walked up to me and she said, you did a good job for Austin Grant. But who is our voice now? I was like, what do you mean?  But we're not, where's the, when one year old baby is killed, where's the outrage for that? But when a white police officer kills Austin Grant or Ramona Grant, you tear the whole town up. But every day, 500 murders in Chicago, 135 in Oakland, 170 in San Francisco, 500 in New York. But there's no outrage when it's black on black or brown on brown time. But in no disrespect to it, it's like, the white police officers come out to do that. But why aren't you doing that when our young men are being killed? I couldn't even imagine what you and Donald were going through, because every day, I leave with that fear of losing both my sons.  I know 10 of these mothers that lost their sons. And there's no outrage. There was no outrage when a straight A student named Terrence Kelly, he played football a day in the south. He was on his way to Oregon, scholarship, had a future head of him. The night before he was about to go to Oregon, he was shot eight times. I don't know who it was, man. Shot eight times. There was no outrage about that. There's no outrage. I know what you're like. There's no outrage about this son. That's one thing we have to change. In order to change our community, we have to show that outrage when we're losing our sons and daughters and our babies. Not even that, we're losing grandmothers who are being shot. Two, a 49-year-old woman walking and opening. She was shot.  The grandkids, who's going to raise them? The Donald will affect that. This has. And we need to start being outraged about what happens to some of these. Absolutely. I would like to say quickly, there's something about showing the lost one. The body or the image of the lost one. That is a commonality to everybody here. So when you show the pictures of your son, we have this image here that no one's going to forget this face, right? And of course, as we know historically in 1955, what did the woman decide to do? Well, she showed the body. She left the casket open. She left the casket open. Didn't thousands of people come? Yeah. And she wasn't ashamed. You said you weren't ashamed. She said she wasn't ashamed either. Who needs to be ashamed of the perpetrators of crime? She said that she was going to leave that casket open, because there was no one. She said no one will believe in crime. And there was no way that she could describe to anyone what she saw in that body. Yes? I have a question about that. I've seen the documentary that was on maybe, that was aired out. The Antel story? Yeah, the Antel story. And I'm not sure if it was from that or another piece where, I read a piece where it said that if it happened today, she's not sure. She wasn't sure that she would have left the casket open. Is that true? No. No, she would have done it. She would have done it because she said that she could not describe the grotesque ugly faith of racism. And this is what she wanted the world to know and to see. And it by far was not the first young man who was killed in that man. But in 1955, we had television, which was able to send these pictures all over the world. And it caused an outcry, because this was a child. And people in other countries just could not believe that this was going on. Yes, it had been going on for years. But now, there was a media. There was a creative way of our business. Don't forget Jeff Manzine. She allows him to take the photographs, that kind of photographs, and publish them, which was a major. So to be able to get it out through mass media, like that, and to show the world. She just, in her spirit, which we all, I think, just that spirit runs through the veins of most of the women in that family, she would have opened it today, especially with what's going on today on here. And she's the only forefront fighting today. She fought to her death. Her last public appearance, she died about a few weeks after. She spoke against the death penalty. So she was moving and shaking even in her last week's life. Thank you. I just wanted to say that we had two problems. We had problems of people now accepting the African-Americans as human beings, and they shoot us down, other groups of people, and shoot us down like it, at the rake of the eye. And it doesn't mean anything to them. And then also, we have the African-Americans who will shoot us down, because we don't mean anything to them. I'm a art teacher, and I'm not talking about years ago. I'm talking about recently, me and the working children from five to 17, and a little five-year-old, we did maths. And he made this, and I still have to encourage the black children to color themselves brown, and they'll get you in bed. I don't want to be brown. I understand that our system perpetuates the idea that black is bad. Everything, like a kinky, is bad. But this little child, when he got through making this maths, when he painted it brown, he bought a red paintball on top of it. And I said, honey, well, why did you do that? And he said, people die. People die, you see. Now, one of the things that has an art teacher studied them in part, importance of art, that our children go through a school system that teaches them, that treat them like factory workers. And you know what happens when a person doesn't keep up on the line, they kick them to the curb. We have two problems. We have the problem of our society that hates us in general. I mean, the new Americans come here. I tell them all the time, I didn't come through Ellis Island. I built Ellis Island. I am the prime minister of America. I paid the way for you to get here. And then when you get here, you turn your nose up at me. You cheat me in your stores.   And they're not going to get it from our society. They're going to get it from their parents and their aunts and uncles. So we have those two major fronts to fight on. And I thank you. Thank you and these for sharing your stories. Because that means that they killed your boy because they didn't like themselves. And then they killed any tear, because white people and other groups of people do not see our humanity. Very well said. I'm already late. But I just want to echo what that's just saying. And part of the problem is there's not enough black men left. And here's where it really went far. There was a white journalist who I had on my radio show. By the way, they're going to be on Saturday, Mom, and some of the two names. But he's called Gary Webb, Dark Alliance. Don't take my word for anything I said. This cannot be overstated. The tumultuous effect. I grew up in East Oakland in the 60s and 70s.  We had a community and a neighborhood. What in all this shooting? Can you hang out in the summertime till 1 in the morning? So why did it change? It all goes back to when the so-called greatest president and bad dog, Ronald Reagan, oversaw the Iran-Contra affair, where Freeway Ricky was a CIA informant on the payroll that distributed crack cocaine of Highway 5 between LA and Oakland. And if you look at the murder rate in the black community, when that exploded in the late 70s or 80s, it goes like this.  But this also changed laws, the indeterminate sentencing.   This was all due to dark lives. Gary Webb was murdered because he fell upon this story. So there was some hearings that Maxine Waters initiated and lo and behold, what happened, right as they were about to go from LA, I was in LA at the time, I went to one of the meetings in South Central. Lo and behold, right before this was to come to Capitol Hill, guess what? Monica Lewinsky popped up and the whole thing was dropped.  And that's where we need to start to see not only some kind of investigation, but some type of reparation if at all possible for the irreparable crime that has been done to our community by the US government. And again, don't take my word for it, look it up. Thank you all, I will see you soon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Don't take my word for it. Don't take my word for it. Don't take my word for it. Oh baby, don't. Next, I'll give up Obama administration. As I understand it, a lot of people were born in black community and also in the white community from out the mix, supported. And many more supported Martin Luther King. Obama comes from the Democratic Party. He doesn't come from Martin Luther King. He didn't come from out the mix. He doesn't come from the Panthers. Then come from many of those groups. How can most of the black people vote for Obama? No reform, because he was black. Yeah, but it was a mistake right there. I'm just gonna say, is he black? Well, if you got, you and we got tricked.  How many people have been exiled from the United States? How much of an issue has been doing? Okay, Ron, so now let's hear the answer. I was answering, I voted for him because he was black. And I wanted to see a black president. And for my generation, okay, he was democratic. I'm democratic. Well, I was. I don't know what I am at this point. I don't know what I am. I might not be anything right now. But at that point, I was democratic. I was part of the democratic party. And my generation, we got out because it was a dream. And that was a dream that we had been taught. I had been told we would never have a black president, Ron. So for me, I wanted to see a black man as a president if it was gonna happen. And it seemed like it was something that could happen. And it did happen. So yes, I did vote for Obama because he was black. And qualified. Thank you. And if I might say so, many of us had our reasons for voting for president Obama.  They don't do it to the other presidents. He's president Obama, like it or not. He came in and he had dreams, which we all know, that everything he wanted to do, he could not do because of the powers to be. He's controlled as well as all the others were. And what did he step into? What did he inherit? That presidents before him left undone. You know, they couldn't change it overnight. And there's no way the president Obama is going to change it in two terms. Oh, it's getting worse. Oh, it's doing this. It's not getting worse. He's trying his best to do something. He does not have the final say. So we know this checks and balances. We know that there's politics and control because it's a lot of things. If he had a power, he would be able to do it. The president is the president, but the president also has powers that's controlling and we all know this. But because he's black, he's supposed to reinvent the wheel and whoa, get it done. It's not gonna happen that quickly. It didn't happen with the white presidents. It's not happening with him. And the ones who follow, they're gonna have just as much trouble trying to get laws that they can pack because their skin is not brown, okay? Now I'm sick and tired. You got to look at the whole and see what he inherited and what he's fighting against. I still don't understand why people are against the Obama health act as they call it. Because it's not a black thing that need insurance. You have people that need insurance for free services and they can afford the paper. They don't because they know they can get free. So not everyone has to do their fair share. You're trying to get them to work, but there's gaps everywhere. Yes, the computer's broke down. And have, let me stop, because see you're taking me to the stop. All right, let's go, I agree. I think it's a, it's just a good deal with them. We're not all supposed to agree, right? Can you, can I, we haven't heard from him yet, sir? Hello ladies, my name is Gray Moore and I'm a glazer, a union glazer in the 70s, 70s, 70s, 80s. And I just want to say thank you for coming and sharing your stories. And my question is, the kind of right on the systems here, Cotel, which he so eloquently articulated, heard about, I try to make a long story short, but quick, that they self-hate within the black community, i.e. Russell Simmons made a video, X-rayed it, portrayed Harry Tubman in a negative light. And when I first heard about it a couple of months ago, I just kind of refused. I said, I ain't even deal with it. And then I was on a computer, let's not use it and just bang, popped up without looking at it. Renishi McBride, Detroit, and that horrible thing right there.  And a lot of blacks, especially for men, can't figure out the system that we actually live in.  And before somebody, you know, Russell Simmons statue, you know, quote, unquote, successful running around, paying homage and sitting with the Dalai Lama, and then he got this spiritual awakeness and enlightenment and all of this and take an icon on the level of using the white community like Harry Beatrice Stroll, Beatrice Stroll was the lady, Bessie Grocer did the flag, Susan B. Anthony. So that's what Harry Tubman means to me. And for her, for him, somebody of his statue, you know, successful, you know, monetary in all Latin America and has a platform where he puts artists and things out. But what would be in his mindset for if you have an African-American of that statue, statue, to be little icon like that of ours and put it out there for the world to see? So the question I'm trying to ask is, what do you, as you ladies go around America and speak, you know, to different artists and groups? And what do y'all see? Or what do you think about the society and what's going on within the black community as a whole to our mindset? So like the sisters express, we know some things, but we don't even like each other to somebody like that who do one of our shemals like that. So if y'all can just kind of speak on it a little bit. Alumni, you got that going on, which is being in that society, in that elite society. Negative publicity is still publicity. And I say that because right before that, back in February, we had Lil Wayne and somebody. Yes ma'am, yes ma'am. Well Lil Wayne, how many know what happened? So I don't have to literally go into it. The Lil Wayne did a song with another artist, Future, and he spewed some lyrics about Emmett Hill. He said, it's Voldemort who said, I beat that woman's body part that pushed me to help like Emmett Hill. And I just went right off. That's it, this is not gonna happen under my watch because it was other than respect. But it was negative publicity. And Lil Wayne is intelligent enough, he knew what he was doing. I don't care what anybody say this. It was negative publicity. But in that fight, that was a strategic, complete, it was a whole full-fledged initiative against him, okay? That was a campaign that we would after him. Got the endorsement deal dropped. But it was in stages. But in doing that, and in doing the research with that, I learned so much about Illuminati and that level, that tiered level, those artists who had that kind of money and different things that go on from public since the different ones, things I had heard about. And so the whole mental process of where they are or what they're doing, it's so far gone. And I think that has a lot to do with it. I can't imagine Russell Simmons, Beyonce and that whole, and when you look at some of the stuff, and I'm not this Illuminati person. I don't study Illuminati and get all off it today. But a lot of that, I think, has a lot to do with that Illuminati stuff. But it also has a lot to do with what the sister back here said. Our young children and our brothers and our sisters, they're not loving these things. They've lost their identity in loving who they are and in loving and embracing their color and where they're from and their heritage. So that's what I think it has a lot to do with. Just self-love and embracing who you are and loving and respecting yourself, you know. If I can, and did anyone else want to? Hello, can you say what she's saying about our children not loving themselves? I mean, there's a lot of children that, I mean, I'm just saying this because one of the children that I'm talking about was a lot of foster care than the foster care system. And they're without their parents or their father. And one of the young men that killed, was involved with my son, was a foster child.  They feel nothing. You know, they're nonchalant and they just don't care. They're in and out of jail. There's no one there to, I mean, you can give them all the love if you're the foster parent but they want their parents. They want their biological parents. So I think that has a lot to do with no love there for them and that caused them not to love themselves. They see other children with their mothers and fathers and they're wondering where their mother and father is. So I think that's a lot of self-hate for themselves that I see in the children today and even in the foster care system. And I really think that's a lot more comes from it. I have a quick question and there may not be an answer to this one, but I'm just gonna ask, in your work that you have done, is there, you've had successes and you've brought a lot of attention to the issues. And just for me, there's also a slight misstep you might have done that you might want to share about so because it's good to learn from very experienced people's mistakes as well as their successes. I don't know if you want to share that kind of a story. I have more stories of that nature in my work than successes, I have more mistakes to talk about, but I don't know if you do, but sometimes that's helpful for people who are thinking of getting active to say, you know, and I did this and it didn't go perfectly, here's why, here's why. So I don't know if you have something to add. We did a production some years ago from one of the anniversaries for Emmett Hill's murder. Was it the 5050 that made these angels? We did made these angels, which was a play that I conceptualized and a colleague of mine, he wrote. I felt that we weren't ready by the deadline and I think that I should have pulled the plug on doing the production by the actual date. Don't you think we kind of rushed and prematurely did that, and it could have been better? I think it could, I think that it was good, it was intended to have done, but it could have had been more refined and could have been presented in a different type of venue so that we would have been able to encompass a greater, we took a loss. We took a financial loss. The play was about May and Emmett's mother. It was about her and the work that she did after Emmett died. About the Emmett Hill players and the impact she had on them. And then the audience was full of the Emmett Hill players who were adults and their families and it was a huge reunion and there were some complaints from some of the people and how they were portrayed in this and that because of the actors that were selected and such. So I just think that for that, I wanted it to be perfect for the type of event that it was. I think we learned from that and then we learned that you always want to make a profit. You never want to take a loss. That was a financial. I don't think, even though he didn't make a loss. It was nice. We had a voucher. We had a voucher. We had a voucher. We had a repeat voucher. Yeah. Issue that he had, that's all. Oh, I thought you had to do that. It's just a quote because sometimes we do, we want things to be perfect. And you had time pressure, it sounds like, because it was a specific anniversary that you wanted to do that. And then speaking engagements. I had speaking engagements where I was one that I had necessarily prepared and when I got there, I shot off the top of the gun. Oh, I've done that.  Well, we're on the restricts because we know exactly what it's supposed to be in our own minds. Right. So other people might not even notice. Yeah. But you know every little part of it. Yeah, the sound system, the venue, the acoustics, I mean, we're still talking about, we should have, I mean, it's okay. Logistics. It sounds like it's about logistics. This isn't logistics. The idea was good and then sound ability. Okay. I was gonna, did you want to say? It's not the same, but you know, it's like we're, we had an event where we had Snoop Dogg come and wanted to do an event for the mothers and fathers who lost their children to homicide. And he came in and he said he allocated us, it was a big old wooden check and said, this is how much money he was gonna give us. And we went to the exotic, we had to appear at the exotic erotic farm with Perry Mates. We went there and we were all on the stage with our baby's pictures and stuff, not knowing that we were being used. We were being used. And they used our stories, used us and turned the money didn't even come to us. It was going out of the way. People were coming in that they didn't even lose a child and was getting that money. And the money didn't come to us. So it's, I really feel, I really, that's the event that I wish I'd never went to, you know. And then not only that, there's other parts where people use us and then throw us away. Come tell your story over here. You know, so now when I go tell my story, it's gonna be on me because I wanna do it. Or you're gonna give me a stipend. Something, you're gonna do something. If I'm gonna come shed my tears and let you see my pain, you're not gonna use me anymore.  Thank you for, you know, it's a strange question, but I appreciate what you've shared because it seems so for people to hear about that and not to avoid that situation. Thank you. Yeah, sure. I just wanna, just, these are being passed out in the community. Jack, how are y'all doing? Good. My assistant back here, he's passing, he should have it when he don't have one. But if you're gonna find us on social media, find anything about our foundation, please have one of the tick on the cards. Keep it up to us. I'm sorry. So we still have like a few minutes and I'm curious if anybody else has a question. Yeah, very good. In a society in a community that's dominated by the single story like Newtown, like 9-11 to this day, how do we get the stories that are more important or valuable or that we are impacted by as a community? How do we get those stories out and in the public in a way that reaches audiences like Newtown, 9-11, or RRU? I'm gonna honestly, truthfully, our campaign that we had against Little Wayne, social media is a beast. Social media that has thrown it out and you got the media calling us. I mean, social media has really, really helped us just catapulting us. I would say, it means social media campaign. Also, the other platform that was very useful was change.org. They reached out to us, we were gonna contact them anyway, but they reached out to us because of what was going on. Someone had called in for us and they called us because of the nature of what had happened and the family and the historical past of the family, but those platforms are huge. Social media is almost to me bigger than regular news outlets because people are youth, everybody, they're on there. Even on Twitter, they'll tell you what's trending news. The top trending news, I'm gonna cry out. The Little Wayne story lasted for months. That was the story that just never ended. We were tired of it. We were over it and it was still going. They're still talking about it. Still a few people talking about Little Wayne apologize on Twitter, but social media is a beast. That's like the biggest platform. Twitter and Facebook and most of the other one that I don't use, the one where you take the pictures. Instagram and it's not another one. There's a time. There's also like something out on YouTube and it goes viral. Oh, because you have a YouTube channel, but I have someone that runs that. That's one of the reasons we have that because someone volunteers to do it. I don't do that one. We have Facebook and the Twitter and the YouTube. I don't play with Instagram. If I can just take a quick comment. I'm an artist activist myself and I also teach guerrilla theater activism of using guerrillas. So it's actually there's techniques that I teach in a class called tactical beforehand. So I teach satire, ironing, protest as another one of my classes. I think your question is spot on. The question is if you don't have a lot of money, like let's say you don't own your own TV station like Rupert Murdoch does. Somehow his opinions are always heard in the world. What can you do? And of course we have some great examples here with our heroes that are here right now. But there are any examples and techniques that you can use when you don't have a lot of resources and influence or people in your pocket, you know, that sort of thing. And sometimes it involves a creative disruption, frankly. Sometimes you have to infiltrate a health insurance conference of corporations as my friends did and we had a guerrilla musical first out in the middle of their meeting which went viral on YouTube and CNN and MSNBC did whole things about it because no one had ever seen that before. All of a sudden people in the audience dressed in suits and ties and looking like they belong here got a certain singing of the song which satirized the corruption of the health insurance corporations, right? So I'm just giving you an example. It's not as dignified or important as what the civil rights movement did. I'm not trying to put it in the same category, it's very different. But these are things that now in this edutainment society that me and some of my colleagues in the yes man who were the billionaires for Bush, I started a group called the Clown Army. And yeah, we manifested an army of clowns that go march somewhere in the dirty, right? And it's just strange and disruptive enough that suddenly there's more attention to a few of the people who are involved. So I'm not gonna talk anymore because I'm not the main attraction. But I just wanted to throw that out. That's what I teach and that's what I do. Question. Oh yeah. What about like these video, like Vimeo and all that kind of stuff? Is that good stuff? I think so. I think so. If you can't afford your own television station. I know a lot of people do YouTube. What about the Southern Stone? I mean, I think YouTube is still like really pop, like Vimeo's great, but I think YouTube is still one of the default places. More than Vimeo. And it's one of our holy grails is to call attention to an issue, to do something that quote unquote, it's a cliche now, but goes viral. Which sounds like a disease. But the idea is like, what you do is so interesting and weird that people just pass it around. And the next time you check there's a million bits and now people are talking about the problem. Doesn't have to be something funny, by the way. It can be deadly serious as long as it's crafted and so forth. And it's not the end all evil. It's only one time part of a social movement. I don't want to say that's the most important thing. Sometimes me and my friends get confused like, oh, we made a successful disruption and people are, so it's only one thing, but it's a part of it. And I think YouTube is, people are passing it around. At least they're talking about it. Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to add to what are you saying that in terms of really getting involved in the community. I work at East Side R Alliance at East Oakland. It's a collective of cultural workers that work with the community. We do a lot of work and I don't think you really need to think about the media, how we need to approach the media, but just getting involved in those organizations, work with the community, try to really make some light to those. I mean, that's what we need to do. I've seen some great events in your space. Yeah, and it's just the intention that you need to have in order to change your community and from there, something might happen or not, but I think it's the intention of going to your community, to those people that are very involved in grassroots and I just participate in it, you know. Because there are a lot happening. Maybe they are not like in the big venues or in the big institutions, but I know there is a lot of people doing grassroots work very deeply in the community. Thank you for that point. It's not only about the spectacular, it's also about what's happening in the big world. So we have like maybe one quick question because we have like three minutes left. I think it's time for 30 minutes. Is it? Yeah. Maybe, or maybe, are we... Your question? This person had a question. Yeah, I've spoken already before. So, there isn't anybody else I know, so. She is so crazy. No, I'm just resting my hands on this. So what I found really interesting and what you said was that maybe it took advantage of the new technology and television to get that image out, to show the world what had happened. Because spectacle lynching wasn't anything new. Those were destination things. People would trade postcards and pieces of flesh from spectacle lynchings. So, what, if you haven't seen the performance, what I like a lot about the performance in the music and I see the composers here, is that from the documentary and the told story of Emmett Till there's a description of him as being a really light person and you confirm that that he was a jokester. And some of that music in there, I think, catches that spirit of him even though there's this heaviness to the piece. There's this weightiness to it. So there's this, I really enjoy that and just the idea of Mamie using that traumatic experience to try and transform the lives of other people using that trauma that she experienced to reach out and nurture other children and bring them forward. And it helped because a lot of those that Mamie told, the Emmett Till players became professionals and were nurtured. So, just the idea of trauma-informed therapy or trauma-informed works that are transformative. That really appealed to me. The composer. The composer. Oh, okay. We'll talk soon. And we have the co-opter as well. Hello, yes. I've tried to have Mamie's book here tonight. To sell. You'll be able to find it on our website. When I get back, I'm gonna have the special link to purchase it. You can go on there now and purchase it or you can get it on Amazon. But if you wait and purchase it when I get back, 50% of the proceeds are gonna be part of our hundreds and we have as an author to discount now to raise money for our foundation. She wrote a book right before she passed away. She completed it. She co-wrote it with Christopher Vincent who basically came and did some he directed questions to her to help her write the book. And she finished it right before she passed. She wasn't alive to see it completed and pulled together, but they had finished their part. Of course, we love the interviews before her passing. And it's a very interesting book. It's about her life and in it. It's not just about what happened to in it, but it starts from how she conceived them and all of that stuff that I was like, Mom, did you know that this happened to Mamie? You know, so, and I haven't read the whole book myself because when I read it, I hear Mamie's voice and it's very difficult for me. And then it gets long for me. I'm like, okay, this part is boring. He knows both. But it's a pretty good read if you really wanna really get to come and get inside her thoughts. You know the story. I love it. Okay, okay. I'm just saying when you say it's boring, some of it's familiar. Some of it. When she talks about me picking her up with Name Guy and how I was driving and stuff, I'm like that. I cried on that part. You know, when the book first came out, of course, I looked in the back of the index for my name. And I was like, where am I in the book? What did she say? What did she say, you know? Which was only like three parts. I was a little disappointed. But we all, as human beings, we all do that. I thought our war was a little bit more talking around in the book. There's also another book out. We don't have a Simeon story with the cousin of ours. He was the cousin that was actually sleeping in the bedroom in it when they came and took him away. So that's another book you might wanna read. That's a very interesting read. Very quick read. It's a very interesting story. Simeon's story is very interesting. Now I have that. It is 732. So I guess we gotta wrap it up. Is that correct? We have Simeon. I just want, can you please give thanks to our audience. Thank you. And for those of you who are seeing the show tonight, it's writing a story for you guys. It's fabulous. You guys are all seeing it. A little bit. Yeah, you both, you know, it's interesting. Hold on. I'm just talking about the other one. Yeah, yeah. He's ancient. He's ancient. He's ancient. He's ancient. He's ancient. He's ancient. He's ancient. He's ancient. He's ancient. This will be a march, yeah. It's very true. It's one of the best. It's not a flat, it's a flat. Flat.


Maybe only one student is going to go to PA school. So look at the guy on your left. Now look at the guy on your right. One of you is going to get into PA school. Those are the numbers. Those are some stats for you. And just in case any of you are too young to remember that movie that was actually from Coach Carter. Absolutely fantastic movie, one of my favorites. If you haven't watched it, go watch it. It's a classic. Anyway, without further ado, here's the video. Hey, guys, my name is Boris. I'm a physician assistant. And today I'm just shooting a quick video to share with you my pre-PA stats. So stats for my GPA, my patient care experience hours, and a few other things like GRE that I applied to PA school with that ended up actually getting me into the PA school and the rest is history. Now I'm a practicing PA. So a lot of people commenting on my channel, asking me on Instagram and offline, what were your stats as if I get the same GPA and the same number of hours as you did? Then I will also get into school and that's a guaranteed, right? Not exactly. Stats do play a very important part, but they don't paint the whole picture of an applicant that ultimately gets them into PA school. However, stats are important, GPA is important, hours are important. So therefore, just to kind of put your mind at ease, I'm going to, at the very least, show you my stats for what got me into PA school. Okay, so let's go back in time to 2019 and see what my stats were for getting into PA school. All right, so as you can see on this little spreadsheet here, my total patient care experience was about 2,400 hours, 2,400 hours, which equates to about a year and a half, a little bit less than a year and a half of total full-time work, 40 hours a week. My shadowing is a total of about 155 hours. Research about 1,100 hours, 1,092. And then if you look over here, you will see my college GPA. So this was before I went to post-back was 2.98. My post-back GPA was 3.89. I rounded up and said it was a 3.9. So basically a 3.0 in college before I did the post-back. And then when I decided to start fixing my application, I decided to start taking my pre-PA application seriously. I realized I had to get my grades up to show that I can handle a tough curriculum. And so I went to post-back and I ended up getting a 3.9, as you can see right here, 3.89. Also the school I ended up getting into did not need the GRE, but I did take the GRE anyway because I was applying to multiple schools, some of which did need the GRE. And as you can see here, my total GRE score was 313. My verbal was 159, which for whatever reason, that cohort seemed to have a very low verbal score because that verbal score put me at the 82nd percentile. But based on my experience reviewing applications, 159 should not be at the 82nd percentile. It should be probably closer to the 50th percentile. So basically fairly average verbal score, but for whatever reason in that cohort, it was above average. My quantitative, my math score was 154, which was the 51st percentile. And then my GRE writing score was four out of six, which was the 55th percentile. So right around the 50th percentile, a little tiny bit above average for my GRE. Okay, so a few things that are not mentioned in these stats are my volunteer hours, which I just did not calculate. I volunteered all through my time in the military. I volunteered before the military. I volunteered after the military and just compiling all those documents would take forever. But I did get what was called the, I forget, but it was like basically the volunteer medal in the military, which you have to have a certain number of volunteer hours to get. So I had a pretty significant number of volunteer hours. Not a lot of them were medical. Most of them were with like animal shelters and whatnot, walking dogs, cleaning up after dogs. So nothing really related to like healthcare, but it's just something that I was passionate about. So that just, you know, shows good things about you if you volunteer. And then another part of my application that's not really in these stats is all the stuff that I did before the Navy and after the Navy, all the jobs that I had, that again, we're not really medical, but definitely we're applicable to medicine in certain regards such as customer service, you know, leadership, responsibilities, things like that. So basically what I'm saying with that is these stats are very important, but they do not paint the entire picture of the applicant, the holistic picture of you as a pre-PA applicant that the school is going to take that holistic picture to decide whether or not they want you in their program. So again, stats are very important, but they are not everything. If your stats are lower than mine, if your stats are lower than like the average, for instance, getting into the school that you wanna go to, do not lose hope, you as an applicant might be outstanding in other areas that would make them accept you over somebody whose stats might even be better than yours, you know. Also one thing to mention here is this 2400 hours, this is what I matriculated with, right? So this is what I had when I started PA school. What I actually ended up applying with was a lot less than this. So I think my application for the school I ended up actually getting into was, I wanna say in like September or October was the cutoff. So basically this gastro thing, this would not have even been like a factor because I started this in January. And the physicist thing, this would have probably been about three or 400 hours less. So total PCE hours, patient care experience hours, when I applied in September, October was probably closer to like eight or 900, you know, less than even a thousand. So yeah, this 2400 hours, this is what I matriculated with, not what I actually applied with. So I think what I applied with was a little bit less than a thousand hours, which, you know, is a big difference. So there you have it guys. Just wanted to share my stats, my pre-PA stats and hope that some of you might get some benefit out of it, knowing, you know, exactly what stats I had personally getting into school as somebody who's been to school, been through school, graduated, passed the pants, you know, have been a practicing physician assistant for about a year and a half now. It is possible to get in with these stats. So any questions, post them below. I'll see you guys in the next video.